Consolidation produces stagnation, fewer jobs, and higher prices in media.

Evidence

As it does elsewhere in the gilded economy, such consolidation results in stagnation, fewer jobs, reduced capacity, homogeneity, and higher prices. Total movie ticket sales are on a steady decline, although profits have been propped up by increasing ticket prices, particularly 3D and IMAX surcharges, as well as continued expansion into global markets, especially China. Hollywood is not yet the oligopoly of three (Universal, Warner, and Sony) that the recorded music industry has become, but if that industry’s experience with private equity and financialization is any indication, further concentration and inequality in Hollywood is on the horizon. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 308

Categorization

• XREF: The music industry as the ahead-of-curve oligopoly case is a strong comparative model for the reader’s trace-one-instrument method.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing how recorded music went to an oligopoly of three under private equity, as a template for Hollywood similarity.