5 ms·

I think he means a monopoly over the output of any given artist, under the traditional system where artists sign restrictive multi-album contracts.

• dereg 16y ago
  Okay, then that's not a monopoly, it's merely an onerous contract.
  • joel_ms 16y ago
    Copyright is the monopoly here. It's an exclusive right to control the distribution of a particular work. The onerous contract is what transfers the monopoly from the artist to the record company. The problem is the cumulative power that the big four record companies wield, due to the sheer amount of rights they control. It allows then to arbitrarily dictate prices and conditions, because if you don't accept their terms, they can lock you out from their entire catalog. Since they have exclusive rights, no one can start a competing service with more favorable terms or a more economical business model. Which is why these four even have the ability to try to keep their pre-digital business model. If there was any real competition here (not saying I have an answer to how that would work), these companies would have been ground into dust ten years ago. Instead they have manage to either litigate away or drown in fees, any possible successor to their antiquated way of distributing music. There are of course independent labels, free music, creative commons and so on, but that's competing distribution models for the artist, and offers no possibility for the consumer to "vote with his money". The only choice is to get a different album/song from a different artist, which doesn't make much sense to me. If I want to listen to "The Chronic" by Dr. Dre, I might also want to listen to "Illmatic" by Nas, but they're not interchangeable competing goods in a free market.