I should have stopped reading after this big misinformation in the thrid paragraph:

"Radiohead’s In Rainbows, whose importance lies not so much in the excellence of its songs as in the ground-breaking way it was sold - or not sold. Because there were no hard copies and no cover price: instead In Rainbows was released online as a pay-what-you-want download."

Someone who hasn't understood - three years after the fact - that the "pay-as-you want download" was a marketing ploy / a gimmick (there were vinyl-albums, cds and a very, very expensive box set available at the bands website, later the album was licensed to "normal" record companies) should not write about the music industry.

My favourite quote from the article:

"Where the old school version was a spivvy schemer brokering dubious deals in a seedy Denmark Street or Lower Broadway office, the man opposite me is a 45-year-old former accountant who cut his teeth at Arthur Andersen."

From Denmark Street to Arthur Andersen is hardly an improvement. It is exactly the opposite.

And what is so "new" about the business model of these managers? Didn't Larry Parnes, David Geffen and hundreds (thousands?) others do (more or less) exactly the same?

If the old system is dead, why did these glorious knights of the new order place their artists with dying dinosaurs like Island (Mumford & Sons) and EMI (Eliza Doolittle)?

He should have read the chapter about the New Model in the best selling music book " How to make it in music" which is the industry standard view of what the New Model is - and of course does not mention the marketing ploy as you quite rightly point out.