"Fifty people control the culture"

 

So says Ted Gioia, whom we've met in these pages before.  Here are a couple of excerpts from his long and interesting article.

After three decades of total connectivity, here’s where we stand:

• Four movie studios still control Hollywood.
• Four subscription platforms account for two-thirds of home movie streaming.
• Three major record labels own most of the hit songs.
• Five publishers account for 80% of the US book market.
• Just one company controls 60% plus of the US audiobook business.
• Etc. etc.

During this same period, print media collapsed—thousands of newspapers and magazines simply disappeared. Online media survived, but just two companies (Alphabet and Meta) now swallow up most of the ad revenues.

And here’s where it gets even worse. If an indie media outlet wants to attract some of this ad money, it needs to reach readers—but it relies on those same two companies for access. To compete with Google you need help from Google.

It’s a mystery to me why this is legal. But it is.

Google is already squeezing digital publishers like they’re mangoes at a Jamba Juice. Publishers have already lost 25% of their traffic from Google, and fear that number might soon reach 60%.

The concentration of power at Google is mind-blowing. It controls around 90% of search traffic. All that total connectivity we envisioned in the early days of the web is mostly reliant on this one company.

You can try to bypass it with apps. But guess what? Two companies control most of the app store business—and one of them is (again) Google.

Can you see what’s happened? Power in the digital world is even more concentrated than in the real world.

Just one company controls around 40% of online shopping. Two companies control two-thirds of US music streaming. The same is true elsewhere online. Because of network effects, no new entrant can compete effectively against the dominant incumbents.

If you take the CEOs of all these businesses—in movies, books, media, etc.—you could fit them in [a] single school bus, with seats left over.

There's more at the link, including more details on the "favored fifty" and how much they control.

That's a truly scary thought.  I knew that five companies controlled almost all TV networks, and a few giant publishers controlled "traditional" book publishing - but I hadn't realized how far that level of concentration had spread.

What it means, of course, is that if anyone wants to do anything that the "favored fifty" (or enough of them, at any rate) would rather not see succeed, they can throttle it to the point of strangulation without even raising a sweat.  If they don't publish it, nobody will be able to access it.  If they don't publicize it, nobody will know about it.  If it becomes any sort of a threat, they can buy it with their pocket change and simply shut it down.  The developer or author or owner won't be able to refuse their offer, because he/she/they will go broke if they don't.

A prime example may be seen in Minneapolis and Minnesota right now.  All the focus of the news media is on ICE's law enforcement activity there - ignoring the truly massive fraud investigations going on into multiple aspects of the state's government, which look likely to dwarf anything that's happened elsewhere.  (California, where investigations are just beginning, might take the crown there, but it's too early to tell yet.)  Most of the powers that be in the news and social media circles are shutting down anything that goes against the "party line".  (That's also why they're so eager to silence Elon Musk and X [formerly Twitter] - because he allows people to speak freely.  They daren't allow that on their platforms, and they're going to do their best to silence any that do.)

Can anything be done about this concentration of power and influence . . . or is it too late?  I fear the latter may be true, because the "favored fifty" can buy any unprincipled Congressional representative or Senator (which means a goodly proportion of them) and prevent restrictive laws from being passed.

Any solutions come to mind, dear readers?  If so, please share them with us in Comments.  (Please do not suggest actions that are criminal.  I won't allow this blog to turn into a bloodbath, theoretical or otherwise.)

Peter