It doesn’t outweigh the the very bad news about Covid relief negotiations, but there is some good news from Congress: @HouseJudiciary antitrust subcommittee released their investigation of Big Tech. And they did a great job.

The report is very lengthy—we’re still working our way through, but it takes on the problems caused by Facebook, Google, Amazon, and to a lesser extent Apple’s dominant power over our economy and society.

This matters to musicians, both because of our many issues with these specific companies, and because it’s a huge step forward for antimonopoly policy generally.

So many of the challenges that musicians face can be traced back to one central problem: too few companies have way too much power. Building a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable future for music post-COVID means tackling these issues head on.

There are a couple small things to criticize about the report: naturally, we wish it did more to center workers and wage suppression—it doesn’t say enough about the monopsony problems associated with YouTube, for example.

There is a good passage about Amazon and music streaming, though, citing the good folks at @artistrightsnow. The basic idea is that big tech platforms can use music as a loss leader, and aren’t incentivized to preserve the value of music.

And the policy recommendations are solid and sound. Kudos to @RepCicilline @SladeBond @linamkhan and the whole team that worked on this. Now it’s time for team music to come together with workers and small businesses across the economy to fight for the changes called for.

You can read the report here: https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf