AlterNet: The Growing Impact of Big-Name Music Monopolies

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

The Growing Impact of Big-Name Music Monopolies
As big music companies sink deeper into oblivion, will more and more resort to non-competitive behavior to save themselves?


The specter of hyper-conservative, long-despised Clear Channel still looms large over the media industry, with its fraught history and insatiable appetite. Though it was more visible in the news during the 1990s and early 2000s, the behemoth corporation remains the largest radio station owner in the United States; still controls a majority share of the billboards on the nation's highways; and owns a grip of news networks, radio stations and transmission towers -- that is, access to the internet -- across the country. Clear Channel has gobbled up radio companies for years to own a majority of FM, AM and several stations on Sirius satellite radio. It’s also the syndication company for inflammatory right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh, and renowned for its free-speech-squashing robo-channels. It was, and is, a sort of proto-monopoly for the internet age, a corporation with a conservative agenda that figured out how to gobble up platforms and rake in obscene amounts of dough (in 2008, the last year it reported separate quarterly earnings before merging with a Clear Channel parent company, it made $1.6 billion... in the first quarter). And with its stake in radio, clearly it was going to branch out into further music ventures, In 2005, when Clear Channel spliced its business into three in order to drum up its value, it created Live Nation its events promotion leg... setting the stage for one of the biggest chokeholds on venues, ticketing, recording, promotion and sponsorship this country has ever seen. And as other large music corporations seek to save their crumbling empires as the pro-business, anti-regulation GOP Congress ushers itself in, Clear Channel may have foreshadowed a nefarious future.

The curtain's already closed on the first act of this media melodrama. Last January, the Justice Department approved a Godzilla of a music merger––the union of Live Nation, a large-scale events promotion corporation, with Ticketmaster, the behemoth ticketing company reviled for its egregious “service fees.” For a year, consumer groups and Congress alike had rallied the DOJ to stop the merger, saying it would inevitably incur steep fees upon music fans and unfairly bar competition from smaller companies and promoters. The ever-awesome Bruce Springsteen got in on the act, too, saying, “The one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near monopoly situation in music ticketing...."

And yet, the Justice Department paved the way for Live Nation Entertainment’s controlling interest in both high-demand tickets and large-scale venues, creating, in the words of the L.A. Times, “a goliath with hands in every pocket of the music business.” In other words -- a $5 billion company with a 90 percent market share. And it set a precedent. As the music industry continues to flail, smaller, independent labels and companies are relying on creative wits, but larger corporations are reacting with staid, Gordon Gecko-era hunter instincts. Law of the land––big animals move slow. As major stakeholders bleed income and are seemingly unable to adapt to the Internet era, will more monopolistic moves become standard? .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/149168/the_growing_impact_of_big-name_music_monopolies/

[Tsiyu]

1. when you can hear peter frampton

several dozen times a day, you are in radio hell...



as for tickets, as a teenager, I could afford all the concert tickets I wanted


as an adult woman, it's rare



so we head for the underground music, which is more fun anyway...

[tridim]

2. DIY music is the way to go.

Mostly because it is now 100% possible, and cheap.

Just ask Pomplamoose (the Hyundai xmas folks).