Bangaranga post-Eurovision; Zara Larsson’s virtual pyjamas; Steve’s big announcement; How many songs have you heard on Spotify?; Plus: World Cup Muppets!

0:03Steve:Hello and welcome to The Price of Music brought to you by Music Ally, the show that both looks at the finances of the music industry. We'll also bring you some stories and comments about the past week in the pop business. He's Stuart Dredge, I'm Steve Lemaac. Let's start as always with a show-stopping figure, a big number. What's your big number this week, Stuart? I'm going big and very specific this week. It's 41 ,307. And that is how many songs I've listened to on Spotify since 2008. Oh, this is another Spotify feature, this, isn't it? Which I noticed came up recently. We're celebrating its 20th anniversary of its launch, which you may have seen or people may have seen The Spotify logo has changed on people's phones to a disco ball logo, which has predictably created anger and fury on the internet.

1:04People are saying, why is the logo a disco ball? Forcing Spotify yesterday to say, no, it's not going to stay a disco ball. It's just a temporary thing. Come, lighten up people. But yeah, so in app now, you know the Spotify rap thing that happens at Christmas where it gives you all your stats? Well, they've basically done that, but for as long as you've been on Spotify, which for me is since 20th of October 2008 because we were writing about it then. And what was the number again? 41 ,000? 41 ,307. I looked up, so my most streamed artists are the Chemical Brothers, it turns out, which I think is because for three years I was using them as my gym playlist.

1:41I do love them. But 10 ,834 minutes of Chemical Brothers listening, which I did some crunching. that's roughly between$8 and$14 of royalty payouts for the Chemical Brothers from my listening, which kind of sounds puny, doesn't it? Like 10 ,000 minutes plus. It really does. But they've got 7.4 million listeners on Spotify. Right. So if we all listened like I had, that's like$80 million, which is simultaneously the kind of, the paltriness of my individual royalties. Well, I spent more on a mug with the Chemical Brothers on it than I've given them in streaming royalties, clearly. So I've got a mug that cost me 16 quid.

2:19So I have found other ways to put money in their pockets. But it does add up. And yeah. So yeah, I don't know. I don't, what lacks is context. I don't know if I am really good in terms of how much I've listened to. I don't know how high up the kind of the engagement pyramid I am, you know.

2:36Steve:Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I suppose it's when you signed up to Spotify and what you use Spotify for. If you're using it as a replacement for your stereo, where you used to play your CDs, we don't really listen to actual physical records anymore, then your Spotify figure will probably be higher than, for instance, yours is double mine. I looked up mine and mine is, having joined a year later, so a year after you, but mine's only around 21 ,000. But then again, I listen to actual records quite a lot. Well, that's it, yeah. Your listening time is surely lots of them. It's down to your music listening habits, I imagine.

3:15Steve:It's not a competition. All right. No, no. I'm feeling... But it is a weird slice because like you could... It's part of this thing. You can get it to make a playlist, can't you, of your most dream songs. Mine is Confidence Man Boyfriend, which I'm quite happy about because I really like that. But mine is, again, dominated by... There was a period of time when I had this one playlist that I played every time I go to the gym. So every couple of days. And so those are the songs that high up there. So it's kind of... It's not really measuring what I love. It's measuring what I've played most, and there is a difference there, I guess, if you use it for purpose.

3:49Steve:Okay, three talking points from the past week. Well, this first one is something which we've mentioned in the past couple of weeks, something we've been speculating about, which is whether the UK's planned crackdown on ticket touting would appear in the King's speech, which was announced last week. That's all the proposed legislation for the next round of government. The answer is, unfortunately, no, but slightly yes. Explain this. Well, yeah, so the king gave his speech and what my government's going to do. And it wasn't mentioned in there, but it's, if you go to page 64 in the background briefing notes of the king's speech, which we all, of course, are reading that really carefully, it's in there as a draft bill.

4:36Which, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but it basically means it will be discussed in review, but there's no guarantee it'll actually become law in the next session of Parliament.

4:45Steve:Yeah, it's interesting. The draft bill was actually defined by the NME as being designed to be subject to consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny from parliamentary committees, industry groups and consumers before being formally introduced to Parliament as legislation. All this, of course, takes time. And as you say, there's no guarantee at this moment in time when it will get shunted up the list. So although this is, I mean, it's one small step forward when it comes to fighting the taunts, one very small step forward. But it's also at least half a step back because, again, this is going to open up another opportunity, I'm sure, for big ticket resale websites to start lobbying MPs all over again.

5:31Steve:I shouldn't wonder. Well, on that topic, actually, I had an email after we covered it from Fiyagogo's PR, and they had a statement. and their statement was they think the government's got it all wrong and they think it should focus more on the primary ticketing market, so, you know, first sales. He said, focusing only on price caps risks entrenching a dominant primary player, that's Ticketmaster. So exactly as you say, they're gearing up to now say a new argument. I mean, I thought the spiciest quote I saw was, you know UK music, so the umbrella body, they're generally quite measured, aren't they, because they represent a lot of different interests.

6:06But Tom Keel, the boss of that, said it was a betrayal of millions of music fans, which is, you know, a no-nonsense quote saying we're really, really disappointed with this government.

6:14Steve:I mean, obviously I'm not going to go through all the arguments which we've put forward over the past fortnight, but it's just, it's such a missed opportunity to do something easy and positive and no one, apart from the secondary ticket resale websites, no one is, I don't think is against this. For music fans, it's going to mean another year, two years, three years of having to live with exorbitant resale prices and touts employing thousands and thousands of bots to buy tickets, thus taking them away from real fans. And it just seems a missed opportunity. is not the only story this week which concerns government either because the British labels body, the BPI, has put out some advice for the governments about how to handle AI music licensing.

7:11Steve:But again, based on story one, well, in this case, will MPs listen to what they're saying? What are they putting, what are they recommending and how will this go down, do we think? Well, it was very unfortunate because this report came out, which basically is saying here's what the government should do, came out on the very day the government was imploding in terms of leadership battles and infighting. So it might got lost a bit in the main news. But yeah, basically it's saying to the government, we are licensing AI music companies. It's from the label saying we're doing licensing deals. And I think it mentions 26 so far with AI companies.

7:45And it's saying, look, this is working, so don't mess this up. And by that, they're saying don't relax copyright rules to let AI companies kind of train on music without permission. Let us continue to do licensing deals with them. And also back us up. So this report is saying that they want more transparency from AI companies telling you what they've trained their stuff on. And they want the rules to apply to all the AI models that are available here, even if they were trained somewhere else in the world. So it's kind of saying this is what we want, but it's also saying it's working. We're signing deals.

8:18So just kind of almost don't do things that will mess that up for us. It's the gist of this report. weirdly, I mean, it's a lot of complicated subject because just today I was writing about a story about the US where there's going to be some protest marches from musicians who are unhappy with the major labels' AI deals and they think it's not going to be fair to musicians. So, there's a lot of discussion still about these deals that are being signed by Universal and Warner and Sony. In the UK, they're saying, yeah, let us carry on. But there are musicians saying, hang on a minute, we want some transparency from you about these deals and how they're going to reward us.

8:54So, it's all It's all still arguments, basically. But the report's got one of those report-y titles. It's called Driving UK Growth, the Role of Licensing Music in the Age of AI. But if anyone wants a primer on what the industry is asking for, it's a very good summary. They're doing a good job of setting out their demands.

9:12Steve:Okay. Right. Not content with infiltrating 90 % of parental streaming algorithms and making your Spotify raps look like an 11-year-old's birthday party playlist. those cartoon K-pop demon hunters are going out on a global tour. Although details so far a bit sketchy. Yeah. It was an announcement that there'll be more announcements basically. But yeah, I mean, so we, I think we all knew this was coming because kids love K-pop demon hunters. And so they're going to do a big tour and it's Netflix and it's AEG presents. It's one of the big, big kind of live promoters, isn't it? Yeah. And they said, we're going to do a tour.

9:53And that was the announcement. And it doesn't say, how big it is. I mean, I'm assuming it's at least arenas. Maybe stadiums. I don't know. Maybe stadiums is too big, but it doesn't say where it's going to be and when. It's being announced later this year. So I would assume it's a 2027 tour. But we don't even know if the singers, because the real singers behind them have actually been more prominent recently. They performed at the Brits. They performed in America. And I don't know. We don't know if it's going to be, I sort of think of it as like old gorillas and new gorillas, right? So you remember old gorillas when they had the characters at the front, and the musicians behind them yeah is it going to be that or they're going to have the people up front you know like new gorillas do and have the characters behind them i i would bet on the former

10:33Steve:wouldn't you think uh yeah i think so because if you're if your target audience is basically the kids who've watched the film then surely they're gonna want to see that the characters in the film unless there are screens running animations and real people. So it might be a mix. I can't believe we're now talking about what the K-pop Demon Hunters tour may consist of on stage. Do you know, though, I think it's a risk because say this tour is next year, are kids still going to like K-pop Demon Hunters then? I think they're going to need a new film at least to get everyone excited again because there's a long gap.

11:14I mean, its peak was last year, and it's still popular.

11:18Steve:Yeah. But I don't know. I mean, a year is a risk. They could have all moved on to something completely different then. Oh, there'll be another film, won't there? It must be part of the plan. I mean, if it's been so colossally successful, you're not just going to walk away from it, are you, without making a sequel? Well, imagine if all the kids have moved on and you've booked Wembley Arena. But I think it's going to be a big deal. It'll be really fascinating if they do something genuinely creative with it, with the characters and with the staging. So we'll see. But I think it's going to be a bit together.

11:49Steve:What a turn up and what a lovely link back to last week's program if K-pop demon hunters are the latest victims of Blue Dot Fever. You heard it first. Yeah. Right. On to any other business. Can we start with the Eurovision Song Contest, which I haven't watched for about, I mean, no exaggeration, I haven't watched it for at least 15, possibly 20 years. So I'm not the most informed and I don't know the recent history, but my daughter has obviously become slightly interested in it for the first time this year. So where do you stand on Eurovision, politics aside, Stuart? I enjoy it. But, you know, it makes me miss old Twitter because Eurovision with Twitter used to be the most wonderful night.

12:36because all the comedians, all the music journalists and my friends were on there being funny. And now we've all left Twitter. But yeah, I enjoy it. I mean, I wasn't sure this was a vintage year in terms of there wasn't much silliness and there weren't many cast-iron bangers. It was all a bit meh. But what did you think coming back to it after 15 years?

12:53Steve:Well, three things. One, I actually really liked the UK entry. I mean, I'm all up for novelty, new rave me. And obviously he's a really interesting chap, isn't he? because he runs this little museum in Ramsgate, which is called This Museum is Not Obsolete, which if you ever happen to find yourself in Ramsgate, I would thoroughly recommend to anyone who likes old-school analog synths. In fact, any old tech, really. It's amazing. I mean, it's a tiny, tiny room, really. Well, two rooms. but it's got just weird stuff like old telephone exchanges and weird keyboards and theremins and a very early version, you can play a very early version of the game Pong it's just got loads of brilliant stuff in it so I like him and I like the song and I just feel quite sorry for him, particularly having seen some of the pictures the good folk of Ramsgate all came out to watch it on a screen.

14:00Steve:That was a long night for them. I don't think there's any shame in it for him, though. I feel like it's not like it's a big star who's flopped. I think he came and did it. He did his thing. And even when he got zero points in the audience vote, I don't know if he stayed up that late. But he just laughed. He seemed to take it in. So I don't think he's going to go back home crushed, or I hope not, because I think he's not let himself down at all. Secondly, where did they get the presenters from? Oh God, they weren't good this year. Who was that fellow who looked like something that was dreamt up by the League of Gentlemen?

14:34Steve:If, you know, if the League of Gentlemen were doing Eurovision, an opacity of Eurovision in the 70s or 80s, I mean, honestly, he looked like he'd fallen through a time warp from 1976, that guy. That was my second thought. My third is, does it, and this is the question for you, does it make anyone any money anymore? Does it make stars out of people? Do you become, even in the minor leagues, do you become a bit more successful, semi-famous? So I don't know, anyone who took part this year, what do we think the best case scenario is? Compared to, obviously, when I used to watch Eurovision 30 or 40-odd years ago, when ABBA were in it, and ABBA become, obviously, quite a big success.

15:23It was a launchpad. Well, I'm glad you asked that because I've been crunching exactly that data. Oh, brilliant. Good, good. This is what we're after. It's a very specific data. It's Spotify streams because that is the public data you have. So there's one, from the last 20 years, there's one standout success story that if you want to emulate, and that's Monoskin, the Italian band. Right, pass me by. They have nearly 25 million listens on Spotify because they won Eurovision 2021. 2021, they won it. But then they had a big hit in America, and they've carried on. So they've actually become a big band, and Eurovision was just a start.

16:00So that's the one. But then it's quite a drop. There's a couple of artists who are on like 8, 7.7 million listeners. So Duncan, Lawrence, and Lorene. Lorene is like a Eurovision royalty. She won twice. But then a big drop. And then most of the winners in the last 20 years, I've got less than a million listeners, and quite a few have got like less than 300 ,000 listeners. interestingly May Muller who entered for the UK a couple of years ago and she did really badly on the night she's got 2.1 million listeners so she's got more listeners than a whole bunch of the recent winners put together so

16:37Steve:Will the winning track this year which by the way was pretty good Anger Anger it's fun right wasn't it the choreography as well though the chair choreography it was uh i gotta say i wasn't against it um but does that um become a hit all around europe does it does it even if it's just a one hit wonder for them will that make them some some money or do we all just move on um i think it will make some money and there's two things there's the immediate hit so this is a launch pad for it to be to go to get streamed around europe to get money but there's also the follow-on if like if it's a class if it's a really if it's considered by Eurovision fans to be a classic, then every year it's going to get a bump because people are listening to Eurovision playlists.

17:23So it's one of those things, it's a bit like writing a, it's not quite like writing a Christmas song, but that idea of this is something where every year it can come back. But the question is, can you break out beyond that one song? And in most cases, they didn't and they haven't. But she's, I mean, Bulgaria, wasn't it?

17:43Steve:I think she seemed to, She seemed like a star. Even talking nonsense in interviews with the interviewer trying to get into it, she looked like she's already a pop star. So she's got something about her that could break up. That's the key, I think, is use it as a launch pad. Otherwise, you will become a one-hit wonder who kind of gets to do something every Eurovision and gets some appearance money from doing events. But do you know who the biggest, apart from Monaskin, the biggest artist that's been appearing in Eurovision recently from the UK is actually, and this calls back to previous stories we've talked about, Bonnie Tyler, who I forgot did Eurovision 2013 for the UK.

18:22She came 19th out of 26, so it didn't do very well. But she's got more than 15 million listeners on Spotify. So more than everyone who won in the last 20 years apart from that one band. So maybe the key is to actually have some 80s power ballads up your sleeve. Okay.

18:41Steve:Oh, this is good. have you seen everybody have you seen the line-up the full line-up for the World Cup final half-time show which has been announced again is this a thing I can't remember watching the last World Cup but in the old days you'd just have a brass band marching around football grounds at half-time wouldn't you there's one for the teenagers but now obviously so the World Cup is basically going Super Bowl is it and they're going to have a big halftime show. They are. So Chris Martin out of Coldplay is organising it. I don't think he's performing, or he might be turning up. Hang on a second, Chris Martin is organising it?

19:22Steve:Well, he's a curator, yes. Of the halftime show at the World Cup final. I know. Chris Martin. From Coldplay, yes. Wow. Which I assume means they're going to be giving everyone some lights to wave as well. But this is a partnership with Global Citizen, the charitable initiative that he's been quite involved with. So yeah, and they've got, they announced the first three well the first the only three artists playing and it's quite a lot of Madonna yeah Shakira and BTS which as a trigger and then and also but this is what I'm excited about also Muppets and Sesame Street um do any of those I mean as you know big stars as they as they are in the the pop music sphere does does do they shriek football fan at you do will or is is it purely that we're going to, in between the fellas kicking a ball around, we're going to put on a big glitzy pop show for the telly.

20:20What? I mean, I don't really...

20:22Steve:Yeah, I mean... If I seem like I'm struggling with this concept, but it's just... I mean, the idea of... You could put Madonna on at halftime at Colts United. They're still all out in the concourse buying cups of tea. They're not going to be that fussed most of you. I could turn it back from there. You're not telling me that the South Stands, where all the noisy young fans are, they're buying a beer and a pie, you know, because it's Madonna. I mean, if it was, you could put Skinner and Baddiel out there and get more people. Wow, maybe. But anyway. I mean, to some extent, this is a big US star, big Latin American star, big Asian star.

21:04I mean the thing I was wondering was that the BBC said the show is going to be 11 minutes long because obviously I think for American football it's a stop and start game but for football you can't let the players sit there for half an hour at half time their legs will cool down and they'll come out and get injured you know so it's 11 minutes long and I'm thinking how do you say to Madonna, Shakira and BTS you've got three and a half minutes each no running over and Miss Piggy's doing the finale so don't get in her way you know so it's going to be I don't know. I mean, I wonder if they're going to do massive medleys or whether they're going to do, I mean, like, are they going to do new material, which is the dreaded.

21:40I mean, it's all for good cause. So I think it's going to an education fund. And there's this amazing quote from Shakira in the press release saying, I've spent my life doing two things, making songs and building schools, which I checked and she has. She's got 30 years of philanthropy behind her. It's like building schools in Columbia. So there's goodness to this. but there's also a bit of like, wow, how do you, how did, normally you would think you give one big star 11 minutes to do medleys, but this is going to be real on and off. Or maybe collab, maybe all of them together. I mean, what would Madonna, Shakira and BTS do as one song?

22:16Vindaloo, maybe that's your answer, or three lines.

22:19Steve:That's a bit of thinking about. Here's, now, I've got this note here, which was forwarded to me for the next item, which it simply says, Stuart's latest merch purchase is a set of Zara Larsson pyjamas, but he can't wear them in the real world. And not through embarrassment. Well, this is about Roblox. So we've talked about that every time, the gaming platform that's hugely popular with kids. And Zara Larsson is basically doing a performance in there. so it's called Zara Larson's Midnight Sun World so if you're on Roblox you can go in there and you can kind of see her do a concert and you can buy merch and they've got this big virtual merch store which is selling pyjamas you can buy Zara Larson's hair to put on your avatar yeah of course and this sounds like a novelty thing but here's the thing so Zara Larson was on Roblox before in 2021 and she did like a a Roblox game.