How Several US companies have extracted the creative wealth of the entire Globe..
By: Stuart Wilson

Spotify’s current shareholders major labels such as Sony Music and Universal Music, two powerful publicly traded major record labels. As such, they have an interest in paying artists less for music. Essentially, they have used their artist’s music as a bargaining tool to change their fundamental business to one that values the platform over the music and leaves out the necessity to compensate anyone based on real world terms because they gave the music to their own company for free basically. Payments are also skewed in favour the artists of these ‘major labels’ and artist with more market share, make a larger percentage from each stream that those with a lesser market share. Meaning the top artists are being supplemented by independents; adding insult to injury. Independent labels are hurting just as much as artists under these practices and they are often times further damaged by being grouped in with the, “It’s the labels making all the money”. When in fact, it’s only the Majors and their subsidiaries. The game is rigged in their favour. Several American companies have extracted the wealth of the entire ‘musical creative world' by using their artists music to change the fundamental way music is consumed in order to pay the artist less, whilst enriching themselves with stock. There is also the issue of stream ripping from sites like youtube, which is basically a legal pirating site. Youtube does not pay creators who do not have 1,000 subscribers, despite these persons contributing to the pull and lure of their platform. On top of this, they allow persons to download the music of artists whose music many times has been put on the platform authorisation. The DMCA notice has allowed them to enrich themselves off the backs of creators and then close the door on monetisation for those who made the platform viable in the first instance. Creative industries are being fleeced by the big tech firms who have now taken their ‘act’ in to the realm of politics; influencing elections and putting us all at risk of tyranny and servitude. The risks of inaction are clear. Unless there is a significant shift of power at the ownership level, we’ll see more economic inequality, exploitation, and value extraction from artists.
By Stuart Wilson