Radiohead's secret bunker; the Kanye/Wireless fallout; and how is the world's oldest record shop preparing for Record Store Day 2026? We chat to owner Ashli Todd to find out...

0:03Hello 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 about the past week in the pop business. Plus, this week, ahead of Record Store Day this coming Saturday, we'll also be chatting to Ashley Todd from the legendary Spillers Record Shop in Cardiff about, well, not just the big day, but also the reality of running a record shop in 2026. Before that, though, let's start, as we always do, with a financial fact you can amaze your friends or colleagues with. It's Stuart's big number for this week, which is Stuart's.

0:44I'm going to put on my Dr. Evil face, if not voice. It's$1 billion. So billion dollars of what? A billion dollars. It's a much money Latin American music made for labels in the US last year, which is the first time music from Latin America has topped a billion dollars in a single year. Okay. That's a pretty good stat. What's behind this, though? What's the story? Yeah, well, this is, I mean, it's partly about Bad Bunny. who had an enormous year. He was like the top streaming artist. But it's about other artists coming from Latin America. So I think if you followed Carol G, the Colombian artist, but she played Coachella last weekend and was one of the biggest hits at the festival.

1:26And it's even about this thing I've been learning about called Musica Mexicana, which is very sort of traditional Mexican music, like trumpets and accordions and big story ballads. So very, very traditional folk music. But its top artists are huge in streaming and playing big venues too. So it's like a whole different bunch of different musics from across Latin America, which are all catching on in the US and not just for people who are sort of Latinx descent. It's about, it's just kind of breaking out to all listeners there. Oh yeah. Okay. So yeah, I think it's interesting. Do you remember when Bad Bunny was booked to play the Super Bowl this year?

2:00Mm-hmm. And there were kind of some protests from sort of right wing, Margaret type people were saying, he doesn't even sing in English, he's head on the Super Bowl. But what this stat shows, I think, is that his music and Latin American music more widely is having this really big moment in the US and not just for Spanish-speaking listeners. So yeah, billion-dollar business. A couple of other quick talking points. We should mention this. Obviously, the wireless festival, you will have seen in the headlines in the press, was cancelled last week after the headliner, Ye, formerly Kanye West, was refused entry into the UK.

2:34This has been a difficult situation for everyone involved, I think. But for the promoters in the middle who initially backed the artist and explained the reasons behind why they thought the gig should still go ahead. But then the Home Office withdrew the visa. I mean, aside from the debate over Ye's booking in the first place and where the different sides stand on that, where does this leave Festival Republic financially? because I imagine there's a lot, it's a massive cleaning up exercise which everyone faces now. And I don't know where they stand contractually and where ticket holders stand either particularly because they imagine will be out of pocket at least probably to the tune of a booking fee.

3:23But start us off with Festival Republic, what's the position do they find themselves in now? Yeah, well, so it all depends. This is where I'm going to have to hide our bets. It all depends on the terms of the contract with Ye himself. And it depends on their insurance policies too. And those are the two crucial things. So from the point of view of Ye, it's quite common, I think now, isn't it, for artists headlining a festival to be paid a decent chunk of their fee in advance. So will you have to pay that back? It's very unclear, and we don't know how much they paid him. I've been learning some legal terms this week.

3:58Can I try them out on you? Yeah, go ahead. I've been learning about force majeure, which you may... But that's the... It's kind of the contractual vision that if something unforeseen happens or uncontrollable events happen, it frees everyone from their obligations, which would mean that festival public wouldn't have to pay yay. It's all kind of... It's like, wait, we couldn't control this thing. We couldn't see it coming. Now, there's been some lawyers discussing this, going, well, surely they could see it coming when they booked yay in the first place. did they not consider the fact that government might not let him in?

4:30So there's debate around whether that will apply in this case. But the other key thing, and this has come through, there's a good article in The Guardian, there's a good one on Billboard, that this was cancelled relatively early. It was quickly. So they wouldn't have started building the stage and the sets, for example, at the venue. They'd spent some money on marketing, but if it had been cancelled closer to the time, there would have been a lot more money gone down the plug hole. and the other thing people don't seem to know is there'll be contracts with security with catering all the kind of people i mean there was actually a report i'm trying to think when it was i think it was 2022 it's about three years ago on the economic impact of the wireless festival i think it generated i think it was 28 million quid for the uk economy that year and employed around 2400 people across all the things that do so again how much festival public is in the whole depends on what contracts it signed with all those companies and those providers.

5:26But the other thing I've been reading about, I've been on Insurance Business Magazine's website because I know how to live, very respected publication. And it's talking about how the financial impact, not just for this year, but for other events going forward. And what it got into is this idea of the way event insurance works is you have these clauses that are like about artist-specific risk. which if you're getting insurance, your festival, it used to focus on things like illness and injury. So if the artist gets injured and can't perform, which we've seen, haven't we? I remember, was it one year?

6:01I think the V Festival, Travis couldn't perform because the drummer had a terrible accident and someone else stepped up. And obviously your insurance is probably more expensive if you've got a history of injuries or a history of stuff that might prevent this happening. But this article was saying now it might start working in behavioural and reputational risks. So you might have a clause carving out, well, what if the government doesn't let them in? What if they're part of criminal proceedings somewhere? What if they make public statements that could get them into trouble even? So I think that's the other thing that people are starting to write, well, okay, this year the Wilderness Festival isn't happening, but next year when they and other events try and get insurance.

6:39And this is obviously about, yay, and like you said, there's a whole debate about what he's said and done in the past and people think about that. but we've talked haven't we about like bob villain who uh kneecap this is something that could apply to a whole bunch of artists that if you're listening and you're thinking i don't like what yay did and said but there may be artists you do agree with who could kind of fall under this and find it more expensive to get insured so yeah that's a long long but the other thing i thought is i was wondering why not just get another headliner so that was my immediate reaction was like why not book someone else and you can probably talk about this more than i can but But the general view of Expo is like, even though it's in July, finding one artist big enough to play all three nights who's free or finding three different headliners, it wasn't to say that was not possible.

7:25Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, by this point, they're probably already looking at who's playing next year because everyone's diaries are filled in so far in advance because, you know, a manager, managers or management companies are, you know, they're working 18 months, two years ahead. So it would be difficult, I think, unless someone was at home kicking their heels to find someone with that pulling power to step in so late, even though it's early-ish. I know it's early for us. It's very late when it comes to booking headliners. And also wireless, I mean, one of the things they've done, it's very bold is like last year they had drake do all three nights and that was a big deal same that was what time this is so that's the other thing if you had if you had like a bill of three headliners and supporting bills and one of the headliners pulled out maybe that is something where you can move someone up or do things but when you've put all your eggs in one headliner's basket it really does leave you with nowhere to go other than to cancel and say right we're back next year yeah um talking actually this is this is festival related uh in a way where it relates to Coachella, actually, but have you heard Radiohead are launching a new film and art installation, but if you do want to see it first, you'll have to go to a bunker underneath the Coachella festival.

8:50This could not be more Radiohead than this story. There's always a bunker involved with Radiohead. Do you remember we were talking about Radioheads, like all their treasure trove, all their old master tapes and stuff is all allegedly folklore has it in a bunker somewhere near Oxford now they've got a bunker beneath the Coachella festival yeah and everything I've heard about Coachella says that it's probably quite nice to disappear to a bunker sometimes during that when the sun's kind of blasting down yeah um but yeah so this this actually dates back to COVID times and I don't know I don't know if this was on your radar at the time but it was on my radar because I'm a nerd that back in 2021 um Epic Games who are the people who make Fortnite they said something that's really surprising and that's We're doing a virtual Radiohead exhibition called Kid Amnesia.

9:36And you had to use it on your console or PC. And you kind of wander around this virtual space full of films and artwork. It's from the Kid A and the Amnesiac era of Radiohead, which is kind of a fascinating creative time. But what I didn't know until this month is it was supposed to be a physical exhibition. They were going to have a proper exhibition you could go to. But COVID nixed that. And now they're finally doing it. So yeah, it's a full-on audiovisual installation is how it's described. It's got a film at the center of it, but it's other artwork too. Tom York said it's a narrative about, here's the quote, a monster is trapped in a derelict museum of the lost and forgotten.

10:12So I think it sounds like a great family day out, really, doesn't it? Take the kids. But yeah, so it's happening in this bunker under Coachella, people who are going to, which was last weekend and next weekend as we're talking, and you could register to go and see it. Then it's going to visit Brooklyn, Chicago, Mexico City, and San Francisco between May this year and February next year. So I'm kind of hoping it will come to the UK, but at the moment it's US and Mexico City. And here's the other thing. I mean, we could just kind of watch, you know, see it on social media, but when you go in, they're going to stick a sticker over your camera phone.

10:48So you can't take video and photos in there. right um although there is there's a tiktok account and a threads account and instagram account so weirdly that might be the way you get to see it on radio heads official tiktok presence which is a phrase i've never thought i'd be saying right then it is time for the latest in our monthly series of interviews looking at various aspects of the music business in in a little more depth so uh last month you might have heard Stuart talking to the band Picture Parlour about what the financial realities of being in a band these days. We also spoke earlier this year to Neve Byrne about artist management and Ricky Bates at the venue The Joiners in Southampton regarding the struggles of grassroots venues in the UK.

11:36All of these of course still available on our feed. Today though to throw ahead to Record Store Day on Saturday we wanted to find out a bit more about what it's like actually being on the front line of selling music and how hard it is currently trying to balance the books if you're running a record shop to help us with this we spoke to Ashley Todd owner of Spillers Records in Cardiff Ashley hello welcome to the price of music how's your week going has the stock for record store day started to arrive we're recording this on Tuesday lunchtime is there a van outside with 100 boxes of vinyl already?

12:17Ashli Todd:Well, I am very pleased to say that the vast majority of stock has arrived in the main that sort of happened last week. Because Easter is movable and record store date isn't, where Easter falls affects sort of like shipping schedules. So on the downside, a lot of our invoices came through at the end of March, but because of where the Easter weekend was, the stock didn't then arrive till the very start of April. So the bills will be being paid sooner, but the stock is at least here. Just before we get on to record store day, I'm running a record shop in general. How did you get into the business of running a record shop?

13:00And you should probably as well, just in case there are still people who don't know anything about Spillers Records, tell us a bit about Spillers as well.

13:08Ashli Todd:Okay, so it was not the plan for me to be here still after what will be 30 years this coming May. But that is sort of how it's all panned out. And essentially, Spillers Records is the oldest record shop in the world, famous for having continuously sold physical music since the year 1894. just music nothing else physical music um although we did used to do repairs of gramophones back in the day i'll have you know um we predate the record going flat um back in the day it was wax cylinders um and we've moved a few times uh over the years sort of like reflecting um you know trends in music buying and um how did I end up here well my dad was um running the shop and then bought it in the 70s uh again it wasn't his plan to um have spillers for for uh that amount of time he was actually training to be a bank manager and also was a DJ of um Northern Soul in his after hours world.

14:28Ashli Todd:And as a regular at the shop, he just happened to be in the right time at the right place or the wrong time at the right place, depending on how you look at it, and ended up managing the shop. Anecdotally, he turned up on his first day wearing a full suit and, you know, trying to make a good impression and was promptly told that that was not necessary. But, you know, he obviously just wanted to put his best foot forward. And similarly, I was given, well, I made the mistake of asking for pocket money to go to the cinema in the spring half term of May 1996. and I was promptly told well if you want some cash you have two choices it's either go and clear the expletive out of the chicken shed excrement or come and help out in the shop so I chose the marginally more glamorous option.

15:37You've been there ever since?

15:39Ashli Todd:And I've been stuck here ever since. There's a real sliding doors moment there, isn't there? Like somewhere in another world, you're now a chicken mogul of some kind. Yeah, well, you know, the price of eggs these days, I, you know.

15:55I mean, I was going to ask you about the biggest changes you've seen over the last 10 years, but that's almost a bit unambitious given that it's 30 years. I mean, what have been the kind of the biggest things you've had to respond to in terms of what Spillers does? because obviously there's been loads of disruptions and technologies coming in, but also an exciting resurgence in physical music.

16:16Ashli Todd:This is it. I think after this amount of time, it's a case of being able to take a bit of a pragmatic approach and realise that within different concentric circles, no matter how micro or macrocosm, things do go in cycles. And I guess sort of, you know, we are, you know, very proudly stockists of all physical formats. You know, we've always sold vinyl. We've never stopped. And even with the growth of vinyl, which still gets talked about now, like it's a new phenomenon. But, you know, I can tell you it is a, you know, 20 plus, you know, two decade worth of growth as far as I'm concerned. And even in a smaller scale, you know, I've sort of seen CDs take a knock from that.

17:20Ashli Todd:And lots of signals from the industry imply that there isn't really a continued market for CDs in exactly the same way as they sort of treated vinyl 20 plus years ago, which, you know, then fueled its, you know, demise. it was it's almost like just to bring the chickens back it's a chicken and egg analogy you know it's like if you say something is on the rise it will rise if you say something's on the wane you know inevitably that will sort of you know follow um but yeah even in the last five years i've seen cd sales take a dip like that but then with the what i see is the growth you know possibly fueled by the the the growth in vinyl prices the you know the ever increasing cost of vinyl cds seem to have you know maintained quite a level price point and i think the message about physical supporting for you know for supporting bands and your local record shop with with um you know buying physical music which the message is definitely getting through it's really nice to that in the same way as I was drawn to vinyl in my teens because it was nostalgic from what my parents used to play, I am seeing lots of teenagers doing what I think is the same thing with CDs.

18:48Ashli Todd:It's retro. I was reading a survey today, actually, about Generation Alpha, which I think is, what, up to 14, 15? And how I think half of them are listening to physical music, it's said. Like you say, it's not a... Again, you were talking about how people talk about vinyl, but it was new. People often talk about, oh, isn't it older people still buying physical music? But it's not. It's really young people now. It is. I mean, you know, it's very heartening. It is really heartening. And, you know, they engage with it. You know, it's the whole process, you know, the browsing process. It's lovely to see.

19:29Ashli Todd:It is. I suppose that does that bring us to um the the makeup of the community that comes into the shop and have you noticed any sort of changes in the sort of the sort of people the demographic of people who come in to your shop because you must you must know there'll be regular faces there'll be the person who's in Cardiff who pops in because it's a famous shop but you probably get to see the same clientele and i wondered if that's changed i mean this is the thing i think you know the cost of physical music comes into this so i i think that that does naturally um fuel who who we see more often and it does tend to be you know blokes of a certain age perhaps who's you know retired or you know kids have left home and have a bit more disposable income um you know so i would I would be at pains to draw too many comparisons on sort of um frequency uh you know sort of like you know a tally of how often I'd say more consistently um across the board it is all ages but you know obviously different demographics have different budgets and you know different sort of volumes that they can buy but um it is across all ages it is um it is always lovely seeing you know but lots of the older customers the more sort of middle-aged ones do seem to take a great sense of pride in bringing the youth in um you know the next generation and that's always lovely to see um you know that it it is something that's um that's that that is evident you know families in together or dads with daughters or you know grandparents with with with with their uh you know grandchildren um and yeah it's it's yeah I think it's really broad I I think in terms of where we were 15 years ago, where I think, you know, things were, I think it was more on a hope that things would turn.

21:57Ashli Todd:I don't think anyone really expected vinyl to keep on going in the way that it has. I mean, I am astonished constantly that there is still more room for growth in it. I really did think that, you know, what goes up invariably has to come down to some extent. But yeah, it's a bit like Record Store Day is a really good example of this. I mean, I'm the biggest cynic that you'll find whilst also being very enthusiastic. But I do have a cynic sort of, you know, based on experience of the industry. And I think there are people who came to maybe, say, the first five or 10 years of Record Store Day have over time gotten somewhat jaded with the event.

22:56Ashli Todd:You know, it's grown and grown. You know, what was 100 titles is now 500 titles, which in and of itself looks, you know, could be read as a cash in. You could see that as being trying to offer as broad a range of genres and titles to, you know, keep customers happy. But that's by the by. But every year it seems that there is a new audience. So, you know, there are people who have kept on going and have been supporting it, you know, for the nearly 20 years that it's been going on. But again, with that, you know, a lot of that is through some of the more mainstream, as it were, artists that have gotten involved.

23:43Ashli Todd:And huge profile artists, you know, Olivia Dean, Taylor Swift, you know, the Wicked franchise. and you can't knock that for bringing a new audience in. And I think that's another thing is those sorts of titles for that specific day has also given me more confidence in an area that I really don't feel like I'm, you know, very able to judge popularity, you know. I often have to defer to the youngest person here and say, what is the young person's perspective on this? Is this cool? You do. You sound like, so would you, going back 15 years, was it more, were you in a more precarious position, do you think, at that point?

24:38Do you feel running a shop now? Because I don't know, because I always imagine I'd be so, One of the things which I think would stop a person like me starting a record shop is just trying to balance the books at the end of the month and being at the mercy of the record industry who decide to put a load of records out one month and then nothing the next month or nothing good the next month. But in general, do you feel more stable now running the shop than you did maybe 15, 20 years ago? Well, the thing is, Steve, is as you and I both know, the whole premise of the industry and bands and popularity and what's in and what's not, it's so fickle that quite honestly, no.

25:29Ashli Todd:Because week to week, album to album, I mean, there are so many different things that can affect sales. um you know it's it's it i'm i'm acceptant of it and it's not um it's just a fact of the industry is you know you can have an artist who's the hottest property for one album but then it can be badly received and then it you know or you can have different factors that tie into it so exclusives elsewhere and you know d2c going on or pre-order fan sale you know sign up for tickets and get the pre-order access or whatever um so there are so many variables and um you know that that can impact an artist um you know and and and the reach and the thing i would really say is what you never know when you're ordering something there there are two principal things that is just in a nutshell, the dichotomy of the wrangling that goes on with ordering is, is it going to be selling after week one?

26:42Ashli Todd:Because everything is so week one based, for that sort of chart position. So is it just going to fall off a cliff? Because things invariably do, more does than doesn't. And if it does take off and there is more in, you know more longevity in in it is there even going to be stock in the warehouse to reorder because sadly quite often that is not the case and and that is the the the the duality of of you know physical music in in 2026 um very few labels and uh willing to sit on um large quantities of stock in warehouses, they don't know what's going to keep selling, what's going to have legs and run through till Christmas.

27:39Ashli Todd:And I think, you know, sorry, I say through till Christmas, you know, as we know, lots of things have a boost with, with, you know, sort of end of year polls and charts and whatnot. It's really exciting. I've sort of decided to be excited about uh seeing what is going to be the one that's still here in the racks two years later rather than disheartened um and it and it is i mean i i often wonder are the are the same things that i you know i've been ordering key stock staples um this morning and um if it's okay to sort of name some names you know i i wonder what other record shops sort of like run on ones are i mean um ezra collective's albums still tick over like you know with the disclaimer these will all fall off a cliff as soon as i've uttered their name i will never sell another record by these just just because that is the law of um saying things out loud but um so yeah i'm talking about sort of more relatively contemporary um artists you know i mean i'm not talking about sort of cocteau twins radiohead you know pulp and and that i'm talking more about the the last 10 years sort of artists so um sorry um that's so essentially it's more it it you know i'm talking about the sort of like you know bands from the last sort of 10, 15 years, you know, when we all know that, you know, sales are not what they were, you know, what they were sort of 30, 40 years ago, you know, who is going to be our new Pink Floyd, for example.

29:31Ashli Todd:But, you know, there are bands coming through that you don't really know if they're going to be in your acts in a couple of years' time. But for a very, very short amount of time, you know, Everybody wants to get their hands on it. And it's, yeah, as I say, the drop-off can be after the first week. You just don't know where the commitment is with people. Just to finish off, can you settle an argument for us? Important argument, very important. This has been an ongoing debate. Do you want to ask, Stuart? If you're filing PJ Harvey on the shelves, does she go under P, under H, or if she wanted to do a curveball, a completely different letter just to throw things into chaos?

30:20But yeah, because we, do we disagree? I can't, but I think I was P. Were you H or were you P? I think it's P although controversially, weirdly when I had a look on the shelves upstairs earlier in my own collection I think it's under H put us right

30:44Ashli Todd:Absolutely Well this is the thing like everything we've talked about it's not as straightforward as it may seem so in my opinion correct me if I'm wrong PJ stands for Polly Jean, right? Yeah. Her birth given name, correct? Yeah. Not a pseudonym, is it? No. She's Polly Jean Harvey. So in my head, that without any shadow of a doubt goes under H because that's her name. Where it gets more complicated is when you have your blues artists. I mean, you know, Professor Longhair, Muddy Waters. I mean, you know, he's not Muddy Waters. and that you know I don't think that's his real name um uh and where it gets even more complicated is where you have an artist and band name um and also where you have a name that sounds like it would be a person but it's actually a band but I will be honest that's true I hadn't thought about Tyler Ballgame that's that's the name of the band it's his name but it's the name of the band yeah where does that go but then also you have you have some band names I'm trying to think of some but some band names that sound like they would be a person but they're not a person if you see what I mean so you might think they were if you were coming to buy yeah I can't think of any right now so so really it's really difficult um but generally i i mean if we said for example i mean bruce springsteen i mean there's no way in the world that he would go anywhere other than s absolutely no you know no no way in the world which ties in with record store day because of formatting um reasons on the list everything on record store day that we have gets filed as per the list which is by first you know whatever comes on record store day the rules are completely different in in in uh our filing process so we have to have a mindset shift because because people are used to the list being in the list order right as per the you know printed out slash look on the website slash look in whatever publication you're looking at um and everything there would be alphabetical by first name uh robert plant and our um you know that's a minefield what also if you're running to get like one of the two copies in the shop and you go to the wrong letter you're going to because someone else has gone to r before and you're on p i mean supermarket suite yeah is it ever like that i mean how do you manage that how do you people because do you get that people running in trying to get that was my biggest fear and therefore we keep the stock behind the counter which is hence the filing uh process uh but the the yeah it i could not think of anything worse than losing the last copy of something amongst all the records.

34:07Ashli Todd:Can you imagine? Yes, the system says that we have one copy of Simply Red's remixes, but I cannot find it. That would be the worst thing in the world. By the same token, I'm afraid week in, week out, we have discussions over genres on where to put people. I mean, that causes all manner of kerfuffle. And actually, in terms of misconceptions, my other favourite unwritten misconception that people seem to have is that when they walk into, and I do not think it would be exclusively our place, that everything would be where you would expect it to be. um and that sort of thing of um you know do you have something i you know oh i've checked there you haven't got any of that or is this all you have um or is this all your stock and that sort of not realizing that we do our absolute very best to keep everything where we think it should be however as you have illustrated we do not all think along the same we don't all have a consistent agreement over filing over genres you know your blues may be my I don't know swamp rock or whatever and also the second you open your door anything can happen in terms of, you know, does anybody mean to pre-Mark?

35:46I mean, you know,