In a candid conversation I had with a venture capitalist at one of the Big 3 record labels (under condition of anonymity), he gave a deceptively direct and distilled description of how the contemporary music industry works: “A music company doesn’t need to go out and make money. People make music; they aren’t going to stop making music. People listen to music; they aren’t going to stop listening to music. All a rights holder like Sony, Warner, or Universal has to do is say, ‘Fuck you, pay me.’”

XREF: Connects to critiques of the music industry's rentier model and debates about artist compensation under streaming economics.

Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, loc. 230