The Music Monopolists

Thinking outside the antitrust box

Writing in Wired, Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) researcher and anti-monopolist Ron Knox gives a thorough, important account of how music industry monopolization resulted in declining revenue for artists, even as the industry itself has reaped greater profits.

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-big-music-needs-to-be-broken-up-to-save-the-industry/

Knox describes how concentration has come to every link in music’s supply chain, from radio to recording, streaming to live performance. The monopolists who dominate these sectors fight fiercely between each other, but no matter who wins, artists lose.

Let’s go segment by segment. Two-thirds of all North American music comes from three labels. The labels grew through anti-competitive mergers: giant companies, awash in investor cash, bought out mid-sized, successful labels, turning them into subdivisions of the Big Three.

The more concentrated the labels got, the worse they were for everyone. They spent the ’90s and ’00s price gouging record companies, pocketing hundreds of millions from an illegal price-fixing conspiracy. The fines they paid were smaller than the profits they reaped.

But at least they distributed music. Today, the struggling physical record-store…