The music streaming industry presents itself as a modern marvel of digital convenience. And it is that. But beneath the surface lies a system that mirrors the worst aspects of platform capitalism - without even the trickle.
The streaming model concentrates revenue at the top of the distribution curve, extracts value from the workers who generate it, and redistributes that value to shareholders who contribute capital but not creative labour. Cooperatives don't fix this by being 'nicer'. They fix it by changing who owns the infrastructure and who makes the decisions about how it operates. This is the oldest insight of the cooperative tradition. It still holds.
The Pack was built on the premise that the antidote to extractive platform capitalism isn't a better-designed version of the same thing. It's a different model with a different ownership structure and different answers to the question of whose interests the platform was built to serve.
👉https://www.packmusic.au/blog/brokenindustry
#MusicIndustry #CooperativeModel #IndependentMusic #ThePackMusic #EthicalBusiness #MusicianOwned #StreamingRoyalties





