Radiohead's twenty-show limit; Spotify lets you tweak its algorithm; Steve's SXSW debrief; BTS' mega-livestream; and... Salt-n-Pepa!

0:02Steve: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 about the past week in the pop business. He's Stuart Dredge, I'm Steve Lemack. If you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music industry and how it all works, then here we are reunited after last week when I was away in the States for the South by Southwest Festival, of which more later. but let's start as always with a financial fact you can amaze your friends or colleagues with Stuart's big number for this week what is it Stuart?

0:38Okay big number this week with the caveat that it may be completely made up is 300 million and that is how many people reportedly watched the Netflix live stream this weekend of BTS's comeback concert. 300 million people watching which this is in the times and telegraph but it didn't have a source so netflix haven't confirmed it yet but this was their their comment they played a gig in south korea and it was streamed live on netflix and i think it makes it probably the biggest live stream of all time by by distance

1:09Steve:do you know how much netflix uh netflix paid for the privilege of uh having the rights to this i don't know how much but i mean i would think it's a normal sum because they've also got the exclusive documentary about BTS coming back, and that goes live later this week. So it's a double-pronged Netflix special. And the funniest thing was, the new album, Arurang, came out on Friday, probably one of the biggest releases of the year. And on the weekend, every single big streaming service, Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon, they all posted on Instagram saying, it's broken all our records, one after the other, sort of competing to show how big bts are on their service right right and i mean do you think with this tv deal do you think that's um there will be more of these type of deals then to come uh in the future i think so so netflix also recently had the harry styles comeback gig they didn't stream it live but they kind of filmed it and put it on netflix two days later so they're doing more music stuff and they're doing more live stuff like i don't know how closely you follow the world of pretend boxing matches not very closely is the answer a couple years ago they had that influencer jake paul and for mike tyson uh and netflix drew that and at the time they said that fight and i say fight i mean it was like you know when people get what you know men fight in pubs because they're drunk imagine if they were so drunk they're just sleepy and lazily pouring at each other it was like that but apparently 108 million people watched that live netflix said at the time so it's that kind of getting into these big things big big yeah i mean i find it interesting because you know it is um it's a i mean it's a favorite famous adage isn't it in the world of tv that music doesn't really rate uh and this uh has played out with well i mean the the termination of so many music shows in the end um certainly during the the 80s we were better represented musically on tv in the 70s and 80s with the likes of the old gray whistle test and revolver all sorts of shows even into the 90s with the white room and various experiments in trying to bring music to tv all of which obviously came to an end but i wonder if this suggests then that there is an appetite for music on tv or at least there is if the if the artist is a big enough draw but i wonder if there'll be any knock-on effect of this sort of success this level of success when it comes to TV controllers and their thoughts around music.

3:43Because there was a moment a few years ago, I think, when Netflix got really big into stand-up comedy and they started commissioning all these specials. And as a comedian, a Netflix deal was a really good thing for you because you could make decent money from putting on that. So it'd be interesting if they do get on that. So SoFi has done Harry Styles, has done BTS. I wonder if they, yeah, like you say, have they got ambitions to do a music show, a performances show, or is it just the biggest artists they can get for live streams?

4:07Steve:Yeah, I suspect that it's the latter. Right, three talking points from the past week. The first one, radio head guitarist Ed O 'Brien has revealed the band's new way of planning tours. 20 shows each year. No more, no less. That's what we're going to do. Just going to put it. We're just going to tell you we're going to do 20 shows. Once those 20 have gone, they're gone. That's a lot. Yeah, would you remember, like, this is what happened last year, but they didn't say at the time, but they did five. It was Madrid, wasn't it? Madrid, London. Copenhagen, I think, Berlin and somewhere in Italy, Bologna, I think it was, five nights each.

4:44And so, Eb was doing this interview about his new solo album, and the journalist, as they do, as fast as we politely turned the conversation around to Radiohead. And yeah, he was saying, yeah, every year we're going to do a different continent, and we'll do 20 shows a year. So they did Europe last year. They're not doing anything this year, he said, but then next year they probably will. And so it'll probably be maybe North America or Latin America or Asia. And I love the quote he said, he said, we're not spring chickens anymore. We can't do those kind of endless, endless tours. And they want to put their all into it.

5:17And it's interesting because it was also he was talking about that we want to put our all into every performance. We really want to make it a show. I mean, I wonder how festivals fit into that.

5:28How breakable is the 20 shows rule if Glastonbury comes in and says, how about playing next year and radioheader on north american year and they've done 20 shows already like i hope there's some wiggle room there for them to play other things one-offs

5:40Steve:okay um secondly well last week saw the launch of the annual global music reports from the industry body ifpi and it revealed how much money the industry made from recorded music last year and that was how much it was 31.7 billion dollars so this is like say it's recorded music it's not live it's not publishing it's just the recordings bit but it was up 6.4 percent which is faster growth than the year before and that's one of the stories we took away is that everything growth has been slowing down but now it's speeding up again and then here's the i mean it's just full of big numbers i could do all these all at the beginning of the show couldn't i but i think it's now 837 million people using paid streaming subscriptions, which is up from 702 million the year before.

6:29So about 85 million new people on a paid streaming thing last year. And then vinyl was the other stat that jumped out. So vinyl sales grew by 13.7%, and it's the 19th year in a row they've grown. And I keep seeing people saying, well, surely this vinyl boom is going to end sometime. It can't go on forever. but it's been 19 years now and it's still double digit growth like it's the real success story

6:53Steve:i mean obviously this is a global thing i was thinking about this because well would i be right in thinking this the increase uh and because obviously you know the the figures of the figures are up but are they up because well partly because of the expansion of music streaming or the increase in popularity of music streaming in in emerging markets so is it it's not necessarily you could have countries which are plateauing but the figure goes up around the world not necessarily led by america or the traditional european markets it's because other places in the world are catching up and those are where the new listeners or streamers are coming from yeah definitely they gave they sort of gave their launch event and they gave some of the stats out and i think it was i think every what was it there was i can't remember how many countries they cover in this report but all but one of them grew last year okay and i think one that didn't grow it was probably more to do with currency fluctuations because these things get quite broad.

7:51But yeah, I think the big places, Europe, North America, Asia, they're growing, growing still but slower. But yeah, it is like the Middle East, it's Latin America, Africa. So yeah, in that sense, it's exciting. And one of the things that came across there was, yeah, it's exciting, it's growth all over the place. It's not just one market or one kind of music. So the other thing, actually, China was the other thing that stood out from this. So China is now the fourth biggest recorded music market in the world. It overtook Germany last year. So you've got the US is top, biggest, Japan is second, and the UK is third, and Germany has always been fourth, and those were the kind of biggest four.

8:29But now China's there. It wasn't in the top 10 a decade ago, and now it's fourth, which says something else about how things are changing. Because a decade ago or maybe a bit longer China was basically a music piracy sort of wasteland like there was no money to be made in selling music there um now it's the fourth biggest market in

8:48Steve:the world and everyone's quite excited about that uh here's a bit of good news back in blighty uh the British government has u-turned on its preferred plan for regulating the way AIs can be trained on music and other forms of art uh so this is this must be this is good news for the music industry, is it? It is, yeah. So it's been bubbling for a while that the government's sort of figuring out, like every other government, what do we do about AI and copyright? And if AI companies go, we just want to hoover up all the music, all the TV shows, all the books, and train our models. And you've got the industry saying, you need to ask permission and pay us.

9:21And this report came out last year where the government said, we've got a few options here, but here's our preferred option, which was to say, basically, they could train on everything unless the rights holders, the labels in our case, had opted out and said, no, you can't train our music. And it reminded me of like, I mean, I'm a parent of two children. There were times when I was parenting them when I'd be like, I found a great compromise and everyone hated me because no one liked it. Because this option, the music industry hated this saying it was too much power to the AI companies to let them train everything unless you opt out.

9:54And the AI companies didn't like it either because they were like, this is too tight, we want looser rules. And essentially, the government put this report out last week saying, yeah, no one likes it, no one can agree what we should do either. So we're going back to square one and they're going to try and figure it out. So it was one of those stories where the government announces it's kind of easy U-turn, like the thing we wanted to do we're not going to do. And the music industry went, hooray, this is great news, it's a victory for our campaign. Because I don't know if you remember, a bunch of famous musicians, Dua Lipa, all kinds of people came out and said, we think this is terrible, don't do it.

10:28It was quite an organized campaign. But it doesn't mean it's not going to happen, it just means that the government is going right back to the drawing board and saying we don't know what to do yet. So what they eventually decided to do could still be bad for the music industry. But yeah, there was a kind of mini celebration. And actually at this IFPI event last week, the boss of the IFPI, Victoria Oakley, was asked about this and she said she thinks that governments and politicians are coming round to the music industry's arguments. So for a while they thought, oh God, they're going to go towards the AI companies.

11:00They're going to say, yeah, train on whatever you want because AI is our future. And she said that they think they've been looking at what the music industry has been doing, for example, signing deals with AI companies and doing partnerships. And she reckons that is having an effect and that politicians are saying, okay, not so fast. Let's figure out a way to do something that doesn't hurt musicians. So there is a good little trend there for the industry, but it doesn't

11:25Steve:mean that it couldn't suddenly swing in the future okay um any other business for this week i mean i was going to bring you you know all the all the news from the south by southwest festival but we ended up we had a bit of problem we had we had some problems getting to austin last week i've told this story a couple of times but just in case you don't know we were on a flight from the uk taking off on Thursday at midday. Four hours into the flight, the captain came on the intercom and said, the plane is reporting a fault because apparently the plane automatically reports its own faults. So it was reporting a fault back to Heathrow.

12:05Steve:And the captain was saying, even I don't know what it is, although I've been told it can't be fixed in Austin. And so we're turning the plane around and we're going back to Heathrow. So we got four hours to, I think we were just over Greenland when we did the U-turn and came back to Heathrow. And the rearranged flight wasn't until the following afternoon. So we ended up getting to Austin basically a day and a bit late. We arrived at the hotel where we were staying at half past 11 Austin time, which that's 4.30 in the morning, UK time. so I mean to be fair I still managed to get out and see a couple of bands that night but it meant meant going to bed something like half past six UK time and I don't usually get jet lag going up but this time anyway what it meant was we had to because we had a show to do on Monday a live show for six music which with the time difference meant going on air at 11 in the morning Austin time so So really we only had Saturday and Sunday to prepare a whole three-hour program.

13:12Steve:So I didn't, in the end, I don't think I didn't get to one panel because obviously South by Southwest during the day, there's lots of talk shops, workshops and panels where people are discussing all the things which we discuss here, you know, AI's impact, the future of music. The only thing I did see was because it was in the venue where we were broadcasting from was a man who was obviously selling a new way of lighting a gig and spent a good, I mean, I was there for 15 minutes where he was just reeling off specs and showing how the lights worked in different, you know, if you program them differently.

13:51Steve:So I didn't see anything. I don't, I didn't really get the impression. I'm not sure. I'm not sure any real decisions were made or there was any huge news coming out of South by, But as I say, that's possibly because we were just running around like headless chickens, really. I did get to, amongst the people I spoke to, though, I spoke to Dev Sherlock, who I really like. He's one of the eight, I think there's a team of eight music bookers who program the music part of South by Southwest. And he's a bit of an anglophile, is Dev. So I like him a lot. But he was saying that, I mean, South by Southwest is partly there to spot trends in music.

14:29Steve:It is a sort of barometer of what's going on globally in music and trends in music. And, you know, he was saying there was a huge representation of Latin artists in town, which reflects everything we've been saying. But, I mean, this is an interesting point which he made, which is that singing in a different language to English, which used to be a barrier to having a hit, now it hardly makes any difference. It's not a barrier anymore to success. And a big star on the global stage can now sing in a different language to English, and that's quite a shift to where we've been in the past. But, yeah, from the UK perspective, the showcases went well.

15:18Steve:The British Music Embassy was set up again. This Department of Business and Trade get involved in trying to, you know, obviously showcase the UK music industry in one place. So it's the hub for all things British. And there are showcase gigs in the afternoon and one in the evening. And, you know, they get people together. And it's a place where people can obviously network. and anyone who's interested in British music, you know, will pop by at some points. But, yeah, it was interesting. I would say, I mean, I've got no figures to back this up, but it did feel like there were slightly fewer delegates from the UK in attendance.

16:02Steve:One or two familiar faces I always see weren't there. And, I mean, there's going to be loads of reasons for this. One is the expense of getting to America now and, you know, and applying for visas if you don't have a visa. So it's time consuming and it's expensive. But also those meetings that you went to America to do face to face are some of those people from America coming to South by Southwest in London. And therefore, you don't have to go there because some of them are coming here. So that might be an explanation. But yeah, it was all right. As I say, more more Latin music, a lot actually weirdly talking about China as well.

16:41Steve:More music from Japan and China. I mean, the diversity, I think, has increased. Also, the other thing, and this comes back to, remember we were saying no bands in the top 40 here in the UK, far less bands playing and a lot more solo artists, which is partly a musical trend, but partly, obviously, I think speaks volumes about the economics of being an artist in the present day. but you know i'd i'd there was not much news in my inbox from south by this year the one thing i did get is there was a showcase event of music being made by plants there's a tech company have a thing where they basically connect up various things to plants and it makes sounds and i almost sent it to you thinking well you know you might have an hour on your hands to go and see some plants make music and see what it's like there is a lot of bonkers stuff out there i mean can you imagine how many startup companies are in town because the other thing obviously this year was usually the the film part of south by and the tech part so by and the music uh leg of south by they all run one after the other whereas this year is the first time they experimented with everyone being in town at the same time and all of them running concurrently so it was quite it's quite because they all the lanyard obviously for the different parts of south by they're all different colours.

18:07Steve:So you can work out the tech people by the colour of their lanyard. And when you're at a gig, you can easily identify someone in tech. Not just by the way they're standing and nodding at the music or scratching their chins. It's because of the lanyard. But anyway, yeah, it was interesting, I think. What's next? Oh, there was a report about the importance and influence of black music culture for the music industry. Tell us about that because I miss this being a white. Yeah, well this came from UK Music, the industry body, and it's a really big undertaking because they were trying to basically get to the bottom of, okay, what of all the value the music industry created in the last 30 years, how much of that derives from black music?

18:56And it's capital B, capital M, like the support was making a definition of it's not just music made by black musicians, it's what they've influenced, the genres they've created. So everything from thinking about Chuck Berry's influence on the Beatles or Chicago House's role in UK Rave or even Reggae and Dubb, their kind of intersection with punk. It's such an interwoven thing that it's really hard to get to the bottom of it economically, but that's what they've done. So they support basically just, yes, 24.5 billion quid out of 30 billion, the total market in the last 30 years, is from black music.

19:34And I guess that the point of this report was not just to come up with a number, because I think if you, unless you're a racist, people have a sense of this, a sense of how important black musicians and music has been. But the reporters are saying, right, well look, now we've got a figure, now we've quantified the value, let's talk about making sure that black musicians now have opportunities to do as well as they can. Let's make sure the industry is diverse. So it's kind of almost a call to action. It's saying, look, celebrate this, but also stuff needs to be fixed still to give people opportunity.

20:08So I thought it was a really good point. It wasn't a complaining report, it was a celebratory report and also a here are some things we need to do now to unlock further growth. So it's a really interesting report if anyone can go with this. It's on UK Music's website, I think, in their reports section, but it's well worth it read.

20:23Steve:uh i tell you what this is a bugbear of mine uh but are you annoyed occasionally that spotify doesn't really seem to understand you well it's now testing a feature where you can give its algorithm maybe a shove in the right direction as i say it's constantly a bugbear of mine because um it suggests music which clearly patently i'm not going to like i mean i know i'm a contrary bugger at the best of times but you know the the idea that um the algorithm is it's just not it's not well honed enough to do the job for for me so what can i now do to help yeah well this is being tested but i think it's a fascinating thing so this is about something called taste profiles and taste profiles in spotify are what it thinks it understands about you right um everyone has a taste profile based on everything I listened to and went.

21:22And so it's kind of testing this in New Zealand at the moment, but what normally happens is it starts in one market like that, and then it rolls out to the other English-speaking countries first. So I think we'll get it soon. And it will show you what your taste profile is. It will tell you, here's what I think you are. And there's a screenshot they published showing someone's taste profile. So I'll read it out to you and you can sort of see. So, your music taste is a vibrant mix of contemporary pop sounds with artists like Gracie Abrams and the K-pop group Illid frequently in a rotation. You also gravitate towards the distinctive hip-hop influences of artists like Don Tolliver, showing a preference for modern vocal during tracks.

21:59Which is just quite weird when you read it out or read it, but everyone has got this paragraph that summarizes them in Spotify's eyes. Mine probably just says, Jesus Christ, Stuart, lay off the hairy rock, would you? So what's going to happen is you'll be able to go and see this in Spotify's app, see what your profile is, and then you'll be a little prompt box, like talking to an AI chatbot, there'd be a prompt box. And you can say, I want to hear more British young bands or play me some more classic rhyme tracks, or I want to get my big beat nostalgia on, or whatever you want. You talk to it in natural language, you'll say, right, actually, I like this, not that.

22:35I don't know if you, I assume you can be negative too. I assume you can say, never play me the red hot chili peppers ever again. And actually, I was doing a show with producer Joe yesterday and we were talking about like, what if you could say never play me AI generated music? Would it take that on board? Basically, you're going to be able to talk to Spotify and tell it what it's got wrong about you and tell it what you want more of, which genuinely feels like, if it works, a step forward. Because like you say, I think everyone's had those moments where you're like, why was this played to me? I've been using you for 10 years.

23:07Why don't you understand? I hate this. But yeah, I'd love to hear. It'd be interesting. I mean, we should, if it ever comes here we should see what our taste profiles are and see how accurate we think they

23:16Steve:are yeah i'm all up for that but given uh given that spotify thinks i'm a hundred years old from my music test and uh and the stuff that it churns out that it thinks i might like i'm not hopeful it'll be an entirely accurate profile of who i am um right finally uh now Now, do you think, have we got a winner for, when it comes to the big nostalgia tour, because there's a big nostalgia tour coming your way, which, I mean, could be, this raises the bar somewhat. Tell us the lineup. Doesn't it just, I got this in my inbox yesterday, it's Salt-N-Pepa, TLC, and En Vogue, which I was going to say was the ultimate 90s nostalgia trip, but Salt-N-Pepa are 80s, aren't they?

24:06Yeah, yeah, yeah. but it's going to be it's only north america for now but my god i'd go and see that here because having seen i think on vogue did glastonbury last year and they were great i only saw it on tv um tlc did glastonbury year before they were great so it's they're quite up

24:22Steve:for the package tour aren't they into into nostalgia in the states i mean i know we do we do it as well i mean all the time i mean i just just before starting this i noticed the wonder the stuff are going out on tour with the Inspiral Carpet supporting and that's sort of but you need three I guess to be a package tour don't you but I know in America I know some British artists have teamed up in the States and are now replicating those tours where two big UK bands play together they've done it in America because obviously they were never as popular in the States as they were here in terms of profile and record sales and stuff but if you put the two of them out together there are enough Anglophiles and fans of both bands that when you put them together, they'll fill a decent-sized venue.

25:08Steve:But yeah, but now I think that idea is coming back this way. I'm alluding to a tour that I can't mention. Oh, man, would I like it? Yes, you would, I think, yeah. And it's not being announced for, I think, another month yet. Okay, what do you think? I'll tell you off air. But yeah, the package tour, big in the States. I had an idea actually for a Britpop one. The Britpop bands that won't reunify to menswear, elastica, and longpigs. How much money, bribery, persuasion, arm-fisting would that need? But this Salt and Pepper TLC, there's another layer to this, which is like, you know we often talk about how artists of a certain era maybe didn't necessarily have the best time with their labels?

25:54So Salt and Pepper are currently suing Universal Music to try and get their masters back. TLC famously stormed into their labels' offices saying, where's our money, at the height of their fame. And I think En Vogue was sued by one label at one point because they said they'd broken a contract. And then there was some stuff about how little they were earning from their early albums. So all these three artists, they've all been in that era when contracts were, how should we put this, a little bit. And so now they're getting together, going out on the road, hopefully making some good money. So that's the other thing here, I think.