Massive Attack pull music from Spotify in protest; Ticketmaster sued by US government; Lizzo thinks that music videos are dead; More album-filing dilemmas; & people are listening to "My Humps" again?

0:08Hello and welcome to the price of music brought to you by music ally the show that's fascinated by all the fun and games and finances of the music world as explained each week by me Steve Lamac and him Stuart Dredge if you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music biz and how it all works and how the figures stack up then here we are although as always we'll start with a big number this week a very big number which is 100 billion dollars 100 billion dollars relates to YouTube, I believe. Yeah, I was going to say Dr. Evil, but I'm not going to call YouTube Dr. Evil because Google doesn't do evil, as we know.

0:49Yeah, so YouTube had this event last week called Made on YouTube, which is kind of its big, it's half like bragging about how great it is and half announcing new features. And its CEO got up and said, yeah, we've paid out more than$100 billion in the last four years. That is not just music though. That's everyone who gets paid by YouTube. So it is musicians in the music industry, but it's also every YouTuber you can think of. It's also media companies. So it's like all the payouts coming from video being watched on YouTube is$100 billion in four years. That's a big number. I mean, is it when they announce, when any company announces how well it's doing, is there at the same time a fear that this will cause an immense backlash from the people who are making stuff and feel that they aren't getting paid well enough?

1:36though despite the fact that they've paid out 100 billion dollars is 100 billion dollars enough well that's it i mean do you know it's not a few years ago the music industry was regularly having a go at youtube for not paying out enough and that would have been the direction then but in last few years everyone seems very happy with youtube like the labels have stopped because i think they're getting a lot more money now because it has a subscription service and that's been growing um so yeah i don't know i mean if you're if you're a youtuber and you're not very not getting much money you probably are looking at this going well it's all going to mr beast not me or whatever um i was trying to do some reverse engineering because like they youtube has given out some music stats in the past but it's a few it's a while so it was like 2022 youtube said it paid out six billion dollars to the music industry in the previous year and i was starting to think well can i work out how much of that hundred billion might be music but it's difficult because they've not updated it since but it was six billion a few years ago to music so it's it's big let's do our top three stories then which we picked out for you this week from all the goings on that we've seen reported over the past seven days we'll start with this our first story our top story more than 400 artists have pulled their music from streaming services in israel as part of a campaign called No Music for Genocide.

3:00Meanwhile, and you may have seen this one, Massive Attack have pulled their music from Spotify in every country around the world. This is two stories, really, although obviously linked around the same issue. Should we take them one by one? What's happened and what are the implications of these announcements, starting with the 400 artists? Yeah, this is a delicate one, isn't it? It needs a bit of explaining. um so yeah this was announced last week and the reason they've been linked is massive attack announced them both so massive attack are kind of key but yeah so it's it's called no music for genocide it's a new campaign describing itself as a cultural boycott against apartheid occupation and genocide of palestinians so it's very much about what's happening in gaza at the moment um as you said more than 400 writers have basically said we want our music taken off every streaming service in israel we don't want to be making money from streams in that country and it's it's people like fontaine's dc kneecap massive attack amon the sniffers enter shikari i mean it's being led from the uk i think it's fair to say these are the big big artists uk and ireland and it's i guess you could also say that these are artists who have been making their views known about gaza for a while now so it's the most politically engaged with this what's happening there i think who've started this and it was quite interesting reading the kind of the wording around it so they're comparing it to two things basically the first is what happened in was it 1980s the boycott of south africa from musicians yeah and they're saying that that was that happened because of our pilot there we're comparing to that but also they're looking at what happened in in russia recently so when russia invaded ukraine the music industry shut down its offices there all the international labels and streaming services shut down a lot of musicians pulled their music from streaming services in Russia so basically this campaign is saying that these two things are our kind of our reference points for what we're trying to do here we're trying to make our voices known and so I guess the next step for this is going to be to hope that that launch signs up bigger artists so they'll be looking for I don't know could they get U2 because they spoke out recently about Gaza can they get the likes of Taylor Swift Coldplay Drake like the real big hitters of streaming to join in that's what would kind of take it to the next level I think beyond well these are artists who who care a lot about what's happening in Gaza and been talking about it but yeah it made quite a big splash I think because it's it's one of the first there've been a lot of artists speaking out about Gaza but it's one of the first examples of people doing something in terms of right we want our music taken down here we want to not be earning money from this because of our views so it's actually like the next concrete step I guess taken yeah or anyone else making money out of them that's the other thing isn't it?

5:40Massive Attack themselves. I mean, no disrespect to Deerhoof and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard who've already withdrawn their music from Spotify, but Massive Attack are probably, I guess, the biggest name to date who've come out against Daniel Ek and his investments outside of Spotify. That seems to be the cause of this. That was it. And it was announced in the same Instagram post as the No Music Venocytes, which is why a lot of people are kind of conflating them and that's caused a bit of a hoo-ha so um this is not about gaza it's about like you say danielek's investment so he's got a personal investment firm it's called i think it's premium materia um so it's the money he has earned from selling shares in spotify he has an investment firm that invests in different companies and we've talked about this before haven't we when took those bands so it's a company called housing they make ai drones and ai sort of defense technology and they're basically defense tech um and yeah massive attack talked about basically they they don't want their the money of fans and the creative work positions too and the quote was that ultimately funds lethal dystopian technologies and that's why they're out um and it caused some afters so like this happened this this social post and then very quickly this company helsing put a statement out saying our tech isn't being used in war zones other than Ukraine.

7:01So what they were saying was, I don't know if I'm paraphrasing here, we're the good arms guys. We're being used to defend Ukraine. We don't sell our stuff to other countries and we're not being used in Gaza. And then this Spotify exec called Joe Hadley, who's quite a senior exec at Spotify, he posted a comment on Massive Tax Post saying, one, Spotify and Helsing are two totally separate companies and they're not involved in Gaza. And he said, actually, I thought it was quite interesting, we might come back to this. He said, I know that because I asked that myself internally which kind of hints at in within spotify even quite seeming exactly i've been a bit like hang on a minute what is this company about where are they selling their arms to we want to know too yeah i mean this because this brings up the questions really doesn't it about how much does this hurt spotify because probably it's a it's a drop in the ocean financially for them but reputationally this seems to be where it's beginning to hurt that they're being drawn into these kind of debates?

8:01Yeah, do you know, a few months ago I was at an industry event and I was talking to someone who was quite senior in industry who I won't name and they were like, watch this story because right now Deerhoof, no one who's not a Deerhoof fan knows who Deerhoof are, but he was like this is going to grow, I think, and it's going to become more of a problem for Spotify. You can see it, like you say, Deerhoof King Gizzard and Lizard Wizard, now Massive Attack. I was looking at it, so Massive Attack I mean, the music's still available. It's taking a while to take it down. But they have around just under 8 million listeners on Spotify, which is a weirdly big number.

8:35If you think back to the old days of music industry, 8 million people listening to you every month sounds like a lot. But like you say, in Spotify terms, they're not one of the biggest acts and it won't hurt the company. But what you think of this, I feel like massive attack of God influence in terms of other artists. I think their voice is quite loud in terms of their political engagement. And so I think them talking about this is going to bring it to the attention of more artists and give it more publicity. So I think the impact is less about it costing Spotify any money other than the ripple effect of other artists who may read this and go, I'm going to look into this.

9:10What is this housing company? What's going on here? And what about Massive Attack themselves? How much of a dent will this put in their income? What's the cost of their stand, do you think, roughly? i mean there is a cost to it because eight million listens a month that's at least eight million streams probably more and streaming will be a lot of their revenue but i mean they put on big live shows so they have a live business they have other streaming services so i think spotify is about a quarter of the global streaming market so you know 75 percent of it is still getting streams from massive attack so i think it's it's definitely a financial hit for them and it's it's a stance that's going to cost them some money, but I don't think it's going to empower their income overall.

9:57And it may actually drive some listening elsewhere. It may drive people to go and buy their stuff. So there may be some, I want to say some upside, but that's not why they've done it, I'm sure. There's not any kind of sense of that. And the other thing I suppose here is, is it going to impact users? Is there going to be a, I don't want my subscription to fund the arms industry ultimately movement? and i i suppose my suspicion my pragmatic suspicion is it won't like not as a meaningful portion of spotify subscribers i'm gonna suddenly go but i think it will cement the views of people who don't like the company for other reasons so people who already think i don't like the royalties model or i don't like streaming um oh and now it's ceo is funding ai drones so i wonder if that dystopian technologies line is going to stick a little bit more than the company would like um but yeah i think i think the main thing is now i think it is a it's a a thing that spotify responded to very quickly and that i think that suggests that it realizes that this is not a great position to be in to be able to talk about how your boss is funding the arms industry and so that line about two separate companies i think that's not going to hold that long because he's the chairman of this company and he's invested for hundreds of millions of dollars but so i think we'll see more I think we'll see more artists maybe talking about this and and the question is whether it goes beyond massive attack in terms of profile like would there be a bigger artist it pulls out but I also think we may see Spotify coming out and talking more trying to combat this combat's the wrong word isn't it trying to trying to something that isn't a word related to to wars yeah story two then um Live Nation and Ticketmaster are being sued uh by the American regulator the FTC for and I'll put this uh next raising quote marks for illegal ticket resale tactics uh and for deceiving artists and fans I mean this sounds like a quite I mean it's quite a major accusation this isn't it who are the FTC and what are they claiming Ticketmaster are doing allegedly illegally yeah do you think this is the show we've done that's going to most likely to get me in trouble somehow.

12:06Yeah, quite. In various ways. Quite, quite. We're just loading it up with contentious stories for you this week, Stuart. Yeah. So this is basically, yeah, it's a big lawsuit from the big competition regulator, the big kind of financial commission regulator in the US. It was rumoured before last week that it was investigating the company and then this dropped. So yeah, basically what it's saying is that Live Nation and Ticketmaster, while they talk about fighting bots and fighting ticket touts, ticket scalpers from the US, actually it claims they're kind of, if not colluding with them, they're kind of turning a blind eye to what they do.

12:46And so the essential accusation is they turn a blind eye to people buying thousands of tickets that they shouldn't be able to buy. And then they make money from it because those tickets are then sold on the secondary ticketing market. So it was basically saying that, and there's a quote here, I'll quote it, it's a little easier. So in public, Ticketmaster maintains that its business model is at odds with brokers that routinely exceed ticket limits. So that is kind of when you can only get eight tickets for an event and thereby 8 ,000. Quote again, but in private, Ticketmaster acknowledged, and they have a bunch of emails and messages, receipts here, Ticketmaster acknowledged that its business model and bottom line benefit from brokers preventing ordinary Americans from purchasing tickets to the shows they want to see at the prices artist set.

13:30so that's the the main accusation here is that ticketmaster makes a lot of money from secondary sales and there's a number in the yeah stop stop there a second how is it making money from from secondary sales um so you can sell secondary tickets on ticketmaster the secondary part of the platform right and it takes a it takes a fee on those so when someone sells a ticket resales ticket on ticketmaster it takes a fee in the lawsuit there's a figure saying it made 3.7 billion in fees on resale tickets between 2019 and 2024. So that's it makes a lot of money from letting brokers buy more tickets than they should be allowed to because they then sell it on its platform and it gets a cut.

14:10And there's a lot of detail. I was going through this lawsuit filing and the one bit was like a table of these five ticket brokers. So these are people who buy tickets and then resell them, but for a living. So it's not fans doing it, it's companies. who's and there were five of them they controlled more than 6 300 ticketmaster accounts between these five companies and they got more than 246 000 tickets in the period covered so it's in a sense it's and it this is the thing ticketmasters always said well we we try and stop this happening we try and fight the bots that are used to who go tickets yeah and this is claiming otherwise um there's been no official response at the time of talking, as far as I can tell.

14:51This year, Ticketmaster and I have been addressing the fact that this sort of thing might happen, this kind of investigation, and saying, no, we'd fight bots. We do our best. We don't like people to get tickets they shouldn't have a right to. But I guess the bigger picture here is, we talked about this last year, that the US Department of Justice is suing Live Nation and Ticketmaster and trying to break them up for antitrust violations, anti-competitive behavior. And now it's facing a lawsuit from the FTC and I think it's seven US states as well. So these are two quite scary foes, legally, for the company to be dealing with.

15:29We've talked about its revenues and how its business is doing very well, but it's got these two really, really big lawsuits on its hands now, which is going to suck up a lot of energy and time. Yeah. Story three, which again is actually two stories, although this time they are brilliantly contradictory, depending on who you believe. Either video clips on social media are the future for artists looking for success, or video clips on social media don't really help an artist's career much at all. Both of these differing opinions emerged over the past week. Shall we do the defence of viral videos first, which comes from the American hitmaker Lizzo, who reckons the golden age of music video is over and that artists should focus on viral clips on social media instead of making old-fashioned videos.

16:26Yeah, and did you actually deliver this message? Via video. Via viral clips on social media. Of course. yeah um putting in all that so what's the so essentially don't waste your money on a video um for you know for for youtube just just make some interesting clips post on tiktok is that the is i mean is that kind of what she's saying kind of what she was saying there's no money to waste on music videos so one of our points was there's no budgets anymore like from the heyday in the kind of 90s and 2000s, the budgets don't exist anymore because no one makes any money from them. And she talked about there's never going to be another thriller, Lady Marmalade or Ladies Night, because critical mass and mainstream culture doesn't exist anymore.

17:12Which gave me, because I don't know if you ever saw this, but in the 80s, the making of Thriller was a VHS video you could buy and watch. And it was like, I don't know, half an hour long? And that video was so big that the making of it became its own products. And yeah, so basically, I mean, this is the other thing. Lizzo has started giving this music industry comment recently on TikTok, which is, I think I always welcome it. Like we need to hear more from artists giving their views on the industry. She's doing my job, I guess, which I couldn't return that by doing her job because I haven't got the chance moves.

17:45but so she said she's made a music video for her new single but she hasn't even bothered putting it on youtube it's just on her instagram account and she said yeah you're better off making small digestible potentially viral clips for your social media platforms especially if you're a new artist so she said yeah new artists you probably haven't got any money to make you should be doing this instead make a bunch of short clips rather than one big video right uh the case uh so that's that's the case in favor of viral clips the case against comes in a new report which suggests that going viral on social media may not actually help artists build their fan bases yeah so this is media research one of the more respected companies and they surveyed 10 000 people so it's a decent size survey and they basically their their main finding was and the quote is discovery is getting stuck at the song clip so basically a lot of people especially young people they discover songs on tiktok instagram wherever and they might like them but they don't then feel the need to tap through and like listen to the song in full or follow the artists on spotify or apple music or become fans and this big thing was like these clips don't create fandom and fandom is a really important thing now as an artist you need because the fandom is how you make your money from people really love you um which and yeah this quote this kind of chilling quote the music they hear on tiktok instagram and other social platforms is enough for them so it's kind of worrying if you're a spotify as well as if you're an artist yeah i mean there have been cases though where certain songs have become hits one-off songs but are they um haven't they so it it does work on occasion but they're saying though this is not it's not the blueprint for an artist though don't think Don't just hold out for the off chance that your one song might be one of the rare times where a viral clip does turn into a hit in other spheres.

19:44Yeah, it's weird because I think the social media apps are going to disagree. And there may be some afters for this where they could put stuff out saying, because I know TikTok, for example, they've got this feature called Add to Music app, where if you hear a song on TikTok and like it, you tap a button and you can add it to your library on Spotify or Apple or Amazon. And I think this year they said that that's done, that's done billions of streams from that feature alone. So I think they're going to have some arguments against it saying, no, no, we are getting people to tap through and play songs in full.

20:13But I mean, I kind of, I see Liz's point of view here, like instead of making a music video, make some clips where you're talking about yourself, telling people your story, showing them behind, that gets people to know you. And I think there is a good argument for that creating fandom because people and it's not just a glossy music video, it's actually people seeing who you are. I think that's quite important nowadays, people to understand what you think. Yeah, or do both. Once again, I can only cite my daughter's favourite artist, Conan Gray, who made videos for the key tracks on his latest album.

20:48But I noticed the other day she was watching a video which was the making of his videos. So he's essentially done both. So he's done the actual video. But while making the actual video has obviously got clippable content of, you know, him talking to the other actor and, you know, explaining how, where they're filming and what they're doing. So he's done, done the two. Maybe, maybe, maybe it's just a matter of, you know, making complimentary content. Well, yeah. And the other thing I think is interesting is Lizzo talked about how she's, her latest music video is not on YouTube and so on, but she has made a music video for a new song, which I think speaks to the fact that I think a lot of artists, still like the idea of making full-length music videos because it shows off something about them or it gives them their vision so i i think that's the other thing is people will still want to make them and maybe it's a case like say of being clever about how you get them to people yeah certain songs as well just lend themselves to being videos there are types of music which are very well illustrated by videos particularly songs which tell a kind of story i mean if it's a very if if you've written a song in your bedroom and it is three minutes of bedroom angst i don't get a video out of that but there are there are other songs which really benefit from the video treatment i think still i would i would say and aren't you know you can't clip out i mean you can clip out one chapter of a book and say look this this is the best bit you this is why you should you know invest in the whole book but you know what maybe you know maybe the whole the whole book needs its own little film that's that's my theory the other thing as well it says there's a few there's a few companies now who have these shows on youtube like there's colors is one um there's also what's the one called mahogany video there's a few publishers like their whole thing is they they film performances of new artists and then they put them out on youtube in other places and i wonder if that is something that's quite good like if you're a new new artist rather than making your own video maybe you do go and do one of those things and then there is a video of you playing a song on youtube but you haven't had to fund it um i don't know how the money works quite around that but so i think there are ways to do videos that are like if you're good if you're a great performing band then maybe that's what you do find someone who'll film you and put it out so there's i think but this thing is that yeah experiment and i think that's maybe the common ground here more experimentation to figure out how you get stuff that's your news for this week our top three stories uh any other business i got an i guess we should start with this because i got an email from uh stewart earlier uh stew's weekly taylor swift email did we go a whole week do you think that was last week did we do a whole week without taylor swift last week she's back anyway um what's what's she done now what's so important you were bothering me at nine o 'clock in the morning with another taylor swift email doesn't does no one else bother you in the mornings about taylor swift no you're the only you're the only one okay so yeah so her new album's coming out third of october it's going to be like it's going to be inescapable over the next kind of week or two um everywhere every platform everything but this is i think this is really interesting so she's announced this thing called so it's called the life of a showgirl and she's announced the official release party of a showgirl which you might think involves going to a bar with some sausage rolls and saying, hooray, a new album's out, like it would be for most artists.

24:18But it's a movie. It's an 89 minute movie that's going to be in cinemas around the launch of the album. And it's going to include a premiere of a new music video. It's going to show lyric videos for the other songs on the album, behind the scenes footage, her talking about what inspired the tracks. So this is the kind of stuff that you would normally put out on YouTube or socials around the release of an album, all the background. but it's going to be in cinemas in a hundred plus countries around the world. It's going to be a movie in cinemas. And in one day she sold$15 million of tickets for the U S screenings.

24:53This event. Wow. And deadline who, who are like a Hollywood news site who know the onion said, they reckon it'll make 30 to$50 million in the U S alone. And to reiterate, this is from the launch promo for the new album could be a$50 million product in itself. Yeah. I mean, this rather walks over everything we've just been talking about for the last five minutes, doesn't it sorry Liz not only has Taylor Swift made the video she's also made the clips and and and and then extended this into an actual film so it shows what you can do if you've got the money but it's a launch party film so you go along with fellow fellow Taylor Taylor Swift fans and it's a failure smith i quite like actually i mean stumbled on it um so uh and you sit there and she explains the record i mean this is essentially it's a great way of getting out of doing any promo isn't it you don't have to sit down with anyone uh on breakfast tv in america and talk about your album because you're telling the audience about the your audience directly about the album, but in a cinema.

26:01Can you imagine, though, how long this film, how long is the film? 89 minutes. 89 minutes sat in a, sat, being, having the album explained to you. Wow. Well, I mean, it's going to be lyric. I think a lot of it will be watching the videos and hearing the music and maybe hearing the music for the first time, depending on what you say. But I mean, I think we've talked about this before when she had her concert film. it's going to be really exciting for taylor swift fans because like that's what i mean is it's it's the let me explain this before you take the piss out of me um it's like a room full of them experiencing this together like that's the exciting thing i think about this kind of event is it's not just about them watching this it's about bringing people into the same space together and like my niece went to the the eras to a concert movie and apparently it was brilliant she got chatting to people around her because they're all tales with friends from her where she lives so i think not to be the the optimistic uncynical guy but i i i do think there's something really powerful here and this can only work for art like a handful of artists but i don't know if you're bts they could do it um if you're i don't know who else could do this thing coldplay could probably do it for a new album get people in cinemas like for a handful of artists this idea of it's not just about making loads of money in ticket sales from and popcorn sort of affiliate sales i think it is about bringing people together to celebrate something and that's quite cool you are so desperate to go aren't you you're so desperate to go i i want to go for research purposes i mean you know research purposes hang on hang on also i'm a i i need i need to take someone as a fan along Otherwise, I'll just look like a weird bloke at the back.

27:47You know, you need to have someone there who wants to go. I mean, obviously, there's a lot. I mean, there's so much money in Taylor Swift's orbit. But this is something I was talking to somebody in the music industry about the other night, where, you know, we're always saying, where is the money going? You know, the record companies are making a lot of money, particularly out of catalogue these days. and always announcing record profits. Part of it, though, because if you are, and this is happening increasingly, if you are a band, an artist, with a bit of a buzz around you that a record company think in the long term are going to be very investable, are going to make some money, then the size of record deals is going back up again to levels which I've not experienced since probably the 90s, really.

28:41I mean, I've heard of at least two deals recently which have been just shy of a million pounds. And even over here, a couple of guitar groups have signed for in the region of 350 ,000 pounds. When everyone has got used to the idea that getting an advance of 40 ,000 pounds was payday, was amazing. And that's if you're lucky enough to get an advance at all. But off the back of this, and this goes back to the States, though, then this news came along because this artist, Zainia Monet, has signed a multi -million dollar record deal and is climbing the US charts. But the only thing here that's going to make us all stop and stare is Zainia Monet isn't real.

29:36She's not real. No. This is the latest AI artist. So this was an article. So, okay, so this is anyway, she's an R &B artist created by someone called Talisha Jones. So there was a human behind this who made the music on Suno, the controversial AI music service, created the artist, and then a bidding war, quote, as high as$3 million began. And then she signed a multi-million dollar, quote marks, multi-million dollar deal with a company called Hallward Media, which is like this new label set up by a former Geffen exec. So a guy from the major label world has come out. Now, my caveat is both these quotes and figures, I think, come from Hallward Media itself.

30:16And there's a long industry tradition of maybe talking up numbers like this to make something exciting. Where maybe, you know, did other major labels really bid as high as$3 million? Or is this kind of part of the launch premiere? You know, who knows? But yeah, this artist is in the Billboard charts. She's had 10 million streams in a week in the US. There's something there. People are enjoying this music. And that was kind of before these articles explaining that she wasn't real. So it's maybe one of the early examples of an AI artist coming through that has got some traction, not because they're an AI artist.

30:51But it's already causing some... I think I saw a couple of artists have come out and said, we don't think this is good. Why aren't human artists getting these advances? But it coincided, this news. I did another interview with a guy called John, who's made – his artist's name is Whitlove, but it's a guy called John. He's made the first full-length AI-assisted country album. Two of my favourite subjects, country music and AI coming together. Together at last. He's made an AI-assisted country music album. I mean, surely that's the easiest of all musical genres for AI to handle, isn't it? Ooh. Isn't it?

31:37I love you. You've called Taylor Swift, Fela Swift, and now you're picking on country. I think you're in trouble after this episode online. Yeah, absolutely. I'm locking the doors and cancelling all my socials. But you know what I mean, though, because country music, for the most part, has a formula, doesn't it? Or am I out of date? Is that? Well, there are some strong tropes on it. You could say, make me some songs about whiskey, dirt tracks, four by fours. I guess the thing about country recently is the interesting stuff has broken out of that. So it's more, yeah, like bad, sort of by the books country is easily recordable, maybe not the new, but yeah, but this guy, so he wrote all the words for this album.

32:18And I think that's country particularly, the lyrics are really important for the country. So, you know, and then he used Suno again to make the music and the vocals. So he's not singing on the album, but he's written all the stories, the words. And his point of view was, I think that I am an artist, but I just couldn't play this music or sing it, but I wanted to get these stories out. And so he spent like hundreds of hours making this album on Suno. So again, it's not like just pressing a button, make me a track, a country track with violins on, like spent hundreds of hours fiddling. and that is what's making me think ah there's these two projects these two virtual artists but there's a human behind each of them who's done some creative stuff so in his case lyrics um in the case of zanima again i think lyrics but also creating the actual artist in the persona but they're also using suno which is still being sued by labels and actually this week labels doubled down on their lawsuit and added some new claims in it so it's and and his interview he actually said yeah i'm i think about these ethics and i would rather have artists be paid for their work when they're trained so there's obviously some he was aware of some of the ins and outs yeah i mean this is interesting though isn't it going back to if you've got an ai artist taking up the space of an actual human artist in the the charts and being offered you know millions allegedly millions of pounds which could have gone could have been spread around a bunch of different artists rather than going to a songwriter um but you in this case on the one hand he's basically said you know i i haven't found the people to make the record with so i've made it with ai um that would be his argument the opposing argument would be you have just put four session musicians out of work who could have been the band who could have created the music to go with your lyrics do you see what i mean and i'm not i'm not i'm not having a go at you john i i understand it's you know in some ways being able to do it all yourself means you don't have to have constant arguments with a drummer who doesn't play so i i sort of i sort of get it but those are the arguments because ai as in this case because this is the over you know the overwhelming argument isn't it how much um how many jobs is ai going to wipe out and in this case it would be that the musicians jobs but as i say john i'm not having a go at you i'm not having a go at country music i take everything back you very much were having a go country music yeah he did say actually he wants to work with humans he hopes this will be a stepping stone to realizing his work with humans in the future so he's okay all right i think it is a reminder i think that there are humans behind some of these AI artists, but there's also a very, very complicated mess of ethical, moral, like philosophical issues around it, which is why I find it so fascinating.

35:10It's why I like these stories, talking to those humans about what they're doing and why. Let's finish with a stat and a story. And finally, this week, why are lots of Spotify listeners checking out my humps in 2025? I just want to leave that hanging for a little while. Do, producer Joe, do leave that in, even though if it's edited out and put over a piece of music, someone's going to create an AI track with just that line on it. What's the deal? Yeah, so this Spotify puts the stats out. So this 20th anniversary, which I'm sure you were celebrating, of Black Eyed Peas, My Humps, which is one of those stats.

35:53I mean, I don't like these stats when it reminds you how old you are by saying it's 20 years since My Humps came out, you know, 30 years since this album. but yeah so 2.4 million people have discovered black eyed peas for the first time this year through my humps um and its biggest day of streams ever was in june for a 20 year old track which and apparently 60 percent of those people discovering black eyed peas are gen z so young people um which ties in do you know we were talking about tiktok's song of the summer um earlier this month and the number the second biggest song on tiktok was a 2009 track from Black Eyed Peas.

36:29So there's this weird thing happening where these old tracks by that kind of group are suddenly, there's no big reason. It's not like it was in a certain Netflix drama or it's not one of those sync stories. It's just, it's making its way. My Humps is making its way into the ears of a whole new generation, which is slightly strange to think about. I know I said that was our final story, but can I just mention a couple of listeners who've been in touch on the subject Well, it's this week's instalment in our great album filing debate. So thank you very much, Dave Sparks, who says, on the subject of filing records, which was brought up on your pod, how do you file Ben Folds and Ben Folds 5?

37:12Obviously, Ben Folds goes under F, but Ben Folds 5, being the band name, would presumably go under B. But then it feels odd having them not together. in my own collection says dave i've filed them both under b and it pains me every time i look at it uh and same here i've got lots of benfolds and i i think it's b because benfolds five came first you've already got benfolds five under b and when the solo stuff comes out i think you put it next to it like he has i think he's right there okay all right there's an endorsement of your tactics there dave uh thank you very much dave and ian beresford where does prince go given he was just a symbol well he goes with chick chick chick and everyone else at the back that's where i'd put prince but also those the albums from that era you don't need to have them with all the good prince albums to you need to separate them off uh and peter gedge uh adds to the question from last week where do you file van morrison uh peter blessed you loved it here from you peter uh well the where to file van morrison question is very easy to answer in the bin right we've done country Van Morrison and Taylor Swift this week.

38:23If you'd like to get involved, I'll give you the email address in just a second. But we're out of time. Thank you very much for listening. If you are enjoying what we're trying to do here, please do spread the word. Anything from leaving a review to telling some of your friends, posting on your socials, that would be amazing. Alternatively, you can support us via Patreon. In fact, if you sign up to be a super fan, you get an extra 15-20 minutes or so of us. That's me and him chatting about music and money in a fairly free form kind of way. Can we just say hello, in fact, and welcome our new superfans, Mike Walsh.

39:03Bless you, Mike. That's very community-minded of you. And Mark Ayres. Thank you, Mark, for your support as well. If you would like to join us, you can become a superfan of the show at patreon.com slash the price of music. Alternatively, as I say, if you just like to get in touch with us, you can use our socials or send us an email, anything you don't understand about the industry or how it works or something that you think we may know something about, we may be able to make sense of for you, or indeed any guidance or advice from the professionals. It's the price of music podcast at gmail.com. That's the price of music podcast at gmail.com.

39:44Until next time, take care of yourselves. Bye for now. Goodbye.