[geodel]

> small cartel of massive labels dictating the terms for everyone else

Only for those who sign with them. So this brings the question as what's stopping these musicians to make music independently and market using internet along the way avoiding these labels. It is not even the case that music can be listened only via monopolistic mobile app stores.

I have used small independent service providers for tax filing, lawn mowing, cleaning and myriad other services by finding at internet. They are not backed by big corporate chains. Why music has to come from big labels.

[ProofByAccident]

> Only for those who sign with them.

I think generally the point of cartelization is to make it very challenging NOT to sign with them. Clearly many independent labels can thrive, and I can't imagine that it's impossible for an artist to start their own label. Nevertheless, when eg. sound and recording engineers can be aggressively poached by a major studio it's got to be challenging to go it alone.

[jyrkesh]

Price fixing? You can buy music directly from artists for any price you want. I do it all the time on Bandcamp and independent stores, for both digital and vinyl releases.

Piracy set the price at 0, Spotify pulled the price up from there, but there is literally nothing stopping consumers today from paying more for music except that they don't want to.

[ProofByAccident]

>Price fixing? You can buy music directly from artists for any price you want.

I think you're missing my point. The opportunity to market direct to consumer does not negate the massive wage-setting power of a cartel which can buy up rivals, production talent, leverage radio, venue, and streaming contracts, etc.

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

[ProofByAccident]

Like I don't know how you can read something like this and just say "well have you tried selling on Bandcamp?"

'''

Live Nation’s consolidation of the industry was rapid and aggressive, spending around $1 billion in just 18 months in the late 1990s buying independent concert promoters and venue owners. By 1999, when radio titan Clear Channel paid $4.4 billion for the company (then called SFX), it was the largest music venue owner and concert promoter. Antitrust enforcers took no action to stop the deal.

By 2005, Clear Channel had spun off its live music division into a new, standalone company: Live Nation, the country’s largest artists manager and concert promoter and second-largest venue owner. Today, Live Nation is once again part of a massive broadcasting and live music conglomerate that wields immense power.

Live Nation has since combined with the ticketing monopoly Ticketmaster, satellite radio monopolist SiriusXM, and online radio leader Pandora as part of media mega-conglomerate Liberty Media. Last year, Liberty Media was approved to take control of iHeartMedia, the largest radio station owner in the country; prior to 2014 iHeart was known as Clear Channel. The proverbial band was back together, antitrust concerns and all. Competition and consumer advocates stridently opposed every corporate tie-up along the way; my organization was part of a coalition that argued against the Liberty/iHeart deal last year. Antitrust enforcers permitted every one.

'''

Further down:

'''

The company’s power to steer business away from rivals is not theoretical. In late 2019 the Justice Department found that, for years, Live Nation had abused its monopoly by steering its artists and tours away from venues that refused to use Ticketmaster. The government could have sued for monopoly violations but instead simply amended the agreement it struck with the companies when they merged a decade ago.

'''