They can keep sending you back into the studio, and mess with your music. If they got an offer, they'd go for it. It's not like that anymore. Nothing was happening at the major labels anymore, he thought. There was a time when a band or artist needed a record company to pay for the making of their record, but that's changed.
Recording technology is cheap now.
Even musicians who don't have the technical skills to do their own recording can find a cheap studio and record an album for a few grand. The cost of pressing CDs is pretty minimal too. Already, thousands of bands sell their indie CDs at shows. Sure, it's not on the same scale as Tool, who sold over 500,000 albums in a week. But the whole star thing is myth that's been foisted on musicians anyway.