Latest / The Price of Music / Coldplay's never-ending world tour keeps selling tickets; K-Pop Demon Hunters!; What on earth is "speculative ticketing"?; Bandcamp's $3.5m Friday; and has Steve actually “gone deaf for a living?”

Transcript

Coldplay's never-ending world tour keeps selling tickets; K-Pop Demon Hunters!; What on earth is "speculative ticketing"?; Bandcamp's $3.5m Friday; and has Steve actually “gone deaf for a living?” · The Price of Music

• 0:07
  Hello and welcome to The Price of Music, brought to you by
• 0:10
  Music Ally, the show that's fascinated by the fun and games
• 0:13
  and finances of the music world, as explained each week by me,
• 0:17
  Steve Lamac and him, Stuart Dredge.
• 0:18
  If you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music biz
• 0:23
  and how it all works, then here we are.
• 0:25
  Although I've been a little bit out of the loop this week
• 0:27
  because I was away for a few days before having to come back
• 0:30
  to come back to London for my mandatory BBC hearing test on
• 0:36
  Friday. No, no, no jokes please.
• 0:39
  Have you ever had that? You must have had a hearing test
• 0:40
  at some points too. Yeah, it's been a while.
• 0:43
  Yeah. What does it involve?
• 0:44
  Is it? I only had one a long time ago
• 0:46
  and they said, oh, you've lost this frequency because they're
• 0:48
  going to concerts. You must you must have lost more
• 0:51
  frequencies than I have going to.
• 0:53
  This is the strange thing I mean, so the test is it's just
• 0:56
  you put a pair of headphones on and they play you a series of
• 0:59
  bleeps and noises which progressively get quieter.
• 1:03
  And the guy that was a young guy, really nice, really nice
• 1:06
  fella, making notes on his laptop.
• 1:08
  And all the time you're straining to hear whether
• 1:11
  there's some tone, you know, which just faintly make out.
• 1:15
  But then he showed me, obviously there's a piece of software, I
• 1:18
  guess, which then produces kind of an automated result.
• 1:22
  And it said something like a warning, potential hearing loss
• 1:27
  or something. And he looks at us as I was
• 1:30
  looking at that, and he said, it's all right, we haven't
• 1:32
  factored in your age yet. And he pressed a button that
• 1:34
  said 60, and all of a sudden, everything's fine.
• 1:37
  And he just said to me, yeah, your hearing's fine.
• 1:40
  You can go. And that, hang on a minute.
• 1:42
  That was the end of that. Aren't you the man who wrote a
• 1:44
  book called Going Deaf for a Living?
• 1:46
  I'm calling fraud on that. You're not.
• 1:47
  Going deaf for a living? Well, I've got no right to have
• 1:51
  reasonable, you know, hearing by this point.
• 1:53
  But it turns out, as he said, your hearing's fine for a man of
• 1:58
  your age. Anyway, coming up this week,
• 2:01
  secondary ticketing band Camp China's version of Spotify is
• 2:05
  booming. Taylor Swift's secret
• 2:07
  negotiating weapon. And a quick mention of badly
• 2:11
  sequenced albums because we have a brilliant suggestion from one
• 2:15
  of our listeners. Thank you, Ben.
• 2:17
  We'll come to that in a second. First though, and you suggested
• 2:20
  coming back to this topic because we rather threw this
• 2:22
  away last week, but it will include some big figures.
• 2:25
  It's Coldplay's run of 10 show, 10 sold out shows at London's
• 2:32
  Wembley Arena, which I mean, in news terms has been slightly
• 2:35
  overlooked in all the in the cascade of Oasis stories, but
• 2:38
  it's no main feat. Is it?
• 2:40
  This? Can we can we crunch some
• 2:42
  numbers involved with this run of shows?
• 2:44
  Yeah, we can. So I've got two big figures.
• 2:46
  The first is $400 million, and that is how much Coldplay made
• 2:49
  from there to last year alone elsewhere in the world.
• 2:53
  It was the top of billboards like tours list.
• 2:55
  So there was a big asterisk there.
• 2:57
  And they didn't have the numbers from Taylor Swift in yet, right?
• 2:59
  I think she probably was the biggest tour, but they were 400
• 3:01
  minutes. But yeah, the other thing is,
• 3:03
  yeah, playing ten nights at Wembley and two in Hull.
• 3:05
  Interesting. Which is kind of I think the
• 3:06
  sort of warm up, the warm up gigs are playing a 12,012
• 3:10
  thousand stadium in hell. So yeah.
• 3:12
  So the other big number is 900,000 people are going to see
• 3:15
  in a Wembley. So the captain 90,010 nights.
• 3:18
  I'm not sure I was going to look up.
• 3:19
  Has anyone ever done more nights Wembley in a single run?
• 3:22
  I'm not. I remember Williams did some,
• 3:23
  didn't they? How many do Oasis do?
• 3:26
  They've done. They're doing.
• 3:28
  How many have they done so far? 5 and they're going back to do a
• 3:31
  couple more, I think. So yeah, roughly 7 somewhere.
• 3:35
  It is, I think like you say, it's it's not, it's
• 3:37
  underreported. I wonder if that's because
• 3:38
  Coldplay have never been away. They've basically been
• 3:40
  constantly touring, haven't they?
• 3:42
  I mean this tour. Feels, yeah, This tour feels
• 3:44
  like it's been going on for years.
• 3:46
  I mean, it must be two years in by now because they just got,
• 3:49
  they keep going round and round the world.
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  If it was like. Yeah, and the, and the other
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  good thing, I was reading an interview this morning.
• 3:54
  I think the enemy had, I don't know if it's an interview, they
• 3:56
  had some quotes from the tour programme, but it was all about
• 3:58
  the, the, the angle that the, the grassroots venue donations
• 4:01
  stuff. So from playing to these, I
• 4:05
  think it's sided up. It's think it's 924,000 people,
• 4:09
  if it's all set up, 10% of their profits are going to the Music
• 4:12
  Venue Trust. So which I think, and I've been
• 4:15
  looking like how much is that? And even even Mark, he didn't
• 4:18
  know how much it would be. It depends on the cost of the
• 4:21
  shows and everything like that. But it's going to be a huge
• 4:23
  donation that's actually going to keep some small venues open
• 4:26
  that were closed. That's what he said.
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  So that's the other thing here, the big numbers around the fans
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  is going to actually save some small venues.
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  From yeah, I mean, I think that you have to give, you have to
• 4:35
  give a lot of credit, I think to to the band and the management
• 4:38
  for doing this because I mean essentially recognises where
• 4:41
  they came from. I think because Coldplay, like,
• 4:45
  you know, so many bands started out in the in the pubs of
• 4:48
  London. I first saw them at a venue
• 4:50
  called The Falcon and then the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town.
• 4:55
  And neither of those are venues now.
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  The Falcon is flats and the Bull and Gate is a gastro pub.
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  And they did that tour, didn't they?
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  Which did you see them on this tour with Terrace?
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  I still say for you, Lou, yeah, the university venues are not
• 5:08
  quite the same. But yeah, that was that was my
• 5:10
  first. Day, I think they did, yeah.
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  They did a tour where they did, you know, venues again, some of
• 5:14
  which aren't there anymore. The Princess Charlotte in
• 5:16
  Leicester I think was on that tour and that's no longer there.
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  So, yeah, I think you have to applaud that.
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  And I mean, hopefully, you know, more bands are going to follow
• 5:26
  the lead. I mean, it was Enter Shikari, I
• 5:27
  think who who first committed to giving a pound from all of their
• 5:33
  ticket sales to the music Venue Trust.
• 5:35
  And now of course now we have the Live Trust, which is the
• 5:38
  charitable trust set up by Live, which is the live music industry
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  trade body again to allow artists and promoters to
• 5:47
  contribute 1 LB a ticket from stadium and arena gigs to a fund
• 5:52
  which will then be distributed amongst the main players in the
• 5:55
  grassroots ecosystem. So venues and artists and and
• 6:00
  promoters as well. My Chemical Romance, do you
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  notice they've they've recently become one of the bands who've
• 6:06
  committed to giving a pound a ticket from their shows as well.
• 6:10
  And they're, they're, they're big old gigs, them gigs.
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  But yeah, well done, well done, Coldplay.
• 6:16
  Anyway, here we go. After much deliberation, here's
• 6:19
  our top three news stories of the week, starting with this
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  secondary ticketing firm. StubHub has been in the news
• 6:27
  for, well, several reasons, some less positive than others.
• 6:31
  Can you explain very quickly who StubHub are and what they do?
• 6:36
  Yeah. So StubHub is one of the biggest
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  or probably the biggest secondary ticketing firms.
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  So they have a platform where you can go on and sell tickets
• 6:43
  for events and people can buy them and they can be priced
• 6:47
  whenever you'd like. They would price like higher
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  than they would have gone itself before.
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  And that's obviously quite a big, a controversial area.
• 6:54
  There's been a lot of talk about are these are these companies
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  helping people to, to basically screw fans, you know, making
• 7:01
  them pay. So that's the key thing.
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  These are platforms. So people go on who has tickets
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  for sale? People are going to tickets to
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  buy. They're not selling the tickets
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  themselves. They're providing the platform,
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  which is one of those ways where you can end up saying, well,
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  it's not our fault what happens here.
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  We're just providing the space. So yeah, the big story is a
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  financial one. It's going public.
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  And this has actually been coming for a loan.
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  So we want to become a public company, do an initial public
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  offering where basically sell shares to investors and the
• 7:28
  public. And it's been rumour for ages,
• 7:31
  kept getting delayed. And earlier this year it filed
• 7:34
  for this IP. You have to basically do a
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  filing saying we're going to go public here is all the
• 7:37
  information investable need. So and they've just refiled that
• 7:41
  filing, refiling the filing. That's an album title, which
• 7:45
  suggests 2 things. It means the IPO is back on,
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  they're going to go public and maybe as soon as next month
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  according to some reports. But it also gives us some new
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  numbers on how big, stubborn, how many tickets are being sold.
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  So I've got a bunch of those numbers.
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  Have you so, so in terms of the, yeah, the amount of tickets, so
• 8:04
  essentially they host the, the people, the people who are
• 8:07
  trying to resell, they give a space for people who want to
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  resell their tickets, which I mean, loads of people are doing
• 8:14
  it now, but what's, what are we up to then?
• 8:18
  What's the stats and what are they?
• 8:21
  I suppose they've been waiting to get big enough that investors
• 8:24
  will want to pull their money in or they.
• 8:27
  That's it. Yeah.
• 8:27
  So last year more than 40 million tickets were sold on
• 8:30
  StubHub and that's $8.7 billion worth of sales.
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  There's a term for which like growth, like how many they don't
• 8:38
  keep, that's not their revenues. Their revenues are like 300 and
• 8:40
  something million because they only keep a small percentage.
• 8:42
  But and that is and like you say, it's it could be me.
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  If I have a Coldplay ticket for Wembley and I can't go, I could
• 8:48
  go on StubHub and sell it. But it's also the the
• 8:51
  controversy comes when it's companies whose businesses
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  buying and selling tickets like making a profit.
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  And some of those companies have an absurd amount of tickets to
• 8:59
  sell. And people say, how did you get
• 9:00
  all those tickets so that those 40 million tickets, some of it
• 9:04
  is just people selling tickets they can't go to anymore.
• 9:06
  But other things are commercial operations.
• 9:08
  Yeah, which which brings us to the other, the the other story,
• 9:12
  isn't it? Which is?
• 9:15
  Well, there was was it a guy was trying to sell, was selling
• 9:18
  about 300 tickets for a Lewis Capaldi show and did he even
• 9:24
  have the 300 tickets? But this, this is the can of
• 9:28
  worms, isn't it? And this is this is the problem
• 9:30
  with StubHub and I imagine be a go go as well, is when people
• 9:35
  are using it for a profit, brutally using it as a part of
• 9:40
  their business plan. Well, this is it.
• 9:42
  So Lewis Cabaldi, obviously, he just come back after a big
• 9:44
  hiatus and his ticket, his gig sold out in, you know, matter of
• 9:47
  minutes when they were announced.
• 9:49
  And yet there was a company selling tickets via StubHub and
• 9:53
  they had 306 seats for the first night alone.
• 9:55
  And they were selling them for like more than three times their
• 9:57
  face value. And yeah, you're right, it's two
• 10:00
  things. Either they got hold of 306
• 10:03
  tickets, which is actually it's very hard to do that legally.
• 10:06
  Like there were limits offered. There's, you know, 6 per
• 10:08
  purchaser and that's something we're quite used to that now.
• 10:10
  So either they got host tickets and no one's quite sure how and
• 10:13
  what tactical season they may be illegal, or they were listed in
• 10:17
  speculative. And the speculative ticketing is
• 10:19
  a phrase here where you don't own them yet, you're just
• 10:21
  listing it that you will sell them and you will get them.
• 10:24
  And so you're listing something you don't own.
• 10:27
  And both of these things are a big legal headache both for sub
• 10:32
  Pub and for the people selling them.
• 10:34
  I think the Guardian did an investigation, said we, we found
• 10:36
  these listings and we're like, how do they get these tickets,
• 10:38
  if they have them at all? So what happened was StubHub
• 10:41
  removed the listings after being contacted and it said that it
• 10:44
  doesn't allow people to do speculative ticketing.
• 10:46
  It doesn't allow people to list things they don't actually own
• 10:48
  to resale. But all of this is fuelling in
• 10:52
  the UK, but also elsewhere. There's a bit about call to
• 10:54
  reform that. How should these companies be
• 10:56
  regulated? Should there be more stiffer
• 10:58
  regulations on all this, which it kind of comes back to if
• 11:02
  you're trying to go public and you're trying to get people to
• 11:04
  buy shares in your company, this sort of stuff, regulation is a
• 11:08
  headache for you because you might.
• 11:10
  And that's why StubHub figure all these companies, they have a
• 11:15
  lot of people working as lobbyists to kind of convince
• 11:17
  politicians not to regulate the way they didn't want.
• 11:20
  They have a lot of they put that stuff out and research saying,
• 11:23
  look, here's how we do is positive.
• 11:24
  Lots of research coming out of these companies.
• 11:26
  So we're brilliant. So it's a very, very big
• 11:28
  operation in terms of the, I guess the PR and the courting of
• 11:32
  politicians to say, look, don't crack down unless we're good,
• 11:35
  we're not bad. But every time these reports
• 11:37
  come up, I think everyone looks at it and goes, that doesn't
• 11:39
  feel fair that there's 306 tickets.
• 11:42
  It's amazing this gig that everyone wants to go to three
• 11:44
  times the value. So it's a, it's, I mean.
• 11:46
  It's interesting, it's interesting timing if it is
• 11:49
  happening in the next month. Because also, and I don't think
• 11:54
  I don't think there's ever been a point where people have been
• 11:56
  more aware or more annoyed by secondary ticketing.
• 12:01
  Because I think post Oasis, it was the Oasis bun fight which
• 12:05
  brought this back into public focus, wasn't it?
• 12:08
  I think, and, and and also brought it back into the back
• 12:14
  into the minds of government. I think I think Labour has in
• 12:18
  their manifesto has said we're we're going to look into
• 12:20
  secretary secondary ticketing, but they but a post Oasis where
• 12:25
  even MPs were grumbling about not being able to get tickets.
• 12:29
  Since then, obviously the, the, the Labour government said,
• 12:33
  well, yeah, we'll, we'll, we're going to look into and they
• 12:36
  don't they make, they're in the process at the moment of
• 12:39
  compiling a report about secondary ticketing, which may
• 12:44
  the suggestion is it may result in a recommendation to price cap
• 12:51
  how much you can make on reselling tickets.
• 12:56
  I think the so the, it's if you, so it's basically, I think the
• 13:01
  idea is the amount, if you can lower the amount of profit that
• 13:06
  people are making by reselling a ticket if you cap it, then I
• 13:10
  think they hope that if there's less money in reselling tickets,
• 13:15
  if you can't inflate the prices by stupid amounts that will put
• 13:18
  the touts off. But this will all depend on
• 13:22
  where the price cap is because if it if it's 30%, I don't think
• 13:26
  that's going to put touts off. If it's 10%, then you've got a
• 13:29
  chance of, I think that you know, damaging their business
• 13:34
  enough that they'll go and do something else.
• 13:35
  So. That's it.
• 13:36
  That's always the way, isn't it? Make it easy to do something
• 13:38
  else. I mean, it's the thing.
• 13:38
  There's nothing wrong with reselling tickets and actually
• 13:40
  it's a fan. If you can't go to something,
• 13:42
  there are there are now ways you can do that without, you know,
• 13:44
  their Twicket is 1. We've talked about, I think
• 13:46
  Ticketmaster if he dice as a way of making a ticket, like there
• 13:50
  are now ways if you can't go to a gig to sell it without
• 13:52
  charging someone else loads of money.
• 13:54
  Yeah. And this is about companies
• 13:56
  making a profit from this business.
• 13:58
  And I think I think a lot of us would look at that and go
• 14:00
  actually, yeah, I don't mind if they go out of business.
• 14:02
  So business to be in, not to buy.
• 14:04
  I mean the actual the people buying and selling these tickets
• 14:07
  purely for profit. Yeah, I.
• 14:09
  Really am relaxed about them not being cracked down.
• 14:12
  It is. It's the irritation, isn't it?
• 14:14
  When it your average music fan who tries to buy a ticket having
• 14:19
  waited in a queue doesn't get the ticket, but within seconds
• 14:24
  there are 100 tickets for that gig at massively inflated prices
• 14:29
  on sites like this. Story 2.
• 14:32
  This week, the latest Band Camp Friday promotion generated 3 and
• 14:37
  a half million dollars of music and merch sales for independent
• 14:42
  artists. I think this is something which
• 14:44
  began in lockdown. But for anyone who doesn't know
• 14:46
  the score, tell us briefly about.
• 14:48
  I'm sure everyone knows what Band Camp is, but tell us about
• 14:51
  Band Camp and their Band Camp Fridays.
• 14:54
  Yeah, I mean, if even one person doesn't know what it is, it's
• 14:56
  exciting to tell them about it because it's a wonderful thing.
• 14:58
  So, yeah, Band Camp is, has been historically a place where
• 15:01
  independent artists and labels can set up their stores, can't
• 15:03
  they? And they can sell music and
• 15:04
  merch directly to fans. And then during the pandemic,
• 15:08
  you're right. It was basically they were like,
• 15:10
  OK, well, this Friday we're going to waive our fee.
• 15:12
  So I think Band Camp gets 15% of your digital sales and 10%,
• 15:17
  which is a decent, you know, it's, it's not an absurd revenue
• 15:20
  share to take, but it waves though for one day so the
• 15:23
  artists can get more of the money.
• 15:25
  And that became a thing and it became this big promotion and
• 15:27
  people look forward to it. And artists started preparing
• 15:29
  releases specifically for it and it became an event.
• 15:32
  And I think so far they've done, they're doing them every month,
• 15:35
  I think at the height of the pandemic.
• 15:36
  And then they've been not quite so often since then, but they've
• 15:38
  done, they've carried on doing them.
• 15:40
  They've done more than $140 million of sales so far on this
• 15:44
  day. And all of that money has then
• 15:45
  gone to the artists and labels, minus the kind of payment
• 15:48
  processing fees. But yeah, so the latest one was
• 15:50
  on 1st of August, the three and a half million dollars.
• 15:52
  And what I think is important about that is that it's up from,
• 15:56
  it was $3.2 million for the last one in May.
• 15:59
  And I think you could assume, OK, they started this into
• 16:03
  pandemic, it will dwindle over time because as we get further
• 16:05
  away from lockdowns, we, you know, we don't.
• 16:08
  But it's not, it's growing and it's become this thing that
• 16:10
  isn't just about lockdowns and pandemics.
• 16:12
  It's about here's a day we're going to come together and
• 16:15
  celebrate and get people to come.
• 16:16
  And the thing I like about Band Camp is that they've built this
• 16:21
  community of people who want to pay artists money, and that
• 16:23
  feels important at a time when there's a lot about how artists
• 16:26
  are struggling in all kinds of ways.
• 16:29
  So that's one thing. But they did this announcement
• 16:31
  of this figure, and then buried near the bottom was like, oh, by
• 16:34
  the way, we've got a new thing coming.
• 16:36
  And they sort of trailed this upcoming feature, which I think
• 16:38
  is quite interesting. Which is Which is what?
• 16:42
  So it's called Band Camp Clubs and they said it's basically a
• 16:44
  new way for fans to discover music, connect more deeply with
• 16:47
  artists and each other and explore monthly selections
• 16:50
  curated by trusted tastemakers, which I sort of read that and
• 16:54
  thought, I wonder if it's like a subscription.
• 16:56
  Do you pay a monthly subscription?
• 16:57
  You get some music curated for you, but it could be something
• 17:00
  different. But they're they're obviously
• 17:01
  planning something that like takes what they do to the next
• 17:04
  level. And and that is again, quite
• 17:06
  exciting. I mean, how come, how long it
• 17:09
  was? It was a couple of years ago
• 17:10
  now, but Band Camp used to be independent and they got bought
• 17:12
  by Epic Games, which is a company that owns Fortnite.
• 17:15
  And that was always like, what's that about why they bought Band
• 17:18
  Camp and then it sold them to another company called
• 17:20
  Songtrader. And remember at the time, there
• 17:21
  was a lot of worry about who are these people who've bought bank
• 17:25
  and what are their intentions? Are they going to going to run
• 17:27
  it into the ground and ruin it or they're going to push it on?
• 17:30
  And this company song should always said no, we we want to
• 17:32
  protect bank. And actually ever since there's
• 17:37
  been no evidence of it getting worse going terrible.
• 17:40
  It seems like they are putting more well into it and developing
• 17:43
  stuff. And as I say, I think it's, I
• 17:47
  mean, I, I can see lots of good things about streaming and you
• 17:49
  know, I'm, I'm not a kind of anti streaming person as people
• 17:51
  would know, but I think band camp is a really important
• 17:54
  complementary thing to streaming for those artists.
• 17:58
  And, and that three and a half million dollars is the tip of
• 17:59
  the iceberg of what it's providing.
• 18:01
  So. Story 3 This week China's
• 18:05
  Spotify, that's $0.10 music now has 124.4 million people paying
• 18:13
  for music. Why?
• 18:14
  Why is that a big deal for the music industry?
• 18:17
  I'm guessing because it was, I mean, China didn't sell a lot of
• 18:22
  records in China, but there was a lot of music being bootlegged
• 18:25
  or just passed around. It didn't, wasn't it, you know,
• 18:28
  wasn't it home to home of piracy?
• 18:31
  It was, yeah. So when I started writing about
• 18:33
  the industry, it was basically a kind of a just a no go area for
• 18:37
  selling music. And it was kind of like you had
• 18:39
  these big search engines just basically we could go and search
• 18:42
  for MP threes and download them. Like the equivalent here would
• 18:45
  have been if Google had a little box saying search for music and
• 18:48
  get it for free here. It was that that was the level
• 18:50
  of it. You know, you basically no one
• 18:51
  paid for music because you go and just and such.
• 18:54
  And then and this is kind of this is something that only a
• 18:57
  certain kind of government can really do.
• 18:59
  But the Chinese government stepped in at one point and
• 19:00
  said, no, we're not going to have that anymore.
• 19:02
  Overnight made that those services legal and said you have
• 19:05
  to be licensed and legal. And overnight they all became
• 19:08
  legal because that's that's kind of what the Chinese system is
• 19:11
  like. You know, the government says
• 19:13
  and you jump. So 10 Cent Music is basically
• 19:16
  it's sort of China's Spotify, except it has three different
• 19:21
  music streaming. So it's got one called QQ Music
• 19:23
  and one called Kugo and one called Kuo.
• 19:25
  So it's got like 3 Spotify's and it's it also does live stream
• 19:29
  video and online karaoke, which is big in China, which isn't
• 19:32
  quite bigger yet anyway. Yeah, so it had its financial
• 19:34
  results. It's also a public company.
• 19:37
  It's got 553,000,000 users of those services.
• 19:42
  And like you said, the key point is 124.4 million they were
• 19:45
  paying and they're either paying for subscriptions or they're
• 19:48
  buying digital albums, which is also a thing in China and that's
• 19:51
  growing by 26.4% year on year. So like China is now the fifth
• 19:56
  biggest recorded music market in the world.
• 19:58
  And actually, looking at the figures, it might overtake
• 20:01
  Germany to be the fourth biggest next year, this year, and it
• 20:04
  could even overtake the UK and in their future if it keeps
• 20:07
  growing like this, like it's really on a surge.
• 20:10
  But there was another point I wanted to sort of tell you about
• 20:12
  because like in their financial, they've got this thing and it's
• 20:15
  called SVIP and it's kind of their super fan, higher priced
• 20:20
  subscription tier. So you can be, you can be a
• 20:22
  particularly kings and you can pay extra and it costs like five
• 20:25
  times the price of a subscription.
• 20:28
  So the equivalent here will be paying £55 for Spotify every
• 20:31
  month, like and it has 15,000,000 people doing that.
• 20:35
  Obviously the price is lower in China, but it has these
• 20:37
  15,000,000 people saying we're going to pay for the most
• 20:40
  expensive subscription you have. Crikey.
• 20:43
  And that's interesting for us because I think there was in
• 20:46
  Universal Music Groups recent financial earnings call, they
• 20:49
  were talking about this and saying, look at that, this is
• 20:51
  proof there's demand. If you have a higher price
• 20:53
  subscription with cool stuff in it, people will pay.
• 20:55
  And we want to see that in the West.
• 20:57
  And they're looking at Spotify and Apple and Amazon saying,
• 20:59
  look, it's working for Tencent in China.
• 21:02
  Do it here. Does that necessarily follow
• 21:06
  though, because music fans are different the world over, you
• 21:09
  know, in their habits and what what they want from pop music.
• 21:13
  So I don't know if that if that necessarily if it necessarily
• 21:17
  works here. No, I don't think it's a
• 21:19
  guarantee. And there's like there was some,
• 21:21
  there's quite a lot of, there's some fascinating differences,
• 21:23
  like in China, for example, that in streaming, they have a huge
• 21:26
  comment sections, people who are on streamers are commenting on
• 21:28
  songs. There's huge sort of chat
• 21:30
  discussions about them. We don't have that here.
• 21:32
  It hasn't really. But I think it's, it's at the
• 21:35
  very least, it's kind of a well hang on in this market where
• 21:38
  historically we had trouble getting people to pay for music.
• 21:41
  If a decent amount of them are now paying lots more for a
• 21:43
  subscription, why wouldn't it work in the West?
• 21:46
  You should try it. I think that's what's coming
• 21:47
  from the labels to the stream. And we know Spotify is working
• 21:51
  on it's, it's it's idea of a higher price subscription.
• 21:55
  So this is kind of like a this a little nudge saying, look, it's
• 21:57
  working in this specific part of the world.
• 22:00
  So let's see if it can go fly in the West.
• 22:03
  OK. Any, any other business
• 22:05
  actually, can I just mention following on from what's, you
• 22:10
  know, what are we prepared to pay for streaming that we got a
• 22:14
  brilliant question from Simon Hemelrick.
• 22:19
  That's possibly not how you pronounce your name, Simon.
• 22:21
  I apologise, get in touch and put us right.
• 22:24
  But Simon, he's one of our listeners, sent us a question to
• 22:29
  answer, which is about how much money musicians are making in
• 22:33
  the streaming era. And is it, is it as, is it
• 22:36
  actually as bad as people say? And that Simon put forward a, an
• 22:41
  argument about a particular heritage act and said, look, if
• 22:45
  you compare what they would have made then and what they would
• 22:47
  make now, surely they're making still making loads of money.
• 22:51
  I'm not telling you who the artist is because I'm keeping
• 22:53
  you in suspense. Because Simon, when we looked at
• 22:56
  it and started talking to some of our friends of the show who
• 23:01
  knew the answers to your question, it started spiring out
• 23:05
  of all control because there's so many aspects to the question.
• 23:07
  So we're going to dedicate virtually a whole show to your
• 23:12
  one question in about two weeks time once we've finished
• 23:16
  properly researching it. But thank you for asking it.
• 23:19
  We will get there. Any questions for us or if
• 23:23
  you're after tips on how to deal with the music industry machine
• 23:26
  e-mail address coming up later on.
• 23:30
  I know this was on your list, which is Stuart returning to a
• 23:35
  subject very close to his heart which some would claim is the
• 23:40
  big music success story of the year.
• 23:44
  K Pop demon hunters have reached another huge milestone.
• 23:50
  What is it now? I've seen that they're putting
• 23:53
  the film in cinemas. A dent.
• 23:56
  A dent. Tell my daughter that.
• 23:58
  Otherwise, you know that's a that's.
• 24:00
  A She's going to know she's. Going to find out.
• 24:01
  Yeah, play pop demon Hunters. I mean, even some would claim, I
• 24:06
  think we can get rid of now. It is the big story of the year.
• 24:08
  So like, just to refresh anyone who hasn't been K Pop, you know,
• 24:11
  it's an animated film on Netflix.
• 24:13
  It launched in June and it's about basically like it's about
• 24:16
  it's a mythical tale of women who are demon hunters who do
• 24:19
  their demon hunting while also being a pop group.
• 24:22
  And then the demons are blokes who are in also in a pop group
• 24:25
  because you have to have a side hustle nowadays if you're a
• 24:27
  demon or a Demon Hunter. Yeah.
• 24:28
  Because these two, these two K pop groups who are also indulged
• 24:32
  in demon hunting business. And it's been it's been huge.
• 24:35
  And so is the soundtrack. So last week, Netflix actually
• 24:38
  put some numbers out and said the film has been watched more
• 24:41
  than 180 million times around the world.
• 24:44
  And I guess there might be some parents watch listening who are
• 24:46
  going. Yeah, 17 of those are my my
• 24:49
  child. And more.
• 24:51
  Yeah, and the soundtrack. So this came out with its own
• 24:54
  soundtrack because these two pop groups, fictional pop groups,
• 24:57
  each have their songs. And the soundtrack has got more
• 25:00
  than 3 billion streams so far globally since June.
• 25:04
  And to your point about this is the biggest story of the year.
• 25:07
  So right now, the biggest track from this soundtrack is called
• 25:09
  Golden. It's number one in the US.
• 25:11
  In the Billboard chart, there are 4 songs in the top 20.
• 25:15
  Golden is number one in the UK this week.
• 25:17
  And there are three songs in the top ten, right?
• 25:20
  Look at the Spotify chart. Globally, 3 of Spotify's five
• 25:23
  biggest songs at the moment are from K Pop Demon Hunters.
• 25:26
  And Golden's getting seven and a half million streams a day alone
• 25:29
  on Spotify. Like this really has come from
• 25:31
  nowhere in many people's and it's suddenly dominating the
• 25:37
  charts. And it certainly struck a nerve
• 25:39
  with the kids. Yeah, and and now this, you
• 25:42
  mentioned the cinema event. It's not just a cinema
• 25:44
  screening, it's a sing along cinema screenings across the US,
• 25:48
  across the Canada. There's some in the UK and like,
• 25:50
  do you remember? I don't know.
• 25:51
  I want to ask this question for the for the joy of it.
• 25:53
  Have you ever been to one of those like Sound of Music Sing
• 25:56
  Along cinema? No, no.
• 25:57
  What do you do? You, I mean, I know we've only
• 26:00
  known each other for about two years, but I mean, look at, you
• 26:04
  know, you know me. You might have a Sound of Music
• 26:07
  fan, you know, but yeah, like, like we've seen it with The
• 26:09
  Sound of Music and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but it's
• 26:11
  quite a recent phenomenon. But.
• 26:12
  This is this is going to be kids though as well.
• 26:16
  You know, I, I, we should do something on cinemas because I
• 26:19
  think we did, we talk last week about it, this idea of cinemas
• 26:21
  are doing more music stuff now, like doing live concert.
• 26:24
  And like, one of the things I like about that is you are going
• 26:26
  to cinema to the, the music you love and everyone around you is
• 26:30
  from your area who also loves that music.
• 26:31
  It's like a community building thing.
• 26:33
  I think. So it's quite Yeah.
• 26:34
  It's going to be exciting for a kid to meet all the other kids
• 26:36
  in your area who know K pop to your hands.
• 26:38
  Love it. But here's another.
• 26:40
  I've got another stat for you on this.
• 26:41
  OK. There was a survey of kids in
• 26:43
  the US recently and they asked them what their favorite music
• 26:45
  genre is and 25% a quarter of US kids said K pop is their
• 26:49
  favorite genre. Yeah.
• 26:51
  So it's really, something has flipped really fast and this is
• 26:54
  part of it. BTS and Black Pink are part of
• 26:56
  it, but K Pop and the kids, it's like a, you know, it's a big
• 26:59
  thing. Can I can I very quickly mention
• 27:02
  badly track listed albums? We asked about this on the
• 27:05
  program last, where this comes out of the Hayley Williams
• 27:08
  story, which we covered a fortnight or so ago, where
• 27:10
  Hayley put out, instead of releasing an album, released 17
• 27:13
  individual tracks. So you can assemble your own
• 27:16
  version of the album. But we then said what bands have
• 27:19
  clearly got their track listing wrong?
• 27:22
  We've had a few ideas put forward so far but keep them
• 27:28
  coming. I've mentioned this partly
• 27:30
  because this only recently came in and I want I want to look at
• 27:34
  this in more detail before we discuss it.
• 27:37
  But thank you. Ben Cardew who suggested 2
• 27:41
  albums, the first being Discovery by Daft Punk which is
• 27:47
  an album I've written a whole book about Cesspen he has but
• 27:50
  but track listing doesn't work. And then more controversially
• 27:54
  possibly, although producer Joe says, yeah, I'm with this, the
• 28:00
  record in Ben's mind badly track listed The Queen is Dead by The
• 28:06
  Smiths. We'll talk more about that in a
• 28:10
  week or so, but thank you very much, Ben.
• 28:12
  As I say, we are still open for more suggestions of badly
• 28:16
  tracked listed albums. And here's something else from
• 28:19
  last week 'cause I lightly took the Mickey out of you last week
• 28:22
  for getting up in the middle of the night to try and find out
• 28:25
  more details of the new title. Took the Mickey, I'd say quite
• 28:28
  heavily. Well, it was, I mean, and then
• 28:32
  you were you were saying the whole thing was about the Taylor
• 28:36
  Swift camp basically drip feeding information about the
• 28:39
  record. And this is how you announce
• 28:41
  albums these days over the course of a week by giving a bit
• 28:44
  of information here, a bit of information there.
• 28:47
  But she was going on a podcast, which I imagine you listened to
• 28:49
  as well. Did you?
• 28:51
  I watched it, it was on YouTube of.
• 28:53
  Course. Podcast nowadays is already
• 28:55
  Yeah, she went well, she went on New Heights, which is actually
• 28:58
  her partner Travis Kelsey and his brother There is there.
• 29:01
  I think it's normally an American football podcast, but
• 29:03
  one, one thing they went into kind of.
• 29:05
  But yeah, she appeared on that and it's 2 hours.
• 29:08
  Well, I write if I'm going to watch 2 hours of podcasts, I'd
• 29:10
  rather watch Taylor Swift than Joe Rogan.
• 29:11
  So, you know, it wasn't too bad. OK.
• 29:15
  But yeah, so a lot of it was it was about like, it's personal
• 29:18
  stuff, like how how she and her partner met and talking about
• 29:22
  life as a pop star. But there were a couple of music
• 29:24
  industry bits that I thought were interesting.
• 29:27
  So first, you know, do you remember she bought, she bought
• 29:29
  back her recordings catalog earlier this year?
• 29:31
  Yes, yeah. Well, this little nugget, she
• 29:35
  said, yeah, she didn't send her lawyers in to negotiate that
• 29:37
  deal. She sent her mum and brother in,
• 29:41
  Yeah, Which now there's a caveat here, like her brother handles
• 29:44
  her film projects and her mum is a key part of her management
• 29:46
  company, so it's not like sending anyone's mum and brother
• 29:48
  in. You.
• 29:50
  Know they're onions? What's he?
• 29:51
  Going to say or not, I'm oddly likely to get my my old man to
• 29:54
  go in and negotiate my next 6 Music contracts.
• 29:58
  Maybe that's it. It's like those footballers who
• 30:00
  have their dads or mums as their agents, isn't it?
• 30:02
  Maybe they work. But then she said it.
• 30:03
  Basically it was to convey the emotion involved.
• 30:04
  She wanted them to realise that this was really personal for
• 30:07
  her. It wasn't just, you know, but
• 30:09
  then also she talked about how. So this is something she's
• 30:11
  alluded to before, like, like her long fight about owning her
• 30:14
  recordings has inspired younger artists.
• 30:17
  And she's talked about this thing about young artists come
• 30:19
  up to her then say one, they say, I didn't even know this
• 30:21
  sort of thing. I didn't know you could own your
• 30:23
  recordings. Yeah.
• 30:24
  And they're apparently they're obviously, you know, this is her
• 30:26
  say they're telling her that they've, they've negotiated when
• 30:28
  they have a label deal to have their recordings revert back to
• 30:31
  them after a certain number of years or to own them outright.
• 30:33
  So I think we've talked about this one and said, well, it's
• 30:37
  difficult when you're an artist, you know, can you go into a
• 30:39
  label and say, I want to own my recordings?
• 30:41
  But but according to Taylor Swift, people have seen what
• 30:44
  she's done, and they've gone in and done exactly that.
• 30:46
  Yeah, that's, it is interesting, isn't it?
• 30:48
  More and more people are talking about reversion as well, which
• 30:51
  is when you, you, you sign your rights away, but only for a, you
• 30:55
  know, a term of, I don't know, a decade or something.
• 30:57
  Which is, which is strangely what we did at Deceptive Records
• 31:02
  with some of the some of the deals we did.
• 31:05
  We said, well, we'll own them for 10 years and then you can
• 31:07
  have them back. I think we pretty much, I think
• 31:09
  we did that with Elastica actually it's kind.
• 31:12
  Of interesting because like in the industry right now, there's
• 31:14
  a lot of talk about how how lucrative catalog is for label.
• 31:18
  Oh yeah. And so strangely, there's,
• 31:22
  there's something, there's something about that which I'm
• 31:25
  going to raise in the lock in the Patreon listeners in a bit.
• 31:28
  But yes, catalog, sorry. Yeah, so at the time when
• 31:32
  catalog is becoming even more important to labels, we're also
• 31:34
  having this discussion about what artists want to have their
• 31:36
  catalogues back. And that's a a point of tension.
• 31:38
  But the other thing, the other thing I want to highlight is
• 31:40
  that if anyone wants to go and see this New Heights podcast,
• 31:42
  there's a whole section which is called Music Ownership explained
• 31:46
  to football Players. And where is it?
• 31:48
  It's where the two guys are like they're like explain music
• 31:53
  ownership to us and Terrace Taylor Swift does it.
• 31:57
  And if you're actually brand new to how music ownership works,
• 31:59
  that's quite a good place to start because she's she's
• 32:01
  explaining it in terms that football players would
• 32:03
  understand and they're kind of asking questions.
• 32:06
  So it's good a good primer. And finally, we're nearly out of
• 32:10
  time. And finally, this week, What
• 32:13
  does a crunchy soft boiled quails egg have to do with
• 32:17
  British rock band Alt J? Well, you know how riders get
• 32:20
  out of control. Crunch.
• 32:23
  Crunchy soft boiled egg is what I want to take you to.
• 32:26
  With that, how do you have crunchy soft boiled egg?
• 32:27
  And that'd be good. But yeah, I don't, I don't know.
• 32:31
  Shells in it, yeah, but this is. I don't know, isn't isn't Gus
• 32:37
  from Ultra? Isn't he the one who is quite a
• 32:40
  foodie? He is, and that's what this is
• 32:42
  about. So this is happening in East
• 32:44
  London because of course it is. If anyone knows East London,
• 32:46
  this is 1. But he's curating A5 course meal
• 32:50
  based on tracks from the band's albums.
• 32:51
  And it's this place called the Collab, which is a restaurant
• 32:53
  that's been doing these partnership with musicians and
• 32:56
  and food. And so it is So yeah, you go
• 32:59
  along, you have your five course meal.
• 33:01
  Everything is explained to you. And here's explanations of how
• 33:03
  this relates to the album and the inspirations behind it.
• 33:06
  And so yeah, classic. So there at rimoulade person on
• 33:08
  granitor with cured mackerel and shiso, smoked Buffalo shoulder
• 33:12
  and Buffalo blue cheese croquette.
• 33:14
  And just for us who are looking at this going a Welsh cheese
• 33:17
  plate and classic tiramisu to finish.
• 33:20
  But it's, it's like a, it's such a limited thing.
• 33:23
  Obviously you have to be able to go to East London and take part
• 33:24
  in this meal. But this is happening more and
• 33:27
  more like artists who have a foodie interest figuring out
• 33:30
  stuff they can do with that and events.
• 33:32
  And there's a little crossover between music and food around
• 33:36
  events. And you know, it's quite, it's
• 33:39
  quite fun. Is there I can't can't see it
• 33:42
  catching, mind you. This again begs A begs a
• 33:45
  question albums and what metaphorically, what food they
• 33:50
  would be. Let's leave it there, we're out
• 33:53
  of time. Thank you very much for
• 33:54
  listening. If you are enjoying what we're
• 33:56
  trying to do, please do spread the word, tell your friends, or
• 33:59
  leave us a review online if you get a chance.
• 34:01
  I mean, I know everyone gets asked twice a day to leave
• 34:04
  reviews for something or other online, but if you do have a
• 34:06
  couple of minutes would be much appreciated.
• 34:09
  Alternatively, you can support us via Patreon.
• 34:12
  In fact, if you sign up to be a Super fan, as mentioned, you get
• 34:16
  an extra 15 minutes or so of us pontificating over various music
• 34:22
  matters in the lock in, which is coming up next for subscribers.
• 34:25
  If you'd like to join us, you can become a Super Fan at
• 34:29
  patreon.com/the Price of Music. Thank you very much to Gerard
• 34:33
  Gibbons, who's just come on board if you'd like to, as I
• 34:37
  say, if you'd like to join Gerard and the rest of the gang,
• 34:40
  patreon.com/the Price of Music. You can also get in touch with
• 34:44
  this via via our socials or drop us a line at this e-mail address
• 34:48
  ifyouhaveanyquestionsoranyfeedbackforusthepriceofmusicpodcast@gmail.com. Till next time.
• 34:56
  We may be taking a week off next week, by the way, for our summer
• 34:59
  holiday. We're not all going away
• 35:00
  together, but we might be off next week and so we'll see you
• 35:04
  in a fortnight. For now, take care of
• 35:05
  yourselves. Bye.