The EconomistAugust 1st 2020 United States 212 in April 2012, shortly after Facebook bought
Instagram. In another email one of his col-
leagues talks about acquisitions as a way to
“neutralise a potential competitor”.
The four bosses generally managed to
bat away such accusations. Mr Zuckerberg
admitted that Instagram was a competitor,
but said it would never have become as big
as it is today without Facebook’s help. The
legislators succeeded in showing that the
firms were indeed “gatekeepers” to the dig-
ital economy, as David Cicilline, the chair-
man of the subcommittee, argued in his
opening statement. What remains much
less clear is what to do about this, and
whether the companies abuse their power.
The problem is that the firms’ actions
can often be seen as anticompetitive and as
benefiting consumers simultaneously.
Asked why Apple removed from its App
Store some apps that help parents control
their children’s devices, the firm’s boss,
Tim Cook, could argue that this was not
done to hurt apps competing with similar
offerings from Apple, but to protect users’
data (although he struggled to explain why
this took place right after Apple introduced
its own offering and why six months later it
let the other apps back in, without major
changes to their data policies).
The long afternoon was mostly filled
with lawmakers answering their own ques-
tions. They quizzed the bosses and let them
say a few sentences, before talking over
them and making their own statements.
Democrats at least stayed on topic; Repub-
licans seemed more interested in conspira-
cies. They argued that Google is somehow
in bed with the Chinese government and
that tech firms have an inbuilt bias against
“conservative views” in the way they mod-
erate content—even though their plat-
forms are the most important distribution
channels for right-wing opinions.
The most interesting insight came from
how differently the four ceos performed.
Mr Zuckerberg did best; he has been grilled,
in Congress and elsewhere, many times be-
fore. Mr Cook also put in a solid showing,
although he faced the fewest questions. By
contrast, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, appearing
for the first time at a congressional hear-
ing, could do with a tad more coaching: he
appeared to admit some of the accusations
levelled at Amazon, for instance that it uses
data gathered from merchants on its e-
commerce platform to develop rival offer-
ings. But it was Sundar Pichai, Google’s
boss, who performed the worst, too
scripted and apparently overwhelmed by
the conspiracy theories coming his way.
The subcommittee will now write a re-
port, to be published later this year. It is un-
likely to lead to any legislation, at least in
the near future. Nobody expects much to
happen before the presidential election in
November. Even after that, would antitrust
be a priority? What a re-elected Donald
Trump would do is anybody’s guess (“If
Congress doesn’t bring fairness to Big
Tech...I will do it myself with Executive Or-
ders,” he tweeted before the hearing). As
president, Joe Biden, who has not shown
much interest in tech matters, would have
his plate full with other projects, such as
fixing health care and the economy.
If there is big antitrust news before the
election it is likely to come in the form of
lawsuits. Insiders say the Department ofJustice is intent on filing one by Septem-
ber—perhaps with some state attorneys-
general—against Google for having extend-
ed its monopoly in online-search advertis-
ing into other areas of digital marketing.
The Federal Trade Commission may follow
suit by going after Facebook, though it is
unclear what it would focus on. Such cases
tend to take years. The four tech bosses
may have had a few unpleasant hours, but
their power is safe for now. 7B
y now hip-hopfansarealltoofamil-
iar with the success that can come
after an artist’s untimely death. Tupac
Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., two Ameri-
can rappers who were murdered in 1996
and 1997 respectively, have sold more
music in death than in life. Other well-
known rappers to notch up hits after
their deaths include Eazy-E (who died in
1995), Big L (1999) and J Dilla (2006). The
past few years have seen a flurry of such
posthumous hits. Juice WRLD, a rapper
who died in December, has now reached
the top of America’s Billboard 200 charts
for the second time with his third album,
“Legends Never Die”. By one reckoning, it
is the most successful posthumous
release in two decades.
An analysis by The Economist suggests
that, in the world of hip-hop at least, the
sales boost generated by posthumous
albums may be growing. We looked at
recent releases by hip-hop artists Lil
Peep, XXXTentacion, Mac Miller, Pop
Smoke and Juice WRLD. To measure the
commercial success of a release, we used
the album-equivalent unit (aeu), a mea-
sure developed by Billboard and NielsenSoundScan,a researchfirm, which treats
1,500 song streams or ten song down-
loads as equivalent to an album sale. To
avoid comparing albums released before
and after the adoption of the aeuin 2014,
we restricted our analysis to those re-
leased in the past five years.
All five posthumous albums in our
sample performed better in their first
week than previous works by the same
artists. Pop Smoke and Juice WRLD’s
posthumous albums, both released in
the past month, amassed roughly four
and seven times more aeus, respectively,
than the average releases during their
lives. The posthumous works of Lil Peep
and Mac Miller also recorded huge jumps
in first-week sales (see chart).
Critics of posthumous releases—
including fans, music critics and artists
alike—say they are a corporate cash-grab
and a blight on a dead artist’s career. They
allege that record labels compiling post-
humous releases cram them with filler
tracks and unfinished songs, in part to
boost sales figures (the aeusystem fa-
vours releases with more songs). There
may be some truth to that. Since 2018,
according to our figures, there has been a
positive correlation between the number
of tracks on a chart-topping album and
its aeus during the first week. But the
relationship is very weak.
So why do posthumous albums often
outperform their ante-mortem predeces-
sors? The answer may be humdrum. Fans
rally to their beloved artists. The day after
David Bowie’s death in 2016, the rocker’s
streams on Spotify surged by 2,700%
compared with their typical levels. Liv-
ing musicians can benefit, too. Artists
who re-emerge after a hiatus, as Tool, a
Los Angeles band, did last August after 13
years without releasing an album, have
seen their discographies appear on the
Billboard charts. How unfortunate for
artists to have more success when the
mic cable is severed for good.Dead rappers are killing it
Posthumous hip-hop hitsFor many fans, such success is bittersweetReady to Fly
US, average first-week sales of ante-mortem and
posthumous albums, selected artists, 2018-20
Album-equivalentunits*,’000Source:Billboard
200 Charts*Onealbumsale=1,500songstreams
ortensongdownloadsLilPeepXXXTentacionMacMillerPopSmokeJuiceWRLD5004003002001000Ante-mortem PosthumousAll albums
average 2015-20