There's possibly a bit of assumed knowledge in Ben Thompson's posts; he analyzes web companies through the lens of his Aggregation Theory. If you're not familia

There's possibly a bit of assumed knowledge in Ben Thompson's posts; he analyzes web companies through the lens of his Aggregation Theory. If you're not familiar with that, then it's possible that some of his arguments seem unfounded. [1] It perhaps sounds borderline tautological, but I think the reasoning under Aggregation theory is simply: if they could attract suppliers directly, they would have, and therefore because they haven't, they can't. I think this is reasonable where Aggregation theory holds, since being an Aggregator is an incredibly strong position in the market. To make a reductio ad absurdum example, as a musician, I believe you could currently just upload your recordings to Spotify, and skip the record label, in the same way that Youtube video producers upload their content directly. (Youtube is an example of a true Aggregator in Thompson's terminology.) However it seems quite clear that the Spotify-only approach wouldn't be sensible, because Spotify doesn't get you onto radio, tv commercials, and all the other channels that a record label has available. And Spotify revenue alone is less than Spotify-plus-record label. (e.g. see Taylor Swift, who gets (by a very swift Google search) $160m in revenue [2], vs. $2m paid by Spotify [3] (and split between her and her record label). Obviously some of that revenue comes from non-music revenue, but the album sales numbers suggest that she's netting at least tens of millions per year. [1]: https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/ https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/ [2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2016/07/11/taylor-swift-is-the-worlds-top-earning-celebrity-with-170-million-in-2016/#455ff4f0747a https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2016/07/11... [3]: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-taylor-swift-earned-from-spotify-2014-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-taylor-swift-earned-...