Most businesses are designed to move value away from the people who create it and toward the people who own the corporation.

Cooperatives work the other way around. This seems obvious when you say it plainly. The Pack Music Co-operative is a registered cooperative, which means the musicians on the platform are members - not users, not content providers — and they have a democratic vote in how it's governed.

The revenue split is structural, not discretionary: 70% to artists - user-centric, going to the people you actually listened to 15% to sector development — grants, touring support, industry programs 15% to platform operations. Nothing else.

No billionaire CEOs. No shareholder payouts. No venture capitalists wondering where their 10X returns are.

We're crowdfunding to launch. Can you help us get there? https://crowdfunding.startsomegood.com/thepackmusiccoop #CooperativeModel #ThePackMusic #FairEconomy

Most businesses are designed to move value away from the people who create it and toward the people who own the corporation.

Cooperatives work the other way around. This seems obvious when you say it plainly. The Pack Music Co-operative is a registered cooperative, which means the musicians on the platform are members - not users, not content providers — and they have a democratic vote in how it's governed.

The revenue split is structural, not discretionary: 70% to artists - user-centric, going to the people you actually listened to 15% to sector development — grants, touring support, industry programs 15% to platform operations. Nothing else.

No billionaire CEOs. No shareholder payouts. No venture capitalists wondering where their 10X returns are.

We're crowdfunding to launch. Can you help us get there? https://crowdfunding.startsomegood.com/thepackmusiccoop #CooperativeModel #ThePackMusic #FairEconomy

REC was not building fiber to generate profit for distant shareholders. They were doing it because their member-owners demanded better connectivity, and the cooperative had both the financial health and the community mandate to deliver. Every decision traced back to the same question: Does this serve our members?
#cooperativeModel #communityOwned #PuertoRico #Virginia

https://newsismybusiness.com/analysis-co-op-model-could-reshape-puerto-rico-power/

Most businesses are designed to move value away from the people who create it and toward the people who own the corporation.

Cooperatives work the other way around. This seems obvious when you say it plainly. The Pack Music Co-operative is a registered cooperative, which means the musicians on the platform are members - not users, not content providers — and they have a democratic vote in how it's governed.

The revenue split is structural, not discretionary: 70% to artists - user-centric, going to the people you actually listened to 15% to sector development — grants, touring support, industry programs 15% to platform operations. Nothing else.

No billionaire CEOs. No shareholder payouts. No venture capitalists wondering where their 10X returns are.

We're crowdfunding to launch. Can you help us get there? https://crowdfunding.startsomegood.com/thepackmusiccoop #CooperativeModel #ThePackMusic #FairEconomy

Most businesses are designed to move value away from the people who create it and toward the people who own the corporation.

Cooperatives work the other way around. This seems obvious when you say it plainly. The Pack Music Co-operative is a registered cooperative, which means the musicians on the platform are members - not users, not content providers — and they have a democratic vote in how it's governed.

The revenue split is structural, not discretionary: 70% to artists - user-centric, going to the people you actually listened to 15% to sector development — grants, touring support, industry programs 15% to platform operations. Nothing else.

No billionaire CEOs. No shareholder payouts. No venture capitalists wondering where their 10X returns are.

We're crowdfunding to launch. Can you help us get there? https://crowdfunding.startsomegood.com/thepackmusiccoop #CooperativeModel #ThePackMusic #FairEconomy

The story goes like this. Napster destroyed the music industry. Streaming saved it. The pirates were defeated. Heroes were made.

The problem with that story is that it describes a rescue that didn't happen. Music is still very available. Listeners are still enjoying it enormously. The people who made it are still not being compensated fairly for its use. The infrastructure enabling that use is still controlled by people whose primary stake is financial rather than creative.

Napster was shut down because it provided infrastructure allowing music to be distributed without consent and without compensation. Streaming platforms are legal, listed on stock exchanges, and have terms of service. They are also platforms that pay most independent artists less than $300 a year in median income, that used recommendation algorithms to promote music they commissioned at below-standard rates, and whose AI systems were trained on recorded music without consent and without payment. To our mind... not really heroes.

New blog traces the line from Napster to Spotify to the cooperative argument for why genuine rescue looks like structural ownership, not a new middle layer with a better PR strategy.

👉 https://www.packmusic.au/blog/meet-the-new-pirates

#Streaming #MusicianRights #PlatformCapitalism #IndependentMusic #ThePackMusic #CooperativeModel #MusicEconomics #Napster #Spotify

Most businesses are designed to move value away from the people who create it and toward the people who own the corporation.

Cooperatives work the other way around. This seems obvious when you say it plainly. The Pack Music Co-operative is a registered cooperative, which means the musicians on the platform are members - not users, not content providers — and they have a democratic vote in how it's governed.

The revenue split is structural, not discretionary: 70% to artists - user-centric, going to the people you actually listened to 15% to sector development — grants, touring support, industry programs 15% to platform operations. Nothing else.

No billionaire CEOs. No shareholder payouts. No venture capitalists wondering where their 10X returns are.

We're crowdfunding to launch. Can you help us get there? https://crowdfunding.startsomegood.com/thepackmusiccoop #CooperativeModel #ThePackMusic #FairEconomy

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

Most businesses are designed to move value away from the people who create it and toward the people who own the corporation.

Cooperatives work the other way around. This seems obvious when you say it plainly. The Pack Music Co-operative is a registered cooperative, which means the musicians on the platform are members - not users, not content providers — and they have a democratic vote in how it's governed.

The revenue split is structural, not discretionary: 70% to artists - user-centric, going to the people you actually listened to 15% to sector development — grants, touring support, industry programs 15% to platform operations. Nothing else.

No billionaire CEOs. No shareholder payouts. No venture capitalists wondering where their 10X returns are.

We're crowdfunding to launch. Can you help us get there? https://crowdfunding.startsomegood.com/thepackmusiccoop #CooperativeModel #ThePackMusic #FairEconomy