"The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Illinois Attorney General announced a massive $20 million settlement with Leader Automotive Group, the operator of 10 dealerships in and around Bloomington, Illinois, for alleged unfair and deceptive acts and practices in connection with the sale of motor vehicles in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act and Illinois state law."
"...journalist Liz Pelly has conducted an in-depth investigation, and published her findings in Harper’s—they are part of her forthcoming book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.
...
"Now she writes:
'What I uncovered was an elaborate internal program. Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform.'
In other words, Spotify has gone to war against musicians and record labels."
That company still wants to make a profit, so they raise the price by 25 dollars.
Or they raise the price by $40, do stock buybacks, lay off 10% of their workforce, close underperforming stores, and book their CEO on CNBC to squeal about "organized retail theft," and pay record bonuses to the execs.
In most cases that's true, but we all remember specifically that thing that you did in middle school. Shameful.