The music industry was once sprawling enough to accommodate a wide spectrum of artists. But artists today are beset on all sides by monopolists and oligopolists. Like so many sectors of our economy, government inaction has allowed the music business to consolidate, with devastating effects on musicians.
Radio is to a shocking degree in the hands of one company, Liberty Media. Two companies, Live Nation and Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), control a large number of venues and artist management services, with Live Nation dominating ticketing. The major labels have been whittled down to three. Record stores, alt-weeklies, and other elements that nurtured local music scenes are largely gone.
Dwarfing all that in significance is streaming, which has become the industry’s primary revenue source, despite giving a pittance to the vast majority of artists. For the main streaming companies—YouTube and Spotify—music is really a loss leader, incidental to data collection, the advertising that can be sold off that data, and the promise of audience growth to investors. “Spotify is benefiting from every single artist on the platform driving fans to them,” said Chris Castle, an entertainment attorney who used to work at A&M Records. “The labels say they give you exposure. The line is that you can die of exposure.”
This radical upending of the industry’s business model has benefited a few stars, while the middle-income artist, like so much of the middle class in America, struggles to survive. The ubiquity of digital recording tools and social media masks this pain; it feels like music is as vibrant as ever. It’s hard to discern an artist’s suffering, until they’re gone.
The pandemic has cruelly brought this home. Performers who subsisted on touring saw their livelihoods vaporized. Some quit the business; others suffered in silence. But a funny thing happened. Musicians who would pass each other on the road began to organize about how to ensure fair compensation for their work.
“We’re trying to continuously put artist needs and rights into the conversation,” said Maggie Vail, a musician, label manager for Bikini Kill Records, and board member with the Artist Rights Alliance, a coalition challenging industry consolidation. “If you don’t have healthy musicians, you don’t have a healthy industry.”
The notion of a music “business” is relatively new. For centuries, working musicians required patronage, either through churches or royalty or performances for the aristocracy. Mass production of sheet music in the 19th century allowed money to more broadly flow, and this expanded with Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph, and later Guglielmo Marconi’s radio. Musicians could record, package, and sell songs as a commodity, and earn money for more than just playing live.