I have an idea I call The Netflix Precedent. This is for anyone who cares about the music industry.
There was a time when Netflix felt like the place to watch anything. Whether it was streaming or DVDs, nearly every film or show you wanted could be found there. Until that changed.
Eventually, one of the major studios decided to stop licensing content to Netflix and launched its own platform. That decision started a domino effect. HBO, Disney, AMC, Paramount, and others followed, each building their own streaming ecosystems. At the time, it felt like a risky move. I remember thinking, “Nobody is going to follow those shows off Netflix. People ain’t gonna go anywhere else.”
But I was wrong.
That move decentralized the film industry. It broke the illusion that everything had to live on one platform. More importantly, it retrained consumers. People got used to knowing where content came from and going directly to the source to get it.
Now to be clear, the movie industry has still been hit hard by the streaming era. DVD sales collapsed. Theater attendance changed. Revenue models were flipped. But it would have been much worse if studios had not decentralized when they did. By building their own platforms, they protected creative control, access to audience data, and their ability to generate revenue outside of one tech company’s ecosystem. Without that move, Netflix would have controlled the entire pipeline.
That decentralization did not fix everything. But it gave the film industry options. And it preserved a level of cultural and economic sovereignty they would have lost otherwise.
I call this the Netflix Precedent.
Centralization brings convenience. But decentralization protects ownership. This is not just a technical shift. It is a cultural one.
The music industry is standing at the edge of this same moment. Spotify is Netflix in 2007 or 2008. It is the place. The platform. The assumed home for music.
But that is exactly where the danger lies.
Spotify is not just culturally dominant. It is structurally locked in. Major labels like Universal, Sony, and Warner have all held equity in Spotify. Universal still owns millions of shares. Sony and Warner have sold most of theirs, but the early financial entanglement is well documented. This means the biggest players in music are incentivized to keep Spotify on top. Not just for exposure, but because they profit from its success. That creates a massive conflict of interest. It discourages innovation. It traps both artists and labels inside a system they do not control.
But what if music took the same route film and TV did?
What if major labels built their own platforms and required fans to engage directly? What if indie labels and collectives normalized having their own apps, ecosystems, and subscriber bases? What if your favorite artist released albums on their own platform first, and Spotify came later, if at all?
Would it be less convenient? Sure. But it would also be more free.
It would shift the culture. It would retrain listeners to recognize the value of going to the source. It would turn artists and labels into destinations, not just content creators hoping for playlist placement. It would make individual stores and platforms feel normal, instead of extra.
But change like that does not happen just because it should. It needs policy.
If we want to protect the integrity of music, there should be rules, or at the very least strong industry standards, that prevent major labels from owning shares in the platforms that dominate distribution. Just like we have antitrust laws to prevent monopolies, we need safeguards to keep power from consolidating in ways that lock out innovation and independence.
The Netflix Precedent is more than an idea. It is a blueprint. And a warning.
We have already seen what happens when one platform holds too much power. The question is whether we will act now or wait until it is too late to take that power back.
Because the game is not just about access. It is about ownership.
And culture always pays the price when we give that up.
I know this feels almost impossible at this point in time, because consumers are just so used to this monopoly. But if you’ve been around in the last 10 years, a whole bunch of things we thought would have never, have happened.
I think we can apply “this is possible” to this idea safely.