cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23500333

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We now finally have the ugly truth on these fake artists—but no thanks to Spotify. Or to that prestigious newspaper whose editor I petitioned.

Instead journalist Liz Pelly has conducted an in-depth investigation, and published her findings in Harper’s—they are part of her forthcoming book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.

Mood Machine will show up in bookstores in January and may finally wake up the music industry to the dangers it faces.

Pelly started by knocking on the doors of these mysterious viral artists in Sweden.

Guess what? Nobody wanted to talk. At least not at first.

But Pelly kept pursuing this story for a year. She convinced former employees to reveal what they knew. She got her hands on internal documents. She read Slack messages from the company. And she slowly put the pieces together.

Now she writes:

What I uncovered was an elaborate internal program. Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform.

In other words, Spotify has gone to war against musicians and record labels.

At Spotify they call this the “Perfect Fit Content” (PFC) program. Musicians who provide PFC tracks “must often give up control of certain royalty rights that, if a track becomes popular, could be highly lucrative.”

Spotify apparently targeted genres where they could promote passive consumption. They identified situations in which listeners use playlists for background music. That’s why I noticed the fake artists problem first in my jazz listening.

According to Pelly, the focal points of PFC were “ambient, classical, electronic, jazz, and lo-fi beats.”

When some employees expressed concerns about this, Spotify managers replied (according to Pelly’s sources) that “listeners wouldn’t know the difference.”

They called it payola in the 1950s. The public learned that radio deejays picked songs for airplay based on cash kickbacks, not musical merit.

Music fans got angry and demanded action. In 1959, both the US Senate and House launched investigations. Famous deejay Alan Freed got fired from WABC after refusing to sign a statement claiming that he had never taken bribes.

Transactions nowadays are handled more delicately—and seemingly in full compliance with the laws. Nobody gives Spotify execs an envelope filled with cash.

But this is better than payola:

• On February 7, Spotify’s CEO sold 250K shares for $57.5 million.

• On April 24, Spotify’s CEO sold 400K shares for $118.8 million.

• On November 15, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $35.8 million.

• On November 20, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $34.8 million.

• On November 26, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $36.1 million.

• On December 4, Spotify’s CEO sold 75K shares for $37 million.

• On December 11, Spotify’s CEO sold 60K shares for $28.3 million.

Deejay Alan Freed couldn’t dream of such riches. In fact, nobody in the history of music has made more money than the CEO of Spotify.

Taylor Swift doesn’t earn that much. Even after fifty years of concertizing, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger can’t match this kind of wealth

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20923780

Household paper products have the highest rate of shrinkflation, the LendingTree analysis found. Out of 20 products it tracked from prior to the pandemic until today, about 60% had reduced their sheet count, the study found. (Only one item, a 2-pack of Scott multipurpose shop towels, declined in price per 100 count, according to the data.)

Breakfast foods had the second-highest rate of shrinkflation, with LendingTree finding that about 44% of the items they tracked were now sold in smaller portions. Family-sized Frosted Flakes, made by Kellogg's, has slimmed from 24 ounces to 21.7 ounces, resulting in a 40% increase in per-ounce pricing, the analysis found. 

About 38% of candy items are now sold in smaller amounts, including party-size Reese's miniatures (35.6 ounces now versus 40 ounces in 2019-2020) and party-size milk chocolate M&M's (38 ounces now versus 42 ounces previously.)

About 27% of snacks had gone through portion reductions, LendingTree said. That includes party-size Cheetos, made by Frito-Lay, which shrank to 15 ounces from 17.5 ounces while its per-ounce price rose to 40 cents from 17 cents. 

Other snacks that have gotten smaller but pricier include party-size sour cream and onion Lay's, family-size original Wheat Thins and party-size original Tostitos, LendingTree said.

Going back a few years, but worth documenting. Alternative link

[2022], Pfizer forecasts it will generate $29bn from the vaccine, based on contracts it had already signed in mid-October. In an earnings call in February 2021, Pfizer predicted that after the pandemic ends, its current margins — in the high 20 percentage points — will increase, as costs are likely to fall.

“There’s a significant opportunity for those margins to improve once we get beyond the pandemic environment that we’re in,” said Frank D’Amelio, chief financial officer.

...

Winnie Byanyima, the Ugandan who runs the UN’s global effort to end Aids, shuddered when she read that interview. “He hasn’t saved the world. He could have done it but he hasn’t,” she says, pointing to the very low vaccination rates in Africa.

...

Yet even if that makes the doses more affordable, many leaders feel Pfizer is forcing them to navigate a labyrinth in order to obtain them. While western leaders had Bourla on speed dial, the first challenge for some nations was getting his — or anyone at Pfizer’s — ear.

“Countries reported to us that they had been trying to get hold of Pfizer and no one returned their calls,” says a person familiar with the African Union’s vaccine-purchasing operation.

Before deals could be agreed, Pfizer demanded countries change national laws to protect vaccine makers from lawsuits, which many western jurisdictions already had. From Lebanon to the Philippines, national governments changed laws to guarantee their supply of vaccines.

Jarbas Barbosa, the assistant director of the Pan American Health Organization, says Pfizer’s conditions were “abusive, during a time when due to the emergency [governments] have no space to say no”.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/10153234

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/16131753

New Jersey is one of many states that contracts with private telecom companies to provide communication services for its prisons, including phone calls, electronic messaging, and video calls. The state currently contracts with two companies: ViaPath, formerly Global Tel Link, and JPay, a subsidiary of Securus Technologies.[viii] Founded in 1989, ViaPath was one of the first companies to transform prison phone calls into a multimillion-dollar industry.[ix] JPay, founded in 2002 as a prison money-wiring service, has since emerged as one of the largest prison technology contractors in the country.[x]

ViaPath and JPay make up nearly 80 percent of the prison communication market share in the United States, and their monopoly contracts allow them to charge exorbitant fees and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from incarcerated individuals and their families.[xi] The two companies have each faced their fair share of price-gouging complaints, with ViaPath, ordered to pay $67 million to settle a 2015 class-action lawsuit, and JPay ordered to pay $6 million in fines and restitution in 2021 for charging excessive and illegal fees.[xii]

“Shrinking the size of a product in order to gouge consumers on the price per ounce is not innovation, it is exploitation,” the Democrats wrote in their letters. “Unfortunately, this price gouging is a widespread problem, with corporate profits driving over half of inflation.”

The lawmakers pointed to a recent report by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy that found that from 2018 to 2022, Coca-Cola made $13.4 billion but paid an average effective tax rate of 13.5 percent, PepsiCo made $22.4 billion but paid 15 percent and General Mills made $12 billion but paid 14.8 percent.

“No corporation should pay a lower tax rate than working Americans — especially when that same corporation turns around and gouges consumers on the other end through shrinkflation,” the lawmakers said.

Alternative link Article link

Chemical spills, a ceiling collapse, indoor bears. Employees and park superfans blame the hospitality company Aramark.

Aramark’s contract in Yosemite, worth approximately $2 billion over 15 years...

... park insiders say the industry still holds considerable sway. Yosemite is among America’s most lucrative and popular parks, with almost 4 million visitors accounting for roughly $140 million in annual concessions revenue. The NPS has a $3.5 billion annual budget, a $21 billion maintenance backlog and little power to punish a disappointing contractor. “If you kick them out, then what do you do?” asks Jon Jarvis, who ran the park service during the Obama years. “We don’t have rangers to change bed linens.”