I know I am putting myself in middle of a Clash of Titans (Barry and Markham), and this may summon a Ghostbusters-worth armageddon.
So, I've both converted photo studios to cam studios (in siberia and ukraine) and started and managed multiple cam sites for 3rd parties (one of which being Met-Art), with both own managed studios and 3rd party studios and independent models. That's not since 1895 as Markham and Barry (no one questions they're older than anyone else here), yet, done this since 2003, enough to see all the changes (pre and post tube, pre and post myfreecams etc.).
Now if I understand the Clash of Titans debate:
Markham noted, that the cam sites are getting as many girls (whatever independent or studios) as possible with no control over who is there - i.e. like a facebook, anyone signups and is independent, the site it's just an automated platform (no any interest in studios, no any editorial action, just make sure everyone is 18+). However, Markham notes, such way it ends up (like tubes?) so the traffic unit is spread around endless offering and so "this model doesn't earn enough to interest girls in the West. Forcing studios to go to the Third World."
Markham's theory is that, even if he never accepted the offer of converting his photo studio to cam studio (and so he never tried to run a cam studio, or even less a cam site), he thinks that content "quality" (content is King), controlled by pro photo producers is the key, esp. for western cam production. And cam sites should actually (if I understand) allow to stream only a few models they deem as best "quality", and control them like movie or art directors, and so on.
Barry answers with a practical, statistical, historical statement: anyone could have tried to do what Markham said (and some tried), but really, most or all of up and running cam sites, simply let signup anyone. There's a natural selection happening there (free market, or evolutionary), so models who get tired (because no money or else reason) quit and others keep.
Now, anyone can take a look at the complete list of cam sites I wrote:
https://gfy.com/fucking-around-and-pr...-existing.html
There, one can see that most of what's at top does not own cam studios (ok, streamate and jasmin got some studio deals in east europe, but is a minority), and does not filter out "bad quality" models. Everyone can register, traffic is sent to site, then there's natural selection.
Now, if you scroll down to "smaller" sites, you find tubecamgirl (mine), seventeenlive, and a few others (that since was sold or died actually), that really limited the number of models and studios, and kept some control on studio (at least until recently). In fact back in 2003 when I started, it was common for cam sites to own the principal studios, care to "quality" and be art directors. This is how I started and suited perfectly with Met-Art where same model in photo set and cams was the Markham way.
Yes, Markham states that the future is the past. Markham's avatar pic is a Neanderthal man, an extinct race - he implies, really Neanderthals was best, and it was unfair that homo sapiens prevailed. The issue is, that most people in cams until 10-15 years ago believed in what Markham states today, and tried hard to own and control studios and to do beauty contest with performers, and keep out the bad quality ones. This is also cool for the ego of the chief pimp in office. Simply, this resulted in less sales, until some closed, or others "adapted" to take anyone and let the natural selection be done later, on site.
While it is true that most westerns (but also 3rd world's) performers try cams thinking they'll do money, and quit shortly after figuring that's not the case... and only those truly unemployed yet willing to cam, or simply horny exhibitionist character, or those who fished a single big whale paying all bills... keep doing cams for long time... yet there is not a single standard to rate "quality".
The bug in Markham's reasoning is that not everyone considers quality in the same way. Mine quality idea sent me to work at Met-Art, since I was convinced that Met-Art selected the models and the poses and "quality" in the best available way across the internet. Also I was producing content in same places (Ukraine, Russia) so it was just matter of convert photo studio to cam studio, by renting fast internet lines (expensive ast the time, now no more), 3ccd camcorders with firewire port and tripods (expensive - now a logitech $70 cam does excellent video), as well as bribes to the local police and all the package. The girls also was stealing toilet paper, tea and bringing home tons of stuff we had to buy in big amounts to account for studio usage plus all the stole for the families and friends of theirs across the whole city. In some cases they stole the whole studio (we found it empty, including refrigerators gone). That's fine, it was fun stories to tell like I do now.
So it went well, streaming met-art live shows inside met-art member area, sure I was delivering the right thing in the right place, anmd it matched my idea of quality. Yet something odd started to happen: one of the less pretty and especially less friendly or skilled girls (that I was nearly skipping: bad English speaking, goofy posing, often appeared bored in video etc.), got one single guy spending with her $5k+ a month, and this was like $90k in 12 months, all this single guy for this single otherwise unsuccessful girl. The guy later visited her in Russia, showered her of money, and she continued to bounce him anyway. Ok so I had discovered something new: this single bad quality content (according to all standards), bring to company $90k a year, which was higher than what the best content girls could bring by summing hundreds of happy but smaller customers.
A little later, I discovered that very bad video quality, lighting and background it can also bring more money than crystal clear super fast 3ccd camcorder studio streams. I was not allowing any stream under a certain speed and video, colos, lighting quality - however we had one Met-Art famous model that had simply that bad cam on bad internet at her home, she was far from nearest studio, so no choice, she was famous so I allowed. Well the guys was not minding the 1 frame per second, grainy and bad color video, since it was her! The model they admired in countless nice photosets. Further, she could not speak any english, so she just smiled and say hello, no interaction. The guys taking her in private was learning russian to just talk her. It was amasing.
I later allowed girls with very bad videos and framerate, and could not see any sales difference between good and bad video... counterintuitive really.
After the Met-Art era I could try with fat models, 40+ year old models, and there was always someone who liked that. Some guy simply was taking in private the girls to show himself wearing female clothes, not caring how the performer looked like. Other guys wanted the girl to tell them they have a small cock and losers. I ended up very confused at first, but then, I ended up with the practical evolutionary reality. You can't predict what stocks in the market will do well or bad, as well as you can't predict what cam performers will do well or bad. Just to an extent, Apple may do generally better than unknown stock, but some time this is not so.