Musicians' trade group accuses big tech companies of 'creative destruction'

July 31 (UPI) -- An organization that represents musicians and other creatives in the music industry on Wednesday accused big tech companies of driving the "creative destruction" of artists.

The Artist Rights Alliance sent a letter to House lawmakers and Trump administration officials calling for updating laws that govern anti-competitive monopolies "to ensure both the next generation of artists and the next generation of innovators and services get a fair shake."

The letter was in response to anti-trust investigations into Silicon Valley companies by the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and the House Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law.

ARA accuses companies such as Amazon Google, Facebook and Twitter of incentivizing "clicks" on their respective platforms rather than encouraging the growth of creativity in the industry and burgeoning new artists.

"When music or any of the arts are seen as disposable 'content' competing for 'users' in the 'attention economy,' they will always be undervalued and misunderstood," ARA said. "Creators will be shortchanged by platforms that count clicks but curate nothing. And fans will be left unserved by an economy that treats their musical identity as nothing more than a data point that can be leveraged to feed them ads."

ARA said the companies undervalue diversity and commodify the relationship between artists and their fans. The practice is "culturally unsustainable," it said.