who would have been popular in a classic promotion environment
wat
Because the time and energy of the world's hackers is best spent on cargo cult business models attempting to mimic successes of yore?
How about developing tools to facilitate discovery of talented acts who will be popular in the current, real world environment where there's an internet, and people use it to find and distribute things?
To borrow a metaphor from Brian Eno, if recorded music (or any other duplicated and widely distributed art) is whale blubber, and we've reached the point of oil refinement, in what universe is the optimum response a sharper harpoon?
Sure, we can look at that, but then the experiences of people like Louis CK, Brian Eno, Trent Reznor, Radiohead, etc., are not particularly relevant, because they got famous in the old system, so aren't really examples of anything except, "if you got famous via old-style promotion, once you're famous, you can then sell direct online successfully". To reach a conclusion that you don't need the old-style promotion at all, we need more experiences of people who did not first get famous that way.
As is often the case, look to hip hop.. Odd Future, lil-b, Das Racist and (in the beginning) Soulja Boy are all examples of leveraging online presence into widespread popularity
How can this model scale down to unpopular acts? Or untalented ones? Or people who just started making art last week?
Because everyone who makes any art at all is entitled to compensation, right?