Latest / The Price of Music / AI music startup Suno in hot water again, South African artists double their Spotify payouts

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AI music startup Suno in hot water again, South African artists double their Spotify payouts · The Price of Music

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  mintmobile.com. Hello and welcome to The Price
• 1:08
  of Music, the show that looks at the money behind the music
• 1:11
  industry with niece Steve Lamac and Music Allies head of Insight
• 1:14
  Stuart Dredge. How's your week been, Stuart?
• 1:17
  It's been all right. A lot of dog walking, so I've
• 1:21
  been getting fresh air. It is unusual and yeah, kind of
• 1:25
  lots of lots of news happening, but nothing too bad.
• 1:27
  So yeah, how about you? Yeah, not bad.
• 1:29
  I saw a couple of geeks actually over the last few days, both
• 1:32
  bands from New York. As it goes, I think New York,
• 1:35
  the New York scene may be, may be finding its mojo again.
• 1:39
  But I saw Cassie Crew, who were a bit like what a more glitchy
• 1:43
  XX would sound like, and Mono Block, who are sort of returning
• 1:47
  to that New York heritage of the early noughties, but are worth
• 1:51
  keeping an ear out for. Actually one, one thing about
• 1:54
  Mono Block, which was interesting when I spoke to him
• 1:56
  at South by Southwest in Austin a couple of weeks back was that
• 2:00
  as well as transporting their own T-shirts across the states
• 2:04
  on tour, they also had a box of shirts that they were delivering
• 2:08
  to an artist in Austin. And I don't I don't know if they
• 2:11
  were doing that out of the goodness of their hearts or
• 2:13
  whether they were getting paid a small fee.
• 2:15
  But there's there's a new income stream for vans on the road,
• 2:19
  small scale merch haulage. How about that or we'll we'll
• 2:23
  pick it, we'll pick up and deposit your gear across the
• 2:26
  country for a small. We're in the same place, yeah.
• 2:30
  Do you know I've had this? The thing I've had this week is
• 2:32
  do you ever, have you ever seen Song Kick?
• 2:34
  You know, it's a thing like it scans what you stream and then
• 2:36
  tells you when there's gigs coming up.
• 2:37
  Yes, I have. Seen that.
• 2:39
  Yeah. I think, you know, I was
• 2:40
  complaining last week about not having any gigs planned.
• 2:42
  I think it was because of my song kicking must have started
• 2:44
  going into a different folder. So I've got them back now.
• 2:47
  And now I've got, I think last week alone they've told me Griff
• 2:50
  Reese is playing C, Max, playing Fat Dog, which is you're doing,
• 2:55
  I think. Yeah, See, Duncan, the
• 2:58
  Freestylers, John Hopkins. I've suddenly got this list of
• 3:01
  bands. I want to go and see that.
• 3:02
  So that was the problem. I was missing out on people
• 3:04
  telling me when my bands are like playing.
• 3:07
  News, news wise, he's mentioned there's a few things going.
• 3:10
  I thought it was initially the start of the week was quite
• 3:13
  quiet relatively for for us, but there are a few interesting
• 3:17
  things that have cropped up. And of course it's record store
• 3:20
  day at the end of this week, which we'll come to later.
• 3:23
  But to start with, the three major labels UK divisions have
• 3:28
  published their official gender pay gap figures.
• 3:32
  And they do. They showed some progress in
• 3:34
  reducing the gap between the pay of and women in this part of the
• 3:38
  music industry at least. Yeah, yeah.
• 3:41
  Well, this is something that's been going for, I think it's
• 3:43
  eight years now where companies with more than 250 employees
• 3:47
  have to publish their gender pay gap figures, which is it's kind
• 3:51
  of a specific measurement. It's like the difference between
• 3:53
  the average hourly earnings of men and women within the
• 3:56
  company. So you tend to see a percentage.
• 4:00
  And if it's a positive percentage, that means that it's
• 4:02
  the amount, the average amount that men earn more and women.
• 4:06
  And to add to the maths, you get these reported as a median,
• 4:09
  which is kind of the middle person at the company and then a
• 4:12
  pure mean. And there's a that's kind of to
• 4:15
  try and screen out stuff where if you have a lot of high
• 4:17
  earners who are men, you know, you want to get an accurate
• 4:19
  picture of what The thing is. So yeah.
• 4:22
  And Music Week did a good job actually of kind of going
• 4:23
  because these things are all published by the government and
• 4:25
  you have to go and read these reports and Music Week got them
• 4:28
  all this morning. And so.
• 4:30
  Yeah, so UMG, their median gender pay gap reduced from
• 4:35
  24.4% to 23.5%. So that's still quite a lot,
• 4:40
  quite a big gap, but it's coming down.
• 4:43
  Sony Musics went down from 12.5% to 11.6% and Warner Music U KS
• 4:48
  went down from 16.9% to 8.9%. And these figures, I was kind of
• 4:54
  digging into it because these figures, there's obviously
• 4:56
  change over time as companies trying to work to kind of reduce
• 4:59
  the pay gap between men and women.
• 5:01
  But it can be affected by if a particularly high earner
• 5:03
  suddenly leaves before the figures are reported, which I
• 5:06
  think happened with Warner or Sony Woods, someone high left
• 5:09
  and that kind of scoot figures. But there's kind of progress
• 5:13
  there. And there looks PRS for music's
• 5:15
  increased slightly from 12.6% to 15.7%.
• 5:20
  PPL's increased from 2.2% to 3.5%, but that's really low.
• 5:23
  That's much lower than the average in the UK.
• 5:26
  And Spotify's increased from 14 1/2% to 16.1%.
• 5:30
  So it's kind of a mixed figure when you bring in other
• 5:31
  companies. But it's kind of interesting
• 5:34
  because of the reports they do, these figures all come with
• 5:36
  reports where they kind of say here's why the figures have
• 5:39
  decreased or increased. So they're either kind of
• 5:42
  trumpeting what they've done well or they're kind of making
• 5:44
  the the kind of explanations of why it hasn't come down.
• 5:48
  And it's tough. It's everything from kind of
• 5:49
  parental leave policies, inclusive interviewing training.
• 5:54
  So training managers to interview as it includes as well
• 5:58
  appointing more women to senior positions, which is one of the
• 6:00
  big the big things that's happened in the industry and
• 6:03
  kind of coaching and mentorship and kind of all the stuff that
• 6:05
  kind of helps people move up the chain and then learn more.
• 6:08
  So there's quite a lot like these reports, even when the
• 6:11
  figures have gone up slightly, there's a lot of stuff saying
• 6:13
  here's what we're doing. And luckily not being the US,
• 6:17
  it's still a positive thing to talk about this kind of
• 6:19
  diversity and inclusiveness. So yeah, I say a positive
• 6:22
  picture, but still work to be done.
• 6:24
  And I think I was reading, I think the average, the average
• 6:27
  pay gap in the UK is something like 7%, seven and a half
• 6:31
  percent. So the major labels are still
• 6:34
  above that. But one Music UK is getting down
• 6:36
  to it. So yeah, progress, but more work
• 6:38
  to be done. OK, TikTok is back in the news.
• 6:43
  Well, at the start of the week, there were stories about maybe
• 6:46
  Amazon buying TikTok, but by the end of the week, the big story
• 6:49
  was that, well, Tik Tok's been saved from its ban in America
• 6:54
  again, but this time it's only it's a small study of execution,
• 7:00
  isn't it? It's a 70 five day delay.
• 7:04
  I don't know what this means for the music industry, but fill us
• 7:07
  in on this and what's what's been going on in the last few
• 7:09
  days. Yeah, So, I mean, we've been
• 7:11
  talking about this ever since we started the show, I think,
• 7:13
  haven't we? What's happening with you?
• 7:16
  And basically that there is a law in the US that is still a
• 7:18
  law there that says TikTok needs to be sold by Chinese, Chinese
• 7:24
  parent company or it has to be banned in the US And this has
• 7:27
  been a law since President Biden was in power.
• 7:30
  And what Trump did in January was he just said, I'm not going
• 7:33
  to enforce this law for 75 days. Well, we figure out how we can
• 7:37
  sell it. So it's still the law, but he's
• 7:40
  kind of saying we're not enforcing it.
• 7:41
  We're going to figure out a deal.
• 7:42
  And you know what Trump's like. He is very much like, I am the
• 7:44
  deal maker. I will sort this out personally.
• 7:47
  So what happened last week was, yeah, I mean, it's been this
• 7:50
  kind of rogues gallery of people coming up saying I'd like to buy
• 7:53
  TikTok. So last week we saw Amazon say
• 7:55
  it. There was a big apps company and
• 7:57
  a casino mogul. It was even the guy who founded
• 8:01
  only Fans, which we talked about before for other reasons.
• 8:05
  He came out and said I'd like to to buy TikTok.
• 8:07
  So this kind of everyone's throwing the hack in the ring.
• 8:10
  And apparently Trump, what Trump said he he'd nearly done a deal
• 8:15
  to to create a sort of new TikTok America.
• 8:17
  So it'd be like a new all the US operations of TikTok.
• 8:20
  So it wouldn't affect it elsewhere in the world would be
• 8:22
  in a new company. American investors would own the
• 8:25
  majority of shares in it. It's current company, parent
• 8:28
  company Bike Dance. We learn about 20% and
• 8:32
  apparently everyone approved of it apart from the Chinese
• 8:35
  authorities. So the Chinese government and
• 8:38
  what happened there was, you know, Trump had his big
• 8:40
  announcement last, was it Thursday or Wednesday?
• 8:42
  I think it was Thursday. The, the big tariffs
• 8:43
  announcement. We had that big board of like,
• 8:45
  I'm putting tariffs on all these countries because of the trade
• 8:48
  and it turned out that annoyed the Chinese authorities enough
• 8:51
  for them to say, no, we're not going to approve this TikTok
• 8:54
  deal. So weirdly, his triumphant, I've
• 8:57
  done a deal to save TikTok was kind of sort of depth charged by
• 9:01
  his tariffs deal, which was equally proud of.
• 9:03
  So kind of bit chaos there. So what Trump has said is right,
• 9:08
  75 more days, we're not going to enforce this law.
• 9:11
  We're going to get this deal done.
• 9:14
  He sort of said it's a great example of tariffs working
• 9:16
  because look how upset China is at the tariffs, which is
• 9:20
  somewhat it's it's a bold attempt to explain away why he
• 9:23
  hasn't been able to get this deal done.
• 9:26
  And that's what happened this weekend.
• 9:27
  So this weekend, TikTok would have had to have been banned on
• 9:30
  Saturday. But another extension?
• 9:33
  So does where does this leave the the music industry who use
• 9:36
  TikTok for a lot of their marketing these days?
• 9:40
  And of course the artists as well, some of whom have
• 9:43
  benefited from their videos going viral.
• 9:46
  And again, you know the promotion that you can get from
• 9:50
  having a popular TikTok presence.
• 9:53
  Yeah, well, it's good news in the short term.
• 9:55
  So I suppose if you're, if you're a label or a marketing
• 9:57
  team for an artist, like you're planning your album campaigns
• 10:00
  several months ahead. So if you've got an album coming
• 10:03
  out in April, May or June, chances are you've already got a
• 10:06
  campaign prepared that's going to involve TikTok.
• 10:08
  And so now you can be like, right, we haven't got to shift
• 10:10
  all that round and find somewhere else to do that stuff.
• 10:13
  So that's good. But yeah, it kind of is still a
• 10:15
  bit uncertain in the longer term, which I think for music is
• 10:18
  just a case of watching but also thinking, right, If this doesn't
• 10:21
  go well, if Trump doesn't get his deal done.
• 10:24
  Because, I mean, it's every possibility that if this doesn't
• 10:28
  go well, if he can't get this deal done, he might just throw
• 10:30
  his toys out the pram and say, right, ban it, I don't care
• 10:32
  anymore. Like, you never quite know with
• 10:34
  this particular politician when he's going to have a tantrum and
• 10:38
  do something different. So I think it'll be like we've
• 10:42
  said before, I think that all the music companies are still
• 10:45
  going to be thinking, right, if TikTok were to ban in the US,
• 10:47
  what would we use instead? And so it's things like YouTube
• 10:50
  Shorts and Instagram, Rails and other apps.
• 10:53
  So they will carry on quietly, just kind of maybe upping their
• 10:56
  activity in those to make sure that if it does suddenly
• 10:59
  disappear, they could they wouldn't be so kind of panicking
• 11:02
  to to. Shift and Will Here's a question
• 11:06
  and will If TikTok is bought out by one of the interested
• 11:11
  parties, will the record industry have to do new royalty
• 11:16
  deals with the new owners? So and how do we see that going?
• 11:23
  Because if it's if it's owned by a completely new company and
• 11:26
  they say, well, we're not going to, we're not going to pay music
• 11:30
  royalties on the same level as we were before, where does that
• 11:33
  leave everyone? Well, quite.
• 11:36
  And my expert analystic view of this is I have no idea, Right.
• 11:38
  OK. But but, but there are there are
• 11:41
  there are licensing deals. It can be a case where it says
• 11:44
  if there's a change of ownership, we have to come back
• 11:46
  and talk and renegotiate. So, yeah, So I don't know,
• 11:49
  honestly, because TikTok has been doing new deals with
• 11:51
  companies. He did one with the Universal
• 11:52
  Music Group last year when this uncertainty was well known.
• 11:57
  So it's possible there are terms of that say if this TikTok gets
• 12:00
  sold, what happens then? I don't think a new owner could
• 12:04
  turn around and say we're not going to pay.
• 12:05
  I don't think they could kind of Welsh out of the royalties under
• 12:07
  deals already. But yeah, it's going to be.
• 12:12
  I mean, the other thing is, do you know what hasn't happened
• 12:14
  all the way through this? There's never been any kind of
• 12:16
  hint that record labels in the US would try and take be part of
• 12:19
  the investors taking ownership with TikTok.
• 12:21
  Like, I can't remember there being a pot saying, well,
• 12:23
  Universal Music might be part of an investment group.
• 12:26
  You know, it couldn't afford to buy TikTok outright, I suspect.
• 12:28
  But but that hasn't been the case.
• 12:30
  You've had Amazon, like like we said, who no one seems quite
• 12:33
  clear if they're going to be involved in this final deal or
• 12:35
  not. I think they they made a bid to
• 12:37
  buy the whole thing. So, yeah.
• 12:40
  So as far as that goes, it should be business as usual in
• 12:44
  terms of the royalties and the agreements have already.
• 12:47
  But it will be interesting to see.
• 12:49
  And the the other thing is over the weekend, weirdly, I mean,
• 12:54
  Trump is facing some questions from his own party, the
• 12:56
  Republican Party. Some of the politicians there
• 12:59
  are saying, well, hang on a minute, whatever deal you do.
• 13:02
  And they're very focused on China.
• 13:04
  They don't want the Chinese authorities to be the access to
• 13:07
  data of, of American TikTok users.
• 13:09
  And they don't want them to have any influence over what the
• 13:11
  stuff you get recommended. So they're very kind of worried
• 13:15
  about, oh, well, God, China's going to recommend videos to
• 13:18
  Americans and kind of, you know, politically misinform them.
• 13:21
  That's a really big kind of talk about.
• 13:24
  So even if Trump gets a deal done now that everyone agrees
• 13:27
  with, it's possible his own party going to get crossed if
• 13:30
  they don't think it protects the app from what they want.
• 13:32
  So there's there's still so many kind of there's so many
• 13:35
  potential sort of U turns and curveballs ahead that I don't
• 13:40
  think we can predict what's coming.
• 13:41
  But yeah, for now, 75 days, carry on with the deal making.
• 13:46
  Next, the global independent music publishing business
• 13:49
  continued to grow in 2023. According to these new figures,
• 13:54
  a total value of more than 2 billion is what it's up to now,
• 14:00
  which is what's the percentage increase?
• 14:02
  Something close to 6%. Yeah, 5.7% in fact.
• 14:08
  And this is because you mentioned in a year there, this
• 14:09
  is like quite an important point about this.
• 14:11
  Like, you know, we've been talking about the recorded music
• 14:13
  figures recently for 2024. This kind of shows how music
• 14:16
  publishing works because they've just put a report about 2023
• 14:19
  because some elements of that move slower in terms of
• 14:22
  reporting. But yeah, so it's the the IMPF,
• 14:25
  which represents publishers around the world and it's it's
• 14:27
  just independent publishers, so not the ones owned by the three
• 14:30
  major labels. Right.
• 14:32
  And yeah, it was about €2.57 billion.
• 14:35
  That's about two point £2.2 billion at the moment exchange
• 14:40
  rates right now. And that's more than doubled
• 14:43
  since 2018. So it's kind of a positive
• 14:46
  growth story to the independent publishers that they've, they've
• 14:49
  more than doubled their revenues since 2018.
• 14:51
  Obviously with COVID in the middle of that.
• 14:55
  The only downs, well, there's like a sort of a slight fly in
• 14:59
  the ointment, which is that the independent share of the whole
• 15:02
  publishing market fell slightly last year.
• 15:05
  So this report says that independents accounted for 26.3%
• 15:08
  of all publishing revenue gravely, and that's down from
• 15:12
  26.7% the year before. So only a slight fall, but it's
• 15:16
  kind of interesting. It's like 26.3% independent
• 15:19
  publishers. That's ahead of Sony Music,
• 15:21
  which is 24.7% share of the market publishing and Universal
• 15:25
  wise 23.4%. So actually the Indies in this
• 15:28
  space are the biggest single, you know, biggest collective
• 15:31
  group of, of, of people ahead of individual major labels.
• 15:35
  So yeah. And could it's, could it's fall
• 15:38
  percentage wise in terms of their share of the market?
• 15:40
  Could that be anything to do with something we've been
• 15:42
  talking about a lot, which is major companies buying up
• 15:46
  smaller independent firms or is it just that the music which
• 15:50
  these independent companies were signing up is less popular?
• 15:55
  Could be either I guess. Well, yeah.
• 15:58
  And but bear in mind it's it's that delay.
• 16:00
  So this is like 2023. And so some of the consolidation
• 16:02
  we've talked about on the show has all happened since then.
• 16:05
  So that's not affected this yet. But yeah, I think it'll be big
• 16:09
  stars doing well who have signed to the big publishing houses.
• 16:13
  But it's an interesting place. Like, I think we've talked so
• 16:15
  much, haven't we, about, like, music coming from different
• 16:18
  parts of the world now? So Afrobeats doing well, K pop
• 16:20
  doing well, reggaeton from Latin America doing well.
• 16:24
  And a lot of those artists would be qualified as independent
• 16:28
  under this. So I'm quite interested in
• 16:31
  seeing like the figures for last year and this year as we go on,
• 16:35
  perhaps that show will start to increase again or perhaps the
• 16:38
  major publishers will go around saying, right, who's writing
• 16:40
  songs for all these acts and career and, and Nigeria, we need
• 16:45
  to make sure we're signing up those songwriters too.
• 16:47
  So I think that that's the the, but yeah, in terms of the slight
• 16:50
  fall, I think it's like a a very slight fall, which could be some
• 16:54
  major songwriters doing really well that year.
• 16:57
  I don't think it's a kind of a worrying trend.
• 17:00
  Talking of publishing, returning to someone else who's been
• 17:05
  features in our news round UPS quite a bit in the last couple
• 17:10
  of months. This is the AI music startup
• 17:13
  Suno, which as we already know is being sued by the major
• 17:18
  labels for its practices. Now could also Suno could also
• 17:23
  be in hot water with music publishers as well.
• 17:28
  Yeah, so this is, this is really fun.
• 17:30
  This is a story that made me think about the metal bound wasp
• 17:32
  for the first time in about 25 years.
• 17:34
  So I did it when the last time you thought of them was but
• 17:38
  probably similarly long. Probably when?
• 17:40
  Probably in the sixth form. Probably, anyway, yeah.
• 17:44
  But yeah, so SUNO is one of the generative AI music services
• 17:46
  where you can go and create songs and you can go in and
• 17:49
  write in a text prompt saying make me a song like blah, blah,
• 17:51
  blah. And it'll do it, yeah.
• 17:53
  And as we said, labels are suing it for copyright infringement.
• 17:55
  Sing it trained to say on the recordings without permission.
• 17:58
  But yeah, this is a scoop from CMU, the music industry
• 18:01
  publication, which basically went on there and was like, can
• 18:04
  we get can we get Suno to to do copyrighted lyrics when we make
• 18:08
  it songs on it? So what they did was they went
• 18:12
  on and they got it to kind of basically spit out lyrics from I
• 18:17
  think it was Take It Easy by the Eagles and American Pie by John
• 18:20
  Mcclane, all 60 verses. Presumably Beds Are Burning by
• 18:24
  Midnight Early and Blind in Texas by WASP.
• 18:27
  And it's really interesting because they went into their
• 18:29
  workings and said, right, they went to SUNO and they did this
• 18:32
  prompt and they said, make me a 1980s Australian pop song.
• 18:36
  Male vocals about paying dues to the native people in the style
• 18:41
  of midnight Oil title. The song Beds Are Burning and
• 18:45
  then they put this, this song is online.
• 18:46
  You can see it out. It came with the lyrics to Beds
• 18:48
  Are Burning, but it's really a completely different song,
• 18:51
  pretty different music. Yeah.
• 18:53
  Which, and the reason this is important is this word
• 18:57
  regurgitation, which is not a very nice thing to think about,
• 19:00
  but it's a very specific thing in the legal debates, band AI.
• 19:05
  So when you see AI companies saying, no, no, we shouldn't be
• 19:07
  sued for copyright infringement. We can train our models on
• 19:09
  anything. And that's not wrong.
• 19:13
  The other thing they say as part of that is that, look, we're not
• 19:16
  just regurgitating the music and the lyrics that we we train it
• 19:19
  on. We're creating new original, the
• 19:21
  word that uses transformative stuff.
• 19:23
  So a big part of their argument why they shouldn't be sued is
• 19:26
  that they don't just regurgitate the stuff they've trained on.
• 19:29
  And so when someone shows that it appears to, that's quite a
• 19:33
  big headache for them legally. So this has already got, I think
• 19:37
  the Iva's Academy came out next week and said Suno has got to
• 19:39
  remove this lyrics model until it's not doing this.
• 19:43
  It's already being sued by a collecting society from Germany
• 19:45
  called Gemma, and that was over lyrics, I think.
• 19:47
  So it's just a reminder, I think that these AI companies that
• 19:51
  are, are loggerheads with the music industry.
• 19:53
  It's not just about recordings, it's also about lyrics.
• 19:55
  And that's where publishers get involved.
• 19:58
  So I think there'll be some more ripples from this this article
• 20:01
  by CMU. As puppeteers go, what does this
• 20:03
  mean? Do we need to sue them now so
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  you may see some more? Movement form form orderly
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  This episode is brought to you by Green Light.
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  Get this, Adults with financial literacy skills have 82% more
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  prioritizing their financial.educationandfuturetodaywithariskfreetrial@greenlight.com/spotify
• 21:16
  greenlight.com/spotify. This, this next story, this
• 21:21
  actually comes back to what you mentioned a moment ago about
• 21:24
  different global on the rise. South African artists have more
• 21:29
  than doubled their Spotify payouts since 2022, according to
• 21:34
  figures released by said streaming service.
• 21:38
  That's that. I mean, I was going to say
• 21:40
  that's a huge increase. That's double what they were
• 21:43
  getting three years ago. So that I mean, it does, it
• 21:47
  suggests again another breakout scene from elsewhere in the
• 21:50
  world. It does, yeah.
• 21:52
  And this is it's like Spotify's almost on a world tour.
• 21:54
  It's probably like AT shirt for it.
• 21:55
  I think of of going round the world saying, right, this
• 21:58
  country here are the payout figures and here's how it's all
• 22:00
  growing. Obviously they're only talking
• 22:02
  about countries where it's growing.
• 22:03
  Well, like there's this narrative here, you know, So
• 22:05
  this is brilliant. But yes, the South can obviously
• 22:08
  they generated nearly nearly 400 million South African Rand last
• 22:11
  year, which is about £16 million, which is quite small in
• 22:15
  the scheme of things. But yeah, more than double their
• 22:17
  total. In 2022.
• 22:20
  It said that South African music's being streamed for more
• 22:23
  than 600,000 hours every day on Spotify around the world, which
• 22:28
  is kind of a big start. And yeah, it's about, I mean,
• 22:30
  it's about something that's already happened, which is am a
• 22:32
  piano, which is a really, I sort of spent a while last year deep
• 22:37
  diving into this because some friends said you must listen to
• 22:39
  it. And it's kind of South African
• 22:42
  house music. It's kind of a bit jazzy, a bit
• 22:44
  of soul music, a bit of hip hop in there.
• 22:46
  Like it's a really a really dancey dance floor genre that's
• 22:50
  been breaking out across the world.
• 22:52
  And that's the big central thing here, I think is that there's
• 22:55
  when when people listen to stuff on Spotify from South Africa,
• 22:59
  that's been the big success. But there's now new genres
• 23:01
  coming behind it, and I was reading about one that is
• 23:05
  impossible to say for me. It's spelt GQOM and you
• 23:11
  basically say it with a click. And then gum, it's like I gum,
• 23:14
  but I can't even do that. But that's like a derivative of
• 23:18
  a piano. I was reading an article about
• 23:20
  three-step. There's a genre called
• 23:22
  three-step now, which is kind of I'm a piano, but bouncier with
• 23:25
  A3 kick drum rhythm. That's starting to go big and
• 23:29
  this is the pattern. I think that even beyond what
• 23:31
  Spotify is saying, you're seeing this with Afrobeats in Nigeria
• 23:34
  too, which is that something breaks out of its home country
• 23:37
  through streaming and it does really well around the world and
• 23:40
  that brings money back to that. It's home country, which is then
• 23:44
  invested in more artists doing well, the structures around the
• 23:47
  need. But then it also creatively
• 23:50
  there are these subgenres and splinter genres coming out.
• 23:52
  And so when something that's that's kind of derived from I'm
• 23:56
  a piano in South Africa, it's it's pathway to kind of being
• 24:00
  listened to globally has been opened up by that parent genre
• 24:02
  already. So you sort of see these new
• 24:05
  scenes and they, they haven't got to do the hard work of kind
• 24:07
  of breaking out because something has done it for them.
• 24:09
  And so I think that's what's happening here.
• 24:11
  It's what's happening in Nigeria, It's what's happening
• 24:13
  in other parts of the world. So yeah, it's a, it's really
• 24:16
  interesting. And, and if you're a South
• 24:17
  African artist, it's really good news because when you when you
• 24:19
  come through now, right from the start, you could think, well, my
• 24:23
  music could be heard around the world.
• 24:24
  I'm not just thinking about my local scene.
• 24:26
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So it gains its own momentum as
• 24:29
  well as what you're saying. 1 scene leads to two more scenes
• 24:33
  and eventually it becomes big enough that a global superstar
• 24:37
  says, I would like some of this, please.
• 24:40
  And then another door is opened. That's it.
• 24:43
  And then and then the, the global superstars from your own
• 24:46
  genre and country, they often bring stuff up with them as
• 24:49
  well. So yeah, it's, it's kind of a,
• 24:52
  it is just the kind of virtuous circle.
• 24:54
  The other thing about this is, is like, like the old Spotify
• 24:56
  figures, this is payouts from the music of these artists.
• 25:00
  So how much of that kind of 16,000,000 lbs they saw would
• 25:03
  depend on label deals, published deals, and so on.
• 25:06
  Yeah, music management company ATC Group is spending some more
• 25:11
  of its cash. This time it's bought a majority
• 25:15
  stake in a company called Easy Life Entertainment, who I think
• 25:20
  Easy Life are a little bit like ATC.
• 25:22
  You should explain ATC Group is, well, I'm not sure if they
• 25:27
  started as a live agency, but they certainly, I knew them
• 25:29
  initially as being live agents, but they're, they're also a
• 25:33
  management company. They, they, it's more of it's
• 25:37
  one of those sort of conglomerates now where it does,
• 25:39
  you know, a multitude of things, but represents, you know, in
• 25:44
  management terms. We mentioned this the other week
• 25:46
  actually, when we're talking about ATC, people like Nick Cave
• 25:49
  I think, and PJ Harvey on the management side, Live wise,
• 25:54
  they've Fontaine. So they've got loads of big
• 25:56
  artists whose geeks they book as well.
• 25:58
  But ATC, so they've bought a stake in Easy Life.
• 26:03
  And I think Easy Life is also a sort of multifaceted company,
• 26:07
  isn't it? Yeah.
• 26:08
  So it's this company, it's a management company, it's a
• 26:11
  record label. It's also got APR plugging
• 26:14
  company, right. So again, it's sort of multiple
• 26:18
  fingers and multiple pies and yeah, and it's kind of, it's
• 26:21
  interesting you said that about ATC because I, I thought of them
• 26:24
  always as, oh, they're Radioheads management company
• 26:26
  because that's, that's how I first encountered them.
• 26:28
  And like you say, I didn't know about the live aspect till I
• 26:30
  realised, oh, hang on, they're quite big in live as well.
• 26:32
  So, so I found that that ATC is actually a public company.
• 26:36
  They're on the stock market. So you, they have to kind of
• 26:38
  announce these things with, with proper numbers in.
• 26:40
  So I went and found the stock market filing this morning and
• 26:43
  it's, yeah, it's buying 75% of Easy Life for about £750,000 in
• 26:49
  cash. And it's, I mean, I think we
• 26:53
  maybe talked about this before when we mentioned them, but that
• 26:56
  they've been buying a lot of companies, ATC, they've been
• 26:58
  growing very fast through these acquisitions.
• 27:00
  They bought, they bought Sandbag, which is they do all
• 27:03
  Radiohead's DTC stuff, but they, they do all the merchandise and
• 27:05
  DTC stuff for a lot of bands direct to consumer.
• 27:09
  They bought live promoter Joy Entertainment management company
• 27:12
  Raw Power, and I didn't realise this.
• 27:13
  They bought majority stakes in 2 Brighton venues earlier this
• 27:16
  year, so Concorde 2 and Volks I think it is right.
• 27:22
  That's interesting, kind of. But yeah, that when that's
• 27:25
  another string to their both and actually having what being part
• 27:29
  of a venue quite his years and something to Concorde 2.
• 27:33
  But yeah, so, so it's, so it's quite was, it's not aggressive
• 27:37
  expansion, but it's ambitious expansion.
• 27:40
  I think so. And it's it makes you realise
• 27:42
  that these these this is maybe the model now for bigger
• 27:45
  companies. It's like you don't you don't
• 27:46
  you're not just going to be a big management company or a big
• 27:49
  life Booker. You know, you want all these
• 27:51
  things can fit together and probably give you you know, I
• 27:55
  hate this word synergies. It's a very management speak.
• 27:58
  But do you know that thing like when you have the management you
• 28:00
  have you're managing artists when you're booking them your
• 28:03
  own venues, there's kind of interesting crossovers there.
• 28:05
  They even own there's a live streaming service called Drift,
• 28:08
  which launched during the pandemic and it was Co founded
• 28:11
  by ATC, but they recently took 100% control of that.
• 28:14
  So they have a finger in the live streaming gigs pie as well.
• 28:17
  So yeah, all these bits can work together and it I guess it
• 28:20
  shows, like you say, the ambition to be more than just
• 28:23
  what any one of those things and more than just like a collection
• 28:26
  of different businesses. Yeah, and it's, I suppose it
• 28:28
  works, you know, I mean, interestingly, if if you've
• 28:31
  found an artist and you think we'd like to manage you or
• 28:33
  they've already got management, well, we can offer you, we could
• 28:36
  be your agent or other way round.
• 28:40
  You know, we'll, we'll, we can come in at various different
• 28:43
  levels as opposed to assist you with your career.
• 28:48
  They've got like eight, 860 clients, I think across those
• 28:51
  different things. So it's big.
• 28:52
  And I was because I again, I thought of Radiohead, PJ Harvey,
• 28:55
  Bring me the Horizon half. But also it's like Black
• 28:57
  Country, new road lottery winners, divorce.
• 28:59
  Like they're working with a lot of the breakthrough artists as
• 29:02
  well. So it's an interesting business,
• 29:03
  I think. Uh, finally for this week, as
• 29:06
  mentioned, it is Record Store Day on Saturday, April the 12th.
• 29:11
  Hundreds of limited edition records going on sale in
• 29:15
  somewhere around I think it's 270 upwards independent shops
• 29:19
  around the country. And what's the stats, Stuart?
• 29:23
  I mean, one year wasn't it like didn't record stored, didn't,
• 29:26
  wasn't it like 1/4 of all the vinyls sold in a in a year was
• 29:31
  sold on record Store day or generated by record store day
• 29:36
  releases? But I don't know what the figure
• 29:40
  is now. What's the what's the latest?
• 29:42
  But I mean, it makes a incredible impact, doesn't it,
• 29:44
  on. Yeah, Yeah, I think last.
• 29:46
  Vinyl. Well, before last year's they
• 29:48
  were estimating it'd be, I think it's about £9.7 million boost to
• 29:51
  Independent Record stores. So it was like 443 releases.
• 29:55
  And yeah, I think last year there was a stat saying it was
• 29:58
  like nearly 10% of annual sales of all physical music products
• 30:01
  in High Street stores, which is obviously a very specific
• 30:05
  metric, but yeah, but yeah, so it's kind of it's, it's not even
• 30:08
  that it's just big in money terms though, isn't it?
• 30:10
  Like it's a huge moment of like awareness and and and
• 30:13
  celebration. Well, stores but also a vinyl
• 30:17
  like the two seem to go hand in hand now.
• 30:19
  Yeah, you feel, I don't know if you feel guilty about going and
• 30:21
  buying ACD and records store debt.
• 30:24
  Or not, it all counts. Well, you do.
• 30:28
  You remember when we spoke to Jonathan Green and Megan Page
• 30:30
  about this Record Store Day a while back?
• 30:33
  You'll find that episode, along with all our old episodes on
• 30:37
  your streaming platform of your choice.
• 30:39
  I think it was in back in October.
• 30:41
  We did it. But what did you say?
• 30:43
  How many releases last year? I think it was fun for 443, but
• 30:47
  I think is it by you with no more than I do?
• 30:48
  What what's what's this year? Is it bigger this year?
• 30:50
  What sort? Of things are there, yeah, I
• 30:52
  think from the list I saw there's 510 albums and singles
• 30:56
  coming out, including titles by Blur.
• 31:00
  There's a Bieber Doobie live album, always a David Bowie
• 31:03
  reissue, of course. Frank Turner, Fred Again, Oasis,
• 31:08
  Rage Against the Machine, The Cure again.
• 31:11
  Obviously you can peruse the full list at your leisure
• 31:16
  online, but good luck getting the releases you want.
• 31:20
  Bear in mind, of course, if you've never been to a Record
• 31:22
  Store Day event, be prepared is they are very popular and people
• 31:26
  do start queuing sometimes as early as the the night before.
• 31:30
  We did a feature on Record Store Day on the 6th Music some years
• 31:35
  ago talking to shops around the country and they said, yeah,
• 31:38
  we've we've got three people camped outside our shop and that
• 31:41
  was about 5:45 on the Friday evening.
• 31:44
  So it gets it will get very, very busy at your local.
• 31:48
  Elbows up in there in the stores, we have to be kind of
• 31:50
  quite sharp, sharp elbow when you're kind of digging through
• 31:52
  the crates. Got to get in there.
• 31:54
  Some shops are better than others in terms of, and I think
• 31:57
  a lot of shops actually these days will, you know, they will
• 32:01
  go and talk to the queue. I know Sister Ray Records in the
• 32:06
  West End, down in Soho, they quite often go out with a list
• 32:10
  of things that are already sold out and you can see people in
• 32:12
  the queue that have you, have you still got the Bananarama
• 32:16
  coloured vinyl? No, they're, they're, they've
• 32:18
  all gone just constantly just walking out of the queue going
• 32:21
  home. But yeah, have a look at the
• 32:24
  list. Know what you want.
• 32:25
  Bear in mind that given that some of these releases are quite
• 32:28
  limited, certain shops around the country may only get two or
• 32:33
  three copies of each, so you've got to be there early, I think
• 32:39
  is the that's the moral. Yeah, I think the other thing
• 32:42
  is, is, is it Johnny Ma? Is this there's like a
• 32:44
  celebrated artist normally isn't there?
• 32:46
  I think it's Johnny Ma is is it record store legend?
• 32:48
  There's like a sort of award they give and it's him.
• 32:51
  I think Sir Elton John was the first all these years ago.
• 32:53
  But yeah, Johnny Ma. So he's I assume he's got
• 32:56
  something out as part of this year, right.
• 32:58
  Well, and there's. You're right as well.
• 33:00
  Elton's in that list. I've just noticed.
• 33:03
  Elton John records. Yeah, if you want it's.
• 33:06
  Funny, it weird, isn't it? Like, I think we do say the Cure
• 33:09
  again, but in one sense, is that a measurement?
• 33:12
  I guess if some of these artists supported it from early on,
• 33:15
  didn't it? It wasn't like now.
• 33:17
  It's almost like now it's become so, so popular and so, so good.
• 33:21
  Everyone is like, we have to do, we have to do stuff for this.
• 33:24
  It's like obligatory, but I remember the days when it was
• 33:27
  much fewer releases and, you know, the artists who were
• 33:29
  getting behind it Where? Yeah, I mean, there were, I mean
• 33:32
  there are, there are, you know, there are grumbles though Even
• 33:35
  so that, you know, the on, you know, for various reasons.
• 33:40
  One, in the run up to Record Store Day, there was a point
• 33:43
  where it was incredibly hard getting your record pressed.
• 33:46
  If you were a new band not taking part in Record Store Day,
• 33:49
  you still found yourself a long way back in the queue because
• 33:52
  obviously demand grows and it grows over the course of, you
• 33:56
  know, months leading up to this event.
• 33:59
  And I think some people were a little bit, maybe there was a,
• 34:04
  there was a slight feeling why the majors, why the major labels
• 34:07
  jumping on this? And what are there?
• 34:10
  Are there certain, you know, major label albums which are
• 34:13
  being released that people don't maybe really want?
• 34:17
  But is there, there is always, there's always stories of, you
• 34:21
  know, records that go unsold that were released on the day
• 34:26
  and just no one's, no one's very interested in them.
• 34:29
  So, you know, what's, what's the point?
• 34:31
  You know, you. But maybe the music industry has
• 34:34
  worked out now which artists will specifically sell very well
• 34:38
  on record store day, which we shall see.
• 34:40
  As I say, 510 releases out on Saturday.
• 34:45
  Good luck getting whatever you're after.
• 34:48
  I want someone to have collected them all Pokémon style.
• 34:51
  If anyone out there gets 510 they should definitely write in.
• 34:55
  Need to talk to them about how they've managed it but that.
• 34:57
  'D be a lot better. Just imagine how much, yeah how
• 34:59
  much cash, 26 lbs an album that would cost you.
• 35:04
  I can't do the mass in my head, but I'll have to do it for this
• 35:07
  week. Thank you very much for
• 35:08
  listening. If you have enjoyed the show,
• 35:10
  please do subscribe to us in your podcast app and give us a
• 35:14
  review and a rating if you have time because every little helps.
• 35:18
  And don't forget if you have a question or an observation to
• 35:23
  make about any of the stories we've covered or something which
• 35:26
  has always bothered you about the financial side of the music
• 35:29
  industry, or you're just looking for maybe some tips or advice
• 35:33
  that we might be able to help you out with,
• 35:35
  dogetintouchitsthepriceofmusicpodcast@gmail.com. That's the price of music,
• 35:40
  podcast@gmail.com. Until next time, take care
• 35:44
  everybody. Tara.
• 36:11
  None.