From Wikipedia

Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common, due to differential reproduction of genotypes. Natural selection acts on the phenotype, or the observable characteristics of an organism, such that individuals with favorable phenotypes are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with less favorable phenotypes. The phenotype's genetic basis, the genotype associated with the favorable phenotype, will increase in frequency over the following generations. Over time, this process may result in adaptations that specialize organisms for particular ecological niches and may eventually result in the emergence of new species. In other words, natural selection is the mechanism by which evolution may take place within a given population of organisms.

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Can this be applied to Independent artists?

One bombshell that hits you when you explore an OMD, (the type that accepts anyone willing to pay them) is the shear amount of crap on their site.. and the absurdity of the sites management team and other artists on the site's insistence that the crap is in fact pure gold.

The OMD wants your money and you clicking endlessly on your own page and player to enhance their site statistics which in turn helps them look successful and generates advertising in the process.

The majority of artists want ego-boosting and a 'rock & roll' fantasy life online..

To do this you have to provide them with child's toys that they can play with.. simple devices like the artist page, charts, playlists, widgets..

And yet when you offer them an opportunity to actually control the content of a site that is getting genuine music buyers, listeners, etc., there is a parting of the artist crowd..

So many artists expect a site to do everything for them but when given the opportunity to do some real work for themselves.. i.e. promoting themselves, they can't be bothered.. they are selfish creatures, as someone pointed out to me recently.. they are children, still learning, not fully developed..

But the other side of the crowd see the promotional potential and grasp the opportunity.. and they are either genuinely talented or committed and passionate enough to want to improve their art and do whatever it takes to better themselves.. The latter will accept artistic criticism of their music, they will listen, they will learn, and then come back better than they were before.. these are the people we are looking for at ArtistLaunch.