also, one purpose of the "gatekeeper" is to ensure a very minimal level of quality... not the best approach but one that is used often in retail... exceptions are sites like youtube and zazzle...
Quality is important if you are the gatekeeper trying to sell other people's music. But if I am an artist, and I record something that everyone thinks sucks, so what? The only consequence is a low rank in the aggregators, just like low-quality submissions here on HN.
Well there is the "cost" of having an unwanted item clutter up the aggregator (or store, etc.). Things like collaborative filtering help with this, but are still (shockingly, really) not used, even by HN.
also, one purpose of the "gatekeeper" is to ensure a very minimal level of quality... not the best approach but one that is used often in retail... exceptions are sites like youtube and zazzle...