I don’t think most Californians appreciate the dread experienced by band business managers when they see California on the tour itinerary. California just sent Camper Van Beethoven a 2023 tax assessment for $800. CVB has been a Virginia LLC since the late 1990s. We haven’t played in California since 2019. It’s not really clear to me what value the state is providing to the band. And don’t bother trying to get anyone on the phone. No one is home at FTB. This is a simplification, but once you play in California, FTB likes to assess you as if you are a Californian entity whether you are playing there or not. Tennessee used to do something similar but they seem to have stopped.

If you want know what's screwed up about Antitrust in the US, look at how songwriters are treated. Since the early 50s both major songwriter organizations (ASCAP/BMI) have been governed by DOJ "consent decrees" ostensibly for anti-competitive behavior 1/x because the DOJ treats songwriters as producers of a goods, not laborers, when we collectively bargain we are treated as colluding on prices. This is complicated by the fact the songwriter organizations also have publisher members 2/x

In the age of Silicon Valley monopoly pseudo-capitalism, a tell that an organization is up to no good, is the use of the word "open." Take OpenAI. It has slathered itself in a pseudo-academic ooze, presenting papers, hosting "discussions, hoping you don't realize who really owns OpenAI: The same Silicon Valley monopoly pseudo capitalists that have given you all the other monopoly platforms. Start with Sequoia capital. Go from there. Now it's important for the scam to present it as something that is "open" to the public as if they are creating something..

Windowing is a concept from the movie business. That is you move your release from one "platform," say movie theaters, to another say subscription streaming, eventually something like free over the air TV. The idea is the price decreases as the value of the movie decreases 1/x with time. At least to the consumer. The legacy corporate music business doesn't do this (with rare exceptions). Everything goes straight to streaming. Essentially valuing the recording from the outset at residual long term price. In the case of music about $0.005/stream.