At the end of the day, what's left?

This I read the other day with great interest. Basically it's about Cordless, a new record label that's being run by Jac Holzman, who started Elektra records back in the day. It's part of Warner Music group, as I understand.

There's a couple interesting things about Cordless. The first is that they allow the artists to keep their masters, which is pretty unusual. The second, and more curious aspect, is that there are no physical products -- it's intended to be a digital-only. So no CDs, no physical distribution network. The third is that they aren't going to be releasing full-length "albums" (basically collection of 10+ songs); instead they will be releasing three songs at a time, more frequently. Fourth, the traditional big record-label advance is nowhere to be seen -- the advance is able to recover some of the recording costs, but not much more. There is no tour support, since the idea of the label is to promote the artists solely online.

Which leads us to the question: Well then, what exactly does the label add?

Webhosting and distribution are pretty easy and cheap to get (and getting cheaper all the time). Capitalization? For most bands, any money to help with recording -- especially if you're just getting started -- is welcome. But besides that? Not very much, maybe a little marketing knowledge, but at this scale it's unlikely that they'd be spending tons of money promoting any band. Being with an established name is definitely a big advantage nowadays, since with so may acts clamoring for attention, any differentiator will help. And certainly just having a third party that helps move things along and does some of the work (as I can attest) can ensure things get done on the days when you'd rather just slack off.

However, all that aside, there is one substantive thing that a label can (and a long time ago, far away, used to) provide -- and that is guidance and coaching. Perspective, wisdom, and insight into an artist's latent talents, and the ability to help draw these out -- this is an extremely rare and valuable skill which only a few people can do. A&R guys were supposed to do this, but all I've ever seen in A&R roles are a bunch of glorified scouts who only know how to say "I don't hear the songs" and play the construct-a-band-from-other-bands game.