Shayan Italia is an Indian-born singer-songwriter, with a nice line in pop that takes the mind back to the mid-1980s. Not a lot of people have heard of him, but Italia is a talent of the times. He has developed himself with almost no help from a record company, raising £500,000 from a group of private investors to shoot a professional video.

His Reflection reached No 1 on YouTube's music video charts last week, with 190,000 plays in the first 24 hours of its placement online, all of which sounds promising enough. Italia owns his material, selling 1 per cent shares in the business that controls all his copyrights, plus any tour and other music-related income for £12,000 a time.

Investors own 40 per cent of all Italia's future music output, the kind of fashionable “360-degree” recorded-plus-live arrangement that is supposed to excite us. Italia believes that his overheads are sufficiently low that he might break even selling far fewer albums than a conventional record company, although he will need to sell a few hundred thousand to achieve the task.

He scores a perfect ten for effort, but it has taken him a long time to get this far. He came to London from Hyderabad a decade ago. He is 29 years old, which, in pop terms, is bordering on ancient. For all his talent, the big break is yet to come and there is not yet any return for the investors who are taking part in an exercise that is supposed to prove that the great rock'n'roll swindle is dead.

Glance at this week's hit parade, meanwhile, and it is Duffy, the Welsh singer, who leads the singles and album chart. The 23-year-old was first signed by Rough Trade, the independent group that manages her, and it brought her to Universal Music, the wearyingly dominant market leader. Backed by the kind of marketing campaign that only big music can provide, Duffy has been compared - rather optimistically - to Dusty Springfield, Crucially, her strong voice and well-crafted album Rockferry do not, at least at this stage, disappoint on that hype.

Rockferry shifted 180,000 CDs in its first week, worth rather more than 190,000 views on YouTube, without the help of a television programme talent contest or any internet nonsense. In fact, the album was marketed conventionally to entice the mainstream buyer.

Nevertheless, despite these simple facts, people get very excited about the death of the record company and about finding clever ways to ward off its demise. But it is easy to get distracted: these companies are really creative businesses, allying marketing muscle with nothing more complicated than good music.

Spending too much time banging on about a new business model while failing to discover new acts, hiring management with little credibility in the industry or simply not bidding for talent when necessary are sure ways to fail, as Guy Hands many find out if he is not careful.

After all, people who buy or steal music do not care about how the music business should reinvent itself. What they want to do is listen to songs they like.

That may include Italia's singles, although it would have been a lot easier for him to find an audience if a well-organised music major had snapped him up.

— HIT Entertainment, which owns Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder, was taken over by the moneymen from Apax Partners for £488 million in 2005. After a bright start, when underlying profits rose by 21 per cent under Bruce Steinberg, the business has gone into reverse, hurt by flagging toy sales in America. Profits fell last year and Mr Steinberg was forced out in the usual flood of euphemisms last week.

Interestingly, though, one of his failings was to reveal the earnings growth in the first year - the sort of transparency that seems to outrage private equity men. Since then, HIT has been run like a secret society, while, presumably, Bob struggles.

Perhaps Apax has forgotten about the Walker code, which will commit private equity firms to disclosing how their portfolio companies are doing once a year, in an exercise that might, for example, be of value to employees.

Media companies are a little different from other businesses and having an open, public profile helps with recruiting and retaining talent. The point about media is that it thrives on the open flow of information. The sight of media organisations that refuse to play their part is always surprising. Doubtless, the men from Apax know better.

dan.sabbagh@thetimes.co.uk

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