Earlier this year, footage was released showing Diddy / Puff Daddy / Sean Combs savagely beating his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, in public. This wasn’t an isolated incident and it certainly wasn’t a secret in the music industry. A recent lawsuit also revealed that Combs’ beat Ventura at a dinner party with Jimmy Iovine, Usher, and Ne-Yo at the table. Ventura was helped out of the room while all of the guests continued eating and partying.
In 2020, Combs received the “Icon” award at the GRAMMYs. In 2023, he received MTV’s “Global Icon” award.
Combs’ abuse and exploitation were well-known in the industry. Yet the industry made continued choices to celebrate him. This is not an isolated incident: Dr Luke, Michael Jackson, R Kelly, Russell Simmons, Cage the Elephant, Drake, Marilyn Manson, Kanye West, Charlie Walk… There’s endless examples of prominent executives and artists with horrific treatment and exploitation in the industry who continue to be made welcome.
The film industry had its own reckoning that sadly never ran its full course but the lesson is clear: it’s always worse than you imagine.
My first experience of this was at a Cannes house party during the MIDEM conference, where a 50+ year old, obese Warner Music executive entered the party with his arms around his guest—three beautiful twentysomething women. These types of arrangements can of course be consensual however in this particular setting, this arrival communicates its own message about how the industry likes to communicate power and influence.
This is the legacy of the music industry as shaped by the major labels. A culture that not only tolerates but celebrates toxic power dynamics. Stories are reported regularly but rarely come with consequence (social accountability sits outside of this and rarely leads to industry accountability). Artists and executives who have operated under the protection of fame and wealth continue to be heralded as titans of the industry. The actions of Sean Combs is not an aberration—they are the outcome of an industry operating as it was designed.
EXPLOITATION BY DESIGN
These stories and this environment is not new. Many of the stories connected to currently celebrated artists and executives go back decades. If you went back to the 90s, the stories and allegations would go back to the 60s.
Artists forced into dysmorphic disorders, substance addiction, assault and rape as payments artists must make if they want to “make it”. The physical abuse also extends to creative abuse.
The music industry’s Tin Pan Alley was its own way of creating a white-washed standard for song creation and concentrating wealth creation in a small set of publishers.
Hip-hop has been the most innovative genre of the past 40 years and it’s no surprise that the industry has leaned heavily on it and seized its genius for repackaging into commercial banality. The Majors’ obsession with hip-hop is about recreating Tin Pan Alley but for hip-hop production houses—consolidating ownership, influence and power in a small number of companies while pushing a conveyor belt of insultingly mediocre talent and rehashed musical ideas as attempts to reinforce the value of their catalogs and maintain a strict pro-capitalist message through the music.
The artists that are the face of the major label music industry are talented in their own way but success is guaranteed when the majors reduce their uniqueness and artistic genius by filtering it through their go-to producers and monopolistic control of commercial radio, given them the ability to define to consumers what current is “good” while pushing an endless stream of banality.
The GRAMMYs and the major labels are not the music industry’s center of genius and creativity. They never have been. And when true artists are able to operate in that environment—see Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Peter Gabriel, Paul Kelly, Tems—it makes their genius all the more apparent. You only need to look at the recent VMAs and the artists who were awarded or given stage time, or listen to commercial radio to experience the sheer mediocrity that the major label industry passes off as artistically important. As an example and setting the individual aside, there is nothing artistically or creatively interesting or valuable in the machine-created output of Katy Perry. And yet the major label industry pummels commercial consumption into submission so the investment makes its return.
This is no different to what we see in the film industry, where Disney takes over entire cinemas with the release of their latest committee-designed slop, with eight screens showing the same film and not allowing other more dynamic and urgent voices in cinema to be played.
INDUSTRY ECONOMIC GROWTH BUT NOT REALLY
The modern music industry, while more accessible in some ways due to streaming, remains deeply inequitable and the unsustainability of the streaming consumption model is now self-evident. The major labels work continuously to maintain the oligopolistic structure to exert immense and immoral control over the distribution channels, artist contracts, artist wellbeing and music rights. Their deals with streaming platforms were enabled to limit the ability for artists to secure fair compensation and recognition. Streaming has made music accessible while devaluing the product.
The independent distribution industry that emerged with the innovations of digital technology gave the major labels the impetus to seize these means as well.
PAYING YOUR DUES
When you go to conferences there is no shortage of old heads sitting on stage telling their own stories of exploiting or being exploited. The conclusions they all draw largely end up the same—pay your dues like we did, because that’s how it was and that’s how it should be.
The irony should not be lost when they spend time discussing all the ways the industry was fucked up when they came through, only for them to say that current artists should do it that way as well.
It’s no surprise that the people who sit on these panels and sprout these platitudes stand in the circles of wealth and power.
AN INDUSTRY WORTH SAVING
Digital technology means access to creation is easier and cheaper than ever. It’s just that the industry is designed so that there are channels that artists need to work through to become part of the major labels’ established status. There’s a revolution of creative genius that can be overwhelming to experience and underwhelming to see how the industry makes space for these acts. There’s no discovery on commercial radio. There’s no discovery in the streaming playlists that reinforce the commercial radio agenda. To its credit, TIDAL makes an effort with its RISING-focused playlists.
While the major labels ensure the economics of the industry punishes these artists for operating outside of their control, the independent music distribution space provides a public service by distributing them. For transparency, I currently work at UnitedMasters, an independent distribution app.
There are no redeeming factors for the major label music industry and its rot and demise should be urgently welcomed. There is a philosophical throughline from areas where independent distributors look to innovate and differentiate—distribution, finance, expanded monetization, and now AI, all while allowing artists to maintain ownership of their works—that makes independent distribution a moral necessity.
It cannot be understated enough that the bargaining abilities and artist control that lie as core tenets of the independent distribution space directly refute the rotten systems that allows the major label industry to sustain its system of abuse.
This is the industry where you will find the early traces of the next great leap in consumption models. It’s where you will find repeated innovations on artist business models and operating structures.
Independent music is the industry that’s worth saving.