Twigs Vs Twigs! Just how big is country music in the UK now?; Timbaland's new artist is unreal; Digging for deep cuts; and how much is AI Slop worth?

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, whilst also bringing you stories and comments about the past the past the music.

0:30industry works uh is Stuart's big number for this week which is Stuart what have you got right I wanted desperately some good news it's basically where this comes from we all need some good news so the big figure is 50 000 pounds um that's not the price of a tank of petrol for your car just yet um that's how much Sam Fender has donated to charity youth music from his latest tour oh right okay so um so 50 grand to youth music that's that's good and it's going what's is there a specific project that they're going to use it for um yeah so he it's from donations from ticket sales with new tour and it's part of this rescue the roots campaign that youth music runs to kind of support uh projects around around the country working with young people music so it's going to match fund it so 50 000 pounds becomes 100 000 pounds and it's going directly to projects in the northeast of england so it's kind of an example of actually he's not just giving back to where he came from in terms of grassroots music he's given back to literally where he came from and projects to find the next sam fender you know in newcastle that kind of region of the country and this follows on from like you remember last year he gave he gave his 25 000 mercury prize winnings to the music venue trust yeah yeah so i mean like if you've got friends listening people listening what friends who think sam fender he's rubbish he's a good egg you need more of those in the world that's our feel good story for this week uh here's three other talking points which we thought were worth sharing with you uh starting with uh this uh everyone justin timberlake jay-z madonna i guess most famously missy elliott they've all collaborated with the superstar producer Timberland, but his latest musical partner is, I'm going to have a run at this, Tata Tak-To-Me.

2:21But here's the twist. She's not real. Or is she? Is this open to debate? Well, it's seemingly so. So you know how we talk a lot about Suno, the AI music service, and how it's kind of quite controversial within the industry, and artists don't like it because it was how it was trained. But Timberland is quite a fan. He actually joined the company as a strategic advisor a couple of years ago. And now he's got this company called Stage Zero developing AI artists. So they're going to be developing, not just making AI music, but actually creating the virtual artists to kind of release it. And this first one is, I'm going to try it too, Tata Taktumi, I think.

3:00So she's kind of a solo female electronic music singer slash rapper. The first video came out last year and actually Timbaland appeared in it. And it's a very strange video. It's like Timberland sort of boogieing around with a virtual avatar next to him. And the reason it's in news is this week, they signed a record deal with this company called Pacific Music Group, which is based in Asia. So this virtual artist now has a record deal and a marketing sort of partnership, and they're going to be trying to make her. I say her. What do we say? What pronoun do we use for this kind of thing? Is it an it or her?

3:33I don't know what you say when the person is not a real person. but the other thing I found interesting was Timberland's taken a lot of flack about this project in the last couple of years like in the comments section of Instagram people are saying you know why are you working with Suno, why are you making AI music and even like why is your first AI artist an Asian woman and is there kind of a bit of a worry about cultural appropriation here and in this press release they had a whole point of saying no no the artist behind Tatatatum is of Filipino heritage adding a deeper cultural dimension to the project and they said that her personal identity remains intentionally private, which if you're a cynic is a bit of a, my girlfriend goes to another school and you wouldn't know her.

4:14But taking it at face value, there is a human behind this. And this Tatatumi is kind of her avatar. So it's one of those stories about, yeah, they're going to try and make this a hit and it's got Timberland behind it. But so far, this artist has just over 2000 listens on Spotify and the biggest song has 45 ,000 streams there. So there's quite a lot of work to do. But yeah, I mean, it's a weird thing. Because Timberland, he and Missy Elliott particularly, didn't they? They had such a huge role in changing the way music sounded at that time. And so people are looking at that going, right, and this is what you're doing now.

4:52And quite a lot of people are not so keen on it. Will the Timberland brand, though, help this? this is the difference between other AI artists popping up on the streaming services. In this case, instead of being an anonymous producer, this is Timberland. So it's all being sold on Timberland, I guess. That's it. And if anyone's going to make interesting sounds from an AI music thing, it should be him. He's not just going to be there pressing a button saying, write me a song about the club and bosh it out. like you'd think he's going to be doing because sooner i think we talked about this last week a bit its whole direction of travel is going look we've got all these tools for proper musicians and producers to do complicated stuff with we're not just a presser button a song pops out thing so yeah but i mean there is this debate like will he will he help this will he help this get over people's distrust or is the alternative is this going to harm his kind of standing and his legacy and you know obviously people across on the internet are saying this this trashes your entire legacy but i don't know he should be able to do something interesting with it so we'll see but so far she's only had a couple of songs out but i would assume now we have this deal this record label deal we'll be seeing more music in the year ahead and we'll find out if it is any good so what they've really signed to the record label is timberland in a way rather than i mean obviously they've signed the artist but the artist is manufactured by well whoever the human is behind it and the Timberland brand that's what they've signed well that's the interesting thing isn't it because does this depend on Timberland being involved like if he got bored and didn't stop doing it what have they signed if this got an artist that we don't know are behind it and an avatar character yeah so yeah it's kind of weird like what is a record deal for a virtual artists.

6:47I mean, they obviously haven't released the details, but yeah, I would think it's very much about they're working with Timberland and it's Timberland's new music is going to be coming out with this, another, but I think the plan is he's going to release a bunch of virtual artists if this works. Right, okay. While we're on the subject of AI and AI music, obviously some artists have been getting very cross about fake AI generated songs appearing on their own Spotify profiles, but now Spotify are doing something about it. They've found a way of trying to help out the real artists here. Yeah, well this has been happening more and more and you've probably seen the stories like I have where a song appears on an artist's profile and all their followers on Spotify or Apple Music get a thing saying here's a new song from Artist X and then it turns out to be not them and they didn't think about it and they say hang on, that's not me the best to take one of the best, the crazy example was there was a country musician called Blaze Foley who had some new music suddenly pop up and he's been dead since 1989, which isn't always a barrier to releasing new music if it's been found in the vaults.

7:55But so yeah, the point here being like the way stream works is if music comes out attached to your profile as an artist, your followers get pinged, it appears in their new music playlist that Friday and it gets it in front. and as always Spotify gets the lion's share of the criticism for this even though it's not a one company problem it's everywhere so it's got this new thing it announced last week called it's called artist profile protection and it's quite simple really if you're a musician you can say nothing goes live on my profile unless I approve it right and if something comes up that's not me I can decline it and it won't go live as me right I mean I say very simple you know the stuff to make this work it's probably quite hard work um it does mean you have to remember to approve your own releases because if you forget that you've got a single coming out and you haven't said to spotify this is definitely me yeah it won't so they've warned people you have to do that but but yeah it's the first real streaming service to say okay this is the problem and this is what we're doing about it and unashamedly good a good thing i think you know giving giving control back So in theory, this should mean that your favorite artist doesn't suddenly release a techno banger when they're a roots American artist, which is the sort of thing that's been happening in the last year.

9:10Music's latest bitter lawsuit is, ladies and gentlemen, Twigs versus Twigs. That's FKA Twigs versus the indie band The Twigs. So it's a spat over who owns the name or... Um, yeah, well, yeah, yeah. Who came, who came first? Uh, tweaks or tweaks? Twig or Twigs. Yeah. So yeah, the, the Twigs came first. So they're this American independent band. They've been releasing music since 1996. Uh, so very, very, and FK Twigs, obviously she, I think her first album came out in 2014. So and actually that year, the Twigs did sue her for trademark infringement when she was about to kind of play a gig in the US.

9:56Right. And at the time, the lawsuit was withdrawn, and there was kind of reports saying they'll probably reach a deal now, and she'll probably pay some money to allow them to coexist. Because that's what you can do with trademarks. You don't have to win or lose. You can actually reach a deal where you both coexist. Right, okay. And now this year, apparently, the Twigs sent her, suddenly out of the blue, a cease and desist order saying, we're going to threaten you with a court injunction, if you carry on using this name. And now she is suing them right back, saying there's no trademark infringement here.

10:27It's not a thing. They're just trying to get money out of me. And that's the accusation. They're just trying to get money. Which is, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a, so if I put my legal hat on, the whole point about trademark infringement is there needs to be confusion. You need to prove confusion. People will think that the twigs are FKA twigs or vice versa. And FKA twigs' lawyers are saying that's not happening. No one thinks the twigs are me. No one thinks I'm the twigs. you know we're in different genres different levels of popularity it's quite a brutal bit in the filing where they compare their spotify numbers um but the twigs presumably for they do have a case and then like the other thing about trademarks is you kind of have to protect them or you lose them it's the reason why like if i write in an article if i write biro in an article when i mean pen i'll get a letter from biro's lawyers pointing out that biro is not a generic name for pen it's a brand because they have to protect their trademarks so in a way as a band you do have to predict this.

11:22But I mean, I think it's maybe a sign of the times really that we're running out of names. Yes. Well, I mean, this has been true ever since I think the 90s. I mean, there was a whole raft of British bands who had to alter their name even slightly because there was a band mainly in the States who said, hang on a second, we're Swede. and suede became, in America, the London suede. Of course. Isn't it? And then charlatans UK. And the weirdest one, when I was running Deceptive Records, our first signing was a band. And this tells you how badly we have run out of names. We signed, our first signing was a band called Collapsed Lung.

12:10And we had a letter from the States from a band called Collapsing Lung. Oh, wow. So, yeah, but I think they were of sort of new metal origin, collapsing lung. So there wasn't too much of a crossover. You didn't have any football songs. No, they had no, yeah, they wouldn't understand Eat My Girl for a start, would they? So there's, yeah, there was no. You might touch down with that big hit, I think. Yeah, no confusion to be had there, but yes. That's the thing, I think, yeah. So this is a case like FKA Twig is saying, they're just trying to get money out of me, but the Twigs may well feel like this is us and we need to defend it.

12:49So we'll find out. I mean, should I do the usual line that we do? Yeah, of course. This will probably get settled out, of course. Of course. And this feels like an example where they should be able to coexist as different artists and in their own lanes. But for now, FKA Twigs is suing and the Twigs are threatening to sue. Okay. Any other business? this you've got a correction to the bts story from last week's episode um that figure what was the figure we said 300 million people watch their concert on netflix um i think that was a little ott it was and it's not my fault i never thought it was genuinely never thought it was this is fake news from the times and the telegraph newspapers right and in fact i think if we go back i think i said this is not an official stat so we should be careful yes at least i hope i said that yeah um but yeah bts played a concert in seoul netflix streamed it live and yeah these reports said 300 million people watch but netflix put a press release out saying it was 18.4 million people right which is some discrepancy uh dear broadsheets uh we we understand you have been known to exaggerate in the past but this this is a triumph of exaggeration but it is and i don't know where the number came from originally uh which but i mean it's the thing is it's still a huge number isn't it like 18.4 million people watching your concert yeah is a huge you know but it just suddenly seems a bit small because of the previous claim but um but yeah i mean that's that's still a lot of people and we talked last week i think about how netflix maybe doing more of this stuff i mean that that to me counts as a success and and you know bts are continuing to set every streaming service's records alike yeah um i've got a question for you listeners have you ever been to a gig where the first band on uh started the moment the doors opened or possibly they were on as the doors opened um this because i thought about this after on a friday night just gone so i was at the six music festival we did a show uh live to wear in the evening but then I DJed as part of the Six Music Indie Forever club night, warming up for Nick and Beth.

15:06Beth Disso and Nick Grimshaw were on after me. But yeah, due to what I can only imagine is or can describe as some cock up in the timings, my set started at midnight. the doors opened at midnight so when i played my first record there were i counted five people in the room as i as i started so have you ever come across a band being on stage so early that that the crowd had yet to arrive and i mentioned this probably because the one this brings up the the great Coldplay story when they were playing Reading. It was their first time at Reading. So they're a very young, not very well-known Coldplay.

15:59First on opening the NME Radio 1 stage, whoever the sponsor was that year, probably both of them, but that stage, the 10th. And yeah, there was a problem with the gates opening and the gates were going to open late, but the stage manager who I guess didn't want the stage to run late. You don't want stages running late. That's the stage managers. That's the one thing which really, well, one of the things that irritates the stage manager is if bands overrun. Your stage is running late. The stage manager said, well, yeah, you've got to go on. and so Coldplay went on before the gates opened and played to an empty, the first part of their set, played their set, legend has it, to an empty tent and I don't know how, I mean obviously I think they were quite irked by this as you would be and I don't know if this is the reason but Coldplay never played Reading again.

17:01Ever? Ever since then, since that. so examples of bands going on before the doors opened or as the doors opened we'll give you the email address a bit later and sorry go on I was going to say this is not quite right but I once saw Guns N' Roses play in the stadium and they came on on time and 30 ,000 people had to rush from the bar because no one goes to Guns N' Roses assuming they'll be on on time so they came on to like a half third full standing stadium because everyone just assumed they'll never come on that time it was great it was like those you know those time lapse videos you see of people going into a gig it was like empty it was like that in real time people running from the bar going Jesus they're on very good so we'll give you the email talking of getting in touch with the program here's an answer to a listener question thank you very much Pete Felden And Pete got in touch to say, hi, guys.

18:01At this time of year, various commentators on the BBC, both specialists and others, tell us that country music is the fastest growing genre in the UK. Is this true? I know it's bigger than it used to be, but for several years running, it has supposedly been growing faster. So will this growth eventually lead to the eclipse of all other music genres? is is country music the fastest growing genre in the uk and if so can we prove that or disprove that so yes with caveats the caveat being that fast is growing from a small base yeah so there's probably things growing faster that were invent genres were invented two years ago that have grown 700 000 in two years but yeah so i've got two sources here one is the bpi which is a labels body here.

18:52And the other is Spotify, who pulled some data for us exclusively. So the BPI actually put a report out in 2024, well, last year for 2024, saying that since in the last two years, country had doubled its share of the UK singles market. And this is where the small base comes in. So in 2022, we have 1.6 % of the UK singles market, had 2.1 % in 2023 and 3.3 % in 2024. four. So it's doubled, but it's still just 3.3 % that year. We haven't got the figures for last year yet. But that makes it the sixth biggest genre behind pop and rock and hip hop and R &B and dance. It was the sixth biggest genre. And I think it was just under 3 % of albums, streams and sales that year too.

19:34So it's big growth, but from a very, very small base. But then Spotify, I asked them about what they're seeing in the UK. And they told me since 2020, so the last five and a half years, there's been a 238 % rise in country streams in the UK and that's comfortably the biggest of any country in Europe. And again, so Rick there, who just said that comes, he said, it's probably not the fastest rising genre in percentage because something like funk has probably grown by thousands of percent. But the other thing he said was nearly half, so 45 % of the Spotify country streams come from people aged under 30.

20:12So it's kind of a lot of young people listening to country that's driving this trend. And then looking at some of the stuff that's been making this happen. So the big country styles like Morgan Wallen and Jelly Roll, they've had a big impact. Shaboozie had a really big track in 2024. It was like a huge pop hit in a way. It was big in the charts. It wasn't just a country. And that was the year that Cowboy Carter came out, the Beyonce album, Post Malone had a country album that year. So that was a year of particular sort of lots of stuff going on, not just like core country artists, but the big pop artists who are getting into country.

20:46And yeah, and then the other thing people were saying when I was saying what's happening now is they're saying it's almost starting to become a bit blurrier to track because I don't know, who's a good example? Seamat, for example. She's definitely got a strong country influence, but it's not just that. She's not a country artist only and there's more artists like that who've been influenced by what's happening but yeah so i suppose to answer the question it is probably the fastest growing big genre in the uk but it's not going to eclipse everything else for a while yet but but i mean as as it's grown it sort of has a self-perpetuating effect because it's now worth big country stars coming over here to play concerts they know they can fill arenas and stadiums so more of them do it and at the same time people are listening to country music the barriers to listening to it have really come down if you like one country song one country artist you'll get recommended more by your streaming service you'll gradually find your way into it so yeah it's growing and I think it's an exciting thing for people who work with country artists because this is a good market for them and I'm based in Europe too I once saw Deezer I once saw a map of genres unexpectedly popular in different countries of the world and apparently Germany was huge for country music at that time and they had like a big cowboy hat on this on Germany in this map so so it's been like all kinds of things I'm around with but yeah so yeah it's growing it's not the biggest genre and and yeah rock and pop aren't under threat just yet um it's obviously isn't this country um but you mentioned like the UK and it's sort of happening in Europe it's happening in the states as well to a certain extent where at least with a sort of new wave of country artists.

22:29And I only know this because it was something that came up in conversation with Deb Sherlock, who's one of the programmers for South by Southwest, who was saying that for, obviously South by Southwest, starting in Austin, Texas, 40 years ago, you know, the majority of music was country linked, you know, and then country music began to stagnate for quite some time. but he was saying there were far more country artists at this year's South by Southwest than previous years because there's been more experimentation with the genre there's a new wave of younger artists coming through who are not just you know just repeating what's gone before um so it's it's even happening happening there to a certain extent yeah I once did interview we did a whole report about country music a few years ago from music ally and someone there was saying yeah streaming is helping country reach more people around the world but streaming has also helped more music from around the world reach young country artists and so their influence palette is much wider and yeah so it's kind of um it's interesting i mean i don't know i sometimes feel like i should know more about country like i need to spend some time like investigating the new artists because i think a lot of brits we still have this cliche thoughts don't we about it's what country music is so i need to spend a day just like going right who are the ones who are new and exciting.

23:52And finally for this week, by the way, thank you very much Pete for that question. Do you prefer deep cuts to big hits? If you do, can we point you in the direction of a new website which is called The Hidden Jams, which is trying to help people discover the obscurities in bands' catalogues? So essentially, and this is obviously fan-driven, isn't it um and who knows what this is going to throw up but the idea is yeah if you want to find a really good uh i don't know radio head track say that isn't one of the big hits hits um then this is the place where you can go and recommend something so it's it's shining a light on the um yeah on the obscurities in a band's catalogue yeah or alternatively it's going to start a lot lot of arguments.

24:44Because yeah, it is, it wants to be, I think, I've got a press release, and it wants to be the Wikipedia of deciding which songs are best in a band's catalogue. So you register as a fan and then you vote on your favourite tracks and it turns those into rankings. And it's starting with rock bands because that obviously seemed the place to start. So it goes from like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and R.E.M. through to Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead to some modern bands. And it's interesting, I mean, It is interesting because I don't know. I thought of it as deep cuts, but it's maybe some of the tracks that are top aren't exactly unknown.

25:19Right. So like the top-ranked track for Radiohead is Paranoid Android. Okay. Which is, I know it's not creep, you know, it's not, but it certainly wasn't an under, you know, under the radar. Did it get to number one? It was number one or number two, wasn't it? It was a big, it was a hit. Yeah, it was a big hit. To be fair, like Weird Fish's arpeggio is second. but I think even that has had a TikTok viral moment which is the other thing here some of these tracks that you thought of as obscure deep cuts a few years ago are now the biggest tracks for that band because they've gone big on TikTok randomly so it's hard to find what a deep cut is and that's played out on the streaming services in a lot of cases isn't it so this almost exists for some bands already because there's that pavement track that wasn't one of their best known tracks that became as you say had its moment and that's top or second in their Spotify rankings.

26:12I think that's their most listened to tracks. But that was because, you know, for a time, loads of people listened to it. That's it, yeah. And it's like, you know, for REN, for example, Radio Free Europe is their top ranked song on this platform. Right. Because that's what the fans have chosen or the fans who've registered. I'll spare you the Black Rose one, but I'll send that as you to the playlist if you like. Thank you very much. But this follows on, I mean, some fans of certain bands have done this sort of work already, I think. I remember when I was interviewing Radiohead, I can't remember for what record, and looking online, doing some prep, I found a fan site that had listed every Radiohead song in order of how much they liked it and importance and how much the fans liked it and everything.

27:03so it was all of radio heads songs from top to bottom and i just read out what their worst four songs were and they were they were set there going there was one from there was one from the pop is dead ep i think and they went oh yeah oh yeah that was that wasn't good but it's it's like yeah the entire the entire radio head back catalogue uh ranked by a fan i mean there's I think it can be a brutal wake up cool guy. Because I suppose the interesting thing would be to compare some of these rankings on this hidden jam site with, with the streaming totals. Are they going to, are they going to match those and follow them or they'd be different?

27:41Because if you're a band planning a tour, this could be quite useful information. If you're not sniffy about seeing what the fans like and playing it, you know, maybe the kind of band that looks at this thing is right. We're not playing any of the top 10 from here because we're an artist. We're playing all new material. That's not even on this site yet. That's it for this week. Thank you very much for listening. If you are enjoying the show, please do spread the word. You can also support us via Patreon. In fact, if you sign up to be a superfan, you get to join us for our weekly lock-in, where you get to stay behind, well, after hours for an extra 15 or 20 minutes of kind of bonus material, I guess we'd call it.

28:24And it's actually quite a good time to mention and welcome another new superfan, Stephen Rayner. Bless you. You can join Stephen and the rest of the gang behind the lock-in doors just by becoming a superfan of the show, the address patreon.com slash the price of music, patreon.com slash the price of music. Or if you'd simply like to get in touch with us about anything, really, anything you don't understand about how the industry works or where the money goes, how much stuff costs, how much do people get paid, all this type of stuff. Or if you're after some guidance or advice from the professionals, drop us a line at thepriceofmusicpodcast at gmail.com.

29:09That's thepriceofmusicpodcast at gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you. And we'll be back next week. Till then, take care. Cheerio.

29:23Hey.