The rise of the super-middlemen

Posted on October 21, 2009 by Ian Betteridge
Image representing Rupert Murdoch as depicted ...
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Ken Doctor on Rupert’s attempt to get people to pay for news:

“When you hear Murdoch and other publishers justifiably scream about Jeff Bezos’ hard bargain — he keeps customer relationships and 70% of the revenue — you understand that they see the multi-platform future becoming real and want to be in the center of it.”

I find it incredibly ironic that the Internet, the medium which was supposed to lead to a wave of disintermediation where artists/writers/content owners would no longer need distributors to take a cut, has instead led to a massive new wave of middle men.

Apple’s iTunes Store, Amazon, eBay – all super-middlemen. And even Google, which should let you find anything you want, can’t break that up.

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  • http://www.hexkey.co.uk/lee/ Lee Maguire

    I’ve been refering to them as über-middlemen (überMittelsmänner?).

  • chrislunch

    And Spotify’s model *requires* labels in a way that downloading tracks didn’t. Unless some kind of non-profit payments clearing house that actually works at scale and yet can cope with individual acts as clients suddenly pops out of nowhere.