Monopolies and Magnolias (Audio Edition)

Merchants have played a role in societies since ancient times, and in so many ways, acted as de facto ambassadors across continents and cultures. The ‘merchant class’ represented the one of the earliest versions of the middle class; people with little or no inherited wealth who managed to cultivate status through their adventurous personas, access ... See more

From Airbnb to Google to Spotify, this era has come to be defined by the commodification of accessible consumer (and now, even enterprise) brands.

What’s coming into focus more gradually is how bad things are getting for those of us in the audience, too . Something that’s long bothered me and Erin about the hegemony of streaming is that if you do away altogether with physical media, you put yourself at the mercy of corporate accountants (who might decide there’s insufficient R.O.I. when it co... See more

Second, I’m reflecting on a point former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale famously made in 1995: “There are only two ways to make money in business: bundling and unbundling.” I think we’re burnt out by the fragmentation that the D2C era brought to everything. After subscribing to tons of hyper-niche content over the years, the idea of a couple brands we ... See more

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