Radiohead and Kesha are furious; Artists are struggling to tour; Football cosies up to music; and buying a slice of your favourite artist

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 while also bringing you stories and comments from the past week in the pop business. He's Stuart Dredge. I'm Steve Lamac. If you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music industry and how it all works, then here we are this week. One or two AI stories, of course, but ones which we'll be approaching from slightly different angles. Plus, if Radiohead really are annoyed with the American government, why aren't they suing them? We'll be addressing that. And is this new June app any good?

0:41Steve:We have a question about that we'll get to in a bit. But to start, as always, here's a big number you can quote to people this week. Stuart, give us your stat of the week. What is it this week? My stat of the week. okay this is 162 million and this is how many instagram views this year's brit awards got all right um which is up from 32.4 million last year so basically instagram views quadruple which is just a little statement about where awards shows are now but this is the big headline about how popular the brits were it's not about tv viewers it's about instagram views yeah absolutely and what why why do you think it's gone up so much this year was it just it was a particularly grand affair and there were a lot of big performances which I imagine if you clip them up make quite good soundbites I think that's it, I mean the people behind the Brit Awards are putting a lot of effort into socials nowadays, clipping everything up they got up a deal with Meta which owns Instagram as well as Facebook and WhatsApp so they had a red carpet live stream on Instagram before which would have pushed things up they had, I think you could vote for the songs of the year in WhatsApp like kind of these partnerships they have are quite common so it just and the press release goes the press release about how popular they were goes paragraph on Instagram paragraph on Facebook Reels paragraph on YouTube views paragraph on TikTok views paragraph on ITVX on demand streams and then and by the way viewers on TV which but that's that's how things are now I think when we move the glory days of the Brits when it would be like how many people watched on TV and how many tabloid headlines were made by bad behaviour.

2:20It's all about the socials.

2:22Steve:Okay, three of the more interesting talking points of the week. The first one, as mentioned, is Radiohead and Keisha are the latest artists who are furious that their music has been used in social media posts by the US government. But can they do anything about it? Because this comes up quite often, doesn't it? Artists who don't want their music used by political figures or regimes. But apart from sending them a cease and desist letter, is there anything really they can do? Well, not much other than go on socials and say how much you're cross about it. And it's true. This has been a thing happening increasingly.

3:03And there seems to be a strategy in the US, doesn't it, I think, that the White House or different bits of administration, they'll put a social post out and they'll put someone's music on it that they know is going to be annoyed. They've done it with Olivia Rodrigo, with Sabrina Carpenter. I mean, Radiohead, obviously, if it was any band, less keen on having their music featured in a White House post. So yeah, they used Let Down, which is obviously a massive song on socials, which is Silent Times equally in itself, on a montage of, and I quote this, criminal illegal alien violence. So one of their kind of posts about how terrible immigrants are and how they're committing loads of crime in the US.

3:41And then it was used. I think it was like a choral version. So it wasn't Radiohead's version. it was a choral cover of it but it sparked this really really fun statement from the band who said we demand that the amateurs in control of the ICE social media council ICE is the immigration agency there take it down it ain't funny this song means a lot to us and other people and you don't get to appropriate without a fight also go fuck yourselves radiohead and Keisha had a similar thing her song was used in a post about to do a war related post and she said that this is disgusting and humane it's not what music is about out.

4:16And it just goes on and on. This has kind of become a strategy in that they put these songs in posts, the artists complain, everyone talks about it and it gets more headlines and the original post gets seen more. So in one sense, the artists are kind of playing into the hands of the people posting the posts because they're giving them the publicity they want. On the other hand, I mean, there isn't much you can do. I mean, there's been no lawsuits in the US from an artist saying, the White House used my song in a post on socials without my permission. There have been lawsuits for brands. So like, for example, fitness companies have used songs from major labels in their socials.

4:51And the labels have sued them and said, you haven't got a license for that. You need to come and get a sync license. But no one seems to know how this would go if you sued the actual government, the president himself. And also there's the risk of actually, do you want to be in a legal battle with a very litigious man who might come back and sue you for$10 billion? there was a case actually White Stripes sued Donald Trump a couple of years ago for using Seven Nation Army in a social post office I think one of his team did and then they dropped that case and didn't pursue it which was they didn't say why but it was seen as a sign of this is going to be difficult suing the president for social media posts using music isn't difficult so really it's you say how you protest and you let your fans know we're not on board with this we don't like it but other

5:39Steve:than that no one really is going to court do they get paid for the for the use is other u.s government covered by any sort of licensing agreement or do you can you recoup any royalties or does it come through the royalties you get from the social media yeah i mean if it was on if it's something like youtube you could claim the video using its content at least when you get that you get money then. TikTok and things, it's very, very, it's very unclear. Right, okay. So I don't think road ahead of making money from this. But one of the reasons I think you protest as an artist is because you don't want people to think you are.

6:18You think you're comfortable with that. So in a way, although protesting brings the original video more attention, I can understand why artists want to do it because they want to make it very, very clear. We're not. This is not done with any art permission. But it's going to carry on, I think. And this week, there was an example, I think Franz Ferdinand, Take Me Out, was used in a video by Israel's Defense Force about bombing Iran. And the band said, we didn't agree, this is not what this song is about. But it just, either your lyrics are appropriate for a video about war, and so it's used, or it's a careful strategy to say, let's pick someone who'll get really pissed off, because then it will get even more publicity.

6:56Steve:Yeah. Franz Ferdinand, that wouldn't be the first band who I would pull out the hat. But anyway, right next, a report from the House of Lords. Well, a House of Lords committee here in the UK about AI has been strongly welcomed by the music community and Stuart will explain why. Yeah, and I should do a bit for non-British listeners first about the House of Lords, shouldn't I? Because it's our upper house in our parliament. So the equivalent of the Senate in the US or Australia, except with some very British aspects, we don't vote for them. They just get appointed or they kind of born into it. But the idea is they're a check, isn't they?

7:32They're a check on the government and they look at legislation. And they've been looking at AI and copyright and creative industries. And yeah, this report, I mean, this report came out on Friday and says, essentially, AI is a clear and present danger to the creative industries, including music. If AI companies are allowed to just train their models on anything they want, or the music, or the books, or the art, without permission, which is exactly what the music industry has been saying for the last two years. and yeah it's telling the government don't give these guys a free pass make them license stuff properly which was very topical and timely because the same day on Friday this report came out there were these news stories saying the government was considering possibly I think it was called a commercial research exception and what that is is if you're an AI company you can train on everything you want without asking but only when you want to commercialize it actually launch a product then you have to go and get licensing deals and if it did that the problem with that is it might give them unfair advantage in negotiating.

8:32We've used all your stuff, we've trained our model, it's looked good we want to make a product now so here's some money, take it or leave it. It takes money. So this report came out saying don't do that at the same day when it emerged that the government might be considering doing just that. Okay.

8:50Steve:Alright. There's another actually, staying with the subject of AI. Apple Music subscribers will soon know exactly how AI has been used in the music they're listening to. Although there is one rather large loophole. Yeah, there is. But this is interesting. So, you know, we've talked about the idea of people want to know if they listen to AI music or not. Yeah. So this is these new things called transparency tags. So if you're uploading music to Apple Music, so it's not an artist level, it'd be a label distributor. But if you're putting your music out through a distributor as an artist, you would have to give them these tags.

9:23and it's four tags. One is artwork. So if you've used AI to make your cover art. Another one is track, if you've made the music using AI. Another is composition, which is kind of the lyrics and the actual song itself. And then music video, if your music video is using AI. So if you have used a material portion of AI, which is one of the loopholes, because that's quite a vague definition. Yeah. If a material portion, you have to say, and the idea being then is that those tags could be shown so as an apple music user you might see a tag saying this song used ai for its track but it could also be used by apple if they want to treat ai music differently so if they wanted to give lower royalties or you know not promote it um but yeah the loophole essentially is that the person uploading music has to decide whether to use these tags like in a way it's saying you should use these and if they go well okay but i'm not putting it on because i don't want to we don't quite know yet what apple will do if it detects that you're trying to pretend not.

10:26But I think it's good. I mean, I think it's one of the big, the lowest, literally the lowest thing, lowest bar here is that people should know what they're listening to and then they can make their own decisions. And Apple's doing this. Spotify's got its own plans to have tags. These are tags AI music. I think in the next year, we'll see some kind of system on every streaming service where you should know if something has been using AI. The difficulty there for an artist, if you're using AI, for example, say you're using AI to mix your song or master it, which is one of the reasons. Do you say that here?

11:00And then people think your track has been made by an AI when it's been made by you. So there's all kinds of little blurry bits around the edge that artists might worry if they haven't been using AI to make the whole track. Do they get tired with that brush? So there are a few things to work out. Okay.

11:17Steve:Any other business? Oh, actually, let's start with something from the Price of Music inbox. This came in from Karen Ashton, who's been in touch, asking about the new Dune app. Well, I think it's new-ish. Dune, that's D-U-N-E. It's where fans can buy stakes in an artist's work. Karen says, I'd be really interested to know what you think about the app, how much it will help artists which artists it will appeal to and how it all works thank you very much karen for this because it wasn't something i was aware of so uh so i downloaded the thing i went and had a look at it i mean i've got quite a lot of questions for you now stewart um given that i don't really understand how it works so you should explain sort of what what it is what it does what it's there for yeah sure so it was announced in november i think last year when they raise their money.

12:12And yeah, it's kind of in a way, it's treating artists as if they were like public companies that you can buy shares in. So the way it would work is as an artist, you go on there and you do a sale. So you'd say, I'm selling, I don't know, a hundred shares in myself. And you buy a share and then you own it as a fan and then you can sell it if you want to. And the price will go up and down based on that artist's streaming stats. So if the artist is doing well on streaming, the price of the share goes up. if it's not doing so well, it goes down again. And so it's two things really. It's kind of a stock market for artists in that sense.

12:47They have to be in on it. So it's not like Taylor Swift is in there. An artist has to sign up and say, I want to be part of this. So it's mainly independent. Artists like BC Camp Light is one, The Hun are another.

13:01And yeah, I think artists keep 70 % of the money from their initial sale. So if they put 100 shares on sale for$5, they keep 70%. of the sale yet. So they get some money. And as an owner of a share, you can get benefits and the artist can choose to give you stuff like exclusive videos or giveaway prizes or VIP meet and greets, ticket pre-sales, merch discounts. So by owning a share, you're not just hoping to get rich if it goes up. It's more like you're getting these perks of being a fan of the band. So that's the basic gist of it.

13:33Steve:Right. So it is partly about fans supporting artists they like by giving them some money. But also, I guess part of the rest of the appeal is that you can make some money by wheeling and dealing as if you are playing on the stock exchange. But if so, so how do you make money? Say you buy a share in BC Camp Light for$5. How do you make money? do you wait till BC, when do we know that BC Camp Light is, shares in BC Camp Light have gone up? Is that how it works? And it goes up if the streaming figures go up? I don't know. So it's based on their average monthly streams of their music, which the idea behind that is just like not a sudden spike.

14:27So for example, if today is 100 streams, tomorrow is 1 ,000 streams, the price rockets. So they kind of, they level it out. but yeah if his streams go up the value of that share goes up and it might be seven dollars or nine dollars and so on um i mean i think thinking about it and looking at it it's not it's no you're not going to get rich doing this like you really aren't going to get rich by sort of piling all your savings into bc camp like you know being his albums as well i think it is much more about the fandom aspect and getting the perks and i don't honestly i think if you buy a share and you get good stuff do you want to sell that share even if the price has gone up or do you want to hang on to it so I think it is more just another way of putting some money in their pockets and getting something in return I mean the alternative is you could go to BC Camp Lights Bandcamp and buy an album so there is that argument if you want to put money in someone's pocket there are less complicated ways to do it but I think the one thing this made me think of, I'm sure something else was like this.

15:34And there's quite a bad example in the past that June has learned from, I think. So there was a thing called Football Index, which I don't know if you remember that. I don't know. It was a few years ago. It was like a virtual stock date for footballers. So you could buy shares in footballers and then see them go up and down based on their performance in the real world. And that all collapsed very badly. People lost thousands. It just, it was a big kind of controversy where people have put lots of money into these shares and they ended up being worth nothing and they got the movements. So June, when you dig into how June works, it's been quite designed.

16:10So there's a ceiling on it. So shares can't go over$100. If they get to that moment, they split. So if you've got a$100 share and it goes up, you now have two$50 shares split in two,

16:23Steve:which is kind of a financial thing. And it can't go below$5. So in that sense, like BC Camp Lot, for example, his share is$5 at the moment. So if you buy it, you're not going to lose money. You might not be able to sell it later, but you've only lost a fiver then. So I think they've looked at what happened in football and said, right, we're not going to do that. That was really bad. So it does feel much more towards, this is not get rich quick. It's not a money-making thing. It's a support the artist you like. So yeah, it's a way to put money in their pockets and there are other ways, but it will be interesting to see if it catches on.

16:58Steve:That's the thing, isn't it? I mean, having looked at it, there's not a huge amount of artists who've signed up to this as yet. Although I did notice, I think the journalist John Rob's band, The Membranes, are listed. And currently one of the trending artists is the band, the Manchester band Northside. The Northside. The Northside, I think. Yeah. Well, are they? I mean, that's the thing. I mean, the singer Dermo from Northside still does stuff. I think Northside are advertisers doing gigs, although sometimes it's just him. But, I mean, I guess you could. I mean, if you're a heritage act who streams well, then I guess you could become part of this, even if you weren't doing any gigs or anything.

17:49Steve:I guess you could just say, you know, buy into whatever dormant band it may be because they still stream well. But yeah, I guess we'll wait and see. Just out of interest then, if BC Camp Light did, by the end of the month, BC Camp Light stream, BC Camp Light puts out, because here's the thing, this will always be slightly skewed by, do they have a record out? When they have a record out, they'll be streamed loads more, I would imagine, when they're in the press or in promotion or on tour. but anyway suppose bc camp light goes up to ten dollars how do who do i sell who do i sell my share to uh and how do you how do you sell it and more importantly does that money just come to me i'm not i'm not going to do this but does that money come to me none of that money then goes back to the artist the artist has had their five dollars every every time there's a transaction after that i presume the money is held by the person who owned the share or has just sold the share yeah so in terms of selling it as i understand it works is you um you say i want to sell my share it gets listed and then it gets matched with a buyer if there is a buyer and that's the other thing if no one's buying shares then you can't sell it um yeah do you know i don't know about the artistic i i know it definitely gets so the original sale i don't know if they get a portion of the the follow-on sales yeah i mean I mean I think it's yeah the challenge it faces I think is say you come to this because you're a fan of BC Camp Light and you buy a share in him it only kind of works if you end up looking at the other artists and buying shares in them as well like it needs a community people buy it who want to buy shares in different artists rather than just a bunch of BC Camp Light fans here a bunch of media fans here you need to have so I think that's going to be its challenge it needs to get lots of music fans interested in the idea and like you say who it signs up be important because they'll bring people to it.

19:47But it's interesting. And I think to the question, it doesn't look like something where you're going to lose money. You can buy a$5 share. You might lose that$5, but you'll have got some benefits. Okay.

20:00Steve:All right. We shall wait and see. Thank you, Karen, for that. Karen, by the way, also sent us some recommendations for our playlist of bands on Spotify with less than a thousand plays in our attempt to drag some of them out of the sub-1000 ghetto. Of course, under 1 ,000 plays, you don't get paid on Spotify. So have a look for these. I mean, I'll confess, I haven't listened to any of them yet. Apologies, Cameron, but that's because this week I have mostly been listening to about 200 artists who are playing this year's South by Southwest Festival, which is where I'm off to on Thursday. But if you're interested, everybody, try these out.

20:38Steve:True Heads and a song called Public Pressure, Pamphlets by Jester, Sell With Confidence, that's a good band name, who've got a track called Aiming, and then brilliantly, Glue Smells. That's one of the band names of the week. Glue Smells and their track TV Moms. Good work. Well done, everyone. Right, there's some good news today for artists in the UK who are struggling with the economics of touring. The UK Artist Touring Fund has just opened for applications. It's partly driven, of course, by the much-discussed£1 contribution being raised at a selection of gigs with a capacity of more than 5 ,000 people.

21:19Steve:A pound a ticket then goes to the new Live Trust. The Live Trust, which, as we reported, made its first payout recently, something like half a million pounds to various grassroots organisations. organizations some of that money that first payout uh went to ucat uh you should explain for a start who ucat are um who's a part of this and what are they going to do with the money yeah sounds like a k-pop group doesn't it um but you can't uk artists touring fund so it's it's a fund focusing on artists and by extension promoters and managers um and it's overseen i think by the featured Artists Coalition, the MMF, the Manager's Body, and the Musicians' Union.

22:01Steve:So three people know their onions when it comes to reporting artists and musicians. And yeah, they've got 125 grand. And so I thought it was interesting because they've done out the details of how they're going to split it up. And I think so from today as this comes out, Wednesday, artists can apply for up to£7 ,000 each. And there were some strings. So you have to be playing a headline tour of small to mid-sized venues. You've got to be playing at least three dates and three quarters of them have got to be promoted but with guarantees not so so i suddenly thought there was that that's avoiding a loophole isn't it where you could just book a bunch of village halls and say you're playing gigs there and claim some money and just yeah so they've kind of seen that coming and gone right so you have to be proper gigs headline gigs and i think the key thing and this is something i hadn't thought about as well is it's not about paying for the tours it's not about paying all the costs for your tour it's about you have to show them that you're going to make a loss.

22:58There's a shortfall between what you're spending and what you're making in return, and it's covering that. So that's why£7 ,000 isn't enough to fund a whole tour, but it might be the thing that tips you back into profit. And make sure your managers and crew get paid, because that's part of this as well, isn't it? You have to pay everyone fairly to help you do that. It seems like a good thing. I mean, the only thing I think is like£125 ,000 divided by£7 ,000. It's going to be limited. There's a certain amount of artists that can help. but I suspect they'll be over over applied won't they but yeah I mean it's more

23:31Steve:FAC has have their own funds where they've been helping artists go out on tour so this and this is much more money than has previously been available for this but I think it'll be interesting as a first because I think when you launch something like this as you say you they've already spotted some loopholes you've got to work out how do we best help artists to get out on tour? And I think this will be a real learning curve. A lot of things around the Live Trust and some of the organisations who are receiving money, everything is a sort of learning curve as we work out what's the best way to support the grassroots economy and everyone who is part of it.

24:18Steve:So I think as an initial funding, I think it will give them a lot of experience, I think. Also, just imagine how many artists will probably be in touch with them. So someone needs to go through all the applications for a start. But yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. I mean, the idea is, as you say, if you're an artist, I think what UCAP would really like to do, what the problems they're addressing is, not an artist who can't afford to go out on tour, It's about artists who are doing six dates, but they could do nine if they only had more money. Now, why is this important? Because the other three dates might be in places where venues are struggling to book artists because artists are doing much shorter tours and they're only going to Glasgow, Manchester and London.

25:18Steve:And so being able to do the three extra dates, hopefully means that you can get an artist to areas where gigs are becoming thinner on the ground. And all the things we've said about that means you support that local music community. People don't have to travel so far. They don't have to get a train or a bus and leave just before the encore. It's all those things. So there's that. And definitely what you were saying about just being able to fund the tour properly, paying the tour manager, paying maybe for a sound person. So because what their argument is, particularly the FAC, I think, is artists want to do the very best.

26:00Steve:They want to do the very best show, the very best gig they can do, and they're having to cut corners because they don't have the money, which means they can't take, even if it's a solo artist with a couple of really hot session players, right? You can't afford the session people, the session musicians. or you you know you can take three of the bands not five of the bands it's it's being able to you know i guess you know this is what the seven grand is for do it do it really well um and it's you know in a way it's a new version of tour support which used to be a thing in the 90s and part of the noughties and very few artists now get tour support from their labels so it's a little bit like that but i think creatively i think this is probably better but we shall see but yeah have a look if you're an artist with a tour as I say you know you might have seven you might be thinking I can do seven dates but then got to take X amount of time off work the cost of the van the cost of the crew maybe we could just do four dates maybe this is for you if you are just as we've said struggling with essentially the bill for your tour this might be an interesting way around it this is a story this next story I mean this could also be a part of our former colleagues over at the Price of Football part of one of their shows as you may have heard John McClure from Reverend and the Makers has a new part-time job he's become the chairman and part owner of the world's oldest football club which of course is in Sheffield it is Sheffield FC founded in 1857 who play in the ninth tier of England's football pyramid, which in a reference to all players for everyone, that's two rungs below Bishop Stortford, I think.

27:56It's a northern premier league. But yeah, I didn't realise, so I was really, you actually interviewed him this week, but he tried to buy them before, I think, a few years ago, and it didn't work out.

28:05Steve:Yeah, it turns out I didn't realise that. When he first said, when he first sent us a WhatsApp about it, I mistakenly thought he was going to attempt to buy Sheffield Wednesday, who are looking for new owners at the moment. But yeah, Sheffield FC, oldest football club in the world. I mean, he talked very passionately about this. But one thing he said, we're just not very good in Sheffield of actually telling people about the stuff we've done. He said, Manchester are great at self-publicity. Sheffield, rubbish. And he said, we've got the oldest football club. in the world and we never really sing out loud about it.