The Podcast Conglomerate the Media Won’t Name

Spoiler: It’s John Malone’s Liberty Media

FOREST HUNT

News consumers hear about the titans of podcasting regularly these  days: Spotify, iHeartMedia, Amazon Music.  But there is one name that’s curiously absent: Liberty Media.

The company recently got some coverage after Taylor Swift fans rose up against Ticketmaster’s monopolistic pricing. The live event company increased its market share after being bought by Live Nation, a Liberty subsidiary. Forbes (1/21/22) also named Liberty the “most valuable sports empire” from its profits off its Formula One and Atlanta Braves subsidiaries.

More often ignored, Liberty Media also owns satellite radio SiriusXM, internet radio Pandora and podcast platform and network Stitcher, which it claims amount to the “largest ad-supported audio entertainment streaming service in the US,” with over 100 million listeners.

In 2021, it rolled the advertising wings for all three of those companies into SXM Media, now one of the largest ad sellers in podcasting. These forces combined make it the only real direct competitor to Spotify for a vertically integrated podcast empire (FAIR.org, 4/21/21).

A hidden conglomerate

An avalanche of consolidation over the past few years has made the podcast industry difficult to report on. It’s tedious for readers to shift through chains of corporate subsidiaries, so journalists seem to simply ignore them.

The media press do cover Sirius, but consistently fail to highlight its corporate parent or its own subsidiaries. The satellite radio giant itself owns Pandora and Stitcher, which includes the Midroll ad business, which was rolled into SXM, and the Earwolf podcast network (and oh what a simplification that is). But of much greater consequence is the media’s consistent failure to highlight that all of these companies are owned by Liberty Media.

In 2021, the Department of Justice gave Liberty the go-ahead to purchase iHeartMedia (formally Clear Channel), the largest radio broadcaster in the country. iHeart reaches over 90% of Americans every month “through podcasts, AM and FM stations and online platforms,” according to Variety (10/19/21). Liberty sold off its entire stake in iHeart last year, but had the deal proceeded, it would have merged two of the nation’s largest audio oligopolists into one.

The DoJ decision was sparsely covered, but even if it was front-page news, you can only understand what Liberty taking control of iHeart would have done if you already understood its other audio holdings and how they fit together. This is a bigger picture that is sorely lacking in coverage of either company.

Corporate consolidation bias 

Liberty Media owns SXM, which owns Pandora which owns Stitcher which owns Earwolf.

When mergers happen, there is often a natural news bias toward the company doing the purchase. But the complete failure to contextualize which companies the purchaser and purchasee already own, or are owned by, obscures monopolists and insulates them from scrutiny.

The Wall Street Journal (7/6/20) reported that SiriusXM bought Stitcher, and Forbes (7/7/20) noted this will “give it the tools to compete with Spotify,” without a single mention of Liberty Media. Ashley Carmen has a superb deep dive into the after-effects of SiriusXM’s purchase of Stitcher for the Verge (3/22/22), but she never mentions that Sirius itself has a parent company.

Billboard  (10/23/20) reported when iHeart acquired Voxnest, and Variety (2/17/21) noted when it bought Triton Digital the next year. Again, no Liberty. When the New York Times (4/3/19) covered iHeart’s potential IPO, it failed to mention Liberty held a stake in the company at the time.

News sites also want to write about companies their audience wants to hear about, and that’s often the platforms and networks that they actually use. Spotify’s purchase of popular podcast network Gimlet Media was a darling story of the podcast press; meanwhile, their purchase of Anchor, an ad seller, was covered less. Today, Anchor is an engine that’s key to the audio company’s success, while Gimlet lags.

Over-focus on podcast networks poses a lot of problems, because they are often nested at the bottom of the new corporate podcasting Matryoshka dolls. Think Earwolf, owned by Stitcher, owned by Pandora, owned by Sirius, owned by Liberty.

The largest Russian doll

Liberty Media‘s John Malone (Vox, 8/26/22): “Fox News, in my opinion, has followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have ‘news’ news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.”

OK, take a deep breath, because Liberty itself is not the top of this nested power structure. It’s owned by one man: John Malone. Worth over $9 billion, and the largest landlord in the United States (FAIR.com, 2/17/22), Malone’s media influence does not end with audio. He is also the “power behind the throne” of the new company formed from the merger between AT&T’s Warner Brothers and Discovery (Next TV, 11/21/22). Lest I fall into the trap of my own criticism, that includes the following entities: CNN, HBO, DC Comics and 67 other companies.

Malone was the long-term chair of TCI, the US’s second-largest cable provider (and “worst discriminator,” according to the NAACP) until it was purchased by AT&T in 1999.

Liberty Media began as the cable programming subsidiary of TCI, and helped the cable company rise to the top by purchasing stakes in the programs it ran on its channels, including a 10% stake in Time Warner, and a controlling stake of Discovery (Extra!, 11–12/97). Liberty even owned PBS NewsHour (yes, you read that correctly—Extra!, 11/10) from 1995 until 2014, when Washington, DC’s public media station WETA bought the program.

Under AT&T’s ownership, it absorbed TCI’s digital music and satellite businesses, before splitting off into an independent company in 2001 under Malone’s control (CNN, 8/10/01).

Malone was CEO of Discovery between 2006 and 2008, and was the company’s largest shareholder and board chair when it merged with Warner Brothers. He is now an independent director at the newly merged Warner Brothers Discovery, which is also run by his former hand-picked CEO of Discovery and long-term mentee, David Zaslav (Vox, 8/26/22).

Malone is a noted conservative who contributed over $1 million to Donald Trump’s inaugural campaign. 

Before the Warner/Discovery merger went through, he told CNBC in an interview (11/18/21) he wished CNN would “actually have journalists,” then praised Fox for its “actual journalism” (FAIR.com, 2/17/22). Many journalists at CNN suspect the media company’s recent firing of celebrated media reporter Brian Stelter was a political decision at the behest of Malone (Vox, 8/18/22).

There are rumors the merged company may attempt to absorb NBC Universal, along with its streaming platform Peacock, as early as 2024 (The Street, 9/22/22).

We’re getting far afield from podcasts here—but the whole point is that these things are all connected. When we put these threads together, we see a bigger picture that’s important for news consumers to digest.

Noted political economist Robert McChesney wrote for FAIR back in 1997 (Extra!, 11–12/97) that TCI faced “a direct and potentially very damaging challenge to its US market share from digital satellite broadcasting.” Now, Malone controls SiriusXM, the largest satellite broadcaster in the country.

The coming Spotify/Liberty duopoly 

With the podcast industry thinning out, Liberty and Spotify are fighting for dominance.

All of these failures in clear reporting obscure the bigger picture. Mainstream coverage might leave you with the impression of a podcast landscape dominated by Spotify and Apple. But if we incorporate an understanding of corporate ownership, there are two main end-to-end podcast empires with a clear grip on the market at this point: Spotify and Liberty Media’s SiriusXM (FAIR.org, 4/21/21).

Sirius certainly sees it that way. A former Stitcher employee told the Verge (3/22/22), “Spotify is the devil to SiriusXM.”

Spotify has the bigger platform, with 400 million monthly listeners (CNET, 2/2/22), while Pandora has hemorrhaged listeners year after year since 2019. (Note that these numbers are from before big artists like Neil Young boycotted Spotify over Joe Rogen; Young still has an entire  channel on SiriusXM.) But Liberty has built an ad-selling powerhouse in SXM Media that Spotify’s own Megaphone struggles to compete with. In fact, with SXM’s help, Pandora has increased its ad revenue despite shrinking listenership. SXM Media signed deals with NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Soundcloud and Audiochuck early on, and has since signed with Spanish-language reVolver Podcasts and Crooked Media (home of Pod Save America). In February 2020, SiriusXM made a $75 million minority equity investment into SoundCloud, which expands on their ad agreement.

Sirius has also drawn more listeners to its content than Spotify. Spotify’s Joe Rogan Experience remains the most popular individual podcast, while SiriusXM’s Crime Junkies comes in third in Edison Research show rankings. But the Stitcher podcast network has topped Triton Digital’s weekly download rankings for over a year, after it edged out NPR. And SXM Media beats Spotify in Edison Researcher’s rankings for “top podcasts networks by reach.”

Sirius also bought Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco podcast network and digital media company last year, adding a network with 180 million annual downloads (Tech Crunch, 4/23/22)

But winning the so-called “podcast wars” has never been just about platforms. It’s about building a whole end-to-end system for producing, hosting, monetizing and then platforming content. Spotify and Liberty are the only companies that have unlocked this “final infinity stone” in the US market (Input, 2/22/21).

Worker strikes and union elections surged in 2022 – could it mark a turning point for organized labor?

 

Marick Masters, Wayne State University

Workers organized and took to the picket line in increased numbers in 2022 to demand better pay and working conditions, leading to optimism among labor leaders and advocates that they’re witnessing a turnaround in labor’s sagging fortunes.

Teachers, journalists and baristas were among the tens of thousands of workers who went on strike – and it took an act of Congress to prevent 115,000 railroad employees from walking out as well. In total, there have been at least 20 major work stoppages involving at least 1,000 workers each in 2022, up from 16 in 2021, and hundreds more that were smaller.

At the same time, workers at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple and dozens of other companies filed over 2,000 petitions to form unions during the year – the most since 2015. Workers won 76% of the 1,363 elections that were held.

Historically, however, these figures are pretty tepid. The number of major work stoppages has been plunging for decades, from nearly 200 as recently as 1980, while union elections typically exceeded 5,000 a year before the 1980s. As of 2021, union membership was at about the lowest level on record, at 10.3%. In the 1950s, over 1 in 3 workers belonged to a union.

As a labor scholar, I agree that the evidence shows a surge in union activism. The obvious question is: Do these developments manifest a tipping point?

Signs of increased union activism

First, let’s take a closer look at 2022.

The most noteworthy sign of labor’s revival has been the rise in the number of petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board. In fiscal year 2022, which ended in September, workers filed 2,072 petitions, up 63% from the previous year. Starbucks workers alone filed 354 of these petitions, winning the vast majority of the elections held. In addition, employees at companies historically deemed untouchable by unions, including Apple, Microsoft and Wells Fargo, also scored wins.

The increase in strike activity is also important. And while the major strikes that involve 1,000 or more employees and are tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics arouse the greatest attention, they represent only the tip of the iceberg.

The bureau recorded 20 major strikes in 2022, which is about 25% more than the average of 16 a year over the past two decades. Examples of these major strikes include the recent one-day New York Times walkout, two strikes in California involving more than 3,000 workers at health care company Kaiser Permanente, 2,100 workers at Frontier Communications and 48,000 workers at the University of California.

Since 2021, Cornell University has been keeping track of any labor action, however small, and found that there were a total of 385 strikes in calendar year 2022, up from 270 in the previous year. In total, these reported strikes have occurred in nearly 600 locations in 19 states., signifying the geographic breadth of activism.

Historical parallels

Of course, these figures are still quite low by historical standards.

I believe two previous spikes in the early 20th century offer some clues as to whether recent events could lead to sustained gains in union membership.

From 1934 to 1939, union membership soared from 7.6% to 19.2%. A few years later, from 1941 to 1945, membership climbed from 20% to 27%.

Both spikes occurred during periods of national and global upheaval. The first spike came in the latter half of the Great Depression, when unemployment in the U.S. reached as high as a quarter of the workforce. Economic deprivation and a lack of workplace protections led to widespread political and social activism and sweeping efforts to organize workers in response. It also contributed to the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, which stimulated organizing in the industrial sector.

The second jump came as the U.S. mobilized the economy to fight a two-front war in Europe and Asia. National economic mobilization to support the war led to growth in manufacturing employment, where unions had been making substantial gains. Government wartime policy encouraged unionization as part of a bargain for industrial peace during the war.

Inequality and pandemic heroes

Today’s situation is a far cry from the economic misery of the Great Depression or the social upheaval of a global war, but there are some parallels worth exploring.

Overall unemployment may be near record lows, but economic inequality is higher than it was during the Depression. The top 10% of households hold over 68% of the wealth in the U.S. In 1936, this was about 47%.

In addition, the top 0.1% of wage earners experienced a nearly 390% increase in real wages from 1979 to 2020, versus a meager 28.2% pay hike for the bottom 90%. And employment in manufacturing, where unions had gained a stronghold in the 1940s and 1950s, slipped over 33% from 1979 to 2022.

Another parallel to the two historical precedents concerns national mobilization. The pandemic required a massive response in early 2020, as workers in industries deemed essential, such as health care, public safety and food and agriculture, bore the brunt of its impact, earning them the label “heroes” for their efforts. In such an environment, workers began to appreciate more the protections they derived from unions for occupational safety and health, eventually helping birth much-hyped recent labor trends like the “great resignation” and “quiet quitting.”

A stacked deck

Ultimately, however, the deck is still heavily stacked against unions, with unsupportive labor laws and very few employers showing real receptivity to having a unionized workforce.

And unions are limited in how much they can change public policy or the structure of the U.S. economy that makes unionization difficult. Reforming labor law through legislation has remained elusive, and the results of the 2022 midterms are not likely to make it any easier.

This makes me unconvinced that recent signs of progress represent a turning point.

An ace up labor’s sleeve may be public sentiment. Support for labor is at its highest since 1965, with 71% saying they approve of unions, according to a Gallup poll in August. And workers themselves are increasingly showing an interest in joining them. In 2017, 48% of workers polled said they would vote for union representation, up from 32% in 1995, the last time this question was asked.

Future success may depend on unions’ ability to tap into their growing popularity and emulate the recent wins at Starbucks and Amazon, as well as the successful “Fight for $15” campaign, which since 2012 has helped pass $15 minimum wage laws in a dozen states and Washington, D.C.

The odds may be steep, but the seeds of opportunity are there if labor is able to exploit them.

Marick Masters, Professor of Business and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Wayne State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

HOW THE EMPIRE CONTROLS THE NARRATIVE, WITH MARGARET KIMBERLY

LEE CAMP

DECEMBER 23rd, 2022

In the latest edition of “The Most Censored News” interviews, Lee Camp is joined by Margaret Kimberly. A well-known figure in activists circles in the United States, Margaret is the executive editor of and a senior columnist at Black Agenda Report (BAR). BAR’s website offers alternative perspectives on current events and has become a trusted source for those seeking information beyond the mainstream media. In addition to her work at BAR, Kimberly is also the author of “Prejudicial: Black America and the Presidents,” a book that was published in 2020 by Steerforth Press.

Record Number of US Cities, Counties, and States to Raise Minimum Wage in 2023

Jessica Corbett

December 22nd, 2022

"The monumental impact of the Fight for $15 is clearly visible in this year's record wage increases," said one worker advocate. "While it is encouraging to see boosts... we need federal policy."

After a decade since the launch of the Fight for $15 movement in New York City, a record number of U.S. states and communities are set to raise the minimum wage in the new year.

From New Year's Eve to New Year's Day, the minimum wage will increase in 23 states and 41 cities and counties, according to a report released Thursday by the National Employment Law Project (NELP). In 40 of those 64 jurisdictions, it will hit or exceed $15 an hour for at least some workers.

Did the 2022 mid-term elections produce a false sense of comfort?

 words by Charles Brooks

The 2022 midterms were widely anticipated to be the stage on which voters would demonstrate their rejection of the Democratic Party and the Biden presidency. 

In Congress, Democrats entered the midterms defending narrow majorities in both the House and Senate, while on the state level, Republicans held 28 governor seats. The midterm results saw Democrats retain the Senate by a razor-thin margin, 51-49 while losing the House, 222-213. Election results also show 28 House seats flipping parties; 9 to Democrats and 19 to the Republicans.   On the state level, Democrats picked up 3 governor seats, raising their total to 24 versus 26 Republican governors. There’s also the wins in four states, raising the count to 14 states with Democrats in the governor’s seat and holding majorities in both chambers of the state legislature.   

Judge Orders Philly DA to Disclose All Evidence in Mumia Abu-Jamal Case. Could It Lead to New Trial?

Supporters of imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal are celebrating a decision by a Philadelphia judge on Friday to order the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to share all of its files on the case with Abu-Jamal’s defense team. Judge Lucretia Clemons gave prosecutors and the defense 60 days to review the files, including many that Abu-Jamal’s team has never seen. The judge is then expected to rule on whether to hold a new trial for the former Black Panther, who has been imprisoned for over 40 years for his 1982 conviction in the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. His supporters have long claimed prosecutors withheld key evidence and bribed or coerced witnesses to lie, and documents found in the DA’s office in 2019 show Abu-Jamal’s trial was tainted by judicial bias and police and prosecutorial misconduct. 

For more on the case, we speak with Johanna Fernández, an associate professor of history at CUNY’s Baruch College and one of the coordinators of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home. “We have enough evidence here to clearly give Mumia at least an evidentiary hearing, a new trial or set him free,” says Fernández. She is the executive producer and writer of the film “Justice on Trial: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal” and is also the editor of “Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal.”

Media Prescribe More ‘Pain’ for Workers as Inflation’s Only Cure

LUCA GOLDMANSOUR

DECEMBER 19, 2022

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is profit’s prophet and the corporate media are his cultish devotees, joining hands to sacrifice working people. In this cult, profit is sacrosanct.

When inflation hits, this is because of the conditions upon which profits are made. It’s not the fault of profit-making itself. The problem is a “labor shortage,” or “too much demand,” which forces the invisible hand to raise prices—and not a shortage of dignified work, or a surplus of people living paycheck to paycheck. Maximal profits are a given, and scarcity for ordinary people is a requirement.

'A Moral and Political Disgrace': Just 11 Senators Vote No on $858 Billion Military Budget

JAKE JOHNSON

December 16, 2022

"At a time when we spend more than the next 11 nations combined on defense, we should invest in healthcare, jobs, housing, and education—not more weapons of destruction," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

In an overwhelming bipartisan vote late Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed legislation authorizing $858 billion in military spending for Fiscal Year 2023, a sum that drew dissent from just a handful of lawmakers and outrage from watchdogs who said the money should be spent on fighting the climate emergency, poverty, and other pressing crises.

The $858 billion budget amounts to a roughly 10% increase from the previous year and $45 billion more than the historic sum President Joe Biden requested, and it was approved even after the Pentagon failed yet another audit, unable to account for more than 60% of its assets.

Ryan Grim on Railroad Workers’ Rank-and-File Union Organizing

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

Earlier this month, President Biden signed into law a bill prohibiting a rail strike and imposing a deal rejected by over half of unionized rail workers over its lack of paid sick leave. Labor activists have condemned Biden and Democratic Party leaders for failing to secure paid time off for workers who become ill.

Joe Biden is meeting African leaders - why free trade is a major talking point

 James Thuo Gathii, Loyola University Chicago

African leaders face a dilemma over trade relations with the United States. Should they push for the extension of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) or for each country’s bilateral trade deal with the world’s biggest economy?

AGOA was the signature economic policy of the Bill Clinton administration. It provides eligible sub-Saharan African countries with duty-free access to the US market for over 1,800 products. It is set to expire in 2025 but is up for discussion at the annual forum on AGOA taking place alongside the US-African Leaders Summit (13-15 December 2022).

The Trump administration preferred to negotiate bilateral trade deals with African countries.

A free trade agreement negotiation with Kenya in early 2020 was supposed “to serve as a model bilateral deal for other African countries”.

I have been studying Africa’s trade deals and trade blocs for over 25 years. I was one of the zero-draft authors of the Africa continental free trade area, and have assessed regional blocs, the World Trade Organisation and the AGOA.

My view is that African leaders should seek a renewal of AGOA. The individual bilateral trade agreements would undermine the African Continental Free Trade Agreement. One of the goals of the continental market is to boost intra-Africa trade and encourage production of higher value exports.

US trade preferences

The Biden administration’s trade agenda continues to be greatly influenced by US multinational corporations that want access to African markets.

For example, in July 2022, the US launched a US-Kenya Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership.

Although the agenda is less ambitious than the Trump administration’s, it poses many risks for Kenya. For example, the proposed regime may require lifting of tariffs on agricultural imports from the US, exposing Kenyan farmers to an onslaught of highly subsidised US exports.

The proposed deal’s call for “good regulatory practices” imply rollback of public-interest administrative processes in favour of foreign corporations. For instance, African governments may have to give up regulations on environment, labour, consumer and public health whenever deemed to be barriers to foreign investments.

Likewise, the “digital trade agenda” is likely to be harmful. This agenda requires governments to protect the interests of the biggest technology companies. That often happens at the expense of smaller domestic firms and their workers. The digital agenda is therefore likely to entrench the ability of big-tech companies to undermine national laws on competition and data privacy. These are all undesirable consequences that Africa should avoid.

Africa’s agenda

A high proportion of exports from Africa to the US have been precious stones and metals, such as platinum and diamonds, as well as mineral fuels and apparel. These exports reflect the continued inability of African economies to move away from primary products to industrial production.

Moving African products onto higher rungs of the global value chain requires at least two things: increased intra-Africa trade and international market policy support.

More intra-African trade would produce savings that could be reinvested into producing higher value products. For example, billions of dollars invested in buying food from outside Africa could be reinvested in agro-processing firms if intra-African food trade became successful, as contemplated under the continental market.

Similarly, countries like the US can reorient their trade and investment policies to support the development of productive capacities and value addition of African agriculture, trade and services.

Unless African economies are able to produce higher value exports, they will continue to earn minimal returns from global trade.

One of the complicating factors for Africa is the sheer diversity of interests in each of the 55 member states of the African Union. There are the least developed economies like Burundi, on one hand, and sub-regional powers like South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, on the other. Balancing the competing interests among these countries has been one of the stumbling blocks to realising the vision of a continental market. These differences have also manifested themselves in negotiations of the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union.

Pursuing bilateral trade deals with the US will probably burden African economies with trade obligations that disproportionately favour highly subsidised US industries.

The US, for example, heavily subsidises agriculture. Bilateral trade deals will likely overwhelm Africa’s agricultural sector. This will in turn undermine the continent’s industrialisation goals.

AGOA has a price

Going for the extension of AGOA beyond 2025 isn’t an easy route. This is because, as the US has pointed out, few African countries that qualify for AGOA benefits have used them fully. Of 36 African countries eligible to bring in their exports to the US duty free, almost none fully utilises this preferential access.

Choosing AGOA could also mean having to give up the aim of growing domestic industries that can export products of high value. For example, Rwanda’s apparel AGOA benefits were suspended in July 2018 after Rwanda banned imports of secondhand clothes to support its own apparel industry. Kenya faced the same dilemma but chose AGOA benefits.

So, supporting renewal of Agoa may under certain conditions come at a price: the ability to become makers and exporters of high-value products.

What works

There is one issue where African countries should speak in one voice. US-Africa trade relations must be designed in a way that does not undermine the African continental free trade area’s goal of increasing intra-African trade.

This goal could save Africa billions of dollars annually by buying goods produced within the continent.

African countries should not sacrifice their collective goal of promoting intra-African trade through the African Continental Free Trade Area, and other sub-regional groups like the East African Community, by negotiating bilateral trade deals that will disproportionately favour US industries while hurting African firms.

James Thuo Gathii, Professor of law , Loyola University Chicago

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.