Spotify just reported record-breaking profits.
In totally unrelated news, Spotify stopped paying nearly 90% of artists on the service ANYTHING (no royalties for songs w <1k streams/year)
Slave labor is back.
The industries currently built on slave labor:
1. Retail monopolies like Amazon, Walmart, and Target
https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e
2. Music distribution monopolies like Spotify
https://www.billboard.com/business/publishing/spotify-sued-mlc-bundling-cutting-songwriter-royalties-1235684122/
3. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/05/unpaid-social-media-moderators/
https://omr.com/en/daily/eddit-google-affiliate-spam
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/unpaid-moderators-internet-reddit-facebook-1.7267817
4. Browser & search monopolies like Google
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/10/google-underpaid-workers-illegal-pay-disparity-documents
5. Societal
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1972
1/2
2/2
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/04/opinion/women-unpaid-labor.html
https://theeconreview.com/2022/09/01/womens-unpaid-work-and-the-american-economy/
6. Fast food, restaurants, & hospitality
https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/garment-immigrant-workers-wage-theft/
https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/
7. Internships
https://hbr.org/2021/05/its-time-to-officially-end-unpaid-internships
8. College sports
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/23/business/college-endorsement-deals.html
9. Trump venues
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/10/21/trump-us-rallies-leave-behind-unpaid-dues-again-and-again
10. Warmongers
https://theintercept.com/2024/08/19/saudi-arabia-fuel-debt-weapons-sales/