12 ms·

Pop culture has become an oligopoly

234 points by kevin_hu 4y ago

kgwxd 4y ago
Are movies really still influencing pop culture like they used to? I don't think so. Top box office numbers only reflect how many movie watchers watched a movie. My kids don't give a single fuck about movies.
beefman 4y ago
As usual, the cause is below-trend GDP growth, and the solution is to increase the EROI of our energy systems.
McLaren_Ferrari 4y ago
The population is getting older too. Music is the most age dependant business. It's literally impossible to discover your favorite song at age 35+ and it's most likely already buried in your brain forever between 14 and 20. Same things for movies, franchises sell because there is a familiarity to it. Stuff that isn't franchise just doesn't sell. A possible exception would be biopics. I predict a huuuge amount of high budget biopic to integrate revenues from franchises. JFK, MLK, Reagan, Hendrix, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan...they will all get a biopic with a budget of no less than 175M a pop.
- photojosh 4y ago
  > It's literally impossible to discover your favorite song at age 35+ and it's most likely already buried in your brain forever between 14 and 20. With all due respect, this sounds like a comment from someone who's not really into music. I did a quick check with a musical friend to see if he shared my initial reaction... "what's your favourite song?" resulted in "I have no idea how to answer that question. Maybe ask me my top 100 favourites?" I'm well over that age now, and I have a new "favourite song" every week or two. Easing into more free time as the kids get older and am using some of that to go see more live music from local bands.
  - sssilver 4y ago
    Exactly how I feel at 37.
  - redwall_hp 4y ago
    It's a very "consumes music as a mass market product" vibe. My preferred genres have changed over and over, and since I've had a Spotify account since they came to the US, I can easily scroll back over playlists and see that. Hell, I started practicing making music as a hobby at the age of 29. In the last decade alone (I'm 30), I went from primarily classic rock and folk music mixed with some movie soundtracks to metal to Eurobeat to J-Pop. My favorite song when I was 14 was probably something by Feist or the Beatles, maybe something by Queen. Now it's definitely something from a J-Pop or Vocaloid artist. Somewhere between that I'd have said something by Franz Ferdinand or White Stripes (and to be fair, I do listen to them quite a bit).
  - brimble 4y ago
    Approaching age 40. Most of my favorite songs are probably from the 60s and 70s (5-20 years before I was born), but I only heard most of them (the ones that are my favorites) after age 35. I like plenty of newer music, too. I discover great new-to-me stuff from many decades, including the current one, all the time. This seems pretty normal in my social circle, though few of us are super into music. There aren't a ton of albums that I liked between the ages of 14 and 20 that I'd still defend as "good", though a handful are still nostalgia-listens for me. I had pretty shit taste in music then, really.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    I hope when I’m in my 30s and 40s and decades after I’m still finding and enjoying new music from times before I was born to times after my youth.
    - photojosh 4y ago
      Ha! Some of my current favourite artists are barely older than my kids! What's amazing is that you can hear their influences as being the music I was listening to when I was a teen through to my early 20s. Example: Nothing but Thieves are my #1 favourite in terms of recent rockers; you can hear the Queen, Jeff Buckley, Muse, Pink Floyd influences in there. I might be hallucinating some of it, but I swear half my teen favourites are in there somewhere. Another point; some of my favourite bands that were making great music many years ago are still putting out new albums, but they're just missing the edge now, sounding a bit formulaic.
- teg4n_ 4y ago
  No it’s not literally impossible to discover your favorite song when you are 35 or older. You just have to continue to seek out new music.
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    Right, my favourite song definitely changes over time. I don't get people whose musical preferences freeze in place in their twenties. I mean, I also don't get my friends who like Folk but there's no accounting for taste, freezing at that specific age just seems even weirder. The article seems unhappy about sampling, but basically sampling has been important more or less since it became practical. There was a rash of songs a while back that I thought were all sampling an old favourite I bought as a CD single last century. But they aren't! They're just using the same sample it does which is from a 1932 trumpet line. And sampling empowers the outsiders they're enthusiastic about. Lil Nas X wouldn't be anywhere without (almost certainly illegally until he was signed and somebody papered over the cracks with $$$ and co-writing credits) sampling Nine Inch Nails "34 Ghosts IV". Yes that's a great old timey banjo sound, but it ain't sampled from some obscure old banjo tune, Trent and Atticus put a bunch of work into making it sound that way.
- rnd0 4y ago
  >It's literally impossible to discover your favorite song at age 35+ and it's most likely already buried in your brain forever between 14 and 20. I don't have a single favorite song, but the band Ghost is high in my personal rotation -and they didn't even make a record until I was 44. And I didn't discover most of my favorite bands until I was in my 20's.
- cue_the_strings 4y ago
  I'm an avid music listener (in my 30s), and it'd be hard for me to name just 1 (or 10 or even 30) of my favorite songs. A couple of albums I keep in high regard came out in the last several years. Also, I seem to wear out music over time: you can only listen to Loveless or SAW 89-92 or Astral Weeks or Velvet Underground and Nico so many times. I know, yes, those albums are some of the best music made, but I don't find pleasure in re-listening them for the 100th time - I'd rather listen to something new. I probably took after my dad when it comes to music listening. He's in his 60s and still actively searching for and finding new favorites.
  - anfilt 4y ago
    Sounds very much like me. I like to keep listening too new music.
- syntheweave 4y ago
  There is something I saw on YT a year or so ago from a guitar teacher who said that his students have changed over the past 15 years: they used to come in and say "I want to learn this song from my favorite band" - and now, overwhelmingly, when asked what they want to learn, they shrug and start scrolling through their phone to try to find an answer. They want to learn, but not anything specifically. And often when they have something, it could be the most random old thing, from any era. That is, the song catalogue has stopped being something that has turnover, it just keeps accumulating into a library of dusty shelves, and that makes it hard for young people to assert norms as in days past and tell everyone "this band that was marketed to my demographic is totally the best and nothing will ever beat them" - which is where a concept of "best song" is going to come from, because hardly anyone is trying to assign letter grades to their listening. Instead you'll see a more apocalyptic Fall-of-Rome tone in the comments of old hits: "I'm only 13 but I wish I were in the 80's, best decade for music nothing like today's crap". It's so common a sentiment as to be memetic and widely riffed upon. Something has definitely changed in the music business.
  - Applejinx 4y ago
    There are elements where sound has deteriorated, functionally, from what used to be common practice. (this is of interest to me as it's 9/10ths of my day job) Handled properly, modern digital audio is easily capable of containing the magic sounds of particular classic time periods: not just the 80s, if you really work at it you can get late 70s represented properly, even without using period recording equipment. But you cannot mess around, you have to do it a particular way. People aren't significantly different from the 70s or the 60s or the 80s, as far as music creation goes. But the common practices are wildly different, and technology had a forcing effect causing the sounds of a decade (or time period) to take on a consistent quality based on the available tools and distribution media. That's all. You know it's not just 70s and 80s: there's electronic genres where the 90s fill a similar nostalgia role, and coincidentally have an obvious, distinct sound that is not heard today, and can to large effect be recalled through determinedly sticking to the period tools…
- paganel 4y ago
  I'm in my early 40s, I've just discovered Kino [1], I think they're really damn great. I "discovered" Ornella Vanoni and Mina when I was in my mid 30s, me and my SO have formed a habit of listening to this Mina song [2] each New Year's Eve, at exactly midnight (it also helps our dog and cat focus on us and on the music inside the house, and not on the fireworks outside). Between 14 and 20 years of age I was listening to some cool music, too (it was that interesting period just after grunge and as brit-pop was taking off), but, to be honest, the lyrics from those songs and even the music itself don't speak to me that much anymore. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino_(band) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino_(band) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGcX5wopq3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGcX5wopq3M
- redwall_hp 4y ago
  > Music is the most age dependant business. It's literally impossible to discover your favorite song at age 35+ and it's most likely already buried in your brain forever between 14 and 20. Nah. When I was a teenager, I was listening to classic rock and folk music. When I was in my mid 20s, I got into metal. Now I'm 30 and would absolutely give you a list of J-Pop songs competing for the title of "favorite song."
- mdoms 4y ago
  What nonsense. I'm 37 and my favourite song changes all the time.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
Some of these graphs are more convincing than others, this in particular seems to be fairly creative use of statistics. https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea56b3d0-b6c1-46cf-b151-f7d14270a5d9_647x380.jpeg https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p...
- derbOac 4y ago
  I think their paper they linked in the blog post is a bit like that too, maybe even more so, although I found both interesting. I do agree some of the trends are more convincing than others, although they're generally consistent with the overall direction the author is suggesting.
- t1nytim 4y ago
  Error bars nice and tight!
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  It's notable that the lower error bar for the 1920s and the upper error bar for the 2020s only differ by about 2%. Aside from the fact the plot sure looks like random noise, even the trend line is consistent with no change.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  I am a bit suspicious because the specific metric used for each type of media is different. That suggests some amount of cherry-picking.
iostream24 4y ago
Or maybe music executives are the only ones who read Fukuyama?
iostream24 4y ago
This puts its finger on something I’ve had a vague feeling about for awhile now. Something I noticed was that being “underground” and “alternative” was considered “cool” when I was a youngster. Now, it seems all transgressive elements have been stripped from the mix and it’s all about “please like me, like my product, I’m desperate for your approval” I’d had my own notions of this being fueled by the suit-vs-rocker dichotomy turning into the self-promoting-artist lonesome internet point of light thing. But this article describes a bigger pattern, and I think it’s largely about commercial conquest and has little to do with the ideas inside. There’s also the theme of nostalgia and “good old” style marketing. How much junk food is marketed as “grandmas good olde traditional natural authentic junk food”? What is extremely frustrating is watching mediocre output be considered best in class merely due to the rubber stamp effect of popularity, popularity due to marketing power and branding. Clearly xyz charttopper is the best singer in the world if they are the most popular, right? The entertainment oligopoly falsifying the appearance of democracy and choice while limiting the range of presentable choices is actually symbolic of how many authoritarian systems fake democratic parliamentary procedures and such. Clearly the people have spoken, approving the pre approved choice. Lol. Everyone must obviously love autotune if 9/10 top ten songs use it.
- matthewmacleod 4y ago
  Honestly it just sounds like you’re no longer a youngster.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    That's probably the most facile cliche answer, amounting to "it has always been this way". TFA, for one, shows tons of ways it isn't so...
    - teawrecks 4y ago
      > TFA, for one, shows tons of ways it isn't so... It doesn't though. What percentage of people do you think made up the viewership of the top 20 movies in 1977 vs today? People's attention is spread much thinner over vastly more "content" than ever before. You can be a fan of 20 different things that your neighbor has never heard of; this was much more difficult 50 years ago. I don't think the top 20 means much anymore.
spideymans 4y ago
Chart-topping original music has also gone "extinct"[0] 0: https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/no-2022-hits-harry-styles-1235057576/ https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/no-2022-hits-harr...
shannifin 4y ago
In his article [1] he mentions the Internet as part of a possible explanation in terms of it being easier for amateurs to create and distribute material. But I think the Internet also plays a huge part in the consolidation of fandom. Before the internet, the majority of us could really only share our opinions with those physically nearby, so there were less connections per each node. Enter the internet, now each node has 1000000x more connections, naturally pooling together the ranges of an opinion's influence. The spheres of influence expand while the overall number of spheres shrinks. Just a thought, anyway. [1] https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/pop-culture-has-become-an-oligopoly?s=r https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/pop-culture-has-b...
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  It's easier to distribute material. But it is not - at all - easier to market and promote material. Especially not in a persistent and effective way. That's the real difference now. People can make near-professional movies on iPhones, musicians can make professional-quality music at home, but no amateur has access to the huge industrial PR, social, and trad ad networks that the major labels/studios can roll out to promote their projects.
mjfl 4y ago
the consumer is to blame
rurban 4y ago
As counterpoint we just experienced one of the most original movies ever, which made it to the top 3: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3861218049/ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3861218049/ (Everything Everywhere All at Once) On minimal budget and marketing
- insickness 4y ago
  Not for nothing, Everything Everywhere All at Once was produced by the Russo brothers who directed Avengers Infinity Wars, Endgame and Captain America movies. Also Michelle Yeoh is a pretty huge star both here and in China. Just saying it's not exactly an indie film. But it was original, for sure.
SyzygistSix 4y ago
While there may be a smaller number of musicians dominating the Top 100 or Top 40, less people listen to that music than ever because there are tons of other artists putting out good music.
- krapp 4y ago
  Youtube, Spotify, TikTok, Soundcloud, etc. are far more relevant to pop culture, even if they don't bring in as much revenue.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >less people listen to that music than ever because there are tons of other artists putting out good music. You'd be surprised. Most people only listen to what's popular, same as always. It's just that what is popular is much more constrained.
oneoff786 4y ago
Ok devil’s advocate. What’s more original? Thor 3: Ragnarok? Or Jojo Rabbit? Both great films imo; both by Taika Waititi. The former features marvel’s Thor, who’s commercial af. But it goes to a new world, has a markedly different tone, humor, themes, and plot. The plot hits themes of humility and identity and the specifics of the ending were, imo, not very predictable. Jojo rabbit is set in WWII with all original characters with some great bits, but an overall plot that’s fairly predictable. You could easily argue it’s still Jojo rabbit, but is there anything obviously bad about how original Thor 3 is? I think no. And there have been lots of great movies in the past year even. Everything everywhere, Last Night in Soho, massive talent, etc. Edit: the formulaic rom coms and action movies and comedies were the bigger issue to me. A mildly novel setting, or perhaps, novel buddy cop duo, added far less interesting material than things complained about here.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  Romcoms are the romantic equivalent of B-budget action movies. You know exactly how it goes, but that's the reason you enjoy it =)
theshrike79 4y ago
Mid-price movies are the ones that have mostly gone extinct. We have the Disney-level Mega Movies with ONE BILLION DOLLAR budgets. These are the ones that are made by a committee of producers and executive producers and shareholders. They're too big to fail, so they'll be tested and re-tested and re-shot until they WILL make a profit. Currently they will also include a Chinese movie star and won't touch any subjects too sensitive for China, because multiple tens of percents of profit will be made in there. Then we have the Blumhouse[0] type 5-20 million dollar movies. They give a hard budget limit and won't pay the actors much - they'll get a share of the profits instead. They're cheap enough to not bankrupt the production company if it flops, but will make immense profits if they succeed. The Company won't usually affect the production much, giving the director free reign to do what they want. What's missing in today's world are the $10-$100M, movies. These have a big enough budget to not have to cut corners much, but still small enough to not draw the attention of The Executives who want their favourite things in the movie - letting the director enact their vision. The only mid-budget movie I can think of in the recent years is Michael Bay's Ambulance[1], shot with $40M. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumhouse_Productions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumhouse_Productions [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambulance_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambulance_(film)
- smnrchrds 4y ago
  Matt Damon agrees and gives some good insights about why the industry is moving in that direction. Short answer: because streaming replaced DVDs. https://youtu.be/yaXma6K9mzo?t=837 https://youtu.be/yaXma6K9mzo?t=837
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    Yes, DVDs were the second wind for many movies. Even if they failed in theatres they could be a hit on DVD. I've got a ton of movies in my collection I would've never watched in a theatre setting, but have enjoyed on DVD multiple times.
- cableshaft 4y ago
  Everything Everywhere All At Once, currently in theaters, had a $25 million budget, and has made a respectable $38 million in the theater so far, enough that some articles are calling it a box office hit. Also in 2019 there was Knives Out, which had a budget of $40 million and made $311 million in the box office. I agree with your overall point, just giving a couple more examples.
spicyusername 4y ago
A very well written essay. I very much agree with one of the conclusions: > Fortunately, there’s a cure for our cultural anemia. While the top of the charts has been oligopolized, the bottom remains a vibrant anarchy. There are weird books and funky movies and bangers from across the sea. Two of the most interesting video games of the past decade put you in the role of an immigration officer and an insurance claims adjuster. Every strange thing, wonderful and terrible, is available to you, but they’ll die out if you don’t nourish them with your attention.
- frankbreetz 4y ago
  I found it funny that in an article pushing for variation, used two video games examples(https://papersplea.se/ https://papersplea.se/ & https://obradinn.com/ https://obradinn.com/) from the same author
  - Jordrok 4y ago
    I came here to make this exact same comment, but I'm not surprised someone else beat me to it! Maybe Papers Please and Undertale would make better examples.
  - sph 4y ago
    To be fair, the only thing they have in common is the author. They are different in pretty much everything else, and absolutely unique experiences. (This is the only time I can share this with you, but beware, spoiler alert. Papers Please - The Short Film: https://youtu.be/YFHHGETsxkE https://youtu.be/YFHHGETsxkE)
- citruscomputing 4y ago
  So, question to all -- how have you found success at locating the fruits of this "vibrant anarchy?" Here's an interesting, related link, that's very obviously coming from a certain perspective but still has things you can take [0]. Here are some strategies I use for books: Go to the library and walk down a random shelf until a book calls to you. You can run your fingers down the spines and feel for the energy of the right book. The opposite (however, somewhat sideways, rather than top-down) is pulling books from the "someone just returned this" section. And the books suggested by librarians. I will also do full-text searches of my somewhat large library of ebooks, which gives equal weight to popular and unknown authors. Randomness, with uncommon items weighted somewhat equal to common ones, and direct recommendations that bypass algorithmic feeds seem to work somewhat well for me as general strategies. [0] https://www.epsilontheory.com/25-anti-mimetic-tactics-for-living-a-counter-cultural-life/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/25-anti-mimetic-tactics-for-li...
cafard 4y ago
Sixty years ago, the TVs in most American households got three channels, and each channel spent eight or ten hours broadcasting its test pattern. There weren't that many radio stations. The entertainment/distraction available was vastly less than today.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Right, so it's surprising that we see things even more concentrated now.
gregoriol 4y ago
Isn't it somehow related to series being more and more popular in the last 20 years? Maybe people just like being in a comfortable place, seing the same stuff?
omar_alt 4y ago
Growing up in the 80s it seemed like there was a whole host of serious music and films made for my parents whether it was Phil Collins, Luther Vandross, Out of Africa or MASH. There was a market back then whether it was considered less than high brow however that is no longer the case. I would go so far as to say if Steve Jobs was alive things might be slightly different but not much.
kderbyma 4y ago
this to me is a symptom of greed. It's people not wanting to pay for others efforts (possibly because they are not promoted or showcased or hidden) but they expect it for their efforts.
dang 4y ago
Related: https://twitter.com/a_m_mastroianni/status/1521133075199143937 https://twitter.com/a_m_mastroianni/status/15211330751991439... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31245559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31245559, but we merged that thread hither)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hirundo 4y ago
These are natural examples of ecosystems evolving toward a pareto distribution after a punctuated equalibrium. Think of it as another example of the great winnowing of variations that followed the Cambrian explosion. The cultural explosions were the invention of books, radio, television, internet, etc. Those disrupted the prior pareto distributions, and it took time to reestablish them. It's a general feature of complex ecologies rather than a specialty of cultural or economic ecologies.
paxys 4y ago
Sure if you look at box office numbers and the billboard hot 100 you will see this picture, but that is really just telling you about older millennials and above. What about artists who post their music to SoundCloud or Bandcamp? What about all the short-form content on YouTube? What about true crime podcasts? What about big name production houses who skip theaters and go direct to streaming on Netflix or Apple TV? What about all the people whose primary form of content consumption isn't any of these but rather TikTok and Snapchat? The real conclusion IMO is that the methods of distributing "pop culture" have been turned on their head, and traditional media is now playing catch up. Nielsen numbers and Billboard charts and all similar metrics are now irrelevant to the conversation.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Actually Neilsen uses ultrasonic signals which many platforms, big and small, rush to support to satisfy their creators. At least that was my experience as a Neilsen household then SWE at a SAAS serving radio stations (including white-labeled streaming apps).
seydor 4y ago
What do we know about winner take all phenomena from biology? How do they work in a petri dish?
- davemp 4y ago
  In forests it’s usually when an invasive species is introduced and results in a less efficient use of energy in the ecosystem.
rm_-rf_slash 4y ago
>How much does it dull our ambitions to watch 2021’s The Matrix: Resurrections, where the most interesting scene is just Neo watching the original Matrix from 1999? Perceptions are subjective, but I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t consider the most interesting scene to be the one where Neo (and therefore the audience) is told point blank: “our beloved parent company Warner Bros. has decided to make a sequel to the trilogy.” I’m surprised it wasn’t quoted in TFA because it’s an unusual fourth wall break that aligns with exactly the points the author is making about the inherent emptiness of endless franchises.
pbuzbee 4y ago
To me this reflects the large variety and volume of content out there today. As the amount of content grows, people with less mainstream tastes spread out their consumption, but people with more mainstream tastes stick with popular choices. For example, music. Let's say 50% of people like mainstream music and the rest have more obscure preferences. In the past, when music was harder to access, you might be exposed to 100 artists. Now, you might be exposed to over 1,000. The 50% who like more obscure music used to spread their listening out over 100, but now it's spread out over 1,000. Those who like mainstream music still mostly listen to the top 100 or so. The end result is that the top 100 is more solid than before, even though music is diversifying. For multiplicities, I see a snowball effect: each subsequent release in a multiplicity adds more people to the snowball. As long as the quality is good enough -- and people who enjoy mainstream content arguably have a lower bar -- the audience grows with each release. I think this effect, combined with the author's "proliferation" theory and major producers wanting to make safe investments, explains the dominance of multiplicities.
shaunxcode 4y ago
In situationist terminology - the spectacle is compounding upon itself towards oblivion. This is good! It makes it easier for people to see it for what it is.
mr_tristan 4y ago
This sure seems to be what happens when the long tail runs into the paradox of choice. One thing I've noticed, it is now way easier to create content over this time period as well. I now have a camera that can record beautiful 8K video, I can produce high-quality music records, and I don't have to rent or hire anyone. I've got a CNC that can crank out perfect templates for my woodworking. But there are now millions of others who can (and are) doing the same thing. And thus, it's stupidly easy to find something new, but it's hard to find something new and consistently good. So we just gravitate to the proven because, ugh, our free time is valuable. My only sense is that the oligopoly will persist, and probably become even more focused. But the "1000 true fans" approach for small-time producers is still the best way forward. Don't even bother trying to compete with big-time media, just try to build strong connections, thus being a "trusted" choice.
walrus01 4y ago
> remake and then you have things like the book series of The Expanse and the follow on TV/streaming series, which are an entirely new thing. or a movie like "ex machina". nothing mandates watching endless remakes...
6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago
I wish some of these charts weren’t normalized. Instead of percent of the market, I want to see the overall volume. Because my hunch is that these markets are just expanding unevenly. If it use to be 10 novel movies and 1 superhero movie, and now it’s 15 novel movies and 10 superhero movies, it’s a decrease in market share, but it’s still an increase.
jstgord 4y ago
Could this effect also explain why a lot of seemingly truly original music came out in the 80s .. roughly coincident with a peak in wealth distribution in the middle class ? My reasoning : a post-war relatively wealthy middle class and free University education meant more time for things like attending political protests, tinkering with emerging electronics/computers, engineering projects and garage bands. We have wonderful flat screens now, much better comms .. and yet nothing seems fixable, were killing the planet with our carbon emissions and not many people seem concerned, and our best most energetic young minds are slaves to servicing their student debt.
amelius 4y ago
Perhaps we should introduce a "purge" that happens every 10 years or so, and replaces all the popular figures by new ones.
- danrocks 4y ago
  Isn't that what the music industry does, already?
bumper_crop 4y ago
Copyright lasting 1XX years probably has a substantial amount to do with it. If you are a media company, and you already spent the marketing budget building up the idea of Avengers, or Mario, or whatever pop culture icon you are selling, making a sequel means you get to lean on it. Should your company spend lots of extra money advertising your new video game, or just a little reminding people the next Call of Duty is coming out in a month? Alternatively, flip this around. Would Disney spend so much on Marvel movies if other studios could make movies about the same super heroes? No way! Why should Disney let the other studios ride on their coat tails? They would need to make all new stories and heroes.
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  Disney has held their copyrights for over 100 years, but this phenomenon seems to be one of the last decade. I don’t think it is the cause, but you might be right that fixing © would help.
  - dhosek 4y ago
    Minor nit, the Walt Disney Corporation was founded October 16, 1923 and US copyright has anything published in 1926 or earlier in the public domain. I rather doubt, though, that the fact that The Great Gatsby just entered the public domain this year has anything to do with the concentration of the market in the hands of a declining number of producers.
dredmorbius 4y ago
The pop music industry has seen at least three disruptions to its controlling gatekeepers since the 1950s (1956-60, ~2000 with Napster, and presently with Spotify and YouTube), but each time a dominant hegenomy re-emerges. I doubt this time will be different, though the brief renaissance will doubtless be appreciated. Charles Perrow wrote of this in the mid-1980s: After the critical period from about 1956 to 1960, when tastes were unfrozen, competition was intense, and demand soared, consolidation appeared. The number of firms stabilized at about forty. New corporate entries appeared, such as MGM and Warner Brothers, sensing, one supposes, the opportunity that vastly expanding sales indicated. Some independents grew large. The eight-firm concentration ratio also stabilized (though not yet the four-firm ratio). The market became sluggish, however, as the early stars died, were forced into retirement because of legal problems, or in the notable case of Elvis Presley, were drafted by an impinging environment. Near the end of this period the majors decided that the new sounds were not a fad and began to buy up the contracts of established artists and successfully picked and promoted new ones, notably The Beach Boys and Bob Dylan. A new generation (e.g., The Beatles) appeared from 1964 to 1969, and sales again soared.( But now the concentration ratios soared also. From 1962 to 1973, the four-firm ratio went from 25 to 51 percent; the eight-firm ratio from 46 to 81 percent, almost back to the pre-1955 levels. The number of different firms having hits declined from forty-six to only sixteen. Six of the eight giants were diversified conglomerates, some of which led in the earlier period; one was a new independent, the other a product of of mergers.* How did they do it? The major companies asserted “increasing central control over the creative process”[352] through deliberate creation and extensive promotion of new groups, long-range contracts for groups, and reduced autonomy for producers. In addition, legal and illegal promotion costs (drug payola to disc jockeys, for example) rose in the competitive race and now exceeded the resources of small independents. Finally, the majors “have also moved to regain a controlling position in record distribution by buying chains of retail stores.”[353] The diversity is still greater than it had been in the past, and may remain high, but it is ominous that the majors have all the segments covered. As an executive said, “Columbia Records will have a major entry into whatever new area is broached by the vagaries of public tastes.” But for a concentrated industry, the “vagaries of public tastes” are not economical; it is preferable to stabilize and consolidate them. This would be possible through further control over the creative process and marketing. Charles Perrow, Complex organizations : a critical essay, 1972, 1985. pp. 186--187. https://www.worldcat.org/title/complex-organizations-a-critical-essay/oclc/970445475&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/complex-organizations-a-criti... https://archive.org/search.php?query=Complex+organizations+:+a+critical+essay+Charles+Perrow https://archive.org/search.php?query=Complex+organizations+:... The dynamics, actors, and economics remind me strongly of the software / high-tech industry, though with much weaker coupling and different lock-in mechanics. I've just been having a conversation with a friend who points out a quote from Herbert Simon (polymath economist, psychologist, mathemetician, artificial intelligence pioneer, and more): “in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” My friend's observation: [I'm thinking about how the] boom/bust cycles of the 1800s were caused by land value boom/bust cycles and how inflation is too many quatloos chasing a finite supply of dinguses…now wondering if there is a corollary of this in attention, as a finite amount of attention is chased by an expanding supply of "content." Gresham's Law comes into play on the quality but what to do about the quantity of media available in the same fixed 86,400 seconds per day? My response in part: 1. This is what the limbic / emotional system seems to have evolved around. That itself is in major part common at least amongst all mammals, and other life forms --- birds and reptiles show at least fear/anger responses, and for birds affection. 2. I've argued that in a world where there's an overload of information, _cheap and no-regret information discarding_ is an essential property. Some time after concluding that, a podcast guest mentioned the idea that random sampling in statistical methodology is less about choosing what to _include_ as what to _exclude_, which ... seems to follow a parallel path. Random selection isn't a bad option, and is at least unbiased. Stratified sampling may give more appropriate focus to more probabalistically relevant information. I'm thinking here of the eye and both its various regions of sensitivity, as well as its ability to shift focus rapidly. The sense of touch and its varying sensitivity across the body --- highest on hands (especially fingers), feet, lips, tongue, and genitals is another. Audio perception is far less focused, by contrast. 3. One of the useful elements of economics is that it gives a framework for considering behaviours under shifting costs. So with information -> abundant & attention -> scarce, we're shifting the relative costs of information (or perhaps better, "distraction", or "stimuli"), and attention. There's the additional factor that _value of stimuli is difficult (costly) to assess._ - Traditionally, trust, and specifically _institutional reputational trust_ was a key factor. That gives a long-term, slow-moving value which can be assessed. It does of course have and introduce its own problems, but at least reduces the transactional costs of information assessment. - Shifts to biases and tribalistic behaviour are probable. - Similarly, "shoot the messenger", which seems to become more prevalent in high-stimulus environments. (Messengers may themselve often be direc threats, as with disease vectors, say.) - Structural and process reforms. Highly-structured information _at the very least_ reduces the processing costs and/or increases the complexity of information which can be conveyed for any given cost. - Attention may shift to better-regulated platforms or sources. There are information streams we don't follow biologically for their lack of signal / excess of noise, and/or energetic costs of filtering. That may be entire channels, or selecting bandwidth within channels. As Adam Mastroianni notes, there are other patterns to how the industry responds: - Serials (television) and sequels / cinematic universes become preferred over original works. Audiences can re-attach to familiar characters and landscapes, in which a new (though predictable) narrative develops. - "Brand familiarity" follows similar trends, particularly with publishing. For a time this played out through serial publication --- books were produced, and financed, by publishing chapters individually through magazines. Many of those magazines themselves grew with the birth of mechanised transportation, mass production, and the need for advertising-driven marketing which the magazines supplied, while also serving as advertisements for their own product: books. Many of the magazines were organs of book publishers. See Hamilton Holt's excellent Commercialism and Journalism (1909) for background on the origins of the magazine publishing industry: https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft - Marshall Poe, founder and editor of the New Books Network podcast has spoken of how books, especially academic monographs, are a difficult product to crack and market. In particular, "people don't like to read very much". His podcast's long-form interviews with authors provide both a shorter entry point: an hour or so, perhaps experienced during a commute or household chores; and a different format, audio rather than written content, far easier for most people to process. Poe's comments should be in this interview, on his own network. https://newbooksnetwork.com/marshall-poe https://newbooksnetwork.com/marshall-poe On the "not liking to read" bit, my suspicion is that highly literate people strongly overestimate population average literacy, and the rate of low or no literacy, even in advanced countries: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29734146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29734146 The "content problem" has several legs: creation, production, curation, marketing, and distribution. Where costs of creation, production, and distribution fall (as they have), costs of curation (whether centralised or distributed) and marketing increase. We're seeing a shift in just that direction.
teawrecks 4y ago
This looks like statistics being wielded poorly to arrive at the opposite conclusion from reality. Consider if the whole of media were an iceberg: It seems to me that in 1977, almost the entire iceburg was poking up out of the water. Today on the other hand, while there is a much larger visible chunk sticking out of the water, it's just a tiny insignificant prick compared to what's going on underneath. The number you actually want is the size of the rest of the berg in 1977 vs today. Because it seems to me that as popular as the things I watch are, if I went and asked random people on the street about them, 99% of them would have no idea what I'm talking about. But if I were to do the same thing 50 years ago, more people would be familiar with the same smaller set of shows and movies and books. To me this is most evident based on the viewership of tv show finales. To this day, the most watched tv finale of all time is MASH at over 100 million viewers. Modern shows, even GoT don't even come close. I believe this is because there is so much content out there being produced that our attention is much more spread out. The "top 20" means less and less as the proportion of people who actually consume that stuff goes lower and lower.
eslaught 4y ago
Isn't this all explained by power law effects? There was an HN thread digging up an old Shirky.com article on this not too long ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20060208093032/http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060208093032/http://www.shirky... discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31038660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31038660 TL;DR: power laws predictably mean the top <whatever> looks really big, but that doesn't mean the long tail doesn't matter either.
Sophistifunk 4y ago
It's not a conspiracy. There's just some sort of fundamental structure of systems having selection and variable-rewards that leads to this sort of distribution over time.
deleted 4y ago
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teeray 4y ago
> In books: lightning-quick plots and chapter-ending cliffhangers. Nobody thinks The Da Vinci Code is high literature, but it’s a book that really really wants you to read it. And a lot of people did! I know folks in literary circles like hating on Dan Brown, but I do love that all his books have very short chapters. It’s refreshing to have frequent stopping places, rather than tucking in for a 70 page chapter-that-should-have-been-a-novella. I feel like I get through books with shorter chapters faster.
paulpauper 4y ago
Most of the charts look like snow. like this one https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b3884e3-3249-436d-b1e5-a25a167f5ba2_600x380.jpeg https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q... I don't think the author's argument is that convincing except for the rise of movie franchises, but that's not a observation. Ppl have been complaining about formulaic movies for years.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  The trendline is a bit sketchy but just comparing pre- and post-2000 there does seem to be a significant change in that chart.
oicU00 4y ago
Alice neutered the tech patent race, the pivot to copyrightable content creation and rent seeking via essentially lifetime copyright as everyone alive will be dead, began; streaming services for everyone. What do you expect from technocrats who grew up on dystopian capitalist cyberpunk? One touch purchases was a capitalist brand itself; Uncle Pauly G has NFT bucks for cyber punks that ship!
narrator 4y ago
If we had the pre-1994 telecommunications act radio ownership structure, music would sound different every decade because local djs would find bands they liked and promote them. I bet recent music movements that have been ignored by the mainstream like Synthwave would probably be the new thing defining the 2020s.
jwmoz 4y ago
I started watching Netflix regularly over the last couple of years, prior to that I mainly watched good film and the occasional series like breaking bad or game of thrones. I feel so burnt out from Netflix series, they are all the same, crime, murder, replicas of game of thrones (vikings) etc. And the majority of films they list are mediocre, all the good ones I have seen multiple times. I can't remember the last new good film I watched, maybe Tenet. I lost track of new things coming out.
ulisesrmzroche 4y ago
Pop culture has always been an oligopoly. Even before the days of the Beatles or the Olympians or even the Octoads. You can’t change this because pop culture and the star system are for the masses. Art is for early adopters. It’s that same concept of the technical chasm we have.
kilroywashere 4y ago
always has been
akagusu 4y ago
Everything in our society has become an oligopoly.

234 points by kevin_hu 4y ago

Are movies really still influencing pop culture like they used to? I don't think so. Top box office numbers only reflect how many movie watchers watched a movie. My kids don't give a single fuck about movies.

beefman 4y ago

As usual, the cause is below-trend GDP growth, and the solution is to increase the EROI of our energy systems.

McLaren_Ferrari 4y ago

The population is getting older too. Music is the most age dependant business. It's literally impossible to discover your favorite song at age 35+ and it's most likely already buried in your brain forever between 14 and 20. Same things for movies, franchises sell because there is a familiarity to it. Stuff that isn't franchise just doesn't sell. A possible exception would be biopics. I predict a huuuge amount of high budget biopic to integrate revenues from franchises. JFK, MLK, Reagan, Hendrix, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan...they will all get a biopic with a budget of no less than 175M a pop.

photojosh 4y ago
> It's literally impossible to discover your favorite song at age 35+ and it's most likely already buried in your brain forever between 14 and 20. With all due respect, this sounds like a comment from someone who's not really into music. I did a quick check with a musical friend to see if he shared my initial reaction... "what's your favourite song?" resulted in "I have no idea how to answer that question. Maybe ask me my top 100 favourites?" I'm well over that age now, and I have a new "favourite song" every week or two. Easing into more free time as the kids get older and am using some of that to go see more live music from local bands.
- sssilver 4y ago
  Exactly how I feel at 37.
- redwall_hp 4y ago
  It's a very "consumes music as a mass market product" vibe. My preferred genres have changed over and over, and since I've had a Spotify account since they came to the US, I can easily scroll back over playlists and see that. Hell, I started practicing making music as a hobby at the age of 29. In the last decade alone (I'm 30), I went from primarily classic rock and folk music mixed with some movie soundtracks to metal to Eurobeat to J-Pop. My favorite song when I was 14 was probably something by Feist or the Beatles, maybe something by Queen. Now it's definitely something from a J-Pop or Vocaloid artist. Somewhere between that I'd have said something by Franz Ferdinand or White Stripes (and to be fair, I do listen to them quite a bit).
- brimble 4y ago
  Approaching age 40. Most of my favorite songs are probably from the 60s and 70s (5-20 years before I was born), but I only heard most of them (the ones that are my favorites) after age 35. I like plenty of newer music, too. I discover great new-to-me stuff from many decades, including the current one, all the time. This seems pretty normal in my social circle, though few of us are super into music. There aren't a ton of albums that I liked between the ages of 14 and 20 that I'd still defend as "good", though a handful are still nostalgia-listens for me. I had pretty shit taste in music then, really.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  I hope when I’m in my 30s and 40s and decades after I’m still finding and enjoying new music from times before I was born to times after my youth.
  - photojosh 4y ago
    Ha! Some of my current favourite artists are barely older than my kids! What's amazing is that you can hear their influences as being the music I was listening to when I was a teen through to my early 20s. Example: Nothing but Thieves are my #1 favourite in terms of recent rockers; you can hear the Queen, Jeff Buckley, Muse, Pink Floyd influences in there. I might be hallucinating some of it, but I swear half my teen favourites are in there somewhere. Another point; some of my favourite bands that were making great music many years ago are still putting out new albums, but they're just missing the edge now, sounding a bit formulaic.
teg4n_ 4y ago
No it’s not literally impossible to discover your favorite song when you are 35 or older. You just have to continue to seek out new music.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  Right, my favourite song definitely changes over time. I don't get people whose musical preferences freeze in place in their twenties. I mean, I also don't get my friends who like Folk but there's no accounting for taste, freezing at that specific age just seems even weirder. The article seems unhappy about sampling, but basically sampling has been important more or less since it became practical. There was a rash of songs a while back that I thought were all sampling an old favourite I bought as a CD single last century. But they aren't! They're just using the same sample it does which is from a 1932 trumpet line. And sampling empowers the outsiders they're enthusiastic about. Lil Nas X wouldn't be anywhere without (almost certainly illegally until he was signed and somebody papered over the cracks with $$$ and co-writing credits) sampling Nine Inch Nails "34 Ghosts IV". Yes that's a great old timey banjo sound, but it ain't sampled from some obscure old banjo tune, Trent and Atticus put a bunch of work into making it sound that way.
rnd0 4y ago
>It's literally impossible to discover your favorite song at age 35+ and it's most likely already buried in your brain forever between 14 and 20. I don't have a single favorite song, but the band Ghost is high in my personal rotation -and they didn't even make a record until I was 44. And I didn't discover most of my favorite bands until I was in my 20's.
cue_the_strings 4y ago
I'm an avid music listener (in my 30s), and it'd be hard for me to name just 1 (or 10 or even 30) of my favorite songs. A couple of albums I keep in high regard came out in the last several years. Also, I seem to wear out music over time: you can only listen to Loveless or SAW 89-92 or Astral Weeks or Velvet Underground and Nico so many times. I know, yes, those albums are some of the best music made, but I don't find pleasure in re-listening them for the 100th time - I'd rather listen to something new. I probably took after my dad when it comes to music listening. He's in his 60s and still actively searching for and finding new favorites.
- anfilt 4y ago
  Sounds very much like me. I like to keep listening too new music.
syntheweave 4y ago
There is something I saw on YT a year or so ago from a guitar teacher who said that his students have changed over the past 15 years: they used to come in and say "I want to learn this song from my favorite band" - and now, overwhelmingly, when asked what they want to learn, they shrug and start scrolling through their phone to try to find an answer. They want to learn, but not anything specifically. And often when they have something, it could be the most random old thing, from any era. That is, the song catalogue has stopped being something that has turnover, it just keeps accumulating into a library of dusty shelves, and that makes it hard for young people to assert norms as in days past and tell everyone "this band that was marketed to my demographic is totally the best and nothing will ever beat them" - which is where a concept of "best song" is going to come from, because hardly anyone is trying to assign letter grades to their listening. Instead you'll see a more apocalyptic Fall-of-Rome tone in the comments of old hits: "I'm only 13 but I wish I were in the 80's, best decade for music nothing like today's crap". It's so common a sentiment as to be memetic and widely riffed upon. Something has definitely changed in the music business.
- Applejinx 4y ago
  There are elements where sound has deteriorated, functionally, from what used to be common practice. (this is of interest to me as it's 9/10ths of my day job) Handled properly, modern digital audio is easily capable of containing the magic sounds of particular classic time periods: not just the 80s, if you really work at it you can get late 70s represented properly, even without using period recording equipment. But you cannot mess around, you have to do it a particular way. People aren't significantly different from the 70s or the 60s or the 80s, as far as music creation goes. But the common practices are wildly different, and technology had a forcing effect causing the sounds of a decade (or time period) to take on a consistent quality based on the available tools and distribution media. That's all. You know it's not just 70s and 80s: there's electronic genres where the 90s fill a similar nostalgia role, and coincidentally have an obvious, distinct sound that is not heard today, and can to large effect be recalled through determinedly sticking to the period tools…
paganel 4y ago
I'm in my early 40s, I've just discovered Kino [1], I think they're really damn great. I "discovered" Ornella Vanoni and Mina when I was in my mid 30s, me and my SO have formed a habit of listening to this Mina song [2] each New Year's Eve, at exactly midnight (it also helps our dog and cat focus on us and on the music inside the house, and not on the fireworks outside). Between 14 and 20 years of age I was listening to some cool music, too (it was that interesting period just after grunge and as brit-pop was taking off), but, to be honest, the lyrics from those songs and even the music itself don't speak to me that much anymore. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino_(band) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino_(band) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGcX5wopq3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGcX5wopq3M
redwall_hp 4y ago
> Music is the most age dependant business. It's literally impossible to discover your favorite song at age 35+ and it's most likely already buried in your brain forever between 14 and 20. Nah. When I was a teenager, I was listening to classic rock and folk music. When I was in my mid 20s, I got into metal. Now I'm 30 and would absolutely give you a list of J-Pop songs competing for the title of "favorite song."
mdoms 4y ago
What nonsense. I'm 37 and my favourite song changes all the time.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

Some of these graphs are more convincing than others, this in particular seems to be fairly creative use of statistics. https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea56b3d0-b6c1-46cf-b151-f7d14270a5d9_647x380.jpeg https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p...

derbOac 4y ago
I think their paper they linked in the blog post is a bit like that too, maybe even more so, although I found both interesting. I do agree some of the trends are more convincing than others, although they're generally consistent with the overall direction the author is suggesting.
t1nytim 4y ago
Error bars nice and tight!
nonameiguess 4y ago
It's notable that the lower error bar for the 1920s and the upper error bar for the 2020s only differ by about 2%. Aside from the fact the plot sure looks like random noise, even the trend line is consistent with no change.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
I am a bit suspicious because the specific metric used for each type of media is different. That suggests some amount of cherry-picking.

iostream24 4y ago

Or maybe music executives are the only ones who read Fukuyama?

iostream24 4y ago

This puts its finger on something I’ve had a vague feeling about for awhile now. Something I noticed was that being “underground” and “alternative” was considered “cool” when I was a youngster. Now, it seems all transgressive elements have been stripped from the mix and it’s all about “please like me, like my product, I’m desperate for your approval” I’d had my own notions of this being fueled by the suit-vs-rocker dichotomy turning into the self-promoting-artist lonesome internet point of light thing. But this article describes a bigger pattern, and I think it’s largely about commercial conquest and has little to do with the ideas inside. There’s also the theme of nostalgia and “good old” style marketing. How much junk food is marketed as “grandmas good olde traditional natural authentic junk food”? What is extremely frustrating is watching mediocre output be considered best in class merely due to the rubber stamp effect of popularity, popularity due to marketing power and branding. Clearly xyz charttopper is the best singer in the world if they are the most popular, right? The entertainment oligopoly falsifying the appearance of democracy and choice while limiting the range of presentable choices is actually symbolic of how many authoritarian systems fake democratic parliamentary procedures and such. Clearly the people have spoken, approving the pre approved choice. Lol. Everyone must obviously love autotune if 9/10 top ten songs use it.

matthewmacleod 4y ago
Honestly it just sounds like you’re no longer a youngster.
- coldtea 4y ago
  That's probably the most facile cliche answer, amounting to "it has always been this way". TFA, for one, shows tons of ways it isn't so...
  - teawrecks 4y ago
    > TFA, for one, shows tons of ways it isn't so... It doesn't though. What percentage of people do you think made up the viewership of the top 20 movies in 1977 vs today? People's attention is spread much thinner over vastly more "content" than ever before. You can be a fan of 20 different things that your neighbor has never heard of; this was much more difficult 50 years ago. I don't think the top 20 means much anymore.

spideymans 4y ago

Chart-topping original music has also gone "extinct"[0] 0: https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/no-2022-hits-harry-styles-1235057576/ https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/no-2022-hits-harr...

shannifin 4y ago

In his article [1] he mentions the Internet as part of a possible explanation in terms of it being easier for amateurs to create and distribute material. But I think the Internet also plays a huge part in the consolidation of fandom. Before the internet, the majority of us could really only share our opinions with those physically nearby, so there were less connections per each node. Enter the internet, now each node has 1000000x more connections, naturally pooling together the ranges of an opinion's influence. The spheres of influence expand while the overall number of spheres shrinks. Just a thought, anyway. [1] https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/pop-culture-has-become-an-oligopoly?s=r https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/pop-culture-has-b...

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
It's easier to distribute material. But it is not - at all - easier to market and promote material. Especially not in a persistent and effective way. That's the real difference now. People can make near-professional movies on iPhones, musicians can make professional-quality music at home, but no amateur has access to the huge industrial PR, social, and trad ad networks that the major labels/studios can roll out to promote their projects.

mjfl 4y ago

the consumer is to blame

rurban 4y ago

As counterpoint we just experienced one of the most original movies ever, which made it to the top 3: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3861218049/ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3861218049/ (Everything Everywhere All at Once) On minimal budget and marketing

insickness 4y ago
Not for nothing, Everything Everywhere All at Once was produced by the Russo brothers who directed Avengers Infinity Wars, Endgame and Captain America movies. Also Michelle Yeoh is a pretty huge star both here and in China. Just saying it's not exactly an indie film. But it was original, for sure.

SyzygistSix 4y ago

While there may be a smaller number of musicians dominating the Top 100 or Top 40, less people listen to that music than ever because there are tons of other artists putting out good music.

krapp 4y ago
Youtube, Spotify, TikTok, Soundcloud, etc. are far more relevant to pop culture, even if they don't bring in as much revenue.
coldtea 4y ago
>less people listen to that music than ever because there are tons of other artists putting out good music. You'd be surprised. Most people only listen to what's popular, same as always. It's just that what is popular is much more constrained.

oneoff786 4y ago

Ok devil’s advocate. What’s more original? Thor 3: Ragnarok? Or Jojo Rabbit? Both great films imo; both by Taika Waititi. The former features marvel’s Thor, who’s commercial af. But it goes to a new world, has a markedly different tone, humor, themes, and plot. The plot hits themes of humility and identity and the specifics of the ending were, imo, not very predictable. Jojo rabbit is set in WWII with all original characters with some great bits, but an overall plot that’s fairly predictable. You could easily argue it’s still Jojo rabbit, but is there anything obviously bad about how original Thor 3 is? I think no. And there have been lots of great movies in the past year even. Everything everywhere, Last Night in Soho, massive talent, etc. Edit: the formulaic rom coms and action movies and comedies were the bigger issue to me. A mildly novel setting, or perhaps, novel buddy cop duo, added far less interesting material than things complained about here.

theshrike79 4y ago
Romcoms are the romantic equivalent of B-budget action movies. You know exactly how it goes, but that's the reason you enjoy it =)

theshrike79 4y ago

Mid-price movies are the ones that have mostly gone extinct. We have the Disney-level Mega Movies with ONE BILLION DOLLAR budgets. These are the ones that are made by a committee of producers and executive producers and shareholders. They're too big to fail, so they'll be tested and re-tested and re-shot until they WILL make a profit. Currently they will also include a Chinese movie star and won't touch any subjects too sensitive for China, because multiple tens of percents of profit will be made in there. Then we have the Blumhouse[0] type 5-20 million dollar movies. They give a hard budget limit and won't pay the actors much - they'll get a share of the profits instead. They're cheap enough to not bankrupt the production company if it flops, but will make immense profits if they succeed. The Company won't usually affect the production much, giving the director free reign to do what they want. What's missing in today's world are the $10-$100M, movies. These have a big enough budget to not have to cut corners much, but still small enough to not draw the attention of The Executives who want their favourite things in the movie - letting the director enact their vision. The only mid-budget movie I can think of in the recent years is Michael Bay's Ambulance[1], shot with $40M. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumhouse_Productions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumhouse_Productions [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambulance_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambulance_(film)

smnrchrds 4y ago
Matt Damon agrees and gives some good insights about why the industry is moving in that direction. Short answer: because streaming replaced DVDs. https://youtu.be/yaXma6K9mzo?t=837 https://youtu.be/yaXma6K9mzo?t=837
- theshrike79 4y ago
  Yes, DVDs were the second wind for many movies. Even if they failed in theatres they could be a hit on DVD. I've got a ton of movies in my collection I would've never watched in a theatre setting, but have enjoyed on DVD multiple times.
cableshaft 4y ago
Everything Everywhere All At Once, currently in theaters, had a $25 million budget, and has made a respectable $38 million in the theater so far, enough that some articles are calling it a box office hit. Also in 2019 there was Knives Out, which had a budget of $40 million and made $311 million in the box office. I agree with your overall point, just giving a couple more examples.

spicyusername 4y ago

A very well written essay. I very much agree with one of the conclusions: > Fortunately, there’s a cure for our cultural anemia. While the top of the charts has been oligopolized, the bottom remains a vibrant anarchy. There are weird books and funky movies and bangers from across the sea. Two of the most interesting video games of the past decade put you in the role of an immigration officer and an insurance claims adjuster. Every strange thing, wonderful and terrible, is available to you, but they’ll die out if you don’t nourish them with your attention.

frankbreetz 4y ago
I found it funny that in an article pushing for variation, used two video games examples(https://papersplea.se/ https://papersplea.se/ & https://obradinn.com/ https://obradinn.com/) from the same author
- Jordrok 4y ago
  I came here to make this exact same comment, but I'm not surprised someone else beat me to it! Maybe Papers Please and Undertale would make better examples.
- sph 4y ago
  To be fair, the only thing they have in common is the author. They are different in pretty much everything else, and absolutely unique experiences. (This is the only time I can share this with you, but beware, spoiler alert. Papers Please - The Short Film: https://youtu.be/YFHHGETsxkE https://youtu.be/YFHHGETsxkE)
citruscomputing 4y ago
So, question to all -- how have you found success at locating the fruits of this "vibrant anarchy?" Here's an interesting, related link, that's very obviously coming from a certain perspective but still has things you can take [0]. Here are some strategies I use for books: Go to the library and walk down a random shelf until a book calls to you. You can run your fingers down the spines and feel for the energy of the right book. The opposite (however, somewhat sideways, rather than top-down) is pulling books from the "someone just returned this" section. And the books suggested by librarians. I will also do full-text searches of my somewhat large library of ebooks, which gives equal weight to popular and unknown authors. Randomness, with uncommon items weighted somewhat equal to common ones, and direct recommendations that bypass algorithmic feeds seem to work somewhat well for me as general strategies. [0] https://www.epsilontheory.com/25-anti-mimetic-tactics-for-living-a-counter-cultural-life/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/25-anti-mimetic-tactics-for-li...

cafard 4y ago

Sixty years ago, the TVs in most American households got three channels, and each channel spent eight or ten hours broadcasting its test pattern. There weren't that many radio stations. The entertainment/distraction available was vastly less than today.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Right, so it's surprising that we see things even more concentrated now.

gregoriol 4y ago

Isn't it somehow related to series being more and more popular in the last 20 years? Maybe people just like being in a comfortable place, seing the same stuff?

omar_alt 4y ago

Growing up in the 80s it seemed like there was a whole host of serious music and films made for my parents whether it was Phil Collins, Luther Vandross, Out of Africa or MASH. There was a market back then whether it was considered less than high brow however that is no longer the case. I would go so far as to say if Steve Jobs was alive things might be slightly different but not much.

kderbyma 4y ago

this to me is a symptom of greed. It's people not wanting to pay for others efforts (possibly because they are not promoted or showcased or hidden) but they expect it for their efforts.

dang 4y ago

Related: https://twitter.com/a_m_mastroianni/status/1521133075199143937 https://twitter.com/a_m_mastroianni/status/15211330751991439... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31245559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31245559, but we merged that thread hither)

deleted 4y ago

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hirundo 4y ago

These are natural examples of ecosystems evolving toward a pareto distribution after a punctuated equalibrium. Think of it as another example of the great winnowing of variations that followed the Cambrian explosion. The cultural explosions were the invention of books, radio, television, internet, etc. Those disrupted the prior pareto distributions, and it took time to reestablish them. It's a general feature of complex ecologies rather than a specialty of cultural or economic ecologies.

paxys 4y ago

Sure if you look at box office numbers and the billboard hot 100 you will see this picture, but that is really just telling you about older millennials and above. What about artists who post their music to SoundCloud or Bandcamp? What about all the short-form content on YouTube? What about true crime podcasts? What about big name production houses who skip theaters and go direct to streaming on Netflix or Apple TV? What about all the people whose primary form of content consumption isn't any of these but rather TikTok and Snapchat? The real conclusion IMO is that the methods of distributing "pop culture" have been turned on their head, and traditional media is now playing catch up. Nielsen numbers and Billboard charts and all similar metrics are now irrelevant to the conversation.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Actually Neilsen uses ultrasonic signals which many platforms, big and small, rush to support to satisfy their creators. At least that was my experience as a Neilsen household then SWE at a SAAS serving radio stations (including white-labeled streaming apps).

seydor 4y ago

What do we know about winner take all phenomena from biology? How do they work in a petri dish?

davemp 4y ago
In forests it’s usually when an invasive species is introduced and results in a less efficient use of energy in the ecosystem.

rm_-rf_slash 4y ago

>How much does it dull our ambitions to watch 2021’s The Matrix: Resurrections, where the most interesting scene is just Neo watching the original Matrix from 1999? Perceptions are subjective, but I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t consider the most interesting scene to be the one where Neo (and therefore the audience) is told point blank: “our beloved parent company Warner Bros. has decided to make a sequel to the trilogy.” I’m surprised it wasn’t quoted in TFA because it’s an unusual fourth wall break that aligns with exactly the points the author is making about the inherent emptiness of endless franchises.

pbuzbee 4y ago

To me this reflects the large variety and volume of content out there today. As the amount of content grows, people with less mainstream tastes spread out their consumption, but people with more mainstream tastes stick with popular choices. For example, music. Let's say 50% of people like mainstream music and the rest have more obscure preferences. In the past, when music was harder to access, you might be exposed to 100 artists. Now, you might be exposed to over 1,000. The 50% who like more obscure music used to spread their listening out over 100, but now it's spread out over 1,000. Those who like mainstream music still mostly listen to the top 100 or so. The end result is that the top 100 is more solid than before, even though music is diversifying. For multiplicities, I see a snowball effect: each subsequent release in a multiplicity adds more people to the snowball. As long as the quality is good enough -- and people who enjoy mainstream content arguably have a lower bar -- the audience grows with each release. I think this effect, combined with the author's "proliferation" theory and major producers wanting to make safe investments, explains the dominance of multiplicities.

shaunxcode 4y ago

In situationist terminology - the spectacle is compounding upon itself towards oblivion. This is good! It makes it easier for people to see it for what it is.

mr_tristan 4y ago

This sure seems to be what happens when the long tail runs into the paradox of choice. One thing I've noticed, it is now way easier to create content over this time period as well. I now have a camera that can record beautiful 8K video, I can produce high-quality music records, and I don't have to rent or hire anyone. I've got a CNC that can crank out perfect templates for my woodworking. But there are now millions of others who can (and are) doing the same thing. And thus, it's stupidly easy to find something new, but it's hard to find something new and consistently good. So we just gravitate to the proven because, ugh, our free time is valuable. My only sense is that the oligopoly will persist, and probably become even more focused. But the "1000 true fans" approach for small-time producers is still the best way forward. Don't even bother trying to compete with big-time media, just try to build strong connections, thus being a "trusted" choice.

walrus01 4y ago

> remake and then you have things like the book series of The Expanse and the follow on TV/streaming series, which are an entirely new thing. or a movie like "ex machina". nothing mandates watching endless remakes...

6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago

I wish some of these charts weren’t normalized. Instead of percent of the market, I want to see the overall volume. Because my hunch is that these markets are just expanding unevenly. If it use to be 10 novel movies and 1 superhero movie, and now it’s 15 novel movies and 10 superhero movies, it’s a decrease in market share, but it’s still an increase.

jstgord 4y ago

Could this effect also explain why a lot of seemingly truly original music came out in the 80s .. roughly coincident with a peak in wealth distribution in the middle class ? My reasoning : a post-war relatively wealthy middle class and free University education meant more time for things like attending political protests, tinkering with emerging electronics/computers, engineering projects and garage bands. We have wonderful flat screens now, much better comms .. and yet nothing seems fixable, were killing the planet with our carbon emissions and not many people seem concerned, and our best most energetic young minds are slaves to servicing their student debt.

amelius 4y ago

Perhaps we should introduce a "purge" that happens every 10 years or so, and replaces all the popular figures by new ones.

danrocks 4y ago
Isn't that what the music industry does, already?

bumper_crop 4y ago

Copyright lasting 1XX years probably has a substantial amount to do with it. If you are a media company, and you already spent the marketing budget building up the idea of Avengers, or Mario, or whatever pop culture icon you are selling, making a sequel means you get to lean on it. Should your company spend lots of extra money advertising your new video game, or just a little reminding people the next Call of Duty is coming out in a month? Alternatively, flip this around. Would Disney spend so much on Marvel movies if other studios could make movies about the same super heroes? No way! Why should Disney let the other studios ride on their coat tails? They would need to make all new stories and heroes.

WillPostForFood 4y ago
Disney has held their copyrights for over 100 years, but this phenomenon seems to be one of the last decade. I don’t think it is the cause, but you might be right that fixing © would help.
- dhosek 4y ago
  Minor nit, the Walt Disney Corporation was founded October 16, 1923 and US copyright has anything published in 1926 or earlier in the public domain. I rather doubt, though, that the fact that The Great Gatsby just entered the public domain this year has anything to do with the concentration of the market in the hands of a declining number of producers.

dredmorbius 4y ago

The pop music industry has seen at least three disruptions to its controlling gatekeepers since the 1950s (1956-60, ~2000 with Napster, and presently with Spotify and YouTube), but each time a dominant hegenomy re-emerges. I doubt this time will be different, though the brief renaissance will doubtless be appreciated. Charles Perrow wrote of this in the mid-1980s: After the critical period from about 1956 to 1960, when tastes were unfrozen, competition was intense, and demand soared, consolidation appeared. The number of firms stabilized at about forty. New corporate entries appeared, such as MGM and Warner Brothers, sensing, one supposes, the opportunity that vastly expanding sales indicated. Some independents grew large. The eight-firm concentration ratio also stabilized (though not yet the four-firm ratio). The market became sluggish, however, as the early stars died, were forced into retirement because of legal problems, or in the notable case of Elvis Presley, were drafted by an impinging environment. Near the end of this period the majors decided that the new sounds were not a fad and began to buy up the contracts of established artists and successfully picked and promoted new ones, notably The Beach Boys and Bob Dylan. A new generation (e.g., The Beatles) appeared from 1964 to 1969, and sales again soared.( But now the concentration ratios soared also. From 1962 to 1973, the four-firm ratio went from 25 to 51 percent; the eight-firm ratio from 46 to 81 percent, almost back to the pre-1955 levels. The number of different firms having hits declined from forty-six to only sixteen. Six of the eight giants were diversified conglomerates, some of which led in the earlier period; one was a new independent, the other a product of of mergers.* How did they do it? The major companies asserted “increasing central control over the creative process”[352] through deliberate creation and extensive promotion of new groups, long-range contracts for groups, and reduced autonomy for producers. In addition, legal and illegal promotion costs (drug payola to disc jockeys, for example) rose in the competitive race and now exceeded the resources of small independents. Finally, the majors “have also moved to regain a controlling position in record distribution by buying chains of retail stores.”[353] The diversity is still greater than it had been in the past, and may remain high, but it is ominous that the majors have all the segments covered. As an executive said, “Columbia Records will have a major entry into whatever new area is broached by the vagaries of public tastes.” But for a concentrated industry, the “vagaries of public tastes” are not economical; it is preferable to stabilize and consolidate them. This would be possible through further control over the creative process and marketing. Charles Perrow, Complex organizations : a critical essay, 1972, 1985. pp. 186--187. https://www.worldcat.org/title/complex-organizations-a-critical-essay/oclc/970445475&referer=brief_results https://www.worldcat.org/title/complex-organizations-a-criti... https://archive.org/search.php?query=Complex+organizations+:+a+critical+essay+Charles+Perrow https://archive.org/search.php?query=Complex+organizations+:... The dynamics, actors, and economics remind me strongly of the software / high-tech industry, though with much weaker coupling and different lock-in mechanics. I've just been having a conversation with a friend who points out a quote from Herbert Simon (polymath economist, psychologist, mathemetician, artificial intelligence pioneer, and more): “in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” My friend's observation: [I'm thinking about how the] boom/bust cycles of the 1800s were caused by land value boom/bust cycles and how inflation is too many quatloos chasing a finite supply of dinguses…now wondering if there is a corollary of this in attention, as a finite amount of attention is chased by an expanding supply of "content." Gresham's Law comes into play on the quality but what to do about the quantity of media available in the same fixed 86,400 seconds per day? My response in part: 1. This is what the limbic / emotional system seems to have evolved around. That itself is in major part common at least amongst all mammals, and other life forms --- birds and reptiles show at least fear/anger responses, and for birds affection. 2. I've argued that in a world where there's an overload of information, _cheap and no-regret information discarding_ is an essential property. Some time after concluding that, a podcast guest mentioned the idea that random sampling in statistical methodology is less about choosing what to _include_ as what to _exclude_, which ... seems to follow a parallel path. Random selection isn't a bad option, and is at least unbiased. Stratified sampling may give more appropriate focus to more probabalistically relevant information. I'm thinking here of the eye and both its various regions of sensitivity, as well as its ability to shift focus rapidly. The sense of touch and its varying sensitivity across the body --- highest on hands (especially fingers), feet, lips, tongue, and genitals is another. Audio perception is far less focused, by contrast. 3. One of the useful elements of economics is that it gives a framework for considering behaviours under shifting costs. So with information -> abundant & attention -> scarce, we're shifting the relative costs of information (or perhaps better, "distraction", or "stimuli"), and attention. There's the additional factor that _value of stimuli is difficult (costly) to assess._ - Traditionally, trust, and specifically _institutional reputational trust_ was a key factor. That gives a long-term, slow-moving value which can be assessed. It does of course have and introduce its own problems, but at least reduces the transactional costs of information assessment. - Shifts to biases and tribalistic behaviour are probable. - Similarly, "shoot the messenger", which seems to become more prevalent in high-stimulus environments. (Messengers may themselve often be direc threats, as with disease vectors, say.) - Structural and process reforms. Highly-structured information _at the very least_ reduces the processing costs and/or increases the complexity of information which can be conveyed for any given cost. - Attention may shift to better-regulated platforms or sources. There are information streams we don't follow biologically for their lack of signal / excess of noise, and/or energetic costs of filtering. That may be entire channels, or selecting bandwidth within channels. As Adam Mastroianni notes, there are other patterns to how the industry responds: - Serials (television) and sequels / cinematic universes become preferred over original works. Audiences can re-attach to familiar characters and landscapes, in which a new (though predictable) narrative develops. - "Brand familiarity" follows similar trends, particularly with publishing. For a time this played out through serial publication --- books were produced, and financed, by publishing chapters individually through magazines. Many of those magazines themselves grew with the birth of mechanised transportation, mass production, and the need for advertising-driven marketing which the magazines supplied, while also serving as advertisements for their own product: books. Many of the magazines were organs of book publishers. See Hamilton Holt's excellent Commercialism and Journalism (1909) for background on the origins of the magazine publishing industry: https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft - Marshall Poe, founder and editor of the New Books Network podcast has spoken of how books, especially academic monographs, are a difficult product to crack and market. In particular, "people don't like to read very much". His podcast's long-form interviews with authors provide both a shorter entry point: an hour or so, perhaps experienced during a commute or household chores; and a different format, audio rather than written content, far easier for most people to process. Poe's comments should be in this interview, on his own network. https://newbooksnetwork.com/marshall-poe https://newbooksnetwork.com/marshall-poe On the "not liking to read" bit, my suspicion is that highly literate people strongly overestimate population average literacy, and the rate of low or no literacy, even in advanced countries: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29734146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29734146 The "content problem" has several legs: creation, production, curation, marketing, and distribution. Where costs of creation, production, and distribution fall (as they have), costs of curation (whether centralised or distributed) and marketing increase. We're seeing a shift in just that direction.

teawrecks 4y ago

This looks like statistics being wielded poorly to arrive at the opposite conclusion from reality. Consider if the whole of media were an iceberg: It seems to me that in 1977, almost the entire iceburg was poking up out of the water. Today on the other hand, while there is a much larger visible chunk sticking out of the water, it's just a tiny insignificant prick compared to what's going on underneath. The number you actually want is the size of the rest of the berg in 1977 vs today. Because it seems to me that as popular as the things I watch are, if I went and asked random people on the street about them, 99% of them would have no idea what I'm talking about. But if I were to do the same thing 50 years ago, more people would be familiar with the same smaller set of shows and movies and books. To me this is most evident based on the viewership of tv show finales. To this day, the most watched tv finale of all time is MASH at over 100 million viewers. Modern shows, even GoT don't even come close. I believe this is because there is so much content out there being produced that our attention is much more spread out. The "top 20" means less and less as the proportion of people who actually consume that stuff goes lower and lower.

eslaught 4y ago

Isn't this all explained by power law effects? There was an HN thread digging up an old Shirky.com article on this not too long ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20060208093032/http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060208093032/http://www.shirky... discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31038660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31038660 TL;DR: power laws predictably mean the top <whatever> looks really big, but that doesn't mean the long tail doesn't matter either.

Sophistifunk 4y ago

It's not a conspiracy. There's just some sort of fundamental structure of systems having selection and variable-rewards that leads to this sort of distribution over time.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

teeray 4y ago

> In books: lightning-quick plots and chapter-ending cliffhangers. Nobody thinks The Da Vinci Code is high literature, but it’s a book that really really wants you to read it. And a lot of people did! I know folks in literary circles like hating on Dan Brown, but I do love that all his books have very short chapters. It’s refreshing to have frequent stopping places, rather than tucking in for a 70 page chapter-that-should-have-been-a-novella. I feel like I get through books with shorter chapters faster.

paulpauper 4y ago

Most of the charts look like snow. like this one https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b3884e3-3249-436d-b1e5-a25a167f5ba2_600x380.jpeg https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q... I don't think the author's argument is that convincing except for the rise of movie franchises, but that's not a observation. Ppl have been complaining about formulaic movies for years.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
The trendline is a bit sketchy but just comparing pre- and post-2000 there does seem to be a significant change in that chart.

oicU00 4y ago

Alice neutered the tech patent race, the pivot to copyrightable content creation and rent seeking via essentially lifetime copyright as everyone alive will be dead, began; streaming services for everyone. What do you expect from technocrats who grew up on dystopian capitalist cyberpunk? One touch purchases was a capitalist brand itself; Uncle Pauly G has NFT bucks for cyber punks that ship!

narrator 4y ago

If we had the pre-1994 telecommunications act radio ownership structure, music would sound different every decade because local djs would find bands they liked and promote them. I bet recent music movements that have been ignored by the mainstream like Synthwave would probably be the new thing defining the 2020s.

jwmoz 4y ago

I started watching Netflix regularly over the last couple of years, prior to that I mainly watched good film and the occasional series like breaking bad or game of thrones. I feel so burnt out from Netflix series, they are all the same, crime, murder, replicas of game of thrones (vikings) etc. And the majority of films they list are mediocre, all the good ones I have seen multiple times. I can't remember the last new good film I watched, maybe Tenet. I lost track of new things coming out.

ulisesrmzroche 4y ago

Pop culture has always been an oligopoly. Even before the days of the Beatles or the Olympians or even the Octoads. You can’t change this because pop culture and the star system are for the masses. Art is for early adopters. It’s that same concept of the technical chasm we have.

kilroywashere 4y ago

always has been

akagusu 4y ago

Everything in our society has become an oligopoly.