[...] Platforms are often distinguished from traditional “pipeline” businesses, which have producers at one end and consumers at the other. But these create chokepoints too: as when record labels and music publishers accrue vast reservoirs of copyrights and use them to extract maximum value for themselves while simultaneously preventing creators from getting better deals. The problem lies not in the type of business, but in the ability to create hourglass-shaped markets, with customers paying money at one end, suppliers and workers creating value at the other, and a small number of predatory rentiers controlling access in the middle. Creators earn little from the culture they produce not because of platforms per se—even if tech platforms are the major culprits right now—but because their supply chains are colonized by powerful corporations who co-opt most of its value.