Bow down to our new music-tech overlords

And so what you've ended up with, not surprisingly, is a few key players that happen to own the majority of the IP that is kind of a must have in this industry to have a product offering and a handful of distributors that have gotten scale on distribution of great user experiences like a Spotify, Amazon, a YouTube, whoever you might want to think a... See more

There is an overload of music. 60,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify every day. Over 20% of those don’t get streamed even once. The ubiquitous access to almost every piece of recorded music in history has led to a paradox of choice, promoting passive and playlist-driven music consumption and creating winner-take-all effects for the biggest artists.

The major labels are finally facing a crucial reality: Independent music's market share keeps climbing, and controlling the infrastructure behind it is becoming as vital as owning rights.

Universal Music Group's Virgin Music Group led this charge in 2024 — snapping up Downtown Music Holdings in a $775M power move (pending regulatory approval), as w... See more