What can music fans expect from the PM Andy Burnham era? DiS meets Lord Brennan

0:00What do music fans really think? That was the mission of the fan-led review of live and electronic music, a survey commissioned by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the UK Parliament. So not necessarily the government, but a committee of cross-party members of Parliament and members of the House of Lords. this was overseen by a music fan and musician called Lord Kevin Brennan and we have mentioned his name a few times on this podcast hopefully you are sort of familiar with who he is but if you're not the main thing you should know is that Lord Brennan previously an MP in the Cardiff area had worked as an MP for a very long time he's a member of the Labour Party and one of the big things he did as an MP towards the end of his tenure was to bring in something called the Brennan Bill which looked into Spotify and their business practices.

0:59It was something we discussed on the episode with Tom Gray from Gomez and the Ivers Academy around Tom's campaigning on the Broken Record campaign and just looking at the music industry and the streaming industry and how the money ain't mathin so kevin did what mp should do which is hold power to account and with this fan-led review of live and electronic music he is not necessarily doing that he is just giving a voice to those of us who often don't have a seat at the table music fans there are all sorts of bodies across the music industry and there are not any that represent the fans there are consumer rights groups which i've always been told represent us and our needs and our desires and all of the things that you would think should be protected by government and yet we were nowhere to be seen in a lot of the conversations around secondary ticketing for instance and you will have known if you listen to this podcast regularly that we've been talking about how we collectively work towards pushing government to push over the line a bill that the Labour Party had in the manifesto to cap the resale price of tickets often known as secondary ticketing but mostly known as touting or in america and other places scalping and that is essentially people buying tickets in order to resell them for a profit obviously some people buy a ticket and run well and resell it and they often put it on somewhere like twickets and they don't make a profit they just don't lose money on a ticket they're not going to use because for some weird reason you cannot return a ticket back to the point of sale in a lot of circumstances although some nice theatre venues and places like Dice will allow you to do that.

2:45If you do it on somewhere like Dice people on the wait list can then get tickets. Anyway I am going slightly off track before we have even started. This was the first time I've interviewed a member of the House of Lords. Actually I think it's the first time I've interviewed anyone who's a politician to be honest and Lord Brennan was lovely. I've met him before because I turned up to one of the roundtable surveys for the fan-led review and there were several of these that took place across the country. I went to one at Ministry of Sound but they also took place in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow, Bathsheba, Carmarthen, Manchester, Portsmouth, Newport, South End on Sea and Stockton on Tees and the one that I went to was a gathering of people from the electronic industry, the dance music industry I guess you could say, people that put on shows, people that promote gigs, people that are involved in the nighttime economy in lots of different ways.

3:38I am not one of those. I was a little bit of an outsider as someone who's maybe a little bit more in the live side of nighttime music. I literally started promoting shows from the age of 16. Drennan Sound did shows when I moved to London and I put on early Biffy Clyro gigs and Kano and all sorts of things. We put on Laura Marlin's WEP launch at FOP in London. We put on the Maccabees and Jamie T, our six tips for 2006 gig. And we've promoted shows for years. Like I live and breathe live music. And I think that is one of the reasons why with the reporting I've done over the last few years around the kind of crisis in grassroots music, the struggle of artists to get tour budgets to add up, venues closing, all of those things has really led me to get a lot more involved in the kind of political and organizing side of things and Lord Brennan's report was fantastic for several reasons one because 4 ,144 people responded to it that was on top of the round tables so there was a survey that went out and that was between the 26th of June and the 30th of November 2025 so that's a huge pool of data and I think I'm right in saying it broke the record for any committee to have that number of responses.

4:56That also built on the work of the Music Fans Voice Survey, which you may remember I was encouraging you all to take part in, which 8 ,108 fans filled in. And the Music Fans Voice Survey really kind of laid out this is what music fans care about. And that fan-led review of live and electronic music, which the CMS committee commissioned, has really double underlined the finding of the Music Fans Voice Survey. so in this conversation i will talk to kevin a little bit about his background um i touch on the fact he's in a band called mp4 which is a members of the members of parliament um i think they haven't done a show for a little while i think he mentions playing music with andy burnham at one point who is the new prime minister in the uk and there's a lot of change in the air the government have finally responded to the fan led review which was published in april We are now in July, but that was responded to by Keir Starmer's government.

5:49It is quite likely that Andy Burnham's government will pick up on the brilliant recommendations in this report. And we might see some quite significant change in the live music industry, driven by over 4 ,000 fans and all these roundtables kind of underscoring what the music scene needs, what music fans want, what people find unfair, like secondary ticketing, like market dominance, like bizarre booking fee charges, all these kind of things. Anyway, in this conversation, on the Drowning Sound podcast, I brought you in partnership with CoBuzz, who each week I make a companion playlist for this podcast.

6:29And this week, I'm going to surprise you. So if you go to drowningsound.org forward slash playlists, you'll find a companion playlist for this episode and all of our recent episodes. So without further ado, this is my conversation with Lord Kevin Brennan.

6:56Welcome to the Drowning Sound podcast, Lord Brennan. The first time I've had to use someone's formal title to open the Drowning Sound podcast. Well, you don't have to use it. I don't have to. You can call me Kevin. But I feel like I should do. Fine. And you have been someone that we've talked about a lot on this podcast. So it's great to finally talk to you. We've talked with Tom Gray about the Brennan Bill in Parliament, which involves Spotify. So we'll touch on that a little bit later. But firstly, I wanted to talk to you about the fan led review of live and electronic music, which you led for the CMS committee.

7:32We can quickly explain what that is in a second. And the government have now responded to it. And we have a new prime minister who was loosely involved in it, who seems to be a big advocate for grassroots music. So I thought it was perfect timing to have a chat, find out a bit more about the, I think I'm allowed to say record breaking response to a government committee survey type thing. so Kevin would you be able to quickly tell our audience a little bit about you and then a little bit about the fan lab review of live and electronic music yeah oh thanks very

8:04Lord Kevin Brennan:much yeah of course and um I'm Kevin Brennan I am a member of the House of Lords so you are technically correct Lord Brennan's my title um I was a member of parliament for 23 years up until the last election when I uh stood down and then got appointed to the Lords just after that um so So in a sense, in politics terms, that means it's a bit like you're on the seniors tour in golf or something. You know, you're kind of still involved, still the right side of relevant, but not as heavily involved in the day to day politics. We've all seen so much. What's the equivalent of playing golf with Gary Lineker in your world?

8:41Lord Kevin Brennan:Well, I think you end up as being like Ed Balls presenting Good Morning Britain, I suppose, as a former politician I used to work with. Well, I guess you get to hang out with Tom Gray from Gomez. I do. That is true. Some of these interesting people. And Tom's been a friend for many years and is a great man. But, yeah, so I have taken an interest throughout my parliamentary career as a musician myself in music industry issues and, you know, always getting to that key question, you know, where's the money and where does it go and who gets it, which is something I've always been very interested in generally in politics, but particularly with a specialism for the music industry.

9:18Lord Kevin Brennan:and yes that led me to when I was a member of the CMS as it's called Culture Media and Sport Committee you referenced earlier on a few years back I kicked off an inquiry into the economics of music streaming which coincided with COVID and was sort of popcorn eating material for lots of people in the music industry stuck at home watching the Zoom sessions that we had with various high ups in the music industry including record label bosses uh and uh that i think you know kicked off a real debate not just in the uk but across the world i go to conferences and people approach me and say you know thanks for doing what you did it really sparked a debate in our jurisdiction as well about uh streaming and the economics of it and where the money goes and and how creators can get rewarded in in this in this world of digital music i think one of i think one One of the things Tom Gray touched on in our conversation was how important it was for the record labels.

10:21And people seeing that the record company deals with these platforms is also one of the big issues. And the historical kind of contracts people have signed. And I don't know whether that would have been something you would have expected to have come up. But that seems to be quite a key part of it, as much as like how much the platforms are paying. It's sort of what they've agreed to on the behalf of their art.

10:40Lord Kevin Brennan:Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And, you know, these things don't just exist in nature, as it were, how people get paid. You know, somebody somewhere has made a decision about how much is going to be allocated. You know, once the government takes its slice off the top in VAT or whatever it is, how much of the rest of it is going to be allocated and to whom and on what basis. And if you're allocating monies for music that's been streamed on the basis of contracts that were signed, in some cases, decades ago, when this whole idea was science fiction of music streaming, it is quite an extraordinary situation that those contracts, when people were distributing millions of records in lorries around the world and so on, are the same for things being distributed by a digital network.

11:28Lord Kevin Brennan:work so um we we dug deep into that and and that did result in me introducing a bill into parliament unfortunately never made it into law as a private members bill but i think it did help turn the dial hugely on the debate around streaming and kicked off a whole sequence of work including uh which the government sort of hosted if you like through the the intellectual property office which is the copyright body and brought record labels, streamers, services, creators and so on around the table to really try and iron out something fairer with some achievements. But it's still an ongoing issue. And I think there's still a big issue about streaming and about the unfair way in which creators are treated, in particular songwriters as well.

12:20and to pivot did the artists are now making their money from touring turn into are they well of course um and what you've been doing with the fan-led review yeah of course um you know at the

12:33Lord Kevin Brennan:time we did the original inquiry there was no touring because of covid so it really set it into sharp relief what people were getting or not getting out of their recorded music through streaming uh but yes uh you know then then typically people say well you don't make money through records anyway you make it from touring and and there's a whole set of other issues there around live music uh which the culture committee after i'd left the house of commons and went to the lords commissioned me to undertake this fan-led review and got the idea a bit from the fan-led review that took place into football um to to really for the first time officially from a fans perspective try and see what are the things that they would like to see out of the live music experience or what are the the problems what the issues what are the things that the live sector is getting right what are the things that they're getting wrong and um i produced the report um earlier this year um with a seven sort of essentials i call them seven essentials of live that we should all remember when we're talking about the fans perspective on live music and a a large number of recommendations, some for government, some for local government, some for the industry itself, some for fans really in some ways about how we could turn the dial in favour of fans in the live sector.

13:52I came along to one of your roundtable sessions down at Ministry of Sounds. You did those all over the country. So it was a really thorough report. It built on some work that I was involved in last year called the Music Fans Voice Survey. also had thousands of fans dig into all of the issues that fans face buying music buying tickets um getting to shows getting home from shows and your recommendations cover the the kind of the seven things it's is it called the fans charter yes um that you'd like to see come in yeah and and i think that some of them are quite obvious some of them were maybe not obvious to people outside of music.

14:34But I thought my favorite one was the one Celebrate. So I thought if we could maybe quickly talk on the kind of embrace live music, not just as a kind of money making thing, but as a public good. Like that felt like a really key part of your findings of what fans were telling you, because as I'm sure most people are aware, there's no association or body that represents music fans. So in all of the reports that the government's ever done, they've been listening to the record industry the independent record industry people recommend representing musicians songwriters producers but no one representing the fans so there's a very obvious empty seat at the table in a lot of music industry discussions it was something that i first realized when kate bush tickets were being flogged on secondary ticketing despite obviously her saying at the deaf and you can't get in and i was like why is there nobody that represents us and i came across adam webb from the fanfare alliance and that took off anyway that was a very roundabout way of getting into the kind of celebration bit and i think there is a bit of a kind of complicated nest of topics you covered but i think the recommendations are really clear and simple

15:43Lord Kevin Brennan:yeah i think celebration is really important and really strongly came across from fans that they don't regard going to a gig or a concert or live music event just like any other form of consumer spending or anything of that kind. It's a much more personal, sometimes even a quasi-religious experience for some people, but certainly a communal experience. And that's essential really to the whole thing. And in the same way with the football fans and the football Fans Association, the way that there's something more to it than just a pure business transaction when somebody buys a ticket and goes to see an artist or a group or whatever it is.

16:28Lord Kevin Brennan:And also, yes, it's a business. We're not expecting people not to have to pay for it. We want the musicians to get paid after all. But it's something more than that. It actually contributes to society's welfare in a way, I think, that isn't often captured properly in the way that policy is made around live music. And I just wanted to put that at the top, up front, to say we should really realize the benefits that live music and the live music experience brings to people individually and to us as a society, communally. And even if we can't put a direct monetary value on it, we should actually be capable of acknowledging that and celebrating it and saying this is why it is important that public policy reflects how much good live music does for society.

17:24What came out of the report in terms of how fans explained that? Like, I think I remember reading bits from the Music Fans Voice survey around people just talking about the benefits of their mental health, the kind of friendships they've made, feeling part of communities was it all those kinds of things you got out of the round table sessions

17:42Lord Kevin Brennan:in particular absolutely you know but people finding a sense of belonging sometimes you know in a community you know i mean there's a good example you went to the one at the ministry of sound and i also did one at um sub club up in glasgow you know people who who go clubbing because this was about electronic music as well as um you know live bands and artists and so on orchestras or whatever and um you know that that sense of you know finding your tribe finding a community you could be part of which is so important for people's well-being and mental health you know and just the way that the live music experience brings a kind of sense of joy and and well-being you know it is without a doubt that came across very very strongly from people who attend live music events and it seemed to me we it's something that any government concern for the public good should want to encourage and support so that's celebrate what What were the six others?

18:37Lord Kevin Brennan:Well, the second one was ticketing, which, I mean, not a surprise really, is it? And, you know, it's really we want to try and create a culture where around live music events where ripping off fans isn't the number one priority. It's actually making sure that, you know, there's a fair practice about the sale of tickets, the pricing of tickets, you know, all that sort of thing. And some of the practices that have crept in in recent years are really strongly resented by fans that came across. very clearly. And as we know, one of the recommendations that I made was that the government should get on with it, basically what it said it's come to do about the secondary ticketing market.

19:16Lord Kevin Brennan:It has announced a draft bill, but what that means in technical terms is that it's down the road a bit before they'll actually do it, you know, for the lay person who's not involved in politics. And there's always a concern as a parliament goes on. We're now two years into the current part might seem longer to some people with a new prime minister coming in but we're two years in and you know unless you're careful you're running into the next election you know before you've got the legislation through and implemented so getting on with that it's important taking grassroots again probably not a surprise a real concern about fans about making sure that grassroots music venues and grassroots you know music itself is is is valued again for its own sake not just because yes it is the r &d of our future superstars and so on um it's it's the research and development it's the incubator but it is actually something that is a good in itself in local communities safety making sure that fans you know have a safe experience when they attend live music events accessibility you know lots of stories of good practice actually you know quite interestingly out there but clearly it's very very patchy and making sure that the principle should be that you know think and act accordingly about accessibility for all wherever possible when doing live events transport you know music fans are very practical and you know as i said to you know some leaders in local authorities you can't call yourself a music city if you can't get a bus home at the end of the gig it's as simple as that you've got to be planning and integrating your services to make sure it is actually serving music fans who are attending live music events.

21:01Lord Kevin Brennan:And finally, when we just touched on really, which was voice, making sure that the fans' voices are listened to and acted upon and that they're at the table, as you put it, Sean, you know, whenever there's a discussion about policy relating to live music. And one of the recommendations in there was that the government should, you know, take the initiative of a bit and at least try and kickstart a proper music fans association with a bit of seed funding to get it going.

21:34Lord Kevin Brennan:Hi there, it's Emma here. I'm gay crashing the podcast to quickly tell you about the Drowned in Sound newsletter. Every Wednesday, I invite myself into your inbox with permission, of course, to share opinion writing and resources, tell you about cool things that you should be involved in within the world of music, activism, etc. I also bring track of the week and a little bit of hopeful news for you because we all know that the news cycle can be grim at the best of times. Drowned in Sound newsletter every Wednesday in your inbox. Sign up now.

22:12We're now two or three months since you published the report. The government have now responded. what did you make of the initial response from government then we'll move on to some of the industry response

22:23Lord Kevin Brennan:yeah I think I'd say well they rolled it in with a number of measures which are positive things they've published a music plan tick I think it's good that they've done that there are things we might like more to see in it that's good they've appointed Michael Duggar the former chief executive of UK music as a music champion now that might sound a bit airy fairy but no Michael's I do Michael's a doer and I think that he will sort of actually hold the government to account a bit about what it said it's going to do in the music plan and in fact if I know him he'd probably also try and move it on as well and enhance it as time goes on so I think that's a tick as well um got Andy Burnham as the new prime minister I think that's a tick as well he's somebody who's got a record in this area and obviously he's a genuine music fan with a passion for it and an understanding of how did the fan-led review recommend having a music fan as prime minister It didn't.

23:16Lord Kevin Brennan:I should have, though, wouldn't I? If I'd been properly prescient, I would have put that in and claim credit for it. He has played with me live in a band, and he can play. Is that in MP4? It was with MP4, yeah. We were the former band of parliamentarians, which I was a member of. We were legends in our own imaginations. We're kind of a little bit into semi-retirement now. So if the right offer comes along, we might play again. Who knows? and do you do MC5 covers we should do didn't we we did have an EP called EP3 or EP5 actually we have five tracks on it but we haven't done any MC5 covers yet good idea though yeah why not and or we could also cover parliament no we could go on all day couldn't we with possible groups we could cover in terms of response to my report I'm giving that half a tick I think is what I'm going to say at this stage I think the government have said that they are very positive towards the report.

24:14Lord Kevin Brennan:They've leaned in and accepted on some issues. But I think a lot of what they said in their response is based around existing initiatives. And I want to see, particularly from the new, to be clear, the responses from the last administration, as it were, under Keir Starmer, just done before he stood down. And I would expect to see, under Andy Burnham's leadership, a government that actually would be keen to lean even more strongly into these recommendations. And come September, I hope there'll be an opportunity for me to appear with the minister before the select committee for us to press on that a bit further.

24:52Lord Kevin Brennan:So I'm going to give them half a tick. They've responded positively, in fairness, and said they do some things. But other things like some of the things I suggested about a fans association, they haven't really leaned into that as much as I'd hoped they would. But, you know, they haven't said they'll make the ticketing levy, which gives money from stadiums and arenas down to grassroots music venues, a statutory basis, which I think it will probably need for it to really survive and not wither on the vine when people lose interest. And, you know, things like Kite Mart for disability. There are lots of things that I think the government could do more on than they've suggested in the response.

25:32Lord Kevin Brennan:But I'm going to give them half a tick. One of the refrains that's coming out of Andy Burnham's camp, and I think he said it himself, is fairness you can feel. And I think with secondary ticketing and with booking fees, there's definitely an unfairness you can feel as a fan. Do you think that's an open door that he can just lean on and get something out the way? Because it's already in the Labour manifesto that there'll be a cap on resale. there's already been what I think two inquiries into secondary ticketing and into ticketing like it doesn't seem like there's any more work needs to be done that feels like a to use an Everton fans phrasing an open goal that he can literally tap it in yeah I think one of the things Andy Burnham said is that he's keen to sort of it sounds very technical but to rewire Whitehall a bit in terms of its ability to get things done and look I've been a government minister back in the day under Gordon Brown and I brought in some credit card reform, you know, and what happens is you say, right, we want to do this.

26:32Lord Kevin Brennan:And then the judiciary comes back and says, oh, well, you know, if you do that, it'll take this long. And they try and slow you down and make your drag of it. And you've got to be quite robust really and say, look, we'll let you do it yourselves, but you've only got 12 months or whatever it is. Otherwise, we're legislating and we're not mucking about. And I think the problem with having a draft bill at the moment on ticketing is it feels, it may not be true, But it feels maybe as if your via go goes and others have sort of got their foot in the door and talked to someone and scared some civil servant thinking we might get a judicial review of this policy.

27:05Lord Kevin Brennan:And I think the government needs to be clear. This is our policy intention and we are going to legislate and we're not going to put a draft bill out there for months on end to be kicked around. Yes, we're going to publish something, but then we're going to get on with it. So I would hope to see more urgency in this issue from Andrew Andy Burnham because I know he understands it very well. And to take a step back, the fact there's not a fans association, someone like Viagogo can lobby ministers and MPs around something like ticketing because it's in their interest to. But there's no one doing that on behalf of fans to say this is deeply unfair.

27:42I've been told in the past there's enough consumer rights protections, you don't need to worry about it. and it's like well that they're not really doing anything um and it feels as a fan that like i thought it was actually really interesting when we posted a bit about the fan-led review on our social channels a couple of people responded saying oh yeah i've emailed my mp about secondary ticketing they felt it was unfair too and responded to me and they're like i've emailed my mp 10 times about other things never heard back and i think that it's a very everyday thing that if you've ever had to buy like an mp's buying tickets for their kids to go to a show they've seen that like what i'm paying to print my ticket at home and i'm paying a restoration fee for a venue that's just opened and yeah like all of these things that are like tucked into the ticketing price which yeah it feels like i think i saw victoria derbyshire write about the oasis ticket stuff and obviously she's quite as a bbc presenter has to be quite kind of down the line and balanced in her opinions, but she was just stunned by the sort of feeling of sitting in the queue, thinking you were paying one price.

28:51It suddenly jumped up to another. And the unfairness of it, she doesn't have to be a kind of like journalistic rigor to do anything other than just feel what she felt. Exactly.

29:02Lord Kevin Brennan:And, you know, the industry said, oh, you don't understand how the ticketing market, where you don't understand. But actually people, they're very basic, simple principles here. And those are, you know, you should, the price you should pay should be the price that's advertised. You should know what you're going to pay. If you walk into a shop to buy a Mars bar and it says ATP in the window, then ATP is what you should pay when you get to the counter. So there should be none of these practices to get you to pay more. The extras, I mean, fans don't mind paying something genuine like what we found, like the ticketing levy, if it's a levy that is genuinely going to help the grassroots of music, and you can show that, rather than just an add-on.

29:48Lord Kevin Brennan:And what I found, you know, quite interesting doing the fan-led review and digging into it is often, you know, the booking fees, they're not there covering the actual administration costs of providing the back room to, you know, to be able to administer the ticket in sales. They're actually just a carve-up between, you know, promoters, often artists as well, who, you know, will often come out and say, oh high ticket prices are terrible meanwhile their management are negotiating a cut of a of a very non-transparent service charge that's being fitted on so i think transparency is really important you know clarity i understand a lot of shows are very expensive to put on you know you're going to pay a lot of money to go and see a taylor swift you know or someone like that because it's not just a band and the back line you've got an it's an enormous sort of show that's being put on but the practices that are going on in the ticketing world they have to stop and i think the government needs to be robust on it yeah um one of the other things i found interesting this weekend mark david from the music venues trust shared that andy burnham had bought a stake in the music venues properties one of your um points is around grassroots music i think that's really interesting to see there was literally a video of him at the snug in atherton talking about how important venues are for local communities and i can't imagine any of the last or i can't imagine even ministers let alone prime ministers standing in a grassroots venue talking about how important they are so yeah again like you've put this right you've put these recommendations together and it feels like oh if had you had you known there was going to be a different prime minister i mean we've obviously got we've had two years of Keir Starmer who was in music class with Fatboy Slim which he talks about a lot but it didn't seem to materialize into music fans feeling heard and listened to and that many of the changes were going to happen and like you said we did an episode with Witch around the King's speech because we all thought that secondary ticketing was finally going to go in there because there's lots happening in America as well and in Australia too and it just feels like it's time for a change it's time to the end of like ripping off fans and I think around the World Cup we heard quite a lot about secondary ticketing and there's there's a lot more rules around secondary ticketing in football in this country because of hooliganism and kind of there's because of fan associations I'm assuming as well putting some their foot down a bit.

32:26Do you think that we're likely to see some change happen a bit quicker and maybe the response from the Starmer government is going to be different to maybe if they'd put a response out in the next couple of weeks?