Why have The 1975 deleted a song? Can YOU tell the difference between AI music & real music (Answer: no.); An answer to why Fleetwood Mac are *still* popular; And music made £8bn for the UK in 2024…

0:03Steve:Hello and welcome to The Price of Music brought to you by Music Ally. It's the show that enjoys nothing more than pondering the finances of the music industry while trying to make sense of this weird pop music landscape that we live in. I'm Steve Lamack, he's Stuart Dredge. If you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music biz and how it all works and how the figures stack up, then here we are every week this week. Good news, some good news, at least in the annual UK Music Report. The 1975's Great Disappearing Song Mystery solved. Also, two more grassroots venues have their futures secured and records made out of coal dust.

0:43Steve:But first, as is tradition, this week's impressive stats. Stuart, this week's big figure is?

0:50Stu:my big figure this week is 713 million um which is this is how many people are listening to spotify every month um according to its financial results which came out last week so it's got 713 million listeners which so there are two points here one is a year ago it had 640 million so it's added uh what's that 73 million people in a year and you know how we talk quite a lot about people launching boycotts of Spotify or saying cancel your subscription and protests, this kind of puts it in perspective where actually it's not really having an impact. It's growing pretty well still. And the other point is there was financial results and Spotify's operating profit last quarter alone was 582 million euros.

1:36Stu:And this is one of the things about Spotify. People say, oh yeah, it loses loads of money, doesn't it? But no, not anymore. They're making a lot of money and they're growing fast, despite all the stuff we talk about that's controversial.

1:46Steve:Yeah, because it is, I mean, there was a point where it was posting loss after loss after loss. But as you say, in recent times, no, they're very much in profit now.

1:56Stu:Very much so, yes. So it's interesting. It's a picture of the biggest streaming service in terms of paying people. It's 281 million people paying for Spotify now, or at least on a paid account, some of them are. So that's the kind of top of the market and everything else is kind of in its wake at the moment.

2:12Steve:okay three interesting stories from the past week which we thought would be good to touch on we'll start with this which only came out this morning is a new report which reveals that music's contribution to the uk economy last year was a record eight billion pounds this is the annual uk music report as i say only came out this morning wednesday morning so i've only had a very brief chance to scan it but you you've seen this ahead of its embargoes release i think so what what are the headlines the major headlines stewart yeah so it's that usual thing with the

2:47Stu:industry part where it's kind of some good news and some not so good news um so the good news is like you said eight billion quid that's music's value to the economy last year uh a new record

2:58Steve:it's up from 7.6 billion the year before um which is about i'm trying to work out in my head um

3:04Stu:it's 5 % growth maybe or something. And the other thing is UK music exports, the value of British music around the world, outside the UK, that grew by 5 % to 4.8 billion pounds, which is another new record. So it kind of sounds like pints all round, hurrah. But there's a downside to this and UK music can support. So UK music is the umbrella body, isn't it? For the music industry. So everyone else is below it. And it pointed out that the rate of growth is slowing. So I looked this up last year the economic value had grown by 13 percent and exports had grown by 15 percent and now it's down to five percent so it's a very big slowdown in the growth of this money even though it's still a record yeah um so i thought it was interesting really so yeah it was kind of a big figures but we've got

3:51Steve:some problems with just i mean i did notice there was uh quite a lengthy quote from i think yvette Cooper talking about you know the value of British music around the globe and so I'm thinking this is this is something we touched on I think when Kevin Brennan Lord Brennan was on the program the other week politicians are very quick to take music and champion it for all it's worth but actually around this case the government have committed some money haven't they to to help uh the industry and um and i think that's something something like 30 30 million pounds is it i think so yes

4:37Stu:so there's some stuff and this is the other thing you just say some stuff happening i was reading last week there's some stuff happening with music education too which is something the industry been asking for so the government is doing stuff um but yeah the other thing is i think this report and this is always the case with these reports they're often saying right but here's what we want next yeah and it's two things isn't it i think one is we want you to regulate ai in the way we want you to regulate it make sure that we get paid and the other thing is is that that that old chestnut brexit red tape yeah and just the whole thing of touring europe is still full of red tape and difficult for bands and they want the government to do and wasn't it was it kirsten last week was saying oh yeah i see that it's a real problem we're going to sort it out i felt

5:16Steve:like there was some movement on that recently in words i mean the music has been identified by the current government as uh potentially uh one of the big growth areas and it is committed to music amongst other things as being they've identified that as uh somewhere where they'd like to because this is i mean growth is what the government are always going on about at the moment isn't it so they've identified music as something which could be very valuable in this um but yes there are things again very i saw very briefly in the report something about making it as you say easier for uk artists to get out and tour europe and it's the because but touring europe and i think uh it reports as well that um an increased percentage of british artists saying yeah it's more difficult to tour europe i have i have made less money and it's more difficult and you know in these days where we've already talked about how expensive it is for UK artists to go to the States these days with the price of visas and everything.

6:15Steve:And I can't see America doing anything to make it easier for artists outside of America to go to America. So Europe's a really important part of a group and artist's career. And, yeah, there are a lot of moves behind the scenes, I think, to try and encourage discussion between Europe and the UK government. um to create some sort of you know creative waiver scheme where it would be easier but yes the music industry is definitely pushing for more action from government to try and make it easier for for british artists to go to go abroad yeah and i think it's weird because of these two issues ai

6:54Stu:and brexit like ai there are there are two sides there is the ai companies saying please relax copyright rules stop making us pay for things um and music industry saying don't do that that would be terrible and so there's the government is sort of between two sides but with brexit red tape i mean there's no there's no one saying no we should keep brexit red tape it's brilliant like there really is no argument for it other than it hasn't been dealt with so you know i'm more hopeful of that some momentum there of saying right we need to sort this out yeah i think that part of what's happening behind the scenes is uh because there are i mean we think it's a one-way

7:27Steve:problem but it was i think particularly the live music industry is trying to explain well no it's not really because you're missing out on british awesome european promoters are also now saying well we'd like more British artists to come and we want this band and this band but they won't come because it's too difficult because there's too much paperwork and it's too expensive and the rules are so um uh onerous when it comes to you know the ease of touring so I think that's the thing is trying to get some of um some of the European uh music industry people to go no no actually you know it'd be in Europe hello hello Europe uh the powers would be in Europe actually we want it as well we're the ones missing out too and if you can make that argument it'll be easier than just the uk saying sorry we left you but can we come back in with our guitars yeah yeah with our guitars yeah exactly that um right story two now this is a good one although what the implications are for musicians from this and in fact that the entire future of pop music i don't know but did you do you say here's the question do you think you can tell the difference between human-made music and AI-generated music.

8:34Steve:If we were to say, here's an AI track and here's a human track, could you tell the difference? Because, worryingly, a study by the streaming service Deezer suggests you might be wrong when it comes to this.

8:48Stu:Almost certainly wrong. So this is, I mean, this is fascinating, because I think we would probably say the same, wouldn't we? We can tell an AI track from a human track. We love music. But yeah, so this is Deezer. So Deezer's really been banging the drum about AI music and the issues around it this year. And this release, I'll get into a survey in a minute, but this release came with this new stat that Deezer is now getting 50 ,000 fully AI-generated tracks uploaded to its service every day. Every day. And that is 34 % of all the music uploaded. So 50 ,000 AI tracks every single day.

9:21Steve:I mean, aside from anything else, I mean, that's good for the environment, isn't it? I mean that's I mean just 50 ,000 tracks a day

9:32Stu:Do you remember we used to Landfill Indie was a genre a few years ago This is landfill music And it was in January This was 10 ,000 tracks a day Which tells you what's happened this year But anyway that's the background to this But yeah so Deezer surveyed I think it's 9 ,000 people in 8 countries About AI music And it asked them what they think about it And how they feel about it But it also played them Two fully AI songs And one human song and asked them to tell which was human. And 97 % of people got it wrong. 97.

10:04Steve:Really? I mean, is that now down to the standard of the AI tracks that they've become more believable or that they sound more musical? Is it just the improvements in AI itself? I mean, yeah.

10:22Stu:And what we don't know is what songs were played. It could have been two really rubbish human tracks. but yeah so it says that we got to this point and the fascinating and the good news slightly is that they i these have sent me their country breakdown because it was eight countries turns out brits were the best at spotting the ai track because five percent of us got it right right whereas in japan only one percent of people got it right so there's something to be sort of mildly boasted about there but not much yeah yeah is this something we should be worried i mean it makes me very very nervous all of this i think it makes all of us it's like there's something uneasy about it isn't it that we might not know and actually so this this survey also asked people how they felt and it said i think it was something like two-thirds of people said they would listen to ai generated music at least once out of curiosity i think again that a lot of us feel that way but then 45 they'd like to filter it out on the streaming services and 40 said they would skip without listening if they knew it was an AI generated track.

11:22Stu:So there is a feeling out there of people, they don't want to listen to this stuff. And yet what the survey shows is that we might not know unless it's, you know, and this is what Deezer's point of view, because Deezer is one of the first streaming services to label music when it thinks it's AI generated. It said, this is AI generated, so you know, and it won't be recommended to you. And if you find it, you will know exactly what it is. So it's kind of playing into what it's doing there. And this, I think this survey does, Does this survey and that big stat of 50 ,000 tracks a day does highlight that if you're a streaming service right now, you need to be thinking about what do you do about this?

11:56Stu:Do you label it clearly? Do you kick it off if no one's listening to it? How do you deal with the fact that this stuff really is exploding? And the other thing is like, and I think we talked before, so if 50 ,000 tracks a day is 34 % of everything uploaded, that means about 150 ,000 tracks every day, 100 ,000 human ones, and 50 ,000 AI ones, which, I mean, that's a lot of human music being uploaded. That's a lot of noise there, even without AI.

12:24Steve:Yeah, yeah.

12:25Stu:So, yeah, it's a bit of a wake-up call maybe for the latest wake-up call.

12:30Steve:It's something we'll come back to, by the way, in this week's Lock In, which is that it's the extra bit of the show for Patreon superfan subscribers. But any thoughts you might have, the Price of Music podcast at gmail.com. Story three this week, the 1975 song Human 2 has disappeared from their last album on the streaming services. So if you look up 1975's last record, it's vanished. And obviously a lot of people were saying, why? Why suddenly has this been removed? We know the answer now, apparently. we do we do verified answer so yeah so this is what was the album was it was it it was being

13:16Stu:funny in a foreign language was last time wasn't it was in about 2023 2032 one surprisingly short title for them yeah and it wasn't it was number one in the uk like a big album and yeah this song has gone and so that the what there's a community on reddit the website um where matty healy the front man actually has a verified account and he posts and replies to fans right and so a fan was they're going what's happened to human two you know where's it gone and he replied he popped up and said basically and i'll quote him human two was removed from the album so the album is more how i want it to be um and then followed up i doubt the same will happen with any other records as i'm pretty happy with them outside of what should i say from notes on a conditional form so that may also be removed who knows and just left that hanging there i mean it's amazing isn't

14:07Steve:it i mean again only something you can do in the streaming era all of a sudden but the the idea that you can retrospectively just re-track list your record i mean imagine i mean i suppose we do you know potentially we can do we can all do that ourselves everyone can um you know put the stone roses album into a separate playlist and take out the ones that they don't like um but i don't know why i picked on the stone roses um but um but yeah now now you can just write okay what's wrong with this album god i know albums which will end up with three tracks on it if the ones weren't any

14:42Stu:good well that's it because i think i probably every artist can empathize with this you look at the album you can go i hate that song now that is not me anymore or some songs are problematic in hindsight because culture has moved on or you've written the lyric that's not um but it's interesting because yeah i mean i'm trying to think the the closest parallel i can remember was there was a kenya west album that came out and he kept tweaking with it and kept doing new mixes and upload for a couple of weeks after it came out he kept releasing new versions of tracks because he wasn't happy right um i've had a thing like when i about i don't know 15 years ago i was spending a lot of time trying to discover new artists like i was really properly leaning into finding new stuff and sometimes i look back at like my favorite songs of 2015 playlist and i load them a grade out because the artist has just deleted them from streaming whether it's because they've left spotify or so this is happening all the time and quietly like songs do go but this is probably one of the most high profile things yeah the other thing i thought was interesting was like 95 they've got a really committed fan community like they really go into bat for the band don't they but the reactions on this reddit thread are pretty mixed people are quite a lot of people saying hang on a minute like we love this song it's part of our lives um there was one comment that was really interesting it was like saying um i deeply respect your artistic decisions and i truly admire you as a musician and you know the buck coming but i think maybe you're missing the point of your own idea that the band is something bigger than yourself because once an album is released it belongs to everyone who connected with it not just you yeah i thought that was an interestingly thoughtful comment on why fans are upset even though it's his band he can do what he wants i mean if people do

16:16Steve:and i know there's an argument that people don't often these days listen to albums in their entirety in the same way that we used to. But if they do, you do get into the rhythm of a record as well, don't you? And, you know, you automatically, you know the start of the next, when a track finishes, your brain's already going, oh, the next one starts like this. And to take a track out, I think it's a bit straight. I mean, old school, I've just thought of the only old school rewriting of a band's history that I can use as an example, an illustration of sort of this, is when Pulp's first greatest hits album came out i can't remember what it was called but if you take a scan the track listing of the first pulp greatest hits album what's missing miss shapes miss shapes wasn't on the album and and i asked about this and they said just falling out of love it don't like it really which which i mean i mean one you know i mean it's one of my own favorite pulp songs i don't know what um but actually you know and also it's not a manifesto really but uh for pulp but it is a song which describes pulp the character of pulp so well they just just wonder what they're thinking what do you mean band honestly bands are rotten judges of their own music that's the conclusion i came to 20 years ago and i think probably still rings true it did make me think though do you

17:38Stu:remember a few a few episodes ago we were talking about wrongly track listed albums and you had some you had a quite a firm view on blurs the universe and on blurs um the universal no what's um the album with the universal arm oh great escape was it great yeah you had some quite quite firm views on how attractive should have been next time you see damon get him drunk and say look you know what you can do on streaming you can read track list it the right way and i should have done that i

18:04Steve:bumped into damon the other the other week at a friend's birthday party that sounds like that's a very clunky name drop isn't it i never i haven't seen damon for you know since the last time he was in the studio with us. We're not best mates. We just happen to be at this party. I should have done that. Anyway, right, on to any other business for this week. Actually, we should go back. I don't want to spend too much time on AI, but AI obviously is one of the most talked about issues in the music industry at the moment. And particularly in the past week, it's becoming more and more apparent, particularly after that deal between Universal and Udio, which we covered on last week's program.

18:43Steve:more and more musicians now and their representatives have started laying down what they want from licensing deals between labels and ai companies haven't they coming forward and saying look now you're starting to do these deals these are the things that we as musicians this is what we want and i sense there's a there's a you know potential for disagreement here yeah in the music industry

19:07Stu:I can't believe that. Yeah, so all the way along, the music industry has been saying about AI, you need to ask our permission to use our stuff, you need to pay us, and you need to be transparent about how you're using our stuff. And yeah, so what's happening now is the people who represent musicians and artists and songwriters and managers are saying, right, well, those three things kind of apply to us too if you're a label or publisher signing a deal. And so there's this body called the Council of Music Makers, It's like yet another umbrella body, like more umbrellas than an umbrella shop really.

19:38Stu:But it's the umbrella body for the people who represent artists, songwriters, managers, producers. And they came up with kind of a manifesto, yeah, saying, right, if you're doing an AI deal as a label, here's what we want. And it's three things. It's basically consent. So a label needs to ask all its musicians, do you agree to be part of this? And that's got to be opt-in. It's not going to be like you're part of this unless you say no. it's going to be you've got to say yes to be part of this yeah you want full control over how the music but the third thing i thought was most interesting which is like musicians should be fairly paid for all this and the quote is including lump sum payments equity and legal settlements which is kind of dry but i wanted to break it down because if you think about universal music did a deal with udio and there will be other deals like this um firstly it settled a lawsuit and there could be a payment that's part of that to universal music and so i just say okay well how How are you going to share?

20:31Stu:Say they've given you 10 million quid, like this is a number out of the air. How are you sharing that with the artists who you've been asking for? They've signed the licensing deal, which could involve an upfront payment. Here's 10 million quid for the rights to use music. How will that be shared out? And it's going to also, it could even involve giving a label a stake in the company. So Universal Music could end up with a stake in Udio in the same way that all the major labels and Merlin, the indie body had a stake in Spotify when that launched. and at one point Spotify floated on stock exchange everyone sold their shares got a big winful and then they did share that money with artists but it's not quite the same as when an artist is getting you know you've been streamed 700 times here's the money you get for royalties it's like there's always other ways that labels get paid and some musicians saying yes if you're getting paid by our companies we want to know exactly how and we want to make sure we get a fair share of that and that is to your point that's the argument that's coming next musicians want to know right you've announced a deal with this company or that company we want to know exactly how that deal works so that we can understand how we we get paid yeah um so i mean

21:38Steve:i suppose finally the other thing then from all that which you can deduce is what they what they really want as well is more transparency they want to know how much and you know what the what the

21:48Stu:deals are and they also pointed out that um no record no no contracts like if you're a musician and you've got a contract with your label, it almost certainly doesn't mention AI if it was any more than this year. So there's nothing in your contract saying what happens if they sign a deal with an AI company and your music is part of it. And so the musicians' bodies are saying, right, you can't just go and do this without asking for permission because our contracts don't cover it. So that's the argument brewing as well. It's like there's no contractual clause that lets you do anything without asking us first.

22:19Stu:And that's their view.