Can £125,000 Make a Difference to the Crisis in Live Music?

0:00So if everything is broken, how are we going to fix it? It's pretty much the question I ask every week on this podcast. And this week I speak to some people with a very big solution for some artists. I'm speaking to David Martin, the head of the Featured Artists Coalition. He's the CEO of the organization. he's someone who I've met a few times and previously I've covered the 100 % merch campaign that they ran to try and stop venues taking up to about 25 % of the merch money that artists were getting when they sell their merch and getting venues to commit to the artists getting 100 % he is also joined by and I am also joined by the wonderful Roxanne DeBastien whose music is funny warm, charming and also can be utterly heartbreakingly devastatingly beautiful which I think was the phrase in Still Pigeon that you're never meant to use, heartbreakingly beautiful but her music is exquisite and I was lucky to see her open for the Anchoress on a few shows last year and I know that she is someone who has her ear to the ground and really knows what's happening in the industry so when I saw her talking about the FAC's new UK artist touring fund and knowing that she's been involved in the organization in the past so we've pretty clued up about it I thought who better to come on the podcast and give the artist perspective on this new funding which is only 125 ,000 pounds I say only but that's got to be spread across several different artists in the first instance artists can get 7 ,000 pounds to top up their touring costs which again might sound like a huge sum of money but when the average hotel room is over a hundred pounds and then you've got five people on the road and then you've got to look at all the different costs of vans gear hire if you're a solo artist paying your musicians their day fee that seven thousand pounds across a week of shows is very quickly going to get eaten up and that is partly because we are in a cost of living crisis and you can't push the ticket price too high and record companies no longer provide what's known as tour support which is a loan to cover the costs of touring.

2:21We get into all of that and lots more in this episode with David and Roxanne but the one thing I should really tell you is if you're thinking of pausing this and tuning out the deadline to apply is march the 20th 2026 for the first phase of this um you have until midnight on the 20th to apply there's loads of information on the fac's website so if you go to thefac.org forward slash uk at f und um that's uk um artist fund but at fund um is how they call it for short Yeah, we talk about lots in this episode to do. We're touring the live industry and how this fund is the start of supporting artists, testing how this money can be best spent and trying to best understand what artists need.

3:13So hopefully you've tuned in before the 20th of March, 2026. If you're an artist, if you're not, and you know an artist that should apply for this, make sure that they get hold of this podcast or at least get hold of a link to the fund so they can apply. Yeah, I'm Sean Adams. This is the Drowning Sound podcast brought to you in partnership with Cobuzz. and if you head to dranninsound.org forward slash playlists you can hear this week's edition of Dranninsound playlist which will obviously feature tracks by Roxanne DeBastien who is on this episode but I thought I might have a bit of fun and try and put in artists that have supported the grassroots levy that I'm aware of which means I'll be making a playlist with both Nshikari and Harry Styles on and Katy Perry so um yeah that's what you can find on this week's playlist if you go to dranninsound.org forward slash playlists and you can listen to that on Cobuzz, our preferred music streaming service.

4:14Anyway, this is the Drowning Sound podcast. And as I said, right at the top of this episode, we talk about fixing the music industry and what a better way of fixing things than providing artists with some of the money to cover some of the shortfall and some of the costs of their touring. This is my conversation with David Martin, the CEO of the Feature Artist Coalition and the musician Roxanne DeBastien, who is a musician and author and was previously on the FAC board. She has done lots of brilliant things and I really recommend looking her music up. Anyways, get into this episode.

4:57Welcome to the Drown and Sound podcast, both of you. Thank you so much for taking the time. I saw this morning that the BPI announced that UK Axe generated 1.5 billion from their music I spoke to Tom Keel from UK Music last year just they announced that the music industry made 7.6 billion Taylor Swift became a billionaire off the back of their tour so why does a fund like UK80 even need to exist and is that how you even pronounce it I just suddenly realized it's an acronym and it might be pronounced differently it's the UK Artist Touring Fund um so UCAT I'm really positive about the state of British music I have no fear about the talent that we have in the UK no fear about the artistry and the art that is produced from the UK those statistics that you cited sound great equally in the last nine years British share of the global music market has halved it's come from around 17 % to 9 % equally in the last I suspect mid to late 90s the British artists' share of the charts has gone from around 55 % down to around 20%.

6:04So I'm hopeful. I see, we see talent in our membership every day across our ambassadors, across the UK. We see artists that we have not come across break and do amazing things or pop up. So I'm not fearful of that one. So I think we should be both positive and cognizant would be my response. and i think that i think the world has changed in the last two or three decades when it comes to music and i think we're complete competing in a different field it's more global than it's ever been isn't it exactly competing on a much more global level the uk has always done very well because we're fantastic at music um but the rules of the game have changed and i think that i think because we've done so well the uk has a tendency to say well any intervention should not be necessary but actually you look around the world at that global sector and there is intervention in those countries that are gaining market share now i'm not i'm not protectionist i'm not saying that the uk should should you know britannia should rule the waves when it comes to music i'm not suggesting that either but i think there's a a cultural importance by by interventions do you mean things like the canadian government's investment in music or yeah the way the french government kind of uplift music locally and things like that exactly and that's exactly what i was i was getting to with uk artist touring fund i think we need to recognize that we need to invest in talent i think we need to recognize that also i feel like it's maybe i'm wrong because i see it from a british lens but it feels like there's a british tendency to say goodness me this is a cost rather than wow look at this investment.

7:48I think we're not always great at that. And what the UK Artist Touring Fund is, is an investment in UK talent. You know, there are two things that are sold in the music industry, whether, you know, if we're very blunt about it, recordings and live performances. If you're good at those two things, you can also sell merchandise as well. But realistically, those are the two things that are sold. So we need to invest in making those things work. And just lastly, because I'll let Roxanne come in. I think that we talk about these figures because they're a good microcosm or a good proxy for, I think, the rest of the sector.

8:22But that very top of the pyramid is not the only measure of success. The ability to participate is important. The access to culture is important. Cultural diversity is important. I'm sure we'll get into this more. There's often a conversation about people being, being supported to develop to playing arenas or selling millions of records it's equally important that people can survive in clubs in underground dark rooms and perform and grassroots venues and that is equally important and all of that in in combination is what makes our sector important it all feeds each other it's all symbiotic you know i always make the point that successful major record labels in the UK require successful independent record label I think I think that sort of ecosystem and that symbiosis is important um so I think that's why that's why the UK Altis fund or Tory fund is needed yeah so Roxanne are you feeling the boom um are you are you about to order your next yacht I wish my next yacht yes yeah well the first one was probably made of Lego right Right.

9:38Yes, it's interesting to see those stats, isn't it? I do share David's optimism to a degree. It's fantastic that music generates this much wealth in the UK, but does that money get filtered down to the people who create it is the crucial question. And is that equitable? And is it transparent? and sadly you know just since I guess sort of the sucker punch of Brexit and pandemic we've almost grown accustomed to seeing artists cancel tours stating hostile economic environments is the reason and what I find interesting about this is that it's clear from the kind of artists who are having to make those decisions and who are speaking up.

10:27This issue clearly spans across genre and career stage. You know, whether it's artists as successful, even heritage artists such as garbage or most recently dry cleaning, having to cancel tours even with good ticket sales. I think that's a real scream of a warning sign that we have a serious issue here that's already kind of gone out of hand. yeah I think with Shirley Manson talking about that was going to be their last US tour as well didn't she and just saying like I think she did the maths that I think I saw this morning or last night that if they'd done 10 shows rather than 24 that the tour would have been much more profitable and it's like that that's that's a huge band the household name broken by MTV like Butch Vig the Nirvana producers in the band like Shirley is a legend like we'd all think that a band at that scale at this point in their career touring must be really lucrative and i think it's amazing that shirley speaks up as well because i think that has been a real like wake up for a lot of people that and even an artist at that scale um touring america and it's like arena size shows a lot of the shows and i think they're doing a big tour with skunk and nancy across the uk this summer and it's like they are a very successful band and um we should be really proud of them but i'm also really like amazed when people are shocked that it's not as lucrative to be in a band making that kind of money um so one of the things that we've talked about a lot on this podcast obviously is the grassroots levy and it's one pound on stadium and arena tickets tickets from raw albert hall go into the levy so it's a pound that's trickling down and as you said roxanne that that kind of boom at the top end isn't kind of trickling down to people so it's a great way that it's going to happen and that's how this fund is funded directly indirectly from that that money so harry styles now confirming that he's going to contribute to it katie perry and shikari like all these bands are contributing to this this fund um how much is the fund and um what kind of impact you hope it's going to have i'll start with you on that one david yeah so that those funds go into the live trust um you know you mentioned some there was wolf allais and radio head those those one pound donations go into the live trust and the live trust then distributes that funding onwards to grant awarding programs so the uk artist touring fund is is the grant awarding program that is focused on directing that money to end users if you like you know practitioners and and in our case those beneficiaries are artists i think it's gonna be really tangible when we announce who the awardees are in april hopefully middle of april from this round um because that through line from those artists you talked about you know from harry stars from wolf alice from radiohead to here are artists that are funded at the other end and you know eventually some of those artists will go on i'm sure to be funders of that i think it becomes much more tangible than perhaps the sort of concept that's been talked about um until now So I'm very excited about that.

13:44And I think there is something socialist, right, about the large supporting the small. Or it's very Liz Truss because she did say there's trickle down and we'd all get a slice of the pie. I mean, you could argue that it's a very, very right-wing Tory idea too. So just for balance, not that it's the BBC. I didn't think we were going to talk about Liz Truss today. She's not in my notes for the day. But so, yeah, so in this first round, the Live Trust has distributed£500 ,000. UK Artist Touring Fund has received£125 ,000 of that. They're calling it phase one. We're also calling this round of the UK Artist Touring Fund phase one to align with that.

14:25And we'll distribute that onward in grants to artists. And the beneficiaries are artists, but obviously the whole teams will benefit from the activity. That first distribution from the Live Trust is a limited round because they're also, it's their first distribution. They're working this stuff out as well. There is five million pounds now potentially committed for 2026 already and we're halfway through March. So the hope is that that pot will grow. So everybody is testing those programs. Now, the four main beneficiaries, as you would expect, are promoters, festivals, venues, and artists. And then there are three smaller programs that are also really good programs that are being supported as well by the Life Trust.

15:07So the funding that we've received in this phase will go out in the form of top-up grants. And look, I think$125 ,000 is great. We're really positive about it, really proud about being that vehicle. We've designed something. We've talked about this for 16 months now. And we've designed something specifically for this purpose that is there to intervene in a really acute manner. So it's very specific what we're trying to do in many ways. But you can also see, we can also, we're aware that it's going to help a lot of artists and their teams. And we'll talk about who benefits from that activity in a second, I'm sure.

15:47We have to go questions ready for that. Yeah. But additionally, you can start to see how a pipeline of 5 million or if it's 8 million or 10 million by the end of the year, how that level of investment will have a significant impact on the UK's ecosystem. And maybe we'll come back to this later when we talk about that global competitiveness thing. And Roxanne mentioned Brexit. There are a number of things that have happened in the UK over the past decade, whether it's music education, whether it's Brexit, whether it's a very acute cost of living crisis, you know, whether it's the fact that we're an English speaking market.

16:27And so our next biggest market after our next door market is the US and it's very tough to tour there. And we're competing against US. I don't love the idea of competition when it comes to art, but you get what I mean. we're competing when it comes to the algorithm against American music because it's English language as well all of these things sort of culminate in a scenario where we we may need to be more interventionist at least for now even if it's acute then great but I don't think we should shy away from that as well but also I think we've got the bigger thing that I don't think the industry likes to talk about that much is that for most of the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, the record industry provided huge amounts of tour support to help artists go out on the road.

17:14Like as my small label, I bought a hundred tickets to Martha Wainwright's Shepherd's Bush Empire show to ensure that all the press and radio and ticket giveaway, people can go in. And then I look back and I'm like, why did I buy those tickets to promote her live business? Like I did it because the record was doing really well. We were paying for the press officer the promoter wasn't even though we're part of promoting the artist and promoting the show like we sent out the press release about the tour the promoter didn't like i must have invested like 20 000 pounds in martha wainwright's live career as a record label um similarly with like metric were on my label they came to tour the uk we covered some of the shortfall luckily the Canadian government funding picked up a lot of it.

18:01But like£120 ,000 would have probably underwritten a lot of one band going out on major label debut, three support tours, their grassroots tours. So that's the whole budget for this project. And I think that as much as we lay into major record companies on this podcast, because they have issues, they also have their upsides. Like they did invest in the live, in the booming live business. for the music industry for a long time. And they're not taking a share of Live Nation's huge profits, although in the UK they claim not to be a profitable business from what I've seen since, I think, since 2012.

18:42They've not made a profit. And we'll get on to them and the grassroots levy a little bit later. But Roxanne, I don't think your first records came out with a record company underwriting your touring. What have you seen from your friends and peers, like the difference of how their careers were funded to when they started out to how things are now? So I built my career completely from the ground up, grassroots. The first couple of years of my touring looked like me with an acoustic guitar in a suitcase on the megabus, going through, traveling through the country and playing in small music venues, libraries, independent, um music venues and all those wonderful third spaces that allow us to access culture and live music um so you try and scale and you try and grow your career and with that that will always require some investment with regards to touring it's never been easy to make a living out of music it's this this has never been easy but what's really noticeable is that it has become close to impossible to breaking even or making ends meet even if things are going really well so the problem is firstly as soon as a singer-songwriter as soon as it's not just you with an acoustic guitar your costs skyrocket and you want to you want to present your music the way you want to present it you don't want to make that artistic compromise um it's one i had to make for a very long time because I simply didn't have the funds so as soon as you're touring with a band that's suddenly four travel lodge rooms instead of one four train tickets or that's a van and someone who has to drive it and also four mouths to feed etc and one thing that's just been really noticeable if I look at tours I've done between 2022 and now so in that very short space in time costs have gone up so much yeah the same so that's just really created this huge barrier to entry for artists who in a different decade would have been able to have investment or make that investment whether that is to go on that support tour where you're perhaps not receiving a large fee but you have a huge audience and i don't know whether david maybe you've got some data on this but i don't know roxanne from your experience like the average support fees like they still sometimes are 50 pounds which is what they were when i started promoting gigs in the late 90s like to like 500 pounds say they're not here's 3 000 pounds to be our support act because like the cost of touring with a band is about 1400 to two grand a night and that's if you have someone doing your sound so that when you play in front of a crowd you sound impressive that's probably not with someone doing your lights so that the show looks impressive that's not with any production it's a huge amount of money and obviously every night an artist is making a loss or as your suitcase is often full of books you're often selling books cds records t-shirts i have watched roxanne in action at the merch desk when she was playing with the anchoress and i know quite how much you sold but it probably didn't cover the shortfall of what shows can pay.

22:11I don't know, David, if there's any data of what the average support fee is, because obviously I know that this funding isn't covering support tours, but I think it's quite an important part of the puzzle that fans maybe don't see from the outside of Roxanne's going out and doing tours with Howard Jones playing to hundreds, if not thousands of people a night, and across a few weeks playing to huge audiences and hoping they go and buy stuff and then buy a ticket next time around. But the fee's often not the same, is it? So firstly, we don't have those figures specifically right now, but actually that is one of the things that we're going to find out through UK Outtis Touring.

22:53From the data we're going to collect, it's going to be really rich. It's going to be really important. It's also important to say that this is phase one. Support tours will be in in the future. Festival shows will be in in the future. We've had some, I'm sure we'll talk about the criteria, there's some thresholds that are in there. partly because of the size of the pot, partly because we're testing some things and testing, well, actually quite a lot of things and then doubling the number of things that we're testing in this round, risks, you know, making perfect the enemy of the good in this phase.

23:24Support, we know how important support shows are. I mean, we talked about that in all the lobbying work. Although we don't have the data, we did a panel with, I did a panel at ILMC last week with Picture Parler who said, yeah, just a couple of years ago our support shows we were still getting 50 quid so yeah it's it feels like things haven't moved on in probably a couple of decades in that sense yeah i mean if you consider how much the price for pint was when i was promoting gigs in the late 90s or early 2000s like i think when biffy cliro played the windmill for us i think it was about three pounds a pint max and i think that was expensive for a gig pint yeah whereas now it's like seven nine twelve pounds like so if you just consider the support fee compared to the price of a pint i think you can get basics of inflation i know that inflation doesn't necessarily work like that but yeah exactly i think it's important to remember that like even 50 pounds now versus 50 pounds then is completely different too absolutely and i think roxanne touched on a really important point um and you know there's a number of things that we're trying to achieve with the uk artist touring fund but you go and scrimp this is why i made the point at the beginning the two things that are sold in the music industry you go and scrimp at the time that you're trying to sort of grow your business for want of a cruder term again i don't you know not all artists see themselves as that you're trying to develop your fan base present your music present your art in the way it should be presented yet you're facing this dilemma of having to scrimp on everything to achieve that it's really perverse thing isn't it it's like really hamstringing artists who are supposed to be going out there and presenting the best form of themselves as they develop as they develop their audience and their craft so you know we we don't need to speak to me for long um and you will all see me banging on in the press over the last x number of years about this you know we've been so so sort of visceral about the need for this um and that that we need to do better as a sector in this so i'm i'm really proud that we're doing it but you know the things that you talk about are all things that we want to address.

25:35People sort of say, what's the one thing that it's trying to do? Actually, it's trying to do a number of things. And again, I'm positive that we will get there with it. And I think we're trying to be very open and take people on the journey with us as well, which is why I'm having a lot of these kinds of conversations because I think from our perspective, being that honesty is, I think, important as well. And you touched on Shirley Manson there. I think the fact that she's been so open, And I think it's really important that people see that as well.

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26:52So Roxanne, what are some of those costs? What is some of the things that should you receive this funding or anyone listening to this what are some of the things because obviously most people listening to this are music fans they probably have a rough idea but they're probably thinking about Ginster's pasties not about as you touched on like travel lodges like what are some of the main costs that hit you when you do a show and maybe the difference when you're doing an acoustic and band show like you touched on a few a minute ago I don't know if you want to share any of that yeah sure so the last tour I was on I decided that I would at least like to have one other artist with me so that involves the fee for that session player which includes their time for rehearsals then of course there's transportation costs there's accommodation costs and you need to eat so that's a cost you might need to make some merch to sell on that show so that's a cost and then as you've already mentioned of course if you do want to put your best foot forward you might have a sound person that needs a fee and perhaps even lighting um still a distant dream for me maybe on the next tour um and then there are also depending on your circumstance you might need child care you might need well whatever it is to make sure that you can access venues and that you can do that safely so if we're talking of those fees of between zero and£500 at the very top end of it.

28:25We really don't need to be a mathematician to see that. And also, if you're getting£2 ,000 and you've got£1 ,400 of costs, that's also not going to pay for the, if you can only tour 30 days of the year or 50 days of the year, it's not going to pay for all those other days when you're not on the road. It's not going to pay for the day off when you have to get from Hull to Glasgow because it's a pretty big trip to try and do in a day and play two shows. It's probably just about doable for some people. But if you had to do all that and then go back to your day job two days later, like that's a lot.

29:01And I think that even factoring in the time when you can't work is something which grassroots touring, and I know Los Camposinos did a really great breakdown of how touring kind of economics work. And I'll make sure I drop it in the show notes if people haven't seen it. But I think from the average fan's point of view, they're like, well, you're making music, it's really fun. But you personally investing or at least cash flowing tens of thousands of pounds is, it's like it's not a reality for artists, is it? It's like, but it is a reality if you've come from generational wealth and is going to shift who can make music and who can tour.

29:39And yes, some of the most successful artists from the UK over the years have come from money. but a lot of the people that tell the story of this island or these aisles are often not always from 10 generations of wealth or in taylor swift's case three generations of bankers and it's like and i think who can make music shouldn't be burdened by whether they can afford to cash flow 30 000 pounds or so to do like 50 nights on the road or something across a year i I think it's, and it's also the live, as we started off, the reason why I wanted to start with just how well the live industry, what the music industry is doing, it's, there's people making lots of money, but the investment is coming from artists, managers, sometimes independent labels.

30:27And I think that it's really crucial that when we see the huge amounts of sums that some people are making at the top end, I think it should be really remembered that that investment of time, like the amount of days I've worked unpaid I would hate to try and add up and put as a manager into any kind of spreadsheet because it would I mean it would break my heart for a start to think like but I would do it again without question so I think there's not really a question in amongst all that but I think that just fans understanding like this is 125 ,000 so that sounds like a lot of money but when you add it up across I don't know how many recipients there will be but a few thousand pounds is going to make quite a big difference to 20-30 artists but it's not going to make you're probably going to get from what I know from funding I've applied for 3 ,000 people applying they're not all going to get it and that's all money that those people are going to find themselves to subsidize their tour and invest in the live business of the UK if you looked at it that way around absolutely a couple of things i'll jump in on on that firstly this is is the sort of test phase if you like yeah we expect and know we need to be running this regularly the nature of touring isn't it's not sufficient to have one round of this a year it needs to be running every month or every two months because those that support tour or those shows that pop up or add in a couple of extra shows you often do that weeks out from a show so you need something that's more responsive So we know that we're open about that.

32:06We want to be distributing this level of money once every month or two to be responsive enough. Yes, we know from our other funding that the demand is going to outstrip the supply. And, you know, and that is eye watering. Again, back to my point about the talent that exists. it's not that we in our step up fund that we run with amazon i mean the quality of artists that are coming to us having had no support having invested in their own careers having script and worked for free and done all of this off their own backs the level that they're at and the quality of of music that they're creating is incredible and so yes we we know that there is you know this is the tip of the iceberg, but we're positive about where this will go.

32:54You know, as we talked about in the live trust earlier, I think that that ability to participate in the sector is really important. Roxanne talks about access there, you know, artists that have children, artists that have caring responsibilities, artists that have access needs, they're priced out of the game on the whole. One of the things that we've introduced in this phase, we don't know how it will go. Same as we don't know how much people will apply for, so therefore how many we will fund in this round, again, we'll be much more enlightened post-phase one. But we have an access fund available as part of the UK Artist Touring Fund.

33:33That's not assessed. You put in the cost that you need alongside your application, but it's not assessed by judges. It doesn't impact your application, and the fund will support those costs where it's able to as well. So I think that's really important. and and then two of the things i was going to say is that an extension of the access thing is you touched on working class access to to participate all the music genres that were well known for across the globe came from the working classes they came from the underground they started as niche and they and they came from the working classes and that's right up to you know what's globally grime you know globally significant now what's our last big export probably grime drum basis having a resurgence a very british genre you know but right back to to early pop and rock they came from working class underground movements so it's really problematic if we are shutting those voices out of our our culture um the ability to take part in our culture and the final thing i will say is part of what we're doing with you cat um in the assessment we will ensure that we're asking applicants to ensure there's no safe unsafe working practices and that no Nobody is working for free because exactly to your point, Sean, everybody has worked for free for far too long.

34:52And we wouldn't expect other people in other parts of even the music industry to do it. We wouldn't say, go and work for free. No one is going to a referred to an executive somewhere within the music industry and going, just do this for us, but you won't get paid, but it will be good exposure for you. No one else is expected to do that. And I think that's really an important part of what we're doing. And on the safety point, Joff came to Parliament to talk about this with me last year. From Wolf Alice. From Wolf Alice. And he made the point about Viola Beach and the fact that they were tragically killed driving late at night from a gig.

35:28To try and save money. Yeah, to try and save money. It's a safety element sending artists, sometimes young people, out on the road without the infrastructure and without the resource that they need to be able to do so safely. So all of that stuff is really pertinent for us. Yeah, and I think it's worth people knowing shows that I've been involved in. I've got up at seven to pick up a van for nine, to get to Liverpool for two o 'clock soundcheck, loading out at midnight, and then driving an hour because the hotels were cheaper an hour north of Liverpool. And it got us a chunk of the distance to Glasgow.

36:08so that is a 7am to almost 2am day before getting up and doing it again and then driving back from Glasgow to Nottingham the day after it's like that's a lot when I was working all the days up to that I was working all the days after it and that's just me as the manager I didn't have to go and play a show but the minute you get into the venue you're setting up the merch desk you're running the merch you're selling the merch afterwards you're loading out like it's it's a full-on day and that's with a like a grassroots artist touring sold out venues to 500 to a thousand people a night and that's like that there's not i'm not coming home from that with a a wadge of cash in my pocket either and and i think it's i think it's really difficult to kind of go well oh that must have been so much fun it's like well it was but it was also work and like the musicians union for instance obviously have like minimums that people should be paid to be a musician to perform on stage but also including like the travel time and all those things so yeah when someone says well you got 50 quid to play for 20 minutes and it's like but you're not including the 36 hours it costs of rehearsals and all the other times to do that anyway sorry this is a podcast and i'm talking a lot as the as the interviewer today um obviously you know my background's in electronic music, don't you?

37:32Yeah. And there's a really good interview with, do you know Moody Man? I recognize the name, yeah. I don't know his music. An artist and DJ, but he did this great interview where he gets paid handsomely to DJ now. And he said, but you don't pay me to DJ. You pay me to get on that plane and come over from America. That's what I'm paid for. The DJing bit, I will do for free. You know, it's, yeah. But it's the same thing, isn't it? yeah it's really fun for the time that you're on stage or this the show's happening it's all the stuff that surrounds it this episode of the drannin sound podcast is presented in partnership with cobus the platform that pays artists four times more than the industry standard that has high quality audio that has human curation which as a human curator is something that I truly value over the kind of algo slop that you get on some platforms.

38:28You can really hear the difference. I know lots of places talk about the audio qualities and as soon as I moved across it sort of felt like I was rediscovering music which is one of the platform's slogans. If you're worried about your playlists you can use Soundiz. It's a really good tool that's part of the sign-up process when you join Cobuzz. It just transfers everything across. If you'd like a free trial of this platform that's independently owned and made for music enthusiasts, head to drownedinsound.org forward slash playlists, where you can hear not only our playlists, but get a free trial.

39:03You can also find these details in the show notes to this episode. And now back to this episode of the Drowning Sound podcast brought to you in partnership with Kobuz.

39:23When you started talking about access and who gets to make music and also who gets to consume it, I think David and I were doing so much nodding. I would just, it's really important to me to talk on why this really does matter for all of us, regardless of whether we would even identify ourselves as a live music fan. I think artists, songwriters, musicians are such brilliant. They're so skilled in pattern recognition. They are so good at creative thinking. And we do what we do, not because we think of those sort of sweet, sweet royalty pennies, but because we observe the world and we have something to say and we have a point of view to share.

40:06And in those spaces where we can access art and music, that's where we get to hear all sorts of different perspectives and music is just such a brilliant sort of conduit of empathy and I would argue that in this sort of super fractious time that we're living in it's more important than ever to have a healthy grassroots music scene to have music venues that are accessible to the artists but also to people you know they're really valuable third spaces where sort of this cultural exchange happens like naturally and freely and i really believe quite strongly that that's something that we really need in our society i 110 agree if not a thousand and ten percent um which brings me to the big question i ask all my guests on this podcast um if you have 500 million pounds how would you spend it to fix either the issues we've been talking about or other issues in the industry I set that amount because it's roughly how much Spotify invested in Joe Rogan and it's rough and it's roughly how much the founder of Spotify invested in military technology so I would be curious how would you spend the 500 million if I made you culture minister or just dropped you lottery money on on your hands now but you could only spend it on music oh not on yachts just music okay not on yachts yeah well as a musician That is a sum of money that I cannot picture or imagine, but putting that creative thinking into use.

41:40There are loads of really interesting stats about what happens when you give money directly to the people who actually need it. Globally, there are loads of studies that show that if you cut out the middlemen, that is actually the most efficient way to do it because people tend to know what they need. so I would I would invest that money uh firstly I'd finish off my album and then and then maybe fund my next door and then I would invest it directly to grassroots organizations that actively yeah that have created these important third spaces I'd give them directly to artists who are doing interesting initiatives organizations that have shown different leadership models that are more inclusive i think if those kind of grassroots organizations would receive a massive injection of cash we would see some very exciting things and a little bit of long-lasting change into the infrastructure not just into the symptoms like i think because i think a lot of funding when I look at it I'm always like oh this this is great but it's a crash mat it's not replacing the broken road or putting something new in place which would make this more functioning and I think that like the amount of money that gets spent on Instagram adverts for instance and Google adverts it's like because we don't have routes to market like as someone that's run a media platform that's barely had any adverts from the music industry that spends thousands on press offices to try and get music to people like me so that I can write about it.