Someone pointed out to me that music labels started out as being good, actually!

It allowed a lot of musicians in a hit-based business to band together into something bigger than themselves to give mutual support and smooth out outcomes.

However, over time it grew into something that had so much more leverage over the musicians that it started becoming an abusive relationship.

The collective became so powerful that it completely disempowered the individual.

This is partly because the collective does well when any member of the swarm does well, but individuals only do well if they specifically do well (which has a large luck component).

Also, any musician who gets really successful is incentivized to break off on their own, disempowering the musicians who remain in the collective.

The collective's sustained growth rate is larger than any of the musicians, so it grows in relative power.

This dynamic is, I think, inevitable in some sense.

Yet another example of where preferential attachment and the asymmetric advantage of the swarm plays out.

That said, I think you can design systems that slow its advance… or periodically reset the world to disaggregate it.