Distribute and Be Damned 47
the digital entertainment: in 2013, Alan Kreuger remarked in a speech
responding to the World Wealth Report – which saw the aggregate
wealth of the top 12 million richest people in the world rise by 10
per cent to $46.2 trillion – that the world was now dominated by a
“rock and roll” economy in which the most talented and lucky made
the greatest wealth.
28
As his epithet suggested, this is a phenomenon
that has long been recognised in the music industry (and other sectors of entertainment), and the one that has now spread more visibly
to parts of manufacturing, whereby Apple could take 87 per cent of
smartphone profits in 2017.
29
More troubling for a number of economists, however, Kreuger among them, is that this kind of economy has,
for the past decade at least, been associated with a hollowing out of
the middle classes. As indicated in the previous chapter’s discussion of
some of the perceived threats of artificial intelligence more generally,
the winner-takes-all approach to economics can produce millionaires
for those lucky enough to score the largest audiences, but represents
wealth extraction for those millions who have not seen significant increases in income – and in many cases a fall in real terms – since the
financial crash of 2008.
The Decline of Legacy Media
In very simple terms, particularly for traditional print newspapers, the
past two decades have been a period of steady decline in terms of circulation. This has been well-known and well-commented upon in recent
years. The Pew Research Center tracked growth in USA sales during
the post-war period from some 40 million daily sales in the late 1940s
to more than 60 million in the early 1990s, declining then to 35 million
by 2016.
30
While the impact of the Internet and computer-mediated
communications in relation to print newspapers has been dramatic, the
relationship between print and online has sometimes been more ambiguous than it appears at first. In a 2016 meta-survey of newspapers’
circulation from 90 countries between 2000 and 2009 by Cho, Smith,
and Zentner, the penetration of digital media affected regional publications much more than national ones. This was almost certainly due
to the reliance of the former on classified advertising, and declines in
both circulation and number of titles predated the move of publishers
online in the late 1990s. Nonetheless, despite this ambiguity, it is also
clear from Pew’s research that as broadband and mobile phone penetration increased – from an average of 1.21 per cent of the population
to 13.15 per cent between 2000 and 2009 in the case of the former,
and from 36.71 per cent to 107.84 per cent in the case of the latter
(with many users having more than one phone) – 2005–2009 saw a
rapid acceleration of the decline of print copies each year. Important
consequences of such decline can go far beyond the simple financial
the digital entertainment: in 2013, Alan Kreuger remarked in a speech
responding to the World Wealth Report – which saw the aggregate
wealth of the top 12 million richest people in the world rise by 10
per cent to $46.2 trillion – that the world was now dominated by a
“rock and roll” economy in which the most talented and lucky made
the greatest wealth.
28
As his epithet suggested, this is a phenomenon
that has long been recognised in the music industry (and other sectors of entertainment), and the one that has now spread more visibly
to parts of manufacturing, whereby Apple could take 87 per cent of
smartphone profits in 2017.
29
More troubling for a number of economists, however, Kreuger among them, is that this kind of economy has,
for the past decade at least, been associated with a hollowing out of
the middle classes. As indicated in the previous chapter’s discussion of
some of the perceived threats of artificial intelligence more generally,
the winner-takes-all approach to economics can produce millionaires
for those lucky enough to score the largest audiences, but represents
wealth extraction for those millions who have not seen significant increases in income – and in many cases a fall in real terms – since the
financial crash of 2008.
The Decline of Legacy Media
In very simple terms, particularly for traditional print newspapers, the
past two decades have been a period of steady decline in terms of circulation. This has been well-known and well-commented upon in recent
years. The Pew Research Center tracked growth in USA sales during
the post-war period from some 40 million daily sales in the late 1940s
to more than 60 million in the early 1990s, declining then to 35 million
by 2016.
30
While the impact of the Internet and computer-mediated
communications in relation to print newspapers has been dramatic, the
relationship between print and online has sometimes been more ambiguous than it appears at first. In a 2016 meta-survey of newspapers’
circulation from 90 countries between 2000 and 2009 by Cho, Smith,
and Zentner, the penetration of digital media affected regional publications much more than national ones. This was almost certainly due
to the reliance of the former on classified advertising, and declines in
both circulation and number of titles predated the move of publishers
online in the late 1990s. Nonetheless, despite this ambiguity, it is also
clear from Pew’s research that as broadband and mobile phone penetration increased – from an average of 1.21 per cent of the population
to 13.15 per cent between 2000 and 2009 in the case of the former,
and from 36.71 per cent to 107.84 per cent in the case of the latter
(with many users having more than one phone) – 2005–2009 saw a
rapid acceleration of the decline of print copies each year. Important
consequences of such decline can go far beyond the simple financial