"The majors, they have to control the distribution, the record outlets, the radio and, in some cases, even the venues. And downloading and pirating have also put pressure on the majors"
About this Quote
Ayers is naming the power grid of the music business, and he does it with the matter-of-fact clarity of someone who’s watched the same trick get repackaged for decades. “Control the distribution” isn’t just about shipping records; it’s about owning the choke points that decide what gets heard, stocked, and booked. By stacking “record outlets, the radio” and then slipping in “even the venues,” he sketches vertical integration as a cultural reality, not a conspiracy theory. The subtext: gatekeeping isn’t an accident of taste, it’s an infrastructure. Majors don’t merely market music; they manufacture visibility.
What makes the quote work is the double pressure it holds without resolving it into a tidy villain story. Ayers acknowledges piracy and downloading as real forces “put pressure on the majors,” but the phrasing also quietly reframes the moral panic. The industry’s complaint about piracy is positioned less as a defense of artists and more as a defense of dominance. If majors rely on control of pipelines, then anything that reroutes the pipeline - peer-to-peer networks, direct-to-fan platforms, informal circulation - threatens their leverage.
Context matters: Ayers comes out of scenes (jazz, funk, soul) where innovation often traveled faster than corporate willingness to invest, and where radio and venue access could define a career more than critical acclaim. His point lands as a veteran’s diagnosis: when the business owns the doors, it decides who counts as “mainstream.” Digital disruption doesn’t automatically democratize music, but it exposes how tightly “success” has always been engineered.
What makes the quote work is the double pressure it holds without resolving it into a tidy villain story. Ayers acknowledges piracy and downloading as real forces “put pressure on the majors,” but the phrasing also quietly reframes the moral panic. The industry’s complaint about piracy is positioned less as a defense of artists and more as a defense of dominance. If majors rely on control of pipelines, then anything that reroutes the pipeline - peer-to-peer networks, direct-to-fan platforms, informal circulation - threatens their leverage.
Context matters: Ayers comes out of scenes (jazz, funk, soul) where innovation often traveled faster than corporate willingness to invest, and where radio and venue access could define a career more than critical acclaim. His point lands as a veteran’s diagnosis: when the business owns the doors, it decides who counts as “mainstream.” Digital disruption doesn’t automatically democratize music, but it exposes how tightly “success” has always been engineered.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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