Latest / The Price of Music / Steve reflects on working as a music journalist in the 1990s – and has lots to say on music journalism today; Spotify deletes 75 million "spam songs"; and why is TikTok so important to music?

Transcript

Steve reflects on working as a music journalist in the 1990s – and has lots to say on music journalism today; Spotify deletes 75 million "spam songs"; and why is TikTok so important to music? · The Price of Music

• 0:08
  Hello and welcome to The Price of Music, brought to you by
• 0:11
  Music Ally, the show that's fascinated by all the fun and
• 0:14
  games and finances of the music world as explained each week by
• 0:18
  me, Steve Lamac and him, Stuart Dredge.
• 0:19
  If you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music biz
• 0:22
  and how it all works and how the figures stack up, then here we
• 0:26
  are This week. More old songs making waves on
• 0:29
  social media. Has the American TikTok dilemma
• 0:32
  been solved? And the collapse of music print
• 0:35
  media and its financial consequences for journalists.
• 0:39
  But first, here's Stu's big stats of the week.
• 0:43
  What's your big number this week, Stuart?
• 0:46
  75,000,000. 75,000,000 is quite impressive.
• 0:50
  It refers to what exactly? It's how many tracks Spotify has
• 0:55
  removed from its service and last year because they were
• 0:58
  spam. Because they were spam.
• 1:00
  I didn't know you could have music called spam.
• 1:01
  What does? What does spam mean in this
• 1:03
  context then? What is spam?
• 1:06
  It's that Monty Python song, you know the one, someone uploaded
• 1:09
  it 75,000,000 times to make a point now.
• 1:11
  So this is spam tracks, which is it's a thing that's been become
• 1:16
  a part of the streaming landscape where people upload
• 1:18
  thousands or hundreds of thousands of tracks.
• 1:20
  It may be the same tracks slightly with the title changed,
• 1:23
  it may be just a bunch of AI generated music, but it's people
• 1:26
  mass uploading stuff that isn't intended to be played by humans
• 1:30
  ever. It's just put on there to either
• 1:32
  do a fraud, do a fraud that's the wrong way of saying it to
• 1:35
  commit fraud, or just clogging up the system.
• 1:40
  And this came as part of Swap. I did an announcement about what
• 1:43
  some of the things it's doing around AI music.
• 1:44
  And as part of that, just halfway through this press
• 1:46
  conference when, by the way, we've removed 75,000,000 tracks
• 1:49
  in the last year. Thank you.
• 1:51
  The scale of that, like the official number, which I think
• 1:55
  is probably bigger than this now, is that Spotify has 100
• 1:57
  million tracks on its service. Like that's been the big, this
• 2:00
  is how much we've got. So another 75% on top of that
• 2:03
  was just landfill and it's got rid of it.
• 2:07
  So obviously this is one of those stats where they're saying
• 2:09
  it because they're they want us to be impressed by it.
• 2:11
  And it is quite impressive. You know, it's like saying we're
• 2:13
  not just letting this stuff stay up, we're getting rid of it.
• 2:16
  So yeah. This week's three big news
• 2:18
  stories. They're all quite industry based
• 2:20
  but worth touching on even briefly I think.
• 2:23
  And you just mentioned Spotify announcing some wider changes
• 2:28
  designed to respond to the explosion in AI generated music.
• 2:34
  So as as part of their latest announcement, what?
• 2:38
  What else are they doing and why apart from taking out the spam?
• 2:42
  Yeah, so there were three things in this announcement last week,
• 2:45
  and the one was this, this new spam filter, which I mean, I
• 2:48
  guess we're all used to the idea of spam filters in our e-mail,
• 2:50
  aren't we? So the things that stop us
• 2:51
  getting all those Viagra emails being centrist by strangers.
• 2:56
  And they've got the equivalent for stream music where basically
• 2:58
  they're going to be detecting tracks that are uploaded mass
• 3:02
  upload. So is it mass uploaded?
• 3:04
  Someone's uploaded 100,000 tracks.
• 3:05
  They're all useless just to commit fraud, they'll go.
• 3:08
  So it's improving its detection technology.
• 3:11
  The other thing, and look, bear with me this because I think
• 3:13
  you'll listen to this and say that sounds really boring.
• 3:16
  It does a new system of music credits developed by the D Dex
• 3:21
  Industry Consortium. Brian what?
• 3:24
  What does that mean in English? Then what?
• 3:26
  What does that entitle? So when you're a musician and
• 3:28
  you're uploading your song or or getting ready to upload songs to
• 3:31
  Spotify streaming services, you have to create all the metadata.
• 3:35
  So the tracks, title, genre, all data.
• 3:38
  And this new system is also going to let you say how AI was
• 3:41
  used in the process, if at all. So what it will be is, for
• 3:46
  example, if you used AI generated vocals in your songs,
• 3:49
  you'll say that. If you created some samples
• 3:52
  using AI, but then created a song yourself in traditional
• 3:54
  way, you can say that. And if you use AI just to mix
• 3:57
  and master it, you can say that. So it's kind of you can, you
• 4:00
  don't just say, yes, I used AI in this song.
• 4:02
  You'll be able to say exactly how and where and.
• 4:05
  What's what will will people, will people necessarily do that?
• 4:08
  Because I mean, given the choice, some people might think,
• 4:11
  I'm not going to fess up to this.
• 4:14
  Well, so part of the reason behind making it a bit more
• 4:16
  nuanced is that people don't feel worried about it because I
• 4:18
  know a lot of musicians are thinking, well, my music is
• 4:21
  human music, but I used an AI to mix it.
• 4:23
  But if I say that, will it be labeled as AI generated music
• 4:26
  and they will want to listen to it?
• 4:27
  So it avoids that. But yeah, the idea, I mean,
• 4:30
  Spotify's pitch was we don't want to punish musicians who are
• 4:33
  using this properly in their work.
• 4:35
  But we also want to have these transparency rules so that if
• 4:38
  someone does create an AI track and doesn't fill in that data,
• 4:42
  that kind of suggests something wrong is up.
• 4:44
  And it can that might kind of help them take it down.
• 4:47
  So there is there's like a hint of a stick that if you don't use
• 4:50
  these, that kind of gives them a clue about your motivations
• 4:53
  because they're also going to have technology to maybe detect
• 4:55
  if you have used AI, right? So I think that's quite a good
• 4:57
  thing. And the idea is it's an industry
• 4:59
  standard, so it could be used by any service.
• 5:01
  The, the, the idea behind it is that everyone can use the same
• 5:03
  standard. And then eventually you'll be
• 5:05
  able to see and you'll be able to see a song and say, oh, I
• 5:07
  understand how I was used here. And I'm, I'm not kind of being
• 5:10
  defrauded. OK.
• 5:12
  And the third thing was AI voice clones.
• 5:16
  You know, we talked about the footwear like someone clones an
• 5:18
  artist's voice and then releases a song with them singing
• 5:20
  something they didn't sing. So there's a famous Drake in the
• 5:22
  weekend that's now officially barred on Spotify.
• 5:25
  It's not allowed, which isn't a big change, but just makes it
• 5:31
  official. So in the past, for example, if
• 5:33
  someone cloned an artist's voice and uploaded a track to Spotify,
• 5:36
  the label would have to complain or the artist team and say,
• 5:38
  look, that's not my artist. And then spot, if I decide to
• 5:41
  take it down, it might be. Whereas now it's against the
• 5:43
  rules. It comes straight down when
• 5:45
  notified. So it's kind of just firming
• 5:47
  that up. But while at the same time, if
• 5:50
  you're an artist and you want to do that yourself like Grimes
• 5:52
  did, she licensed her voice out for AI so that people could use
• 5:55
  it. That's still fine.
• 5:56
  So that that's allowed. And again, it's the idea of they
• 6:00
  want to support artists who are using it in creative ways, but
• 6:03
  crackdown on what they call as bad actors.
• 6:04
  So that was the kind of unifying theme here, OK.
• 6:07
  Story 2 and now this one has been running longer than The
• 6:11
  Archers or for listeners outside the UK, let's let's say the
• 6:17
  history of the Olympics is short by comparison.
• 6:21
  This is the TikTok saga in the states.
• 6:24
  Do you want to recap the plots and what has happened this
• 6:26
  weekend? And I guess as well, we should
• 6:28
  also make the point why is I think needs restating on a
• 6:34
  reasonably regular basis, why TikTok is just so important to
• 6:38
  the music industry at the moment.
• 6:40
  Yeah, I'm getting this recap down to a fine art now.
• 6:42
  I think I've got it in a sentence.
• 6:43
  So basically AUS law says TikTok there has to be sold or it's
• 6:47
  going to get banned. And this is all about its
• 6:49
  ownership by a Chinese company and concerns about national
• 6:52
  security in the US. And the deadline to enforce this
• 6:57
  law just keeps getting extended to figure out a way to sell
• 7:00
  TikTok US in a deal that everyone approves of.
• 7:03
  So last week, there was an executive order from the US
• 7:05
  president himself kind of giving details of this deal that's been
• 7:09
  agreed. So the idea is TikTok US will
• 7:12
  become a new separate company, majority owned by American
• 7:16
  investors, valued at $14 billion, which sounds like a a
• 7:21
  big number, but at one point people were saying, oh, it could
• 7:23
  be worth 40 billion. So it's not worth quite as much
• 7:27
  as people thought early in the process.
• 7:30
  And then Byte Dance, which is a Chinese company that owns
• 7:32
  TikTok. Now, they'd still, they'd still
• 7:33
  only about 20% of the new company, so they'd be like a
• 7:36
  minority owner, but it might still be in charge of shopping
• 7:39
  and advertising, which is basically where the money comes
• 7:41
  from. So if this deal goes through, it
• 7:47
  basically means TikTok is here to stay in the US And that means
• 7:51
  that all the artists and all the labels who have made it a really
• 7:54
  big part of their marketing plans just carry on using it.
• 7:56
  They don't need to Plan B, which they kind of have been doing
• 7:59
  anyway. Every time they said and got
• 8:00
  extended, people got less panicked about this, this
• 8:03
  prospect of it closing down there.
• 8:06
  But there were a couple of dark clouds hovering over this, which
• 8:08
  I kind of thought might be quite talk about.
• 8:10
  The first thing is like, so far, it's only the White House saying
• 8:13
  this deal's been agreed. So basically, you've got
• 8:16
  President Trump's word saying, I talked to the Chinese president
• 8:18
  and he approves this deal. But the Chinese authorities have
• 8:21
  been really conspicuously silent so far in public and a few
• 8:25
  Chinese newspapers saying, well, this will depend on the US
• 8:28
  delivering on its promises. So it's not entirely certain
• 8:31
  this has actually been agreed and approved.
• 8:34
  And there is a scenario where China says, actually, no, we
• 8:38
  don't like this deal. And then Trump possibly throws
• 8:41
  his toys out the pram, shuts down TikTok in the US and
• 8:44
  everyone panics again and has to find something else to use.
• 8:47
  I mean, that's kind of that seems like the unlikeliest
• 8:50
  outcome, but it is still possible.
• 8:52
  But the other thing, and this is so I have to get it political.
• 8:55
  Is that OK? I'm going to rely on how you
• 8:58
  look to say if I'm going too far.
• 9:00
  So this deal was pushed through by by Trump and the vice
• 9:02
  president, Jodie Vance. They played a big role in sort
• 9:05
  of figuring out this. And a tech firm called Oracle's
• 9:07
  going to be running TikTok, play a big role in running TikTok in
• 9:10
  the US And that company's boss is a big backer of Trump.
• 9:14
  And the new owners, they're going to have control of like
• 9:17
  Tik Tok's recommendation algorithm in the US So how it
• 9:20
  decides what to show people and also it's content moderation
• 9:23
  decision. So who gets banned, who gets
• 9:25
  promoted? And people are starting to say
• 9:29
  around the edges, hang on a minute.
• 9:31
  Like there's a lot of stuff being talked about in the US
• 9:33
  about kind of censorship and the media.
• 9:35
  So there was the Jimmy Kimmel late night talk show recently
• 9:38
  had taken off the air kind of under pressure from one of them
• 9:42
  from the from one of Trump's regulation buddies.
• 9:45
  And so now people are starting to us, hang on a minute.
• 9:47
  If buddies of the president are going to be in control of
• 9:49
  TikTok, which has like more than 180 million users in the US,
• 9:52
  it's big. It's really big.
• 9:54
  What if this deal starts to turn it into this politicized space
• 9:59
  so where there's a lot of far right wing rhetoric, conspiracy
• 10:03
  theories and and like, you don't have to look too far for an
• 10:05
  example of that because that's what's happened.
• 10:07
  That's what people have said has happened to X, formerly Twitter,
• 10:10
  since Ella Musk bought it. And what happened to X was a lot
• 10:13
  of musicians left it or have retreated from it because of the
• 10:16
  kind of culture change there. And I think that's the danger of
• 10:20
  TikTok here, that if it gets saved in the US, but if it
• 10:22
  becomes this kind of Marga Musk hellscape, which is just me
• 10:28
  worrying really, But there's, there's a potential of a similar
• 10:31
  drain if artists say, hang on a minute, we don't feel
• 10:32
  comfortable here anymore. We're going to go elsewhere.
• 10:35
  So that is the people are just starting to talk about it like
• 10:38
  the, the, the, a lot of the headlines about Tik Tok's being
• 10:40
  saved hurrah. And people are starting to say,
• 10:43
  hang on a minute. How are its new owners going to
• 10:45
  run it? And what will that mean for
• 10:46
  artists who aren't on board with the the current political regime
• 10:51
  in the US? Story Story 3 and this I guess
• 10:57
  there's some relation to TikTok and other social platforms, but
• 11:02
  more news this week of more old tracks finding a new life on
• 11:06
  social media. Billy Eilish's breakthrough hit
• 11:10
  from 2015 is top of the YouTube Shorts chart.
• 11:14
  While there there's a Rihanna album track from 2007, which is
• 11:18
  back in the charts as well. Thanks to as we've just been
• 11:21
  saying to TikTok. Yeah, it's just this is like an
• 11:25
  we could probably do this story every week with different songs,
• 11:27
  but yeah, this week. So did you ever see Ocean Eyes?
• 11:30
  It was like the first Billie Eilish track to blow up on
• 11:32
  SoundCloud, I think. Right.
• 11:36
  So it's pre her big pre her publicly being on a big label.
• 11:39
  But yeah, it's top of the YouTube Shorts chart.
• 11:41
  So YouTube Shorts, if anyone doesn't know, that's kind of
• 11:44
  YouTube's TikTok equivalent. So short videos people can make
• 11:46
  and put songs in them and ocean eyes was the very the most
• 11:50
  popular song used for videos in in the recent week of 12th 20
• 11:54
  December. So and then it then the song
• 11:56
  went back into the top 100 on YouTube Music.
• 11:58
  And it's just as far as I can tell, it's a random trend where
• 12:01
  people are making YouTube shorts videos showing off their eyes
• 12:05
  and thus the track ocean eyes seem to fit, which is kind of it
• 12:10
  sounds quite like they could have chosen anything.
• 12:12
  Eye of the tiger. You know your lying eyes like
• 12:15
  love the songs with eyes in and here you go and and this is
• 12:19
  going to be making Billie Eilish money because her song is
• 12:22
  getting a viral spike. Yeah, Well, I was, I was going
• 12:24
  to ask about this. What is the financial uplift?
• 12:28
  Because what's I can't remember now I should know these figures.
• 12:31
  But you know, as an artist, what would you be getting paid for,
• 12:35
  you know, plays on YouTube Shorts or on TikTok?
• 12:38
  Or does the does the presence on those platforms that lead to
• 12:42
  increased figures elsewhere on the streaming services and
• 12:45
  that's where the money is? That's where the money is.
• 12:48
  I mean, the money you do get royalties for stuff being used
• 12:50
  on TikTok and YouTube charts, but the money is is small and
• 12:53
  the music industry regularly moans about it.
• 12:55
  But what happens? And, and this is one of those
• 12:57
  trends that I think we need more research to understand exactly
• 13:01
  how big it can be. But if your track goes viral on
• 13:05
  one of these platforms, it goes up with charts and gets more
• 13:07
  streams elsewhere. And as we said before, I think
• 13:10
  in the UK, the ballpark figure in the past has been a million
• 13:13
  streams was about £5000. But then you might only see 20%
• 13:19
  of that as an artist winning a contract.
• 13:20
  So you know, millions of streams, maybe £1000.
• 13:22
  So if, if, if you're, if a thing takes off on YouTube Shorts and
• 13:25
  you get 10 million extra streams, then that's like
• 13:28
  significant. And the same with Rihanna.
• 13:31
  So this Rihanna track, I love the Rihanna story because this
• 13:33
  this is a track called Breaking Dishes by Rihanna and it's about
• 13:36
  cheating man. Basically that's the theme of
• 13:38
  it. And people are using that on
• 13:40
  TikTok to soundtrack videos about cheating man.
• 13:43
  Like, you know, they're kind of calling out their ex boyfriends.
• 13:45
  They're kind of the the best one I saw was someone saying a man
• 13:49
  cheated, but I've only got plastic dishes and it's them
• 13:51
  throwing the dishes on the floor and then bouncing all over the
• 13:53
  kitchen. And so basically what happens is
• 13:56
  people, someone, someone used this song and did a really cool
• 13:59
  video. Other people saw it followed
• 14:01
  suit. And then once it starts
• 14:03
  trending, everyone jumps on the bandwagon because that's how
• 14:06
  these platforms work. Like if you are someone trying
• 14:08
  to make money from your TikTok videos, you're on top of what
• 14:11
  the what's trending today And like, right, I'd better do a
• 14:13
  video with that song in it because that's what's trending.
• 14:17
  So it's again, Rihanna. This song, which was an album
• 14:20
  track is now in the main top 100 in the US for the first time.
• 14:24
  And it came out what, 18 years ago?
• 14:26
  Trying to add it up. So yeah, I mean, it seems
• 14:29
  organic, like this is this is a case of, of, of viral craze
• 14:32
  starting and and spreading. But I think increasingly
• 14:35
  Labour's going to be saying, right, how do we make this
• 14:37
  happen? Like, how do we take this
• 14:39
  decades old album track, find something in the lyrics that
• 14:42
  could be a really good hook and then how do we get people to
• 14:44
  start using it? How do we pay influencers to
• 14:46
  start doing it? So we're going to get these
• 14:49
  stories. And the thing I'm looking for
• 14:50
  now is when I hear these stories, is it completely
• 14:53
  organic or is it something that a label has kicked into gear?
• 14:56
  Yeah, it's planted the idea. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:00
  Gotcha. Any other business this week?
• 15:01
  I know we're going to answer a question for one of our
• 15:04
  listeners, Richard. Before we get to that though,
• 15:06
  can we start with the latest from the Frontline filing debate
• 15:10
  which started when a when I mentioned having a conversation
• 15:13
  with one of the lovely staff at Resident Records in Brighton
• 15:15
  about where you file PJ Harvey under P or H.
• 15:19
  I'm very much in the H camp myself, but we are indebted to
• 15:22
  listener Anna who commented on Spotify refiling dilemmas.
• 15:27
  I was in Resident Records today and can confirm PJ Harvey is
• 15:31
  filed under H. Therefore I look most consistent
• 15:35
  so that must be reassuring. It is thank you very much and
• 15:39
  we're just what we thought we might be getting towards the end
• 15:41
  of this thread and producer Joe has just raised the issue of
• 15:43
  Elton John. He or Jay should be Jay doesn't
• 15:47
  look right under Jay. She, I mean, it should be Jay,
• 15:50
  though, should it? I'll tell you what will come
• 15:52
  back. I mean, there's.
• 15:54
  I think Jay. I think Jay, but I I said I said
• 15:56
  P for PJ Harvey and I say so I'm not sure I've got any
• 15:58
  consistency. That's why I don't I wouldn't
• 16:00
  get a job in resident records. They just kicked me out.
• 16:02
  I think we may return to this in this week's edition of The Lock
• 16:06
  In, when we can also do that preposterous theory about The
• 16:08
  Beach Boys and The Beatles. We'll come to that later.
• 16:11
  Here's the question, though, from another of our followers,
• 16:14
  Richard Bose. Thank you, Richard, for getting
• 16:16
  in touch, he says. Hi everyone.
• 16:18
  Loyal patron here. I'm a music journalist slash
• 16:22
  writer for Clash, Louder Than War and Live Forever.
• 16:26
  They're all for anyone who doesn't know, you know, big
• 16:29
  music websites. As a writer for all these, I've
• 16:32
  previously worked as well for Geek Wise before it folded last
• 16:35
  year. And I've interviewed some fairly
• 16:37
  big names, including Sean Ryder, Tim Burgess, Royal Blood and
• 16:40
  Frank Turner. But I've never been paid a penny
• 16:43
  for this work. I don't it for the money,
• 16:46
  clearly I'd threw it for the love and interest in speaking to
• 16:49
  people about music. But it struck me, says Richard,
• 16:53
  that with the likes of Q Magazine and Enemy folding in
• 16:57
  the last few years, there's very little print media.
• 17:01
  Certainly in the UK there's Mojo, Uncut, Kerrang and Rolling
• 17:05
  Stone, but they're the only music magazines which are
• 17:07
  certainly the only ones available in supermarkets, and
• 17:10
  even then they're largely special editions about specific
• 17:14
  bands. The recent integration of
• 17:16
  Pitchfork into GQ met with some outcry, but the dial hasn't
• 17:21
  moved. It would be interesting to hear
• 17:23
  how the money was distributed when Steve was a journalist in
• 17:26
  comparison to nowadays. It strikes me that journalism
• 17:30
  and writing is a key part of the music industry infrastructure,
• 17:34
  but those paid for it are few and far between.
• 17:37
  Say thank you, Richard. I mean, it's, it's a massive
• 17:40
  question there. So when I started thinking about
• 17:42
  it, yeah, I mean there's, there's one or two tangents you
• 17:45
  could go off down I think from this.
• 17:48
  So I've got two or three different bits of answers to to
• 17:52
  your question or to your point, I guess in answer, in answer to
• 17:56
  the question about payment in the old days.
• 17:57
  I mean, obviously it's more than 30 years ago now since I left
• 18:01
  the new Musical Express, but at the time the circulation was
• 18:05
  around about 110 to 120,000 copies a week.
• 18:09
  I think that's roughly how much we were selling.
• 18:12
  So anyway, because it's quite a long time, my memory of what you
• 18:15
  get paid is a bit fuzzy. I do remember though, that while
• 18:19
  you know a lot of people talk about being paid by word count
• 18:22
  at the enemy, you were paid by the inch.
• 18:25
  So you got paid for how much space your article actually took
• 18:29
  up in the paper. But at the time say these are
• 18:32
  very rough figures, but a live review, a minor live review,
• 18:36
  your average live review would probably pay you about 25 lbs.
• 18:40
  A lead review 50-60 maybe. I mean the letters page, that's
• 18:44
  what you want. Letters page paid, I think about
• 18:47
  80 lbs, which is a lot of money in them days.
• 18:50
  I mean, those things were the saving grace for freelancers
• 18:52
  doing the singles page or the letters page.
• 18:56
  That was, you know, that was a decent bit of money.
• 18:59
  But I wish about the point was, I guess from if you picked up
• 19:03
  enough work, you could make a, you could make a living as a
• 19:08
  freelancer as if you could pick up just about enough work, you
• 19:12
  know, a live review and an album review every week, maybe the
• 19:15
  letters page a feature, particularly as you work your
• 19:20
  way up to longer form features then you could, I mean, you
• 19:24
  know, you're not going to live, you're not going to live in a
• 19:26
  palace, but you could do all right out of it.
• 19:29
  And I think the other point to be make obviously this, the fact
• 19:32
  that, you know, there was so little alternative music on
• 19:35
  national radio at the time, except for John Peel.
• 19:38
  And of course, later we did the evening session where the weekly
• 19:42
  papers had a lot of clout at that point.
• 19:45
  And you know, we, we sort of quite often you can see a music
• 19:48
  paper or the set of music papers.
• 19:50
  There were the three Melody Maker sounds and the enemy would
• 19:54
  set the agenda really. And in some cases, they were the
• 19:58
  only place where certain artists could catch a break.
• 20:02
  You know, there was nowhere else for a new band to get mentioned
• 20:05
  really. And that was why the music
• 20:08
  industry were. Were more than keen at on
• 20:11
  throwing money at the music papers, you know, major labels.
• 20:15
  We might come back into this in the lock in as well.
• 20:17
  But major labels at the time I I worked for the enemy 2087 and
• 20:22
  92, but I know this went on through quite a lot of the 90s
• 20:24
  as well. They'd always be flying
• 20:27
  journalists off to America or Europe just to interview
• 20:31
  abandoned by a journalist drinks to get their artists in the
• 20:36
  paper. So as I say, I mean not, I'm not
• 20:40
  saying everyone made a mint, but most people like you know, made
• 20:43
  a, made a live, made a reasonable living, OK, just
• 20:47
  above living what he's living and had a very good time.
• 20:51
  I think. I mean, the other thing I mean,
• 20:53
  so the reason I can't tell you exactly what some of the
• 20:57
  payments were to freelancers because I was on staff my entire
• 21:01
  career at the Enemy, starting off as news editor.
• 21:06
  But then I became live editor, where I have to say, not a month
• 21:11
  would go by without, you know, needing to sub one or two of my
• 21:14
  stringers the price of a pint or two before they all went off to
• 21:18
  record and tape exchange to flock their records to buyers
• 21:21
  back. That was the only way of making
• 21:23
  money, wasn't it? Selling.
• 21:24
  Selling off. Oh yeah, yeah, it definitely
• 21:27
  was. But yeah, so but being on staff,
• 21:30
  you get a monthly paycheck for the job you did and say, I was
• 21:33
  like a live editor for a while. So I got paid for being live
• 21:36
  editor and didn't get anything extra for any of the articles or
• 21:40
  reviews which which I wrote because you were on the staff
• 21:43
  and everything came under your wage.
• 21:46
  And I wrote loads. I mean, a lot of staff members.
• 21:49
  We wrote loads again. But it's exactly the same as
• 21:52
  you. Not because we wanted to make
• 21:53
  money out of it, because we wanted to.
• 21:55
  We wanted to make bands and see gigs.
• 21:58
  And you know what we what we were, what we were essentially
• 22:02
  doing, trying to corrupt a nation's musical taste by
• 22:06
  getting our opinions in print to as many people as possible.
• 22:10
  Although I tell you one thing though, the other thing about
• 22:12
  being on staff and how it relates to payment, anything he
• 22:16
  wrote, not only, not only did he not get paid for it, it was also
• 22:19
  owned by the publisher. And I I guess probably still is.
• 22:22
  So anytime NME reuses or reprints my review of Nevermind
• 22:27
  by Nirvana, don't don't see a penny, don't see a penny extra.
• 22:31
  I mean, obviously it's nice, you know, that people still refer to
• 22:34
  it, but in the same way that, you know, particularly during
• 22:37
  the 70s, eighties, 90s that bands did record deals where
• 22:41
  they signed away all their rights.
• 22:43
  So it turns out did we the staff journalists of the time.
• 22:47
  But anyway, that's that's how it was.
• 22:49
  I left in October 92, which I guess was just as the clouds
• 22:54
  were coming over the horizon. Really.
• 22:56
  Because the problem obviously for weekly music magazines from
• 22:59
  the mid late 90s onwards ends up being the Internet.
• 23:03
  And here's one of the reasons why.
• 23:06
  While I was at the enemy during my five years there, they
• 23:09
  conducted at different Times readership surveys.
• 23:12
  I think there were two while I was there asking people what?
• 23:16
  Who bought the paper? Actual people in the paper.
• 23:18
  Why do you buy the paper? What was the number one answer?
• 23:22
  Why? What did people buy the new
• 23:25
  Mutual Express for Stuart? Gig listings.
• 23:29
  Exactly that Gig guide was top. If it wasn't gig guide, it was
• 23:33
  news Gig guide and news pages were the top 2 reasons why
• 23:37
  people bought the enemy at number.
• 23:40
  I think it was 3 or 4. The the the the third or fourth
• 23:44
  reason. Why do you buy the new musical
• 23:46
  express, the crossword and and so obviously this was quite
• 23:52
  bruising tall where he goes to the right as he goes, but
• 23:56
  features, features basically came, you know, features and new
• 24:01
  bands. They come well right down the
• 24:03
  list. And so of course the Internet
• 24:05
  comes along and the papers lose their exclusivity to the news.
• 24:09
  All the things, the reasons why people actually bought the music
• 24:12
  papers. I mean, I'm not saying people
• 24:14
  bought bought the enemy read the news and threw it away.
• 24:17
  Obviously then read other bits and pieces.
• 24:20
  But news was so key that, you know, with news breaking all the
• 24:24
  time, by the time the music papers came out, that news was
• 24:28
  out of that news was out of date.
• 24:31
  And that's the first thing that starts undermining the music
• 24:33
  papers. And concurrent with that is the
• 24:36
  change in the way that the music industry decided it was going to
• 24:40
  market and advertise its artists.
• 24:43
  Because what keeps all magazines alive is advertising revenue.
• 24:47
  The act, the actual size of the enemy.
• 24:50
  When we sat in a editorial meeting on a Tuesday, you would
• 24:54
  find out and you you'd have an average size, but size of the
• 24:59
  paper could go up and down depending on how many ads have
• 25:02
  been sold for that week. So it's quite reliant on
• 25:07
  advertising, you know, both the, you know, we used to have those
• 25:11
  big page ads for new albums, but also, if you remember the music
• 25:14
  papers from back then, acres, absolutely acres and acres of
• 25:20
  live ads for gigs and tours. And as the industry over the
• 25:25
  years moves to new models, advertising or marketing spend
• 25:30
  starts to go elsewhere and the industry decides maybe we'll
• 25:34
  directly market to fans instead of advertising in these papers.
• 25:38
  And this is this was the slippery slope, which started
• 25:41
  with street teams and, you know, being endless Flyers being given
• 25:45
  out outside gigs and leads us to where we are now where marketing
• 25:50
  will involve TikTok or whatever and bands can publicly announce
• 25:54
  their gigs on their social media.
• 25:56
  So advertising for print media slowly, slowly starts to
• 26:02
  collapse. And of course, then as well as
• 26:05
  the sales begin to dip because people are getting their news
• 26:09
  somewhere else, then that affects your ad revenue because
• 26:13
  you can charge more for an ad in a paper selling 120,000 copies a
• 26:16
  week than you can in a paper selling 80,000 copies a week.
• 26:21
  And and so it goes as the circulation begins to slide.
• 26:24
  And then one by one, the papers started to fold.
• 26:28
  I mean, even those who survived like the enemy survived online.
• 26:31
  Even those publications have had to shift their editorial in
• 26:36
  order to attract enough readers and hence enough advertisers to,
• 26:40
  you know, prolong their existence.
• 26:42
  And that's kind of where we are. I mean, I haven't touched on
• 26:45
  broadsheet journalism where there is some good long form
• 26:48
  writing. But I do think it's, I think
• 26:52
  it's sad we don't have a weekly publication that, you know,
• 26:55
  crosses covers music across different genres.
• 27:00
  But you know, in the magazines that have survived, the reason
• 27:03
  they've survived is because they've identified a particular
• 27:06
  part of the audience and they sell to that part of the
• 27:09
  audience. And because they're specialised
• 27:12
  in a certain genre or demographic, that's also a
• 27:16
  decent target point for advertisers who still want to
• 27:19
  spend money because they know exactly who they're advertising
• 27:23
  to and there's a reason for them to carry on.
• 27:26
  And that's why certain magazines, you know, some of the
• 27:29
  ones that you mentioned, Richard, are still around.
• 27:31
  But I mean, I, one of the things I really miss is the, is the big
• 27:35
  cover stories about, you know, up and coming artists, newish
• 27:38
  artists, because I mean, 1, you know, they're often really
• 27:42
  colourful and entertaining and gave a writer a chance to
• 27:45
  theorize about music in general. We've got more inside the minds
• 27:49
  of the band and you don't have that anymore.
• 27:52
  I think the other thing about them was, but you know, papers
• 27:54
  like The Enemy and Melody Maker, they did quite often take bands
• 27:58
  to task as well. And they would ask them
• 28:01
  difficult questions, you know, and would would occasionally
• 28:04
  slate a record, you know, absolutely pile on a record when
• 28:08
  a band had made a terrible record.
• 28:11
  And all this, I think, helped filter out what was interesting
• 28:16
  and you know, who wasn't interesting because they'd be
• 28:18
  much more debate about it or thought gone into it.
• 28:23
  And there's no, you know, a different there's a divergent of
• 28:27
  opinion as well. I always said, you know, the the
• 28:30
  Tuesday Enemy editorial meeting, which would be the staff and
• 28:34
  maybe leading freelancers. And it's like getting 12 and
• 28:37
  everyone like different sorts of music.
• 28:39
  It was like putting 12 musicians in a studio and asking them to
• 28:42
  make a record together. That was how we put the Enemy
• 28:45
  together and why, you know, we covered so many different
• 28:49
  different types of music and had such a, you know, a range of
• 28:52
  opinions. You know, you could walk from
• 28:54
  one end to the office and the bands who were really popular on
• 28:57
  one end were were the devil's Incarnate by the time you got to
• 29:00
  the the other end of the office. So, yeah, here we are.
• 29:05
  So we're left with, you know, still some really good writers,
• 29:08
  but without, you know, without the openings as much, you know,
• 29:11
  their magazines, as mentioned broadsheets.
• 29:15
  But in a lot of cases, journalists don't have the space
• 29:19
  to really go to town on an article.
• 29:21
  And, you know, places, places where they they do.
• 29:25
  And there are, you know, decent websites as well, but they are
• 29:29
  maybe a little marginalised or just simply overlooked by a lot
• 29:32
  of people because the audience has moved on.
• 29:35
  And, you know, in some cases a lot of people are happy enough
• 29:39
  with a potted history of a band and that would that would do
• 29:42
  them. But yeah, I think, you know,
• 29:44
  actually, actually writing and creating ideas.
• 29:50
  I mean, the whole idea of musical genres now is, you know,
• 29:54
  we used to just invent, come up with on a, you know, in the pub
• 29:57
  on a Wednesday, you'd come up with a genre and and, you know,
• 30:00
  something would be happening two weeks time.
• 30:02
  And that was a way of then, you know, even something like Brit
• 30:05
  pop, it's a way of selling loads of records for the for the
• 30:08
  industry. But yeah, I'd love it if there
• 30:11
  were more. I'd love it if there were more
• 30:13
  journalistic characters and gatekeepers who could have paid
• 30:17
  careers. Because you need people with,
• 30:20
  you know, an instinctive or experienced overview to help
• 30:24
  make sense, particularly now because we need people to help
• 30:27
  us make sense of the model that is music these days.
• 30:32
  So, I mean, to come to your last point, Richard.
• 30:34
  Yeah. Is, is music writing still key?
• 30:36
  And I guess the brutal answer is it is for some fans.
• 30:40
  It's not for all fans. But who knows in this
• 30:44
  generation, who know we might see a revival in print in the
• 30:47
  same way that there's a revival in vinyl.
• 30:50
  I mean, it would take a lot of investment and the buying of the
• 30:53
  music biz for that to happen. But you never know what does
• 30:58
  everyone for what do you? You can drop us a line by the
• 31:00
  way, The Price of Music, podcast@gmail.com, if you've got
• 31:03
  any thoughts on this. What about you, Stuart?
• 31:05
  Because you did a week at the Enemy at one point and you were
• 31:09
  a fan of the music papers and probably from your side of the
• 31:13
  desk as well. You probably know a bit about
• 31:14
  the economics of them. Yeah, well, I mean, I think, I
• 31:17
  think just after you left was when I started reading the the
• 31:20
  weeklies because it was about 1993 or so and they played a
• 31:24
  huge role. And like you say, I didn't mean
• 31:26
  to say Giggles and the Pippin because I read it from cover to
• 31:28
  cover, but it was that was where you found out who was playing
• 31:31
  and you found out, you know, there was either a news story or
• 31:33
  you went back and saw someone was touring.
• 31:35
  There's like yesterday, for example, Super Furry Animals
• 31:38
  just announced a tour and it was every other ad in my Facebook
• 31:42
  feed for Super Furry Animals. And that's how I found it.
• 31:45
  But yeah, I mean, I think the weird thing for me is that
• 31:50
  people, journalists did move online and try to to figure out
• 31:53
  the model for it. Like Pitchfork's a good example
• 31:55
  that for a long time was like, this is a successor, isn't it?
• 31:58
  Yes, but and and there were sites like chanting sound here
• 32:01
  and but I feel like I can't think of one of those sites that
• 32:05
  hasn't struggled with the economics of it because they
• 32:08
  were advertising driven and all the advertising money online is
• 32:11
  really going to Google and Meta. It's not going to individual
• 32:14
  websites and everyone is figuring out how do we make
• 32:16
  money. So people, it's not a journalist
• 32:19
  didn't move with the times and do the stuff online.
• 32:21
  It's just that the economics of that really have been tough.
• 32:25
  I mean, the other thing I wondered is streaming.
• 32:29
  Streaming is a factor. Maybe in not you can go and
• 32:32
  listen to anything at the click of a button now.
• 32:35
  And maybe we don't have that sense of I need to read a
• 32:37
  review, I need to know if it's good because you can type it up.
• 32:41
  But the the difference is you need someone to point you
• 32:44
  towards the stuff you might like.
• 32:45
  But there's all kinds of that that's there's algorithms doing
• 32:48
  that. There's curators and playlists.
• 32:50
  And that's the other thing I was thinking a lot about because I
• 32:54
  think something I've noticed recently with Spotify
• 32:57
  particularly is they've always had a bunch of humans doing
• 33:00
  their playlists. So whatever big players and
• 33:03
  whatever you think of, there is a human picking it, curating it,
• 33:05
  and they are that kind of taste. Mcgatekeeper saying this is
• 33:09
  brilliant. I want to bring it to people's
• 33:11
  ears, but they haven't been public facing.
• 33:13
  It's always like this is Spotify's blah blah playlist.
• 33:16
  But this year they've they've changed that a bit.
• 33:18
  They've started giving those people a profile, they're
• 33:21
  appearing in videos, they're on the thing.
• 33:23
  It's almost like they've said, actually, we need to put the
• 33:25
  humans at the forefront a bit again so you know who it is.
• 33:28
  Who's. Yeah, I mean, that is something
• 33:29
  that we miss, isn't it? That that if you if you started
• 33:32
  following a writer on the music papers that you found had a
• 33:35
  similar music taste, if they wrote about a record even when
• 33:38
  you'd never heard, you might trust them and go out and buy it
• 33:41
  just because of because of that. But I think what I'm, what I'm
• 33:44
  saying is, you know, the, the music, music journalism at its
• 33:49
  best and why, why writers should get paid is because they can
• 33:54
  really, they can explain what's important about that music in a
• 33:59
  way sometimes I would struggle to find words for.
• 34:02
  They can, they can give you they can, they can set the context
• 34:07
  around a band and, you know, draw in various facets of what
• 34:12
  they're about and paint amazing pictures.
• 34:15
  And that's, that's kind of what, what I, what I miss really.
• 34:19
  And again, you know, it's and it's fine.
• 34:21
  The algorithm thing is fine, but it doesn't really say these,
• 34:25
  these artists all have the same outlook on music.
• 34:30
  They all fit together. There's something going on here.
• 34:33
  It takes someone to be able to sift through all, all the music
• 34:37
  that you get and go. I think this is a thing and this
• 34:40
  is important. And that's, that's what's that's
• 34:43
  why, you know, we that's the era of the play journalist, you
• 34:47
  know, was really good for that. And that's the other thing I
• 34:50
  would think about because there is an argument, I think that the
• 34:53
  next, the next Steve Lamackel, the next kind of you just they
• 34:56
  probably are a kid on TikTok making videos talking about that
• 35:01
  stuff. Like there's probably someone
• 35:03
  who has this passionate and knowledge about music as you
• 35:05
  were and your contemporaries, but they're also really good at
• 35:09
  making short videos and talking to camera and like navigating
• 35:11
  their way through Tick Tock's algorithm.
• 35:13
  So they're out there, but they're not writing like 1000
• 35:16
  more reviews or interviews. And as those people get build a
• 35:19
  following, so they come onto the radar, the music industry and
• 35:23
  get that chance to interview bands.
• 35:24
  And it's kind of interesting. I was, I was, who was it?
• 35:27
  I think was it Nicki Minaj? Like there's a Twitch streamer
• 35:31
  who's really popular who, who does these three hour long shows
• 35:34
  and has artists on and they come and basically sit in his studio
• 35:37
  with him and chat and hang out and perform.
• 35:39
  And again, that's, that's more TV than it is journalism, but
• 35:43
  that's where artists are going. Well, actually, let's go and do
• 35:47
  that and sit down. And the, so the exciting thing
• 35:50
  here is, is a new way of kind of that passion putting music in
• 35:54
  front of people. But the economics of it, the
• 35:58
  economics of it can be a bit dodgy, not dodgy, but they can
• 36:00
  be troubling for me. Like I interviewed a couple of
• 36:03
  people in this in that area last year who worked with influencers
• 36:05
  and music influencers. And basically what happens if
• 36:08
  you get big labels can start to pay you to talk about an artist
• 36:12
  who attract the promoting. So you make your money by
• 36:14
  getting paid by the label to do the, the promotion.
• 36:18
  And the argument is always, well, we don't take any to
• 36:20
  promote anything that we don't really like.
• 36:22
  That's the which is probably kind of that's an age-old thing,
• 36:25
  isn't it? I wouldn't I wouldn't take money
• 36:26
  to make something shit any good stuff.
• 36:28
  But it is a little bit it's a little bit to me because I grew
• 36:32
  up in print world where someone might book an ad in your
• 36:34
  magazine. Your ad person will come and
• 36:36
  say, Oh, hi, someone who's booked an ad, could they get a
• 36:39
  review and you're a visitor goes no, fuck off.
• 36:41
  That's not how we work. Or because that was a separation
• 36:45
  commercial and tutorial. Whereas now I think when you're
• 36:47
  in that world of influencers, you're dealing directly with the
• 36:50
  companies who want you to promote stuff.
• 36:52
  And so I, I'm not in any doubt there's, there's a world of
• 36:55
  people out there who are going to be, who are going to be the
• 36:58
  journalists of this era in that, in that form.
• 37:01
  But the economics of that mean they have to deal directly with
• 37:04
  people who want to pay them to promote stuff.
• 37:05
  And it's, it's a bit of a minefield to walk through,
• 37:08
  especially if you, if you are just a young person going, wow,
• 37:12
  I love music and now someone wants to pay me for it.
• 37:15
  But I'm interested to follow that, you know, see how it goes.
• 37:18
  At least it'll be a human because our final and finally
• 37:21
  story this week, not just Spotify now who are replacing
• 37:24
  humans with a IDJS now it's YouTube Music apparently are
• 37:30
  testing this idea out as well. Yeah, you're getting a little
• 37:34
  cold breeze of. Can you, can you see how I had
• 37:37
  to sit back from the microphone and take stock of the world?
• 37:42
  What's happening here? Yeah, so you.
• 37:44
  Well, we've talked about Spotify as AG before.
• 37:46
  It's like an AI that basically introduces tracks.
• 37:48
  These next few tracks are from this genre or theme or this
• 37:51
  artist. So and so.
• 37:52
  Yeah. And so YouTube is testing this
• 37:55
  too, and it described them as AI music host designed to deepen
• 37:58
  your listening experience by sharing relevant stories, fan
• 38:02
  trivia and fun commentary about your favorite music on YouTube
• 38:05
  Music app. Which in my heart of hearts, I
• 38:11
  want a human doing that. I don't want an AI because I
• 38:13
  grew up with humans doing that for me.
• 38:14
  I grew up with the evening session and so on.
• 38:17
  But maybe this is the way the world is going and no one will
• 38:19
  care, in which case it's makes sense.
• 38:22
  So it what I do think though, is whenever I hear this stuff, I
• 38:25
  think the whole thing about AI now is it can hallucinate.
• 38:29
  And isn't that a worry? Like, what happens when it
• 38:32
  introduces a track by a favorite artist and says, well, at the
• 38:34
  weekends they go to Nazi membrilia conferences and shoot
• 38:37
  horses, and then no one knows it's happened because it's only
• 38:42
  said to one person. But it does make me wonder
• 38:44
  what's the kind of the thing. But yeah, so this seems to be a
• 38:47
  factual landscape. Who was saying, right, How we
• 38:49
  want to have more context. And that's a good thing, I
• 38:51
  think. Like, rather than just a song
• 38:53
  starts playing in the stream, so you get someone saying to you,
• 38:57
  oh, we thought you might like this because this is a band
• 38:59
  called Blah. They're from here.
• 39:02
  If you like them, check out Blah.
• 39:03
  Yeah, I know. It's just so basic, isn't it?
• 39:05
  They're just coming back to the journalism argument.
• 39:07
  You know, you've got to do better than that.
• 39:09
  I mean, just saying this is a band from this town and there's
• 39:12
  another band from this town is a band from this genre.
• 39:15
  This band sound a bit like them. That's not really.
• 39:17
  That's not it's not bringing you anything.
• 39:21
  It's not bringing you anything like the the thoughts of an
• 39:25
  insightful actual journalist. Anyway, as I say.
• 39:28
  Also the also the passion, like when someone on the radio I love
• 39:31
  is someone saying this tracks brilliant.
• 39:33
  Like that's that's that's that's what you look for humans for is
• 39:37
  like not just someone saying you may like this because blah blah.
• 39:40
  Someone saying this is great. You should listen to.
• 39:41
  It I think the only problem with that and with regards to
• 39:44
  mainstream radio is that everything is brilliant this
• 39:48
  these days. We're out of time for this week.
• 39:51
  Thank you very much for listening.
• 39:53
  If you are enjoying what we're trying to do here, please do
• 39:56
  help us spread the word. Tell your friends, leave us a
• 39:58
  review online if you get a chance.
• 40:01
  Alternatively, you can support us via Patreon.
• 40:03
  In fact, if you sign up to be a super fan, you do get an extra
• 40:08
  15 minutes or so of me and him chatting about music and money
• 40:13
  and embarrassing stories from our past.
• 40:17
  This week, we'll probably pick up on some of the points from
• 40:20
  that journalism debate. Also, why not buying tickets in
• 40:25
  advance is having a terrible effect on bands touring and so
• 40:32
  the promotion of live shows will do that.
• 40:35
  In the Lock in this week. Can we just say hello and
• 40:38
  welcome to new superfans G Wood, bless you and Karen.
• 40:41
  Don't have your second name Karen, but thank you very much.
• 40:44
  If you'd like to join them and us, as I say for the weekly Lock
• 40:47
  in, become a super fan of the show at patreon.com/the Price of
• 40:51
  Music. Alternatively, if you'd just
• 40:53
  like to get in touch with us, you can use our socials or send
• 40:57
  us an e-mail with any queries. Anything you don't understand
• 41:00
  about the how the industry works, drop us a line, we'll see
• 41:04
  what we can do. We'll be answering some more of
• 41:06
  your questions over the coming weeks.
• 41:08
  The price of music podcasts@gmail.com.
• 41:10
  Until next time, take care of yourselves.
• 41:13
  Bye for now. Goodbye.