What Is the Future of Creators’ Rights in an Increasingly Platform-Dominated Economy?

As lockdown regimes have forced nearly everyone to stay at home in many parts of the world, an increasingly larger portion of global audiences started relying upon a small number of digital platforms to access arts, culture and entertainment. When theatres, concert halls, clubs and other performing arts venues closed in response to COVID-19, many artists spontaneously started broadcasting live performances from their homes and recording studios. This unexpected change showed what the creative sector might look like if hundreds of millions of users had to simultaneously rely mostly on digital services to access music, films, TV programs and other artistic productions. A major concern is that the largest online platforms, some of which have long exceeded one billion users, have acquired and exert too much economic power to the detriment of consumers, suppliers and competitors. The undisputed dominance of a handful of tech companies in controlling (or deeply influencing) access to creative works raises existential questions for cultural industries, their core businesses, and even more so for the authors and performers who must make a living. A first question concerns the value of digital content: what is the function content plays in a platform-dominated economy? This question arises from the technical reality that platforms’ commercial value is not so much in the content as it is in their personal data collection and very sophisticated and secret algorithms. Social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, as well as on-demand content suppliers like Spotify and Netflix, are ultimately data-analytics businesses. Appealing content is a bait to keep their users active on their platforms as much and as long as possible. The main commercial purpose of these businesses is to collect, process and sell targeted advertising based on extensive user data.