Scenario: If you can find time away from other work – and if you can afford the meager development costs – then you can pursue your creative vision, with hopes of hitting it huge.

Question: are we talking web startups or garage bands?

With each passing day, Web 2.0 looks less like traditional industries that sell for profit services or widgets (the old kind). Rather, it resembles something vaguely like Hollywood.

• This industry features vast numbers of candidate projects, produced at a grass-roots level and initially financed by the original creators. Are we talking about indie films – or the latest Facebook App?
• This industry is characterized by fierce competition for recognition, in which middlemen select (from myriad prototypes) those lucky enough to receive funding and promotion. Are we talking about A&R Reps – or angels and VCs?
• In this industry, ideas are easily imitated, so that we often see three or four similarly themed projects in the pipeline at once. Are we talking about this year’s smackdown between “Cashmere Mafia” and “Lipstick Jungle” – or Twitter and Pownce?

The conclusion: if you’re curious about the future of Web 2.0, you’d do worse than look to the entertainment industry. Some lessons from the comparison:

1) Newcomers will arrive in droves – and will have high motivation to make heavy sacrifices. Actors wait tables. Writers flat-out starve. Granted, these people usually desire recognition, and web entrepreneurs a successful exit. But both groups are willing to sacrifice to follow an independent creative vision, which is a pretty decent job benefit.

2) Grass-roots resources count. If you’re a young writer wealthy enough to spend your days working on your laptop, then you stand a better chance of geting published (better than a newspaperman supporting his kids). But while self-financing can keep you in the game, talent nevertheless can win out. If the music is good, a solo songwriter can build a following, as long as he keeps at it. Similarly if an application does something truly worthwhile – like, say, Takes All Types – then sooner or later people will take note.

3) Marketing and industry connections are key. In media, there are plenty of qualified actors who could do that secondary speaking cameo on that new ABC drama. But the role can only go to one – and having well-placed connections, building a name in the industry, and marketing oneself wisely will get the job. Moreover celebrity mentorship can help. Just as Quentin Tarrantino cultivates young filmmakers, high-profile media figures like Steven Spielberg or Peter Gabriel can invest in companies like Rising and TheFilter.

4) Middlemen will be paralyzed by an abundance of choice. If you’ve watched your ‘Entourage,’ you know that in entertainment well-placed individuals – going on no more than gut instinct – often push through products they believe will work. Similarly, early-stage investors and VCs (for all of their love of metrics) frequently make instinctual choices on whom to fund, and whom to leave behind. In both examples, gut instinct yields failure rates often approaching 90 percent – pointing to significant opportunities for new analytical tools to predict hits, whether they’re web apps or screenplays.

5) Tthose dismal failure rates will only climb. In entertainment, most aspiring musicians, film directors, actors, and writers don’t come close to the big time. Once they do, it’s a bleak business. Less than 10 percent of records, films, TV shows, and books generate 90 percent or more of revenue. Will it happen in Web 2.0? As outsourcing continues to lower labor costs, and as tools like Google Docs lower enterprise costs, we can expect even more new companies to emerge. The vast majority will never get funded. The vast majority of the funded will fail.

So the consumer web is evolving into a hit-driven business. As in any other hit-driven business, many stars will have to align for success, beyond inherent merit – from timing your idea at the right moment, to meeting the right people along the way, to delivering a product to the public at the moment they want it. In the coming years, Tinseltown and Silicon Valley will have far more in common than one might have ever imagined.