If you think the music industry's distribution model is broken, check out the movie industry. Currently it'll cost me over $1,000 to use the easiest route to getting a feature into iTunes.
I am a movie-maker (obviously), and I know a lot of other experienced movie types too - happy to help with research.
Good starting points would be the current leaders in getting movies onto iTunes and Netflix: KinoNation and http://www.distribber.com/ .
The situation for filmmakers is so bad that the latter's offer to take 3+ months to get a single movie into iTunes for the low, low price of $1295 was - rightly - considered to be a massive leap forward for filmmakers worldwide.
If you think the music industry's distribution model is broken, check out the movie industry. Currently it'll cost me over $1,000 to use the easiest route to getting a feature into iTunes.