The Frightful Five Want to Rule Entertainment. They Are Hitting Limits.<br />One Hollywood executive who has worked often with tech companies told me: “I wouldn’t say we’ve looked at them with fear, no.”<br />The Five’s struggles in entertainment, if they persist, suggest<br />that they can be as clueless about the changes wrought by technology as the rest of us — that they do not quite understand, and haven’t yet begun to master, how to translate their technological power into wider cultural power.<br />Among them were people in the tech industry, as well as many in other power centers: Washington, Hollywood, the media, the health care<br />and automotive businesses, and other corners of society that may soon be ensnared by one or more of the Five.<br />YouTube has made every song available online, and even though many artists are paid a cut of the ads placed on YouTube (the<br />company said it paid out $1 billion last year), the money is nothing close to what artists got from selling records.<br />Many people fear the companies will be able to translate their hold on key digital platforms into wholesale ownership of adjacent industries<br />that depend on those platforms, giving them wider economic and social power.<br />As I’ve argued before, while musicians have had to find new sources of revenue, the rise of online subscriptions<br />and a new consumer willingness to pay have led to an explosion of new cultural voices.
