They release albums on a major label, promote them with tours that Doherty almost always turns up to, and somehow manage to avoid killing each other along the way.
Those days of needing a major label to promote your record, market you and break you are kind of going away.
December is quieter for new releases as the major labels concentrate on promoting their recent albums in the holiday shopping season.
If a CD does not show smash-hit potential immediately, a major label is likely to stop promoting it to concentrate on the next possible blockbuster, sometimes even dropping the band.
She didn't win, but one year on Williams has a contract with a major label, which is currently re-promoting Little Black Numbers with an eye on the singer-songwriter market of David Gray.
Recording artist Ana Voog, who runs www.anacam.com, has used her cam site to promote a fledgling major label recording career, one which very likely would have gone nowhere were it not for her self-promotion.
"No one knows how to find, develop and promote an artist as well as a major label," says one executive at a concert promoter who asked to not be quoted by name.
This internet-streamed gig to promote their fifth album (and major label debut), Sempiternal, is part of an unusually intimate short tour: their previous English appearance was at London's vast Alexandra Palace.
Despite V2 folding in October 2007, the EP release went ahead and a nationwide tour of Ireland followed to promote what was the band's major label debut.
