US popular music is controlled by a handful of firms across every sector

Evidence

However, this approach risks minimizing the significant contemporary organizational changes within the music industries that go well beyond the concentration of the recording industry. The disproportionate size of just a few transnational companies has such an outsized impact on the music industries that it may very well justify the consideration of a single, consolidated music industry. While there is a thriving underground of professional musicians who toil mostly outside the major label and streaming platform system, as well as many amateur musicians who have no relationship to the music industry at all, when it comes to the popular music that shapes our common culture, the vast majority of U.S. musicians must play by the rules of the companies that dominate each sector. They live in the shadow of three labels, three radio-station groups, one live concert and ticketing company, and four tech giants. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 184

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A sliver of giant firms dominates total sales volume — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 622