Why did Taylor Swift snub YouTube? Did Bad Bunny's Superbowl show boost his streaming numbers? Do teenagers want to go to gigs any more?

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. I'm Steve Lemack and he's Stuart Dredge. This week, artists prioritising fans over streaming services, Trump versus Bad Bunny. and what are the key ways, do you think, of encouraging teenagers back to live music? All of that. But first, here's a stat to amaze your friends with. Our big figure this week, Stuart.

0:38Stu:Okay, big figure this week is$60 billion, and that is how much money YouTube made last year, which comes from the financial results of its parent company, Alphabet. And this is kind of interesting for us, well, I hope it is anyway, because YouTube has become probably the second biggest payer of the music industry behind Spotify over the last years. So yeah, they released their financial results. They made just over$40 billion from ads last year. And I was looking at that thinking, I wish I knew how much they made from subscriptions because that's the other part of YouTube where you pay for YouTube either to get the music service or to just remove the ads.

1:17Stu:And I was thinking, I wish I knew that. It's probably hard to work out if I was better at maths. and then during their earnings call where they talked to analysts about the results one of the execs went yeah so last year our annual revenue is past 60 billion dollars and even i can do that maths without too many problems so 60 billion dollars for youtube 40 billion dollars with ads and that means that youtube makes 20 billion dollars a year from people paying for subscriptions and that's something that the music industry is very happy about because it increases the royalties

1:44Steve:that they get brilliant all right here's this week's three main news stories then that we thought we should share with you starting with well actually some less good news for youtube this week as it lost out to spotify and apple music for the premiere of taylor swift's new music video why is the premiere of a video important and why did taylor swift swerve youtube do we think

2:10Stu:i'm detecting a little bit of a premiere of video is not important in your voice there

2:15Steve:No, I'm genuinely interested. Obviously, I mean, it brings people. I guess if all of Taylor Swift's socials are pointing you in a certain direction, then the direction of travel, you know, the company at the end of it, they're very excited because obviously you can have an influx of millions of people to your sites. But is it, I mean, I guess I've answered my own question, but is that it? Is there bragging rights involved? Does it tell us something about Taylor Swift or Taylor Swift's management's attitude to the various services where she could have gone?

2:51Stu:Yeah, well, it does, I think. Because, yeah, the video came out last Friday. I don't know if you've seen it. It's quite interesting because it features everyone who was on the sofa with her on the Graham Norton show last October. Right. That's the concept. And what happened was there was this actor, Donald Gleeson on it, who said, I think he said, oh, I'd love to star in a Taylor Swift music video.

3:08Steve:Right.

3:09Stu:And lo, it's come to pass, which that seems to be how it works. and we should think about who we want to star in a music video by. Say it and it'll happen. But yeah, so it came out on Friday. And like you say, it's a really big deal, especially for the sort of Taylor Swift band community because every time she does something visual, whether it's a post or a video, it's full of Easter eggs and references and little things and they can then spend days online decoding it and discussing it. So people do want to watch it as soon as it goes live. And on Friday it went live. It was only on Apple Music and Spotify.

3:40Stu:It wasn't on YouTube, which is very unusual for a music video. You don't normally see that kind of windowing, it's called. And no one said why. Taylor Swift doesn't really say much about what she's doing, she just puts it out. There's one theory that there's an argument that's been going on in the US between YouTube and the people who do the charts there, Billboard. It's just pulled out of their charts because it thinks that all streams should count the same and the chart people think that paid streams. So if you're paying for services, you count for more. so YouTube pulled out so there is a possibility you could say well I'm going to put my video on Apple Music and Spotify for a couple of days because that will count towards the charts and YouTube won't

4:18Steve:and then it goes on YouTube

4:20Stu:so yeah so I mean that's the theory but no one has confirmed it or denied it but it meant that if you're a fan you had to go to those two platforms to watch which is not great news if you're a Taylor Swift fan you're not on Spotify or Apple Music but as we speak it's Tuesday now and the video went on YouTube on Sunday and it's currently the number one trending music video on YouTube. It's had five and a half million views. So like all's well that ends well, but it'd be interesting to see if other videos go the same way, if they say, well, actually we could go. I mean, the other thing that would happen here is if you're Spotify and Apple Music, you're going to give that video an almighty push.

4:55Stu:You're going to put it in front of everyone who might conceivably like Taylor Swift. So there might be an argument there for saying, we'll do this deal and they'll really push it for us and then it can go on YouTube.

5:05Steve:Yeah. Bad Bunny did the Super Bowl on Sunday, which, I mean, it might have passed you by, created virtually no news whatsoever. It was universally applauded in the, hang on a minute. There was, obviously, as you predicted last week, and even before the Super Bowl took place, there was a gap in our running order, which was specifically left for reaction to Bad Bunny's performance at the Super Bowl.

5:36Stu:and a certain president didn't disappoint. He didn't, no. And it was, I mean, I don't know if you stay up for the Super Bowl. I'm too old for that now. I can't function on a Monday if I stayed up till 6am watching American football. But yeah, I think it's probably one of the most anticipated musical moments of the year already, isn't it? Because the Super Bowl is a huge TV event. Bad Bunny is a huge superstar. But then there's a whole politics swimming around it. And I think, did we talk about this? He was at the Grammy Awards and he spoke out about ICE, the immigration agency in the States, and said that it's terrible what's happening in Minneapolis.

6:13Stu:And then everyone on the kind of right wing of things in the US has been saying, this is terrible, he shouldn't be doing the Super Bowl, he sings in Spanish, that's not American, all that kind of stuff. And he did it, yes, he did it. It's on YouTube, people can go and watch the halftime show. It's an amazing thing. The whole performance is kind of a love letter to Puerto Rico where he's from. And he goes, and they had the guests including Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, all kinds of people came out. It was one of those Super Bowl moments where lots of, I guess it's the US equivalent of Glastonbury moments.

6:46Stu:If you do the Super Bowl and you have guests on. So it was really

6:52Steve:good, I thought, and I'm not really a big Bunny fan.

6:55Stu:And then yeah, so you've got the president of the US disagreeing and posting on his own social network saying, the Super halftime show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst ever. It makes no sense." And then, shall I get political now? I'll spare you having to do it. Trump went on to say, nobody understands a word this guy is saying and the dancing is disgusting. Sounds like something's good. And this is not only sounding like someone's granddad, but also this comes days after Trump posted that racist meme of the Obamas, which if anything is disgusting that's been the view coming through but yeah he found Bad Bunny playing music

7:34Steve:but I mean and the dancing don't leave the dancing out

7:38Stu:oh god those young people they just don't wear any clothes do they they dance to it was like someone's granddad like most of his but it turns out like there's another there's another kind of way to assess the performance and that is how many people went away and streamed his music after the performance um apple music said that apparently bad bunny streams were up seven times after after the performance so seven times what he'd been getting before

8:04Steve:which which wouldn't have been inconsiderable anyway given the success that he's had over the past year it's not as if he was starting from a low base uh that's seven times what was quite a

8:16Stu:lot already yeah and on spotify spotify said just this today that his bad bunny's global streams were up 210 % on Sunday compared to last week. And in the UK, and just to keep thinking, it's not just a US thing. Over the last month in the UK, Bad Bunny Spotify streams are up nearly 700%, Spotify said yesterday. So there is the court of public opinion and the court of one man sitting in his bedroom posting on social opinion. But yeah, I would say it was a very big moment. And now we're in the follow-on where everyone is giving their view on what it was. there. The funniest thing I saw was, you know those two influencers, Jake Paul and Logan Paul?

8:57Steve:I'm not aware of their work.

8:59Stu:No, they're like big, they were YouTubers and now one of them's a boxer, he may be a wrestler as well, it might be the best, two of them. And one of them came out and said basically, this is terrible, I can't understand what you're saying, he's not American. And then the other one of these brothers came out and said, no he is American, Puerto Rico's american which is american territory so even the kind of even the big the big influencers who tend to be on the right wing so they're disagreeing about whether this was good and what it means so yeah we're going to have another few days of this discourse i think but we can we can wrap it

9:31Steve:there i think uh third story of the week just to let you know this year's record store day is happening on april the 18th in the uk and the full list of the records available has now been posted on the website i did have a quick flick through it i mean there's stacks of stuff it just really depends on how much money you have to burn and whether whether you buy records because they look great um in some cases because as ever there's quite a lot of reissues but reissued on fancy colored vinyl and lovely sleeves possibly with an extra track they found in a cupboard that sort of thing uh it's also it's very good news though for you if you are a fan of elton john and his well let's say more dance floor orientated work which is right isn't it positiva which was big dance label in the 90s is putting out an elton john dance album yeah positiva presents

10:30Stu:elton john the remixes which i don't know if that's new new remixes or has he always had

10:35Steve:dance who mixes on his stuff throughout the years i guess there must have been at some time but you know one of the mixes is by um bless madonna so that can't be that's not like it's decades old is it so um i imagine some of the stuff has been commissioned before but now all together on one handy album available in april yeah and it's interesting i always find it fascinating the

10:56Stu:list of names taking part because there's you've got like elton john and madonna blur charlie xcx like Bruno Mars, and then you've got Sleepy Pokemon Beats, which is one of the big ones, and Bluey, which I think for certain elements of audience, the Bluey one is the one they're going to be queuing up for, for pain of a child at home being really cross when they get home. It's interesting, isn't it?

11:19Steve:At the start, obviously the very start, there was a lot more catalogue that hadn't been available on vinyl for years and years and years. and it wasn't, there weren't a lot of huge acts. I mean, people were already pillaging David Bowie's back catalogue the early years, but there wasn't, it's changed, the makeup of it has changed now. But at least now with more pressing plants, we do know that, you know, you won't, if you're an indie band trying to get a record pressed in the first, you know, two months of the year, There was no chance because all the majors had piled in, booked all the pressing plants so they could repress their stock for Record Store Day.

12:05Steve:I imagine it's slightly easier now. But I remember talking to Mungo's Hi-Fi, the Glaswegian reggae collective, and they always put out a single in the old days on Record Store Day. But they were basically working almost a year in advance to make sure that they could get a slot. so with about five months in advance of record store date otherwise they knew there was no chance of them uh getting their record pressed i imagine that hopefully has eased a bit now but there is there is a terrific selection of uh records though some there's some beautiful looking things i must

12:40Stu:say and how does it work i mean this is where you're you're the expert really how does it work presumably there's more than 300 shops taking part but every shop hasn't got every release like do you have a certain is there a certain amount of strategy in where you go depending on which ones

12:52Steve:you want to buy or well yeah yeah it depends i mean obviously there's some of the shorter runs the record shops apply for copies um you know you you have a form and then i would like 10 of these you may end up with two or three of three of those copies so yes the the actual the real the ones that are really going to be in demand you know and they will fly off the show and that's why people cute from Dawn. I liked the, I don't know if they still do it, but Sister Rae records actually go out into the queue with a sheet asking people, what are you here for? And looking on the sheet and go, well, we sold out of that already.

13:39Steve:So you'd see people going, well, I was only queuing up for that. And then just walk off. But otherwise, you know, it's still worth queuing because the stuff is still in stock. But Sister Ray, the basement, which is usually part of the shop, just becomes the storeroom for the day. And they have a queuing system where we go in and basically, you know the releases, you ask, have you got this? And somebody brings it up from the basement, goes, here's your record, fills the bag with the stuff, brings it up. It's all terrifically well-organized. You've got to take your hat off to the record shops on the day because, well, in the week leading up to it, all this stock arrives.

14:16Steve:imagine it's you know it's more than a year's worth of stock probably for some people you've got to put it somewhere then you've got to organize it uh and it's i'm sure it's very exciting just the smell of opening boxes of vinyl must be you know it must be great but um yeah it's quite a it's quite a thing anyway it's what did i say well april the 18th record store day it's a good time to plan isn't there i think plan your list what you want to get yeah absolutely um any other business um well this is this is something this is a kind of trend uh which is catching on uh and i find this quite interesting because the music industry is always looking for what it calls new models uh which basically translates as either a new ways for labels to sell more records than the competition um or b uh ways of making more money in general that's what they're looking for in a new model.

15:13Steve:But this new model is a model which, I mean, appears to be, you know, so far a bit more artist and fan-led. And as I say, there is this growing trend, and it's for bands who are selling their new albums to fans first before they put them on the streaming services. So they sell records via, I don't know, Bandcamp or other online stores or physical shops. You put your record out first where you can actually make, it's possible to make tangible money before you then put the album on the streaming services that's sort of how it works isn't it yeah and we talked about someone recently we were la russell

15:51Stu:who's the guy who was selling his album to his super fans first and then yeah at the musical conference recently um there's a chap called darren hemmings on the panel and he runs a marketing agency you work with the likes of run the jewels and robbie williams and jungle and the Spice Girls, so the full gamut. And he basically said, it's a quote, we work with artists where for them, streaming is the last place the music will wind up. So it's quite common to see record go up on Bandcamp for immediate sale with a digital download, and then it will move to vinyl sales. And basically what he said was for that, for an artist means that they sell some copies first and that brings money straight into them directly.

16:28Stu:I'm going to wait for it. And then when that has been, when everyone who wants to buy it early has bought it, then they'll put it on streaming. And it basically, it's not an anti-streaming policy, it's just we think people want to buy this. And it ties in with a word I've been hearing a lot recently, which is two words. So one is friction and one is scarcity. People are talking about this idea of streaming is very easy. Everything comes to you easily, but do you value it? It's just like a thing on a playlist. And people are saying, actually, maybe we need a bit more friction. People are looking back at the days when you had to go and hunt down records in record shops.

17:08Stu:And also the idea of people value something if they've got it and not many people other people haven't. So if you're hearing a record a few days before most people are, you value that. So these conversations are swimming around the industry even at higher levels. Because at the moment I would say people going to band camp first, they're all pretty independent artists, not the biggest ones. But there is this talk about, yeah. So if you go straight to streaming, are you maybe not making money you could have been if you do a different thing? And the only risks that I think you can see, or the only worry you might have as an artist is, am I going to get penalized by the streaming services for doing this?

17:50Stu:Will they not put me on playlists as a result? Because in the past, there have been examples when people have done, like in the old days of streaming, you get exclusives where someone would say my my stuff is on apple music first and not on spotify or vice versa and then people worried about well the ones i'm not going with first are going to just not bother promoting me because they'll be cross yeah so that would be the worry here i think