I recommend this entire LA Times article about how musicians have given up on finding the "new business model," and, instead, are simply working with the audience to try new methods and connections. These efforts put the audience first, then determine what they value. I'm fascinated to find out how many businesses, media-focused or not, can sustain subscription models.
Musician Sam Phillips, a singer-songwriter responsible for the music on The Gilmore Girls, recently set up a website within her main site for The Long Play, an experiment in the business relationship between the artist and the audience.
LA Times: For musicians, economy is the mother of invention, 2010-May-9, by Randy Lewis
Securing financing directly from fans has provided Phillips with a newfound sense of freedom to pursue her artistic impulses without artistic second-guessing that can come from corporate overseers.
But reporting to subscriber-investors, with whom she has a greater sense of direct connection, "I feel more pressure to do something for them. It's not a [faceless] company and people out there that you don't know; it's Jill, it's Bruce, it's all these people who have sent their money to me. I've got to get something going for them, and I hope they like it.
"That I'm not sure I like," she said with a laugh, "but they've been happy so far."
QVIews 
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