Thread by @future_of_music

Senate Judiciary is currently debating a piece of legislation intended to support news and journalism at a time when Google and Facebook have been swallowing up more and more of the ad revenue. Watch here and read some thoughts in this thread.🧵 judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/break…

This issue matters a whole lot to musicians, in part because we are citizens like everyone else, but because musicians need a healthy music journalism ecosystem that covers the full diversity of musical traditions. That includes local artists and community scale.

We've seen so many small publications close up shop, daily papers drastically cutting back their arts and entertainment coverage, Alt-weeklies laying off music writers and cutting their page counts. Online, click-based incentive structures can narrow coverage.

There are multiple dynamics driving this. Practices of Facebook and Google as an effective ad-tech duopoly are a real and urgent concern. So is consolidation within media industries themselves, and private equity buying up media outlets and asset stripping.

At the same time, some of our media policy allies are divided about this specific piece of legislation. FMC hasn't taken a position, but it's important to understand the debate.

The proposed bill would create an antitrust exemption that allows news media companies to join together and collectively bargain with Google and Facebook for better terms, including revenue sharing--this is an approach that's been tried in Australia.

This approach enjoys the support of a whole bunch of different media companies of varying size--including some folks (like Rupert Murdoch) that critics say don't need the help and shouldn't be propped up. Not an unreasonable critique.

There have been concerns that the proceeds from these deals won't make it to smaller publications or to newsrooms. We don't want to simply move a too-big pile of money from one dominant company to another.

At the same time, we can think of a whole host of times when we've worked on a piece of legislation that helps independent artists, and there are folks that oppose the legislation because it would also help big labels in some way. This is pretty short-sighted.

While it's important to guard against unintended consequences in legislation, FMC historically looks at legislation with a focus on helping the entities we're concerned about--in this case, publications covering diverse and local music.

(there are also some unrelated concerns that have been raised about copyright--we expect those will likely be resolved in a future draft).

Beyond all that, some of the opposition to the bill comes not from a narrow concern about who it helps or the drafting language, but a more philosophical objection to how it aims to help.

In antitrust nerd-speak, the bill "extends coordinating rights beyond the boundary of the firm." This gets wonky, but it's worth unpacking, because it's one of the most important currents in antimonopoly thought right now.

One of the key goals of worker groups and small business groups in the broad antimonopoly movement is to understand antitrust as an "allocator of coordinating rights" and to advance critical questions about where it’s allowed and where it’s not.

Think of "Coordinating rights" as "who's allowed to work together for better compensation and/or terms, and who's not."

Academics, lawyers and wonks can go deep with this paper by @sanjuktampaul uclalawreview.org/antitrust-as-a… but we'll try and break it down

Right now, coordinating rights are available to unions and firms. Unions can be a vehicle for member workers to achieve improved labor conditions and pay--but that doesn't really help much in *licensing* contexts, or outside employer relationships.

"Firms" basically refers to businesses. A big company like Universal Music Group can coordinate between all its various sub-businesses and imprints and negotiate collectively for the best terms. It's all part of the same firm.

Horizontal coordination outside the boundaries of the firm, however, can attract an antitrust lawsuit. Universal has roughly the same amount of market share as independent music. But if indie labels want to share info or work together for better deal terms, they could get sued.

The net result is that too often, antitrust law has been used to go after the little guys and let consolidated power stay unchallenged. Which is obviously the opposite of what antitrust is supposed to be doing!

Many of the strongest new thinkers in antitrust policy. want to make sure that the law allows for certain kinds of horizontal coordination to allow countervailing power against a dominant firm, especially for workers and smaller businesses.

The legislation being debated today is one example of this. Another is the Protect Working Musicians Act, which would allow independent musicians to band together to negotiate collectively with dominant streaming services like Spotify or Youtube. congress.gov/bill/117th-con…

The approach is to basically define one particular class of firms and a particular negotiation context and say "if these people work together in this context, it's okay, they can't get sued for it".

The traditional antitrust establishment kinda hates this approach. In part, that's because it’s an indictment of how badly they’d been running things for decades.

And so it's important to differentiate between simple differences of opinion about the contours of a particular antitrust exception and a more blanket and reflexive opposition to any kind of horizontal coordination beyond the boundary of the firm.

Some people and groups have a more blanket philosophical opposition to horizontal coordination. Not ascribing motivation, but it tends to correlate with groups that haven't been especially sympathetic to labor or small business concerns about monopolies in the past.

To sum it up: We deeply respect all our allies in media policy working for a healthier and more sustainable system that better serves communities, including music communities.

Addressing the problems that Google and Facebook have created for news media, including music journalism is crucial, as is addressing the impacts of consolidation among media companies themselves.

And finally, allowing certain well-targeted forms of horizontal coordination beyond the boundaries of the firm is a key strategy for workers and small businesses seeking countervailing leverage against monopolies.

Broad blanket opposition to this approach to coordination rights can be taken as a strong indication that the approach to antimonopoly policy is in need of a system upgrade, in order to meet the moment in 2022.

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