Musical Chairs: Vertical Antitrust Should Prevail Over Congressional Payola Prohibitions to Protect Musicians

I. Introduction

The music industry has a long history of pay-for-play, or “payola,” concerns, which have only grown as the recording industry has become increasingly concentrated.1 Payola is a form of “consideration payment” that refers to payments from upstream firms to downstream firms for favorable treatment of their product. In the music industry, this consists of payments for musical promotion by distributors.2 The music industry is dominated by three companies: Universal Music Group (Universal), Sony Music Group (Sony), and Warner Music Group (Warner).3 These groups, described as the Big Three, have ownership and licensing deals with record labels, music publishers, and distributors like streaming platforms and radio stations.4 As a result, the Big Three are heavily vertically integrated throughout the recording process, catalog ownership, and music distribution.5

As music distribution has shifted through eras of radio distribution, and CD sales to digital sales and streaming, the large music groups have found new ways for payola arrangements to evolve alongside music distribution.6 Congress attempted to ban payola arrangements in the 1960s, though payola continued through statutory loopholes.7 More recently, modern payola arrangements arose through vertical integrations between streaming services and the Big Three music groups.8 These pay-for-play arrangements substantially influence the new music being introduced to listeners through algorithms and playlists, with artists signed to the Big Three being algorithmically prioritized on music streaming services, without substantial Congressional interference.9

Regulators in the U.S. and E.U. have increasingly scrutinized vertical mergers that raise barriers to entry and the labor-side impacts of anticompetitive behavior.10 The widening door to labor-side and vertical antitrust enforcement can provide a useful tool to protect musicians in an incredibly concentrated industry as an alternative to payola legislation.

This Comment seeks to evaluate the reasons behind the radio-era payola arrangements, consider the outcome of such arrangements on access to music distribution, compare these payola arrangements to the structure of modern digital streaming, and appraise how recent tendencies in antitrust law interpretation may be applied to payola practices. Part II will evaluate these historical and modern arrangements to analyze the costs and benefits of recommended solutions to modern payola arrangements. It will explain the history of payola and music distribution both on radio and in modern social media and music streaming distribution. Part III will address the vertical and labor-side considerations that regulators and courts should consider when evaluating the costs and benefits of limiting modern payola arrangements. Part IV will evaluate proposals to limit modern payola arrangements by comparing the market structures and goals of payola limitation between radio and streaming/social media channels, ultimately concluding that a modern statutory payola prohibition is unlikely to be effective. Finally, Section V will assert that antitrust lawsuits, with the recent tendency of antitrust law to increasingly consider anticompetitive vertical integration and labor-side effects, would better protect musicians from anticompetitive acts because Congressional action and fraud lawsuits have both proven ineffective in the past.

II. History of the Music Industry and Distribution Channels

The music industry is complex, with many steps in the chain between a song’s inception and a listener’s ear. The music industry is highly concentrated at multiple levels along the chain from music creation to distribution.11 The Big Three dominate the market with labels, managers, publishers, agents, and music catalogs under their thumb. They also establish strong vertical relationships with musical distributors like Spotify,12Apple Music,13 and YouTube,14 where the Big Three have more leverage over the streaming giants than independent labels do because of their large catalog libraries and fewer capital constraints.15 Artists have low bargaining power compared to the Big Three and streaming services, which results in lower relative capture of the value of their work.16 In the days when music was primarily distributed through the radio, Congress became concerned with “payola”: pay-for-play programs in which labels paid radio stations to play their songs. Though Congress attempted to limit these kinds of payola arrangements in the radio era, similar payola concerns have since arisen in the streaming era.

A. How the Industry Creates, Records, and Distributes Music

The process for a song to come to market includes writing, recording, publishing, distributing, and licensing a song. The music industry operates through a network of partnerships between the creators (singers, songwriters, and producers), middle-distributors (labels, managers, publishers, Performance Rights Organizations, distributors, booking agents, etc.), and end-distribution channels (streaming platforms, venues, and radio.17 It is impractical for an artist to handle production, distribution, and promotion entirely on their own.18 Recording labels often contract with artists early in the artists’ careers in return for the label’s ownership of the artist’s original or master recordings.19 The labels can later profit from licensing the artists’ recordings and catalogs to distributors.20 Record labels offer musicians a wide array of tools and industry connections; labels provide equipment and assistance for musicians to professionally record and mix their music, network with producers, connect artists to distribution networks like radio and streaming, and market their artists to garner publicity.21

The music industry is dominated by three companies known as the Big Three: Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Group (Sony), and Warner Music Group (Warner).22 The Big Three encompass and vertically connect several parts of the broader music industry. For example, UMG owns or has a joint share in hundreds of record companies, a large publishing group, and catalogs of musicians’ original or master recordings.23 UMG and the other members of the Big Three also have close relationships with music distributors like streaming services, radio stations, and social media companies through negotiated deals to widely promote their signed artists’ music.24 Record labels not owned by these large music industry conglomerates are known as “independent” labels and artists.

B. Recording Label Market Concentration

After decades of aggressive mergers and acquisitions, the Big Three music groups of Universal, Sony, and Warner control over 83% of the record label market share.25 Specifically, UMG, Sony, and Warner hold 38.23%, 27.23%, and 18.26%, respectively.26 The remaining share of music, even when developed through an independent label, is often distributed through those three major groups.27 Large horizontal mergers over the years have increased market concentration. For example, in 1987, Chappell & Co. merged with Warner, consolidating two of the three largest U.S. music publishers;28 Similarly, in 2012, Universal and EMI merged, integrating the largest and fourth-largest major record companies at the time.29

Despite increasing antitrust scrutiny of large mergers,30 “the music industry as a whole – including record labels, streaming services, music publishers and music venues­­ – is trending toward more consolidation and monopolistic behavior.”31 As described above, this includes the Big Three’s ownership stakes at different levels of the recording, publishing, and distribution stages. For example, beyond owning recording, publishing, and merchandising services like recording studios and record labels, UMG also has extensive relationships and contracts with key distributors like Spotify32 and Meta to broadly disseminate UMG-signed artists’ music.33 Some of the largest and most valuable publishing catalogs are held by “subsidiaries or corporate siblings” of the biggest record labels, a trend traced back as far as the 1950s.34

The increasing market consolidation has impacted both artists and independent record labels who seek to compete in the market.35 Fewer music groups “can mean fewer opportunities for more unusual, riskier, and less mainstream artists.”36 Artists’ “share of the revenue . . . has shrunk as the channels of compensation become more and more concentrated.”37 Most artists lack the size and popularity to negotiate with their large labels for higher royalty rates for their work.38 This is especially true at the beginning of their careers when they are first signing to a major record label. For example, newly signed artists may receive royalty rates as low as 15-20% of the streaming profits from their music, while “superstar” artists with leverage can receive a much higher rate, such as 50% of net profits.39 Artists who struggle to negotiate more favorable royalty rates, which are currently set at less than half a cent per stream, are even less likely to achieve higher streaming rates because it would require support from the major labels that own the catalog rights to the bulk of Spotify’s library.40

C. Historical Radio Distribution Channels

Long before streaming, radio was the key distributor of music that influenced which artists people would hear. Radio ownership was highly regulated for decades to promote competition, diversity, and localism in the radio marketplace with the Communications Act of 1934.41 The Act restricted radio ownership to protect against anti-competitive behavior and reduce large-scale consolidation.42 The Act empowered the Federal Communications Commission to issue licenses and regulations about the radio for “[the] public interest, convenience, or necessity.”43 While these proclaimed goals remained the same, the FCC’s means of achieving them shifted from restrictive radio ownership to protect against anti-competitive behavior from large-scale consolidation to the loosening of regulations to allow the marketplace to achieve the same goals.44 From the 1930s, radio ownership was highly restricted so no single owner could dominate the airwaves; the Act limited the number of radio properties that a single company could own nationally.45 While the FCC began loosening its application of its regulations in the 1980s, the key ownership restrictions were later lifted with the Telecommunications Act of 1996.46

Shortly thereafter, the radio market consolidated substantially. Within three years, three large companies “dominated the market, collecting about 68 percent of the ad dollars while crippling the diversity of airwaves nationwide.”47 The radio station holdings of the ten largest companies in the radio industry grew by nearly fifteen times between 1985 and 2005.48 The national concentration of advertising revenue grew from twelve percent market share for the top four companies in 1993 to fifty percent market share in 2004.49

Heightened consolidation in the radio market lowered transaction costs for record labels to promote their work directly to radio stations.50 Record labels turned to “payola” to promote their artists’ music to grow their popularity and generate greater profits from their investments in artists. Essentially, record labels paid radio stations to play their artists’ songs. Record labels would pay the “disc jockeys” that were responsible for selecting the music played at those radio stations in return for “favorable treatment, namely more ‘spins’ or airplay for their records.”51 Initially, these payments were made directly between the parties because it was legal to do so.52

Congress disapproved of the payola payment schemes.53 Amendments to the Federal Communications Act54 in the 1960s heavily restrained payola by requiring full public disclosure when “a record company or its agent pays a broadcaster to play records on the air.”55 The Act made payola a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum fine of $10,000 and a year in prison.56 In the 1970s, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act increased the penalties that companies found guilty of bribery were potentially on the hook for.57

Congress was critical of payola practices on the radio because the airwaves were publicly licensed and it wanted to protect the radio’s role in the dissemination of honest and reliable information. To this end, the government “decided that radio stations should be as independent as possible from their suppliers.”58 The Federal Communications Act was designed for disclosure, rather than complete prohibition, to give audiences “contextual information . . . to evaluate the messages they consume, while only mildly containing broadcasters’ programming discretion.”59 The Court identified constitutional concerns with radio and public broadcasting deceptions, finding that the First Amendment’s purpose was to “preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market . . . [i]t is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.”60 Congress’s underlying belief, similar to its approach to radio ownership limits until the 1980-90s, appeared to be that preventing excessive concentration/monopolization over the airwaves by a few record labels was the best way to promote competition and protect listeners. However, Congress’s payola disclosure requirement had loopholes that the music industry quickly found and exploited.

The structure of payola payments shifted after the 1960s. The workarounds to the Act’s disclosure requirements only made it harder for smaller labels and artists to get their works on the radio. Particularly with the threat of RICO liability, record companies were increasingly incentivized to retain independent contractors for record promotion “in order to insulate themselves from criminal liability or complicity.”61 The big record labels began hiring independent promoters, known as “indies,” to serve as middlemen to “pass money to radio stations in the form of promotions and giveaways.”62This third-party intermediary sidestepped the FCA’s requirement for public disclosure because the payments did not come directly from “a record company or its agent” despite the close relationship between the labels and their indies. For many years, major labels kept such indie promoters on retainer.63 The big three record labels had the most capital available to spend on the “non-trivial financial burden” of circumventing the payola restrictions to promote their songs.64

Opponents to Congress’s intervention in payola practices reflect Congress’s more recent shift in the 1980s and 90s toward the belief that lower regulation spurs competition and reflects market demand better than high levels of regulation. The heightened transaction costs of exploiting the payola regulation’s loophole had a distinct effect on the top-charting music. Generally, the big three record labels dominated the charts.65 There is conflicting data about the effect of the payola laws. On one hand, research found that payola arrangements between record labels and radio stations (through their indie intermediaries) tended to increase “the variety of musical styles on the record charts, but may also have restricted access to radio stations for smaller record labels.”66 Oppositely, other data found that after the 1960s payola restrictions were placed, despite the large record labels utilizing workarounds with “indies,” there was lower musical variety and lower record sales overall, but slightly increased access for smaller record labels and artists.67 Opponents of payola prohibitions argued that “[e]ntertainment payola is harmless because this is a consumer market that functions reasonably well . . . [i]f no one likes the music, it won’t last, and the stations themselves will suffer.”68 Some opponents argue that the “music industry, the broader commercial culture, and consumer expectations have evolved” so substantially that payola laws seem “outmoded and backward-looking.”69 This argument is bolstered by the ease with which large record labels sidestepped the disclosure requirements, which shows payola’s ability to adapt to changes in the legal environment. 

Aside from the legal changes imposed by Congress, payola has evolved into several rounds of large technological changes since the 1990s. However, the debate between lower payola regulations to protect economic efficiency versus more regulation in the name of fairness and protecting competitive markets continues today.

D. Modern Distribution Channels: Social Media and Streaming

Despite the many differences, there are striking similarities between the historical radio distribution systems and the modern social media and streaming methods of musical distribution. Music distribution shifted from radio to CD sales in the 1990s to digital music sales in the early 2000s.70 In the mid-2010s, streaming took off as the primary method of global music consumption.71

Consumers in the early 2000s were frustrated with the homogenizing effects of terrestrial radio consolidation in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which concentrated the power to decide whether consumers would gain access to new music in the hands of a select few gatekeepers in the radio and record industries. In the mid-to-late 2000s, on-demand streaming services emerged as a fundamental channel of music delivery and, to a large extent, afforded listeners greater access to and choice over what music they would consume.72

Streaming services have risen substantially in popularity in the last decade, generating over 80% of the United States recorded music industry’s revenue.73 This streaming-generated revenue is typically paid to an artist’s record label before some portion of it is given to the musicians themselves.74 Similar to the radio industry after ownership regulations were relaxed, the streaming market is very concentrated among a few corporations. Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music boasted a cumulative 90.5% subscriber market as of February 2024, at 36%, 30.7%, and 23.8%, respectively.75 In 2023, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple accounted for 41% of Warner’s recorded music revenues and 40% of UMG’s.76 Meanwhile, streaming services’ payments to musicians and songwriters are “a mere fraction of what they earn from the sale of physical products like vinyl and CDs,” resulting in musicians relying on touring, merchandise sales, and brand partnerships to raise their incomes.77

The major record labels and music groups quickly developed vertical relationships with the new streaming services to more widely disseminate their artists’ works and catalogs. These distribution arrangements and negotiations resemble the original payola schemes from before the 1960 disclosure requirements. The Big Three hold equity in Spotify.78 Rather than record labels paying for more “spins” on the airwaves, labels or artists accept lower royalty rates from Spotify through the “Discovery” program in exchange for higher priority in Spotify’s algorithms to place their music on playlists and recommend it to more users.79 In 2025, UMG and Spotify announced a new multi-year agreement for recorded music and music publishing, altering the payment structure to increase mechanical royalties to songwriters for streams; previous iterations that lowered these royalties faced substantial backlash and a legal complaint.80 

Additionally, record labels have agreements with platforms, third-party “playlisters” who curate and promote playlists, and influencers who direct audiences to songs/artists on social media.81 Labels identify “influential playlists” using streaming data and cultivate relationships with the playlists’ curators to disperse their artists’ music.82 There is a growing industry of “playlist pitchers” that labels contract with to pitch the label’s music to curators with popular playlists.83 “The importance of a select few playlist 'gatekeepers' creates strong incentives to engage in payola.”84

Social media plays a large role in music licensing, promotion, and popularity.85In 2017, UMG became the first music company to license its recorded music and music publishing catalogs across Facebook’s platforms, making Facebook the first fully licensed social media platform partner with a music group.86 In early 2024, UMG and TikTok renewed their licensing agreement after UMG removed all UMG-affiliated music from the app for a short period during negotiations.87 TikTok has become an increasingly important marketing tool for artists. In 2021, 13 out of the 14 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 songs in 2022 were “driven by significant viral trends on TikTok.”88 In 2022, Warner, Sony, and UMG were negotiating new deals with TikTok regarding getting larger shares of the advertising revenues from the platform.89 The rise of digital music consumption has “significantly increased the demand for music rights,” leading to the Big Three and investment portfolios acquiring music catalogs for billions of dollars.90

There are conflicting reports about the effect of streaming services and social media on independent or smaller musicians. Though streaming services like Spotify have helped some independent artists and labels grow, the “algorithmic recommendations, top charts, and tailored music playlists . . . perpetuate the success of artists with mass appeal. As a result, middling artists, already vying for their share of streaming profits, are drowned out by top earners.”91 Only approximately 4% of daily track uploads are distributed by the Big Three and/or their subsidiaries and affiliates per day, with the rest distributed by others outside of the Big Three including unsigned artists or independent record labels.92 In stark comparison, UMG, Sony, and Warner account for nearly 70% of Spotify’s music featured in its “New Music Friday” playlist.93 This is likely a result of the Big Three’s arrangements with Spotify, which well-capitalized labels like the Big Three’s are better able to afford.94 For independent artists not represented by the Big Three, the need to conform to the algorithm’s demands can “dictat[e] the songwriting process. This may result in less experimentation and diversification within popular music, thereby stifling the creative process.”95 The net effect is that innovation is stunted because the market is generally unreceptive to artists who are not represented by one of the major labels or music different from their algorithm’s preferences.96

Unlike radio, whose airwaves were licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, streaming services do not fall under FCC jurisdiction.97 Current law doesn’t allow the FCC to oversee streaming platforms, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 “declined to grant the FCC regulatory authority over internet service providers or entities doing business over the internet.”98 This reflected Congress’s intent to “preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”99 Like in the 1980s and 90s, Congress’s increased priority of promoting competition through less regulation underlies its decision not to extend the FCC’s jurisdiction to streaming services. However, in the UK, research from the Competition and Markets Authority displayed concern about harms to music diversity, competition, and fairness to artists resulting from the Big Three’s arrangements with the streaming services.100 Evidently, these concerns that justified the anti-payola regulations in the 1960s have been revived within the modern music distribution scheme. 

The high market concentration in the music industry, coupled with the extensive vertical integration and relationships between the Big Three and other facets of the musical industry, can raise anticompetitive concerns. These concerns may be heightened when viewed with the greater scrutiny that academic writing and enforcement authorities have directed toward vertical mergers and horizontal labor-side impacts.101 Labor-side anticompetitive concerns are especially implicated in the effects that the music industry’s market structure has on upstream musicians.

III. The Music Industry’s Legal Implications: Labor-Side Considerations and Vertical Antitrust

Antitrust enforcement has historically focused on consumer welfare as opposed to labor-side considerations, and horizontal mergers as opposed to vertical integrations.102 Recently, academic authors, courts, and enforcement agencies have demonstrated increased scrutiny toward vertical integrations and more interest in labor-side protections.103 Both of these emerging elements are implicated in the music industry’s treatment of musicians through their integration and payola schemes. Growing interest in labor-side impacts of market concentration points toward greater openness to protect musicians, while greater focus on the impact of vertical integration suggests heightened scrutiny of the music industry’s structure and vertical relationships. An approach to antitrust that emphasized labor-side considerations and vertical integrations would provide greater legal protection for musicians from the Big Three’s payola relationships.

A. Labor-Side Considerations

Labor-side antitrust considers the concentration of companies on upstream producers like employees. Monopsony and oligopsony cases occur when companies, due to being the sole or one of the very few buyers in a market, can exert power to lower the prices of inputs.104 For many years, courts and enforcement authorities’ antitrust evaluations primarily revolved around maximizing consumer welfare with little interest in the impact that mergers or other actions would have on upstream producers.105 Under the traditional consumer welfare analysis, monopsony and oligopsony structures appear beneficial for consumers by lowering prices by artificially constraining the price of labor inputs, so they are relatively unobjectionable in merger cases.106 Instead, the negative impact is “most directly felt by the upstream producers.”107 In a break from the consumer welfare standard, the Department of Justice flagged greater concern for authors as upstream producers when evaluating the merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster in 2022.108 The ruling “focused largely on monopsony concerns in its conclusion, suggesting that the turn towards monopsony consideration in antitrust enforcement is not a passing trend.”109 Similarly, the Department of Justice began suing Ticketmaster in May of 2024 for “exercis[ing] power over performer, venues, and independent promoters in ways that harm competition. . . artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts.”110 Though the Supreme Court previously argued that similar legal standards should apply to claims of monopsonization as it has previously applied to claims of monopolization, there are very few cases in which courts relied on labor-side antitrust considerations to rule against an employer.111 It is also uncertain what approach President Donald Trump’s second administration will take, with some projections that merger review may return to traditional consumer welfare principles.112 Nevertheless, the music industry demonstrates some of the same concerns that the DOJ expressed in the Penguin Random House and Ticketmaster cases, like the parallels between authors and musicians having such low bargaining power in comparison to their publishers or labels, respectively, and the lack of employee protections.113

Though the record labels may be the upstream producers compared to the streaming services, musicians are particularly affected because the anticompetitive effects of the concentrated streaming service market are compounded by the similarly highly concentrated music production industry. Musicians not only must deal with the concentration of the streaming service market, which allows streaming services to charge high fees or other forms of payola, but also the concentration of record labels that offer them low royalty rates for their work. As discussed above, artists have captured smaller shares of revenue as their compensation channels are increasingly concentrated, and they lack the power to negotiate substantially with their labels.114

The artists’ low bargaining power in the concentrated industry is especially evident in artists increasingly selling their catalogs and masters. Musical composition rights, which consist of the rights to the notes, melodies, and chords of a musical work, are often held or shared by the songwriters, composers, and publishers.115 This is separate from the copyrights of master recordings, which are the specific recordings of the composition, which record labels often hold the rights to.116 Ownership of master recordings is important because the owners can use those recordings as they please and direct the distribution of profits generated from them.117 Record labels have substantially more bargaining power than individual artists. Musical artists, as independent contractors and gig workers, are unable to form unions and collectively organize because they do not fall under the labor relations exemption of the antitrust laws.118 Attempts to allow musicians to organize and grant statutory protections, like the Protect Working Musicians Act, have not gathered significant steam.119 Because of this uneven bargaining power, particularly when artists are first signing to their label, labels almost always require musicians to give the label the rights to own and use the artist’s original or master records while signing on, and artists have little choice but to yield.120 In return, lacking the popularity to negotiate for higher royalty rates, most artists agree to receive merely fifteen to twenty percent of the profits from their works in return.121 Similarly, in payment scheme negotiations with YouTube, the Big Three can “command favourable terms at the indies’ expense,” because of disparate bargaining power.122

The growing literature around labor-side antitrust analysis makes it clear that the undervaluing of labor inputs like the contribution of musicians harms competition and efficiency. The “monopsonization of labor markets pose exactly the same challenge to the economy—mispricing of resources (material or human), resulting in their underemployment, which both harms the economy and results in inequitable outcomes.”123 Expanding antitrust protections for workers is “both welfare-maximizing, given assumptions about current institutional constraints and market conditions, and consistent with legislative intent, as revealed through the debates over the major antitrust statutes.”124

B. Vertical Integration Considerations

Historically, antitrust enforcement has largely revolved around horizontal mergers rather than vertical integration. Recently, enforcement agencies have begun expanding their guidelines to consider the impact of vertical relationships. Courts and agencies have struggled with analyzing vertical integrations because, though they can raise anticompetitive concerns, vertical mergers can also reduce transaction costs, improve distribution, and promote more efficient pricing.125 There is a conflict between “generally acknowledged efficiencies stemming from vertical relationships and the potential for anticompetitive harm,” which are fact and case-specific.126

In 2023, the Department of Justice published a set of guidelines, applying to both horizontal and vertical mergers, which included considerations of a firm’s trend toward vertical integration and whether mergers were motivated by rivals’ fear of limited access to services needed to compete.127 It also “expand[ed] the discussion of possible anticompetitive harms to include the potential to prevent the entry of competitors not only in relevant markets under investigation but also in related markets.”128 These were partially motivated by concerns that “once a dominant firm has been permitted to extend its power throughout the supply chain, it is difficult to police discriminatory behavior via the antitrust laws,” which is especially true when the discrimination takes the form of internal self-preferencing.129 The extent to which these merger guidelines will be enforced in the coming years is unclear. Most experts “expect [Trump’s] second administration to ease up on antitrust enforcement and be more receptive to mergers and deal-making after years of hypervigilance under Biden’s watch.”130 However, there are also indications that “aggressive antitrust enforcement is unlikely to disappear altogether, particularly in light of the populist approach that defined the first Trump administration,” like in its investigations into Big Tech.131 As of November 2025, several months into the second Trump administration, the FTC has thus far continued relying on the 2023 Merger Guidelines, prioritizing competitive labor markets, but shows greater openness to remedies during the merger process to avoid later litigation.132

Vertical integration can go beyond just mergers. “Vertical shareholding,” or when a common set of investors owns significant shares in vertically related corporations, may have anticompetitive effects similar to those of some vertical mergers.133 The potential competitive benefits of vertical mergers may even be less likely to result from vertical shareholding.134

The primary anticompetitive concern with vertical shareholding is foreclosure, or when one firm exclusively deals, refuses to deal, or deals on different terms with buyers or suppliers. Foreclosure may be more likely under conditions of partial ownership than complete ownership, meaning vertical shareholdings may raise greater anticompetitive concerns than vertical mergers.135

The Fifth Circuit held that a vertical merger could be illegal if the “merged firm will have the ability and incentive to foreclose rivals from sources of supply or distribution,” in Illumina, Inc. v. FTC.136

In this context, payola seems to be an enigma: is it essentially a market auctioning for the efficient allocation of music distribution, or does it more closely resemble a form of vertical foreclosure with different terms of dealing among competitors as seen with YouTube’s disparate payment systems for independent labels and the Big Three? Buying distribution with vertical dealing is more commonly the purchase of a service than the equivalent of a merger. However, as the definition of anticompetitive vertical actions expands with increasing criticism of vertical relationships and greater sympathy for upstream producers like musical artists, antitrust law seemingly begins to reach musical payola’s dealings in a vertically integrated music industry from start to finish.

IV. Does Radio’s “Payola” Ban Make Sense In Streaming?

Congress’s reasons for the 1960s radio era prohibition seem to mirror antitrust law’s goals of promoting transparency, competition, and diversity. The 1960s payola ban, requiring disclosure when record labels paid for greater coverage on the radio, initially arose from a public focus on truth, disclosure, and fraud.137 However, these mingled with the FCC’s goals of promoting competition and increasing diversity in response to the widespread radio industry consolidation, particularly in the late 1980s into the 1990s.138 Concerns over vertical integration and vertical shareholding seem primarily concerned with barriers to entry, anticompetitive outcomes, and harm to upstream musical artists. These same concerns trouble modern payola critics. Modern payola’s role in musical distribution, coupled with the highly oligopsonistic industry, triggers anticompetitive concerns under vertical and labor-side antitrust frameworks. However, in light of how easily the music industry adapted its practices to evade the 1960s payola disclosure requirements, it is unlikely that a prohibition on modern pay-for-play would effectively address these competitive concerns.

A. Musical Payola as Vertical Integration

Universal and Sony hold significant minority stakes in Spotify, a key music streaming service.139 They also have extensive relationships and contracts with Spotify140 and Meta to broadly disseminate signed artists’ songs.141 The musical industry, already having become horizontally concentrated over the last several decades, has increasingly shifted to vertical integration of the recording process, catalog ownership, and musical distribution, including payola relationships.142

Companies with market power and bargaining leverage, like the Big Three and the streaming services, can subsequently use vertical integration to further entrench their market power.143 Some research argues that payola can serve as an access point, rather than a barrier to entry, by allowing entrants to pay for access to marketing and distribution that large incumbents have benefited from for years.144 The music industry’s current structure undermines this potential benefit of payola. “Without vertical integration, other companies could possibly countervail this power on different market stages. However, this compensation is impossible, if the horizontally powerful firms expand to other market stages and use their bargaining power there to carry out foreclosure strategies. . . and/or raise barriers to entry.”145 This appears to be what the combination of vertical integration, algorithms, and payola relationships accomplishes. The primary way in which the major distributors suppress their competition is by “creating market structures that prohibitively increase the costs of entering the market . . . [the music industry] can be characterized as ‘lottery like, winner-take-all markets, where promotional efforts may be more important than content.’”146 As a result, an artist’s success “virtually require[s]” prohibitively expensive promotional efforts, which major labels use to “crowd out” competition from smaller producers, labels, and artists.147 Despite the substantial changes in musical distribution and advertising with the rise of streaming, the Big Three maintain an important barrier to entry against independent artist marketing with their equity relationships and contracts with streaming services that ensure that the Big Three are disproportionately overrepresented in key promotional playlists.148 

Social media has grown as a complementary musical promotion option for artists.149 A study found that half of music listeners in the Asia Pacific region discover new music through social media platforms like TikTok.150 However, there is conflicting evidence of social media’s role in lowering barriers to entry of musical dissemination and the actual opportunities it affords smaller musicians to market themselves at lower costs. For example, TikTok allows artists to post videos to their songs and experiment with their marketing at “near zero costs.”151 On one hand, a report found that nearly two-thirds of viral hits on TikTok were fueled by organic posting without any advertising or influencer spending, with unsigned artists outperforming their major and indie label counterparts with “the times artists posted a breakout track on average before it reached the 100,000 TikTok views milestone.”152 Of the artists who charted on Spotify between January 2020 and December 2021, 25% of the artists who had never charted before grew their following using TikTok.153 On the other hand, as many as 75% of popular songs in TikTok started with a creator marketing campaign where artists and labels paid other content creators to promote their music.154 Despite technological evolutions and changes to music distribution, it has been claimed that “only those artists financially supported by one of the . . . major labels can afford to successfully market their albums to the consuming public.”155 

The role of the Big Three record labels in social media and streaming services through vertical integration and payola schemes could be concerning. When UMG removed from TikTok all music related to UMG artists (including music that UMG had as little as 1% ownership share), analysts estimated that up to 80% of the music on the platform could have been removed; UMG argued that it was likely to be closer to 20-30%.156 Some musicians, who were unaware that their work was partially controlled by UMG, suddenly found their strongest marketing tool unavailable to them.157 For example, some artists were unaware that their independent label distributed their work through UMG channels or that their co-writers were signed to UMG labels.158 These distribution channels raise the risk identified in the Merger Guidelines that a merger “involving products, services, or routes to market that rivals use to compete may substantially lessen competition when the merged firm has both the ability and incentive to limit access to the related product so as to weaken or exclude some of its rivals. . . in the relevant market.”159 Spotify and TikTok, two key distribution and marketing tools for artists, are “routes to market” that allow them to access listeners. Payola schemes impact the viability of “routes to market” for artists. Though these distribution and marketing tools can cost less for emerging artists to use in comparison to past models of radio and billboards, many artists still require substantial capital (provided by their labels) to find success through them.

B. A Modern Payola Prohibition Would Be Ineffective

The 1960s radio payola prohibition impart a key lesson: the big record labels found innovative ways to engage in payola regardless of the prohibition. Warner, Sony, and UMG continued to dominate the charts by circumventing payola disclosure requirements by using independent promoters.160 The industry has proven to be highly adaptive to technological changes as well, managing to continue the payola practice despite the shift from radio to streaming. Similar payola prohibitions, requiring disclosure of payment for promotions, would likely be avoided similarly to the benefit of the Big Three record labels regardless. The payola prohibitions had mixed results compared to their original intent; while the prohibitions may have helped increase access for smaller record labels and artists, they also reduced musical variety and lowered overall record sales.161

It is also argued that the motivation for publicly licensed airwaves disclosure behind the radio payola prohibitions is fully inapplicable to modern music distribution methods. Similar to the argument that entertainment payola is harmless because “if no one likes the music, it won’t last, and the stations themselves will suffer,” the same argument could be made regarding consumer usage of streaming services.162 However, this argument does not hold from a labor-side analysis; the high horizontal and vertical market power concentration both among streaming services and the Big Three music groups increases the risk of anticompetitive coordination because the market is difficult to enter.163 A key potential difference between the radio era payola schemes and modern streaming and social media marketing relationships is the existence of low-cost marketing alternatives like TikTok that have shown some potential in allowing capital-constrained artists to promote their work for low costs.

A payola prohibition, like the disclosure requirements from the radio era of music distribution, would be ineffective for the same reasons that it failed to substantially reduce the dominance of large labels in the 1960s: it was too easy for the industry to adapt and circumvent the requirement. A statute laying out clear rules and guidelines about what the music industry giants are and are not allowed to do would likely be skirted around, or a loophole would inevitably be found. However, the growing receptiveness to government intervention on behalf of upstream producers like musicians and heightened criticism of vertical integrations could serve to limit payola under antitrust applications to vertical and labor concerns in the music industry.

V. Antitrust Lawsuits Would Better Protect Musicians

Musicians lack the power to protect themselves in the music industry due to its high concentration and uneven bargaining power. With payola in streaming consistently favoring the Big Three over independent artists, action is necessary to address these anticompetitive concerns.

Congressional action, however, seems to be a worse solution than court antitrust cases. First, as of 2025, there is no evidence that statutes intended to protect musicians are likely to pass.164 Second, if Congress were to pass a modern payola prohibition, it would likely be inadequate given the history of the Big Three finding workarounds.165 Courts, through case-by-case analyses, would allow for greater flexibility than Congressional action. Historically, suits by artists or independent labels against modern payola have been brought under state commercial bribery statutes.166 However, these statutes often recognize a breach of fiduciary duty as the basis for liability, which modern payola does not typically implicate.167 While courts can act despite gridlock in Congress, these anti-payola cases must be brought through a different channel than fiduciary duty. Antitrust enforcement cases from the Federal Trade Commission or other plaintiffs emphasizing vertical and labor-side antitrust perspectives could be a tool to improve the severe power imbalances between musicians, the Big Three, and the large streaming services.

Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act were established to promote the goal of protecting free market competition from excessive monopolization.168 Section 1 of the Sherman Act deems “[e]very contract, combination . . . or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce . . . is declared to be illegal,”169 while Section 2 states that “every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the . . . States . . . shall be deemed guilty of a felony.”170 Courts consider price fixing, collusion, concerted refusal to deal, cartels, bid rigging, customer and market allocations, some tying arrangements, possession of market power, substitutions, barriers to entry, absence of competitors, and cost advantages when evaluating antitrust claims.171 The default standard for most agreements that have some possible pro-competitive benefits is the rule of reason analysis, which only finds agreements illegal if their anticompetitive effects outweigh their pro-competitive effects.172

This rule of reason analysis is what courts traditionally struggle with for vertical antitrust claims. After a plaintiff alleges that a defendant’s restraint on trade harms competition, like showing that the close relationships between the Big Three and music distributors like Spotify and Apple Music make it substantially harder for others to compete on the market, the defendant has an opportunity to show that the restraint has pro-competitive benefits like lower prices and higher quality.173 In terms of consumer-welfare, defendants like the Big Three and streaming services could easily point to low prices for consumers to meet this burden. The third step of the rule of reason, where courts have struggled in the past in cases of vertical integration, is for the plaintiff to show that “despite the pro-competitive benefits, the restraint is still so harmful to competition that it should not be allowed.”174 The addition of labor-side antitrust considerations in the music industry can serve as an additional weight on the side of plaintiffs to outweigh the primarily consumer-oriented benefits that the music industry’s oligopsony provides.

The music industry is particularly open to these concerns because its vertical integration allows the Big Three and streaming services the ability and incentive to foreclose rivals from sources of supply or distribution.”175 For example, by prohibitively increasing the costs of entering the music industry through payola relationships between the Big Three and streaming services, the major distributors substantially suppress competition.176 The large disparity between the Big Three only uploading approximately 4% of daily tracks but comprising nearly 70% of Spotify’s “New Music Friday” playlist, one of the largest ways in which listeners find new songs and artists to listen to, demonstrates the importance of the well-capitalized labels’ relationships with distributors.177 Such a small minority of music creations, through the industry’s vertical integrations, have managed to foreclose others from being heard on distributors’ algorithms. Courts should be more receptive to these foreclosures of suppliers and the impacts on upstream musicians.

VI. Conclusion

The music industry, among both record labels and streaming services, is highly concentrated. This double layer of concentrated market power, with the Big Three controlling over 83% of the record label market share and Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music controlling 90.5% of the streaming subscriber market, is particularly harmful to upstream musical artists. Aside from those horizontal concerns, however, the extensive vertical relationships between the Big Three and the key streaming services serve as high barriers to entry for market entrants. These relationships and contracts to boost Big Three’s artists to the top of the streaming services’ algorithms strongly resemble the payola relationships from the radio era of musical distribution. Despite technological changes technically reducing the cost to distribute and market music, the Big Three receive substantially different treatment given their vertical integration, relationships with distributors, and prohibitively expensive marketing requirements like modern payola. 

The approach that Congress took to address payola in the 1960s, requiring radio stations to disclose payments that they received from record labels, did not work then. This approach likely would not work today either. The ease with which the record labels sidestepped that requirement meant that, though there was a slight increase in the dissemination of music from independent artists and labels on the radio compared to before Congress took action, the law primarily just increased the transaction costs between record labels and radio stations, with indies serving as intermediaries. Congress has also struggled to pass bills to protect musicians, despite several being introduced over the years.

Existing antitrust structures can help. The increasing openness to labor-side concerns and the heightened scrutiny recently placed on vertical integration should weigh heavily on courts in favor of musicians and independent labels in their rule of reason analyses. The music industry is currently structured to foreclose entrants, with high barriers to entry protecting the longstanding incumbents. Courts, applying increasingly holistic antitrust analysis, are the best option for parties who seek to improve the music industry to benefit musicians.

 

 

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• Id.
• Zoe Stern, The Inequalities of Digital Music Streaming, The Regulatory Rev. 2 (May 30, 2024), https://perma.cc/LJB2-5CUD; Julie Knibbe, Is the Spotify Editorial Playlist Landscape Fair to Emerging Artists?, Music Tomorrow (Apr. 27, 2022), https://perma.cc/3CE5-J7EE.
• FCC, Consumer Guide: Payola Rules, https://perma.cc/UTL5-LRSW.
• Stern, supra note 6; Knibbe, supra note 6.
• Id.
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• Ingham, The Three Major Publishers Generated More than $3.2 Billion in 2019 – That’s $396,000 Per Hour, supra note 4.
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• Universal Music Group, Universal Music Group and Spotify Expand Strategic Relationship, supra note 12; Benjamin Stevens, The Sultans of Stream: How Big Streaming Services Have Used Their Oligopsony Power in the Music Industry to Leave Millions of Musicians in Dire Straits, 73 S.C. L. Rev. 993, 994 (2022).
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• Id.
• Peter Jan Honigsberg, The Evolution and Revolution of Napster, 36 U.S.F. L. Rev. 473, 477 (2002).
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• Stevens, supra note 24 at 999.
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• Id.
• Id.
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• Gregory M. Prindle, No Competition: How Radio Consolidation Has Diminished Diversity and Sacrificed Localism, 14 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L. J. 279, 280 (2003).
• Id. at 280–81.
• Id. at 280.
• Id. at 281.
• Id.
• Id.
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• Id.
• Rachel M. Stilwell, Which Public? Whose Interest? How the FCC’s Deregulation of Radio Station Ownership Has Harmed the Public Interest, and How We Can Escape the Swamp, 26 Loy. L.A. Ent. L. Rev. 369, 369 (2006).
• Renhoff, supra note 2.
• Kim Kelly, A Brief History of American Payola, Vice Magazine (Feb. 14, 2024), https://perma.cc/2VG6-P2TZ. 
• The Payola Scandal Heats Up, History.com (Nov. 13, 2009), https://perma.cc/EAQ2-GZTT.
• Communications Act of 1934, 47 U.S.C. § 317.
• John L. Puckett, The Seven-Year Itch: West Philly Loses American Bandstand, West Philadelphia Collaborative History (2019), https://perma.cc/RUN2-F9RS.
• Christina Guadagno, A Historical Study of Payola: Advertising and Public Relations or Bribery, Rowan Uni. 1, 6 (1997).
• Id.
• Daniel Gross, What’s Wrong With Payola? The Pointlessness of Eliot Spitzer’s Crusade Against the Music Industry, (Jul. 27, 2005), https://perma.cc/Z39P-GST4.
• Clay Calvert, Payola, Pundits, and the Press: Weighing the Pros and Cons of FCC Regulation, 13 CommLaw Conspectus 245, 252 (2005).
• Red Lion Broadcasting Co., Inc. v. F.C.C., 395 U.S. 367, 390 (1969).
• Guadagno, supra note 56, at 7 (citing Gregory J. Sidak and David E. Kronemyer, The “New Payola” and The American Record Industry: Transactions, Costs and Precautionary Ignorance in Contracts for Illicit Services, 3 Harvard J. of L. and Pub. Policy 521 (1981)).
• Nathan Hanks, Payola Laws & The Greatest Music You’ve Never Heard, Max Live (Nov. 22, 2014), https://perma.cc/YSK2-BG6R.
• Nick Messitte, How Payola Laws Keep Independent Artists Off Mainstream Radio, Forbes (Nov. 30, 2014), https://perma.cc/ZFR6-2YUF.
• Renhoff, supra note 2.
• Hanks, supra note 62.
• Renhoff, supra note 2.
• Id.
• Gross, supra note 58.
• Id.
• Felix Richter, Charted: The Impact of Streaming on the Music Industry, World Economic Forum (Mar. 30, 2023), https://perma.cc/E3QQ-X8U2.
• Id.
• Kasi Wautlet, Playlists as Endorsements: An Argument for Continued Payola Regulation in the Internet Age, 76 NYU Annual Survey of Am. L. 821, 832 (2021).
• Niko Smith, Spotify and the War on Artists, Mich. J. of Economics 1 (Jan. 29, 2024).
• Id.
• Dylan Smith, The ‘Big Three’ of Streaming: Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music Now Account for Over 90% of U.S. Subscribers, DMN Pro Data Finds, Digital Music News (Jul. 5, 2024), https://perma.cc/CGV6-Q6HZ.
• Ingham, Universal Music Group Generated 51% of Its 2023 Recorded Music Revenues in North America… and 8 Other Things We Learned From Its New Annual Report, Music Business Worldwide (Apr. 17, 2024), https://perma.cc/QZ97-EBA4.
• Jem Aswad, Spotify and Universal Unveil Far-Reaching Deal That Improves ‘Bundling’ Payment Structure, Variety (Jan. 26, 2025), https://perma.cc/F9ND-G24N.
• Mall, supra note 34.
• Stern, supra note 6; Knibbe, supra note 6.
• Aswad, Spotify and Universal Unveil Far-Reaching Deal That Improves ‘Bundling’ Payment Structure, supra note 77.
• Buccafusco & Garcia, supra note 36, at 805.
• Wautlet, supra note 72, at 835.
• Id.
• Id. at 835–36.
• Nikola Iliev, Social Media’s Impact on Music Promotion: How Artists Can Market Themselves Online, Forbes (Dec. 11, 2023), https://perma.cc/E49G-97SG.
• Universal Music Group, Facebook and Universal Music Group Strike Unprecedented Global Agreement, Universal Music Group (Dec. 21, 2017), https://perma.cc/EGG7-R32T.
• Universal Music Group, Universal Music Group and TikTok Announce New Licensing Agreement, Universal Music Group (May 1, 2024), https://perma.cc/5QD4-75TD.
• Murray Stassen, 13 out of the 14 No. 1 Songs in the US in 2022 Were Driven by Viral Trends on TikTok, Music Bus. Worldwide (Dec. 16, 2022), https://perma.cc/K4LS-YZ73.
• Id.
• Gregory Walfish, The Top Players Buying Music Catalogs in 2024, Xposure Music (Jul. 30, 2024), https://perma.cc/YFD7-EFK5.
• Stevens, supra note 24, at 1005.
• Tim Ingham, The Major Record Companies Release Around 3,900 Tracks Every Day. Their Problem? That’s a Drop in the Ocean., Music Business Worldwide (Mar. 28, 2023), https://perma.cc/PPN2-76CF.
• Stern, supra note 6; Knibbe, supra note 6.
• Stern, supra note 6.
• Adam J. Kays, The Sound of Disruption: The Effects of Music Streaming Services and Technological Change on the Music Industry, Univ. of S.D. RED (Apr. 25, 2025), https://perma.cc/NP8U-B3Y5.
• Ankur Srivastava, The Anti-Competitive Music Industry and the Case for Compulsory Licensing in the Digital Distribution of Music, 22 Touro L. Rev. 375, 390 (2014).
• Wautlet, supra note 72.
• Id.
• Id.
• Competition and Markets Authority, Music and Streaming Final Report 1, 104 (Nov. 29, 2022), https://perma.cc/X44D-RVPP.
• Eric A. Posner, Antitrust Analysis of Vertical Restraints in Labor Markets, U. Chi. Coase-Sandor Institute for L. & Economics (2025), https://perma.cc/3225-B95H (“Vertical restraints in labor markets are a neglected topic, but have taken on increasing importance as the harms caused by labor market restraints have gained greater recognition.”).
• Eric A. Posner, The New Labor Antitrust, U. Chi. Coase-Sandor Institute for L. & Economics (2023), https://perma.cc/X4FE-8TJU;  U.S. Dep’t. of Just., The Merger Guidelines and the Integration of Efficiencies into Antitrust Review of Horizontal Mergers (2015), https://perma.cc/7453-X5HT.
• U.S. Dep’t. of Just., Guideline 5: Mergers Can Violate the Law When They Create a Firm That May Limit Access to Products or Services That Its Rivals Use to Compete (2023), https://perma.cc/6E8H-GXY.
• Stevens, supra note 24, at 1012–13.
• Id.
• Id. at 1009–10.
• Id.
• Sarah Hammond Roberts, Workers of the World, Differentiate: Expanding Protections for Workers in the Age of Labor Antitrust, 2 U. Chi. Bus. L. Rev. 531, 534 (2023).
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• U.S. Department of Justice, Justice Department Sues Ticketmaster for Monopolizing Markets Across the Live Music Concert Industry (May 23, 2024), https://perma.cc/3ZXU-5C5Z.
• Weyerhaeuser v. Ross-Simmons Hardwood Lumber Co., Inc., 549 U.S. 312, 322 (2007).
• Julia K. York, et al., Aggressive Enforcement is Unlikely to Vanish Under Trump’s Top Antitrust Officials, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates (Dec. 17, 2024), https://perma.cc/L2ZQ-TPRM.
• Roberts, supra note 108.
• Stevens, supra note 24.
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• Id.
• Winder, supra note 18.
• Olivia Finlayson, Why the Protect Working Musicians Act’s Proposed Antitrust Exemption Needs to Be Enacted, 44 Loy. L.A. Ent. L. Rev. 129, 129–62.
• Id.
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• U.S. Dep’t. of Just., Vertical Merger Enforcement Policy (1995), https://perma.cc/8XZG-R9ES.
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• Vertical Shareholding, 133 Harv. L. Rev. 665, 665–67 (2019).
• Id.
• Id.
• Fifth Circuit Accepts Vertical Harm Theory and Establishes Standard for Evaluating Merger Fixes, Paul Weiss (Dec. 22, 2023), https://perma.cc/7YJX-BUMG.
• Renhoff, supra note 2.
• Prindle, supra note 41.
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• Buccafusco & Garcia, supra note 36, at 841.
• Id.
• Srivastava, supra note 96, at 388.
• Id. at 388–90.
• Buccafusco & Garcia, supra note 36, at 862–63.
• Id. at 850.
• Joshua Coase & Sean Taylor, How Artists Are Going Viral on TikTok in 2022, ContraBrand (2022), https://perma.cc/2BLG-3EVT; Mandy Dalugdug, Two Thirds of TikTok’s Viral Hits Are Sparked by Organic Content, With No Spend On Advertising or Influencers, Music Business Worldwide (Sept. 29, 2022), https://perma.cc/YX6U-46BX.
• Coase & Taylor, supra note 150, at 3.
• Dalugdug, supra note 150.
• Matt Daniels, The Unlikely Odds of Making it Big on TikTok, The Pudding (2021), https://perma.cc/J9RX-SA9R.
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• Srivastava, supra note 96, at 390.
• Shaad D’Souza, The Music Industry’s Over-Reliance on TikTok Shows How Lazy It Has Become, The Guardian (Mar. 1, 2024), https://perma.cc/4GU5-43FR.
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• Id.
• U.S. Dep’t of Just. and the Federal Trade Commission, Merger Guidelines (2023).
• Hanks, supra note 62.
• Renhoff, supra note 2.
• Gross, supra note 58, at 103.
• Stevens, supra note 24; see also Finlayson, supra note 118.
• For example, the Protect Working Musicians Act of 2023, H.R. 5576, 118th Cong. (2023) was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary but stalled in committee. In 2025, House Representative Issa introduced the American Music Fairness Act of 2025, H.R. 861, 119th Cong. (2025), but it is primarily targeted at protecting musicians from their work being used for AI training rather than ensuring competition in the music industry.
• Finlayson, supra note 118.
• Wautlet, supra note 72.
• Id. at 838-39.
• Tony Freyer, Antitrust Legislation and Law, The Oxford Encycl. of Am. Pol. and Legal Hist. (2012).
• 15 U.S.C. § 1.
• 15 U.S.C. § 2.
• Finlayson, supra note 118.
• Id.
• E. Thomas Sullivan & Jeffrey L. Harrison, Understanding Antitrust and Its Econ. Implications 3, 6-7 (7th ed. 2019); Daniel Francis & Christopher Jon Sprigman, Antitrust: Principles, Cases, and Materials 2 (2023).
• Finlayson, supra note 118.
• Paul Weiss, supra note 136.
• Srivastava, supra note 96.
• Knibbe, supra note 6.