Latest / The Price of Music / William Shatner's metal album; The Jimi Hendrix High Court Experience; Recycled vinyl; The UK's ban on touting/scalping is on pause; Big Spotify numbers; and more...

Transcript

William Shatner's metal album; The Jimi Hendrix High Court Experience; Recycled vinyl; The UK's ban on touting/scalping is on pause; Big Spotify numbers; and more... · The Price of Music

• 0:03
  Hello and welcome to The Price of Music, brought to you by
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  Music Ally, the show that both looks at the finances of the
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  music industry while also bringing you stories and comment
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  about the past week in the pop business.
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  I'm Steve Lemack, He's Joe Sparrow, our producer and
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  guardian, who is being Stuart this week while Stuart is
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  recreating scenes from three men in a boat on holiday in Norfolk.
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  But apart from the changing personnel, it's the same caper
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  as always. Some of this week's big stories,
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  one or two things we thought was worth discussing.
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  It's a bit more length. But as always though, a big
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  number to start the show, a big financial facts that you can
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  throw into conversation in the coming week.
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  Our big figure this week, Joe, is.
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  Yes, it is 761 million. That's how many people are using
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  Spotify now every month, according to its latest
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  financial results. So I mean, for context, if there
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  was a graph of Spotify's expansion, what would that look
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  like over the years if you went back, I don't know, five years?
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  How fast is it growing at this moment?
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  Yeah, so I mean they the growth has been, if you zoom out over
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  the whole 20 years that Spotify had been around, it's it is that
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  classic hockey stick shaped curve over the last five years,
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  it's been very positive. You know, it's been between 5:00
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  and 9% growth, depending on how you look at it each year.
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  And a lot of that growth has been driven by expansion into
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  new markets that didn't have Spotify before.
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  So just new people who couldn't sign up have signed up.
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  So the growth has been globally big and fast.
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  Yeah, that's, and I suppose that I mean, this will this will be
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  the point, I'm sure, where as soon as this becomes common
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  knowledge, people will start saying how much money are they
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  making and why are they not giving some of this money back
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  to poor starving musicians? It's going to reopen that
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  debate. I.
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  Imagine, well, always, I mean, look that so 761 million is a
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  huge number, right? That's that's potentially about
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  7% of the entire world and which is.
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  Like, that is a massive number. Yeah, OK.
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  It's pretty big and you know, nearly 300 million of that, so
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  293 million are premium subscribers.
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  Those are people who are on a paid account.
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  That doesn't necessarily mean people who are putting their
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  hand in their pocket. They can be family members on a
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  family account, but they're on a paid for service.
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  And you know that has that has grown very quickly.
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  So five years ago, the equivalent numbers of the big
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  number was 356 million. So it's basically doubled in
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  that time and well over that time.
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  The way to kind of answer the money debate is, well, what is
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  the average revenue per paying user or APU?
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  And the average revenue for average revenue per paying user
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  is hovering around for EUR 50 per user per month.
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  And like I said, that's global in, in India, they they're
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  paying about a euro a month. Here in Europe, we're paying a
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  lot more. And then you have family
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  members. So it doesn't sound like a lot
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  from an individual user perspective.
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  And that is the the crux of of where people complain about it
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  because it yeah, you've really got on average, and this is just
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  for paying users, people paying about 454 sixty a month.
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  Those numbers might be a little bit higher as the expansion goes
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  on, but it's it's, it's around that point.
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  OK, he's top, He's our top three stories, which we thought were
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  worth bringing you this week. The first one, well, we might as
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  well stick with Spotify because you may have seen this new green
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  tick badge on an artist's profile to verify that they're
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  human. So he's got everything.
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  This story that we always bring you on a weekly basis, it's got
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  Spotify and I imagine AI and but the green tick though.
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  So what's it for? Why have they brought it in?
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  What's it about? Well, it's, it's sort of to do
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  with AI and I think there's a bit of a bigger play here as
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  well. So they, this is what Spotify
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  says. The new Verified by Spotify
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  badge shows an artist's profile has been reviewed by and meets
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  Spotify's criteria for authenticity and trust.
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  It's a little bit like the old verified tick on Twitter, as it
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  used to be in the old days where it gave users a Sheen of
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  authenticity. They've BeenVerified by the
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  company. And of course, once it became X,
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  that became a purchasable asset and all hell broke loose.
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  So it's actually about that trust and connection to the
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  artist, yes. I guess part of that is about
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  AI. Is this a real artist or not?
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  But I think a lot of it is about trying to get people to believe
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  that the artist it really is who they say they are on the
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  platform, the releases are correct, the information is
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  correct, and that the artist is kind of using their page as a
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  place for fans to go and find out true interesting stuff about
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  them. And it's maybe a slight shift
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  towards making Spotify go to hub for artists.
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  And there there was a quote from the Co CEO of Spotify who was
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  talking about the Q1 results and fans of LinkedIn speak.
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  This is, as you know, I am, is one of those good ones.
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  He said that Spotify's intention was to unlock entirely new
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  growth vectors that will enable us to climb new mountains
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  previously unimaginable. Now, part of that is just about,
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  you know, make the big number go up and grow the business.
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  But but some of that is also about trying to find new ways to
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  make new money. So I wonder if if they could
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  sort of make Spotify a kind of like the sort of universal fan
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  page for artists that it would obviously have business
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  implications. It's not entirely about
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  verifying their humanity in the place of in the face of AI.
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  You know, one of but that is happening in one of the newer
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  streaming services called Volcano or Volcana.
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  I'm not sure they're doing a verified human artist approach
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  to this. So they're branches on the
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  profiles to say, hey, this is an actual human and they're and
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  they're doing that in quite an interesting way that they're
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  using data from the live music website Jambase.
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  So if they can see that you are an artist performing regularly,
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  they're like, well, they're probably human, which is quite a
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  smart way to go about it, yeah. OK, Secondly, this way, well,
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  this this is the it's the music industry's latest mega merger.
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  This, which I, I hadn't seen coming, but, but obviously these
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  things, you know, the, that they, they tick along in the
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  background for a while and then all of a sudden BMG and Concorde
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  are coming together. Tell us a bit about this and the
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  players involved and what it means, because it's actually
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  going to be a huge, I mean, it's going to be a yeah, a huge
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  business this. Yeah, it's it's kind of a big
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  deal, although this is one of those company merges with other
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  company stories that might seem really boring on the face of it,
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  which is the not particularly perhaps well known outside of
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  the music industry. You might recognise the names
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  from the back of records, but they're indie giants in a sense.
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  You know, you've got the big three labels, Universal, Sony,
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  Warner, but these two, BMG and Concord have spent a lot of
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  money, billions to become the most sort of powerful
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  alternatives for artists in the more indie space operating at
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  the moment. And their main pictures that
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  separately was that they allow artists to have more control.
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  You can own your, you can keep ownership of your rights and
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  then we'll work with you in ways like big labels and big
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  publishers and you'll make more money and everyone's happy.
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  So it's sort of a combination of services and and label stuff.
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  BMG is primarily a music publisher that's they handle the
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  rights to your compositions, the writing songs, but it works with
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  recording music too. And they've bought or signed big
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  artist catalogues like Tina Turner and Paul Simon.
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  Also they work with Kylie Minogue at the moment and has
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  she's had a massive resurgence under BMG and then also modern
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  country artists like Jelly Roll and Lady Wilson and then
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  Concorde. It's a label that's grown by
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  buying lots of other labels like Stacks, Fearless, labels like
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  that. And they sort of position
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  themselves as curators of music catalog and music history.
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  And then they own, so they own over 1,000,000 songs and they
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  also own a lot of theatrical rights.
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  So if if you're, if anyone's listening out there and they're
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  at a school that's about to do a musical, if it's a Rodgers and
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  Hammerstein musical, they have to pay Concorde for the
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  privilege of doing. They also own big catalogues,
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  R.E.M., for example, which is would be a dream job for me to
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  manage that catalog. And loads of Olivia Dean as
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  well. You know, he's a rising star and
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  a lot of jazz legends, they own recordings of Miles Davis, John
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  Coltrane, people like that. Anyway, they are merging and
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  that makes them into probably the leading independent music
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  company in the world. And it's going to be called BMG,
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  but it will have BMG Publishing and Concorde Records sitting
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  beneath it. Now as you know, I'm a big fan
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  of CEO corporate ease and in their in their release around
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  this that to describe how big they're going to get, they've
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  outlined quote a midterm ambition to achieve 1.2 billion
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  in EBIT to building from a pro forma EBIT to base of more than
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  730 million driven through organic growth, M&A and
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  synergies. I mean, I could not, I could not
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  untangle that if you know, if you even if you wrote it down
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  and put it in front of me. Yeah.
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  But my theory is that these statements aren't written for
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  people. They're written for algorithms
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  to then spread the news on, by the way.
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  But a bit to a bit, a bit to is earnings before interest, taxes,
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  depreciate, depreciation and amortization.
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  So it's kind of used as an indicator of profitability of
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  the business. So what they're saying there is
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  we're pretty big now and we're going to get bigger by bringing
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  everything together. And it does have an interesting
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  proposition. As you said, you know, if you're
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  an artist who doesn't want to sign away your your ownership of
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  your songwriting, which is, is done in a traditional publishing
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  deal or Co signing away. And if you don't, and if you
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  want to own your recordings, which traditionally the record
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  label owns, you can go to this new hybrid entity and say, hey,
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  you know, work with me. And and they would say, Hey,
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  I'll give you the global reach of a big corporation, but you
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  can keep your your freedom. Yeah, this is interesting, isn't
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  it, given given how some of the major artists have been buying
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  back their catalog or not selling their catalog or working
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  with bigger labels, but only only to do things like
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  distribution or whatever marketing or something that it,
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  it really feels now that, you know, it's coming back to that
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  thing that how important rights are.
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  And, you know, if you own something, you can make money
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  out of it. If you've given the ownership
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  away to somebody else, they will make the money out of it.
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  And if you can as an artist, there does seem to be, and as I
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  said, there's one or two, aren't there?
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  Major artists have started thinking along these lines, but
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  it feels like the this is an ongoing trend towards musicians
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  wanting to be more a part of their you know what they do
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  their catalog to be, to own it. And yeah, they have power over
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  it. Yeah, it's very, this is an
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  example of a sort of very modern convergence of the understanding
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  of power and ownership and ambition and also reach and
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  distribution. So in the past, if you wanted,
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  you know, if we rewind to 1995 sort of pre Internet times, if
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  you wanted to get if you're in a band and you wanted to get a
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  song out and people to hear it, you would have to sign a record
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  deal because you couldn't afford a studio.
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  The label would pay for the studio and you'd and they would
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  then own the recordings of the songs.
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  You'd have to sign a probably a publishing deal to make money on
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  that side from the songwriting. You sign temporarily ownership
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  away for a while and then to get the record in the shops.
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  The label pays for that and and essentially all this money gets
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  spent just to get your record in the shops and you don't really
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  own a lot of them, if any. And now it's almost inverse.
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  If you can hold onto your rights around songwriting and
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  recordings from the beginning, you can call the shots and
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  platforms like this will say, OK, if you just want marketing,
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  we'll do your marketing, we'll keep 1015% and you'd keep the
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  rest. Or we'll just do label services
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  and act as your label, but you own it and we'll work hard for
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  you and keep 25% whatever. And, and, you know, if you speak
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  to young artists now, they are educated, they know that and
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  they they want to keep hold of their rights.
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  And we've talked for a while on this podcast about this, this
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  theory of the bifurcation of the music industry where, you know,
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  you have this one big lane over here, roughly speaking, Spotify
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  and, and major label music. People consume music over there.
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  And then this other lane where all the independent stuff where
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  people are piercing together their career and writing their
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  own adventure. And I think that's very exciting
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  if you get it right. Yeah.
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  Finally, in this section, our third story of the way.
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  Well, this is sort of rights related and it's been a while
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  since we've had a proper legal wrangle over this type of rights
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  issue, but this is a this is a big one.
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  So the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which of course in US, I mean
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  that's it's not a solo axe, although Jimi Hendrix is Jimi
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  was Jimi Hendrix, but the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
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  You can argue that's a band actually.
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  However, the estates of Jimi's old band mates have just lost
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  court case in which they were seeking a share of the rights to
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  the albums that they made. Yeah, this is one of those
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  stories that follows on very nicely to describe the
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  importance of ownership and be careful about what you sign.
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  And you know, like you say, the Jimi Hendrix Experience was Jimi
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  Hendrix and Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell and they were
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  thrown together quite quickly and brilliantly in the in the
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  mid 60s with three very talented musicians.
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  OK. And all of those musicians are
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  now dead. So Sony Music could face legal
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  action from the estates of Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell.
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  And they were seeking copyright and performers rights on 40
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  studio recordings made in the 60s.
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  So probably the albums and the songs, you know?
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  And they wanted some of the money from that, particularly
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  from streaming income that had been generated since then when
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  the judges ruled that the recordings copyrights were
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  actually owned by the producers of the albums.
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  That's Sony and not the musicians.
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  And it was the three classic albums that, you know, from the
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  Jimmy Hendry's experience. And it was dismissed on three
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  main grounds. The one is that in the original
• 14:44
  contract that they signed in 1966, it said the producers of
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  the record, again, that's the label, own the copyrights
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  through the entire world with no time limit, the kind of
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  standard, you know, label practice for the time kind of
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  contract from back then. There was an argument around new
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  technology and the estate said, well, hey, when they signed
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  this, they couldn't have envisioned streaming happening
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  and a total full scale change of how the music industry works.
• 15:10
  And the judge said, well, the contract actually had a clause
• 15:14
  to say that the owners could exploit the music by any method
• 15:17
  now known or hereafter to be known.
• 15:20
  So it was covered. And we were sort of veering into
• 15:22
  the that sort of legendary first Stone Roses record that covered
• 15:25
  the entire universe in the wording here.
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  And then also when the band dissolved in 1970, Mitch
• 15:35
  Mitchell and Noel Redding signed a release form.
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  And what they do, there was legal chaos.
• 15:45
  So to settle the disputes at the time, both of them signed
• 15:47
  documents that permanently barred them from future legal
• 15:50
  claims. And they both, I mean, yeah.
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  And apparently they signed them away for different sums as well.
• 15:56
  Noel Redding got about 100,000 lbs.
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  Mitch Mitchell got about 1/4 of a million.
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  And that was all finalised in the sort of early 70s.
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  And this is. Well, the court acknowledged
• 16:10
  that it was kind of unfair for those families that they, you
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  know, Reading and Mitchell died relatively poor, particularly
• 16:16
  compared to the Jimi Hendrix estate, which the catalog has
• 16:19
  generated billions. But the, the, the judge said
• 16:22
  that they have to follow the clear tech and unequivocal, he
• 16:27
  said text of the contracts that they signed.
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  And that's, you know, that's how contracts work.
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  You know, it's not fair maybe, and it feels difficult in
• 16:35
  hindsight. And also it tells you how
• 16:38
  important ownership of the rights are.
• 16:40
  If you sign it away, if things change, you've got nothing.
• 16:44
  Yeah, OK. Any other business actually can
• 16:48
  I, can I, can I start us off for any other business?
• 16:51
  Because this is, this is hugely disappointing, this bit of news,
• 16:56
  or at least it's I, I guess it's speculation at the moment, but
• 17:00
  but, but yeah, this is, I mean, both on a personal level and
• 17:04
  also in my role representing live music in the UK.
• 17:07
  And in fact, this is not great for fans either.
• 17:10
  But you might remember that the UK government promised last
• 17:14
  November to bring forward legislation to clamp down on
• 17:18
  ticket touting. And the recommendation was that
• 17:22
  you wouldn't be able to resell tickets above face value.
• 17:26
  Thus in theory, putting an end to the practice of people being
• 17:30
  able to capitalise on demand for big gigs by reselling tickets
• 17:34
  way above the original cost. And I mean, I won't say it was,
• 17:39
  you know, dancing in the street that was St. parties.
• 17:42
  People were doing a victory lap around, you know, the offices of
• 17:46
  Live Nation or wherever. But I mean, it was a victory for
• 17:50
  the industry and for fans, really.
• 17:52
  But it's now emerged, or it's at least it's the the rumour on the
• 17:57
  Grapevine is that this piece of legislation may now be delayed
• 18:04
  for, well, until at least next year I think.
• 18:07
  And the industry Joe, as you can imagine, is not very happy.
• 18:12
  No. And if anything the the timeline
• 18:16
  here is looking until 2728 parliamentary sessions.
• 18:19
  So we're looking two years into the future now in terms of it
• 18:21
  becoming law. We were expecting this
• 18:25
  legislation to feature in The King's Speech coming up soon.
• 18:29
  And The King's Speech, for those of you who don't know, it's,
• 18:30
  it's when, you know, the king reads it out.
• 18:32
  But it's essentially the government's wishes of the kind
• 18:35
  of legislation they want to push through in each year.
• 18:38
  And it's sort of been nudged out of off the slate, you know,
• 18:44
  because there's competing aims and restricted space,
• 18:47
  apparently. And yeah, people aren't thrilled
• 18:50
  by this. I'll, I will open the floor to
• 18:53
  you to explain this a little bit later, perhaps in the lock in.
• 18:57
  But for instance, you know, well, let's see who let's talk
• 19:00
  about who is happy StubHub and via Gogo, who which of these
• 19:03
  secondary ticket platforms? I'm probably pretty happy with
• 19:06
  this being delayed, but I've got some quotes here.
• 19:08
  Annabella Colerick, who's chief executive of the NMF, the Music
• 19:12
  Managers Forum, said that, you know, these are widely supported
• 19:16
  pro growth measures, you know, banning touting that all deliver
• 19:20
  tangible benefits to British public.
• 19:21
  She's saying why is this not happening?
• 19:23
  Adam Webb, who's leads of the Fanfare Alliance, which is an
• 19:27
  anti touting organization, said that a failure to deliver on the
• 19:31
  manifesto commitment would be devastating, encouraging
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  exploitative touts and under regulated offshore resale
• 19:39
  websites, which will continue fleecing British audiences.
• 19:43
  And it is one of those things where you you look at this news
• 19:46
  story and say, well, who wants this?
• 19:48
  You know, who wants secondary ticketing really?
• 19:51
  And it's it's hard to answer that question because obviously,
• 19:54
  you know, people do want to be able to buy and sell tickets
• 19:57
  because sometimes you can't go to a gig or whatever.
• 19:59
  But it's, it's that feeling, I think in the public of the
• 20:03
  unfairness of of. Seeing tickets being bought
• 20:06
  before they can get them and then immediately appearing for
• 20:08
  multiples on websites. Yeah, I mean, and it leads to
• 20:12
  all sorts of misleading stories in the press.
• 20:14
  I think you wait for a big tour goes on sale and then one of the
• 20:18
  tabloid papers the next day will say it's cost is going to cost
• 20:22
  you 1000 lbs to see Harry Styles and say, well, it will if you
• 20:26
  buy it a ticket which is being resold probably by someone who's
• 20:32
  like bought the ticket purely to sell it on 4 profits.
• 20:36
  And I don't think that's the other thing.
• 20:38
  It's just, I think what's what, why I'm so aggrieved is so the,
• 20:44
  I mean, the government got the round of applause for saying,
• 20:46
  Yep, we've, we've listened to the live music industry.
• 20:49
  We've considered this though, you know, there was a point
• 20:53
  where we thought they might cap resale at 20% above face value
• 20:57
  or even 10% above face value. But no, they, they came, you
• 21:03
  know, with what was, it seemed like the ideal solution, right?
• 21:06
  It's you cannot sell resell tickets above face value.
• 21:10
  So they take the round of applause for that.
• 21:11
  And a lot of people, I think, you know, there are people not
• 21:14
  in the industry who think, oh, well, that's, that's obviously
• 21:16
  happening then, but it doesn't happen obviously till the
• 21:19
  legislation is, is passed. And so here we are now kicking
• 21:24
  our, kicking our heels. And I mean, the other thing that
• 21:27
  Annabella Colerick said was that look, the Labour Party had two
• 21:30
  music related promises in their manifesto.
• 21:32
  One sort out EU touring, 2 clamp down on tout.
• 21:36
  And when you look at those, I mean, sorting out the
• 21:39
  complications around and the around the regulation, what you
• 21:43
  can and can't do, what you have. You know, going on tour in
• 21:47
  Europe is so complicated now because of all the paperwork and
• 21:50
  all the post, you know, post Brexit rules, that's really
• 21:55
  different and it's a hard 1 to unpick.
• 21:57
  The secondary ticketing bill is, is the easiest one to push
• 22:02
  through and everyone, you know, everyone apart from the resale
• 22:06
  companies, you know, it's a, it's a winner.
• 22:08
  Fans don't get ripped off or price or even priced out of
• 22:12
  going to big shows, you know, and also money doesn't leak out
• 22:15
  of the industry to the touts. But I, you know, obviously it's
• 22:20
  not, it's not in the list of the government's priorities.
• 22:24
  And I'm sure they do, they do have a very busy legislative
• 22:28
  program. But as I say, if you're going to
• 22:30
  talk up your commitment to growth and the arts, then you
• 22:34
  have to back that up with some action.
• 22:36
  You can't take the credit and then not, you know, not not see
• 22:41
  this, see it through. Yeah.
• 22:43
  And you, and like you say, you wonder how difficult it would be
• 22:46
  to get traction around this issue because it's hard to point
• 22:50
  to a large number of people who don't want this to happen.
• 22:54
  I mean, even if they even if they sort of said, well, you
• 22:57
  know what, we're going to give the ticket companies two years
• 22:59
  to sort their act out. And then we're going to cap it
• 23:01
  at 20% as a compromise, as a resale.
• 23:03
  You go, OK, that's, that's, you know, that's better than
• 23:05
  nothing, you know, but it's to sort of let it sort of punt it
• 23:10
  into the future and say, oh, we'll come back to that.
• 23:13
  For something that's such an obvious crowd pleaser.
• 23:14
  I I I don't understand. You know, you're not even going
• 23:18
  to get much, you know, push back.
• 23:20
  I don't think within government after, after the, you know what
• 23:24
  we remember when the Oasis tickets went on sale and there
• 23:27
  was a lot of furore around, you know, the, the, the issues with
• 23:31
  the price of the tickets and stuff.
• 23:32
  You know, there were at least three or four MPs there going
• 23:35
  well, I tried to buy Oasis tickets.
• 23:37
  Well, I don't know, they were priced at this.
• 23:41
  And then, you know, a lot of them, a lot of them obviously
• 23:44
  ended up on resale sides and that was it put it right in
• 23:48
  front of the politicians there and then, didn't it?
• 23:50
  Well, one of the issues and one of the reasons that it's
• 23:53
  expensive and one of the reasons why the, you know, they've,
• 23:56
  they've sold out is because of people who are purely motivated
• 24:02
  by the profit involved of buying a ticket and then reselling it
• 24:06
  for, for a profit. But we shall we, shall we shall
• 24:11
  say, I mean, there'll be a lot of pressure in the last few
• 24:14
  days, I think to try and persuade the government
• 24:18
  otherwise. But otherwise there will be
• 24:20
  some, you know, there will be some unhappy people in the
• 24:24
  industry. Can I just say really looking
• 24:27
  forward to the live board meeting, which takes place in
• 24:30
  two days, two days time. What else this week?
• 24:34
  Oh, here's here's a warning. Now, listen, if Taylor Swift or
• 24:38
  Rihanna are on TikTok trying to get you to sign up to an online
• 24:43
  service you've never heard of, well, shock.
• 24:46
  Here's some shock news. It's not really them.
• 24:50
  Yeah, who would have thought it? It reminds me of one of those
• 24:53
  stories you occasionally see in the Press of someone who's been
• 24:55
  defrauded for a few £100 because someone's using AI generated
• 24:59
  image of Jennifer Aniston who apparently is madly in love with
• 25:02
  them. And then they start requesting
• 25:04
  money, things like that. But we spoke, I think, last week
• 25:07
  about how Taylor Swift had filed A trademark for her voice
• 25:09
  saying, hi, it's Taylor, which is one of those things that
• 25:13
  doesn't really make sense until you bring in AI manipulation.
• 25:17
  So there are these AI manipulated ads circulating on
• 25:21
  TikTok, which are deep fakes of celebrities like Taylor Swift,
• 25:23
  Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, promoting essentially fraudulent
• 25:28
  services or suspicious services. And they appear to be have been
• 25:32
  filmed on the red carpet. So it looks kind of legitimate,
• 25:34
  particularly on a small screen. And, you know, and in several
• 25:38
  ads, they even have Tik Tok's branding in the corner.
• 25:41
  So it looks very official and but when you click on them,
• 25:45
  they're redirected to a third party service and it's trying to
• 25:48
  get your personal information. And it's, this is a, one of
• 25:54
  those unforeseeable issues that artists are now having to deal
• 25:57
  with, which is, you know, they've, they've quite carefully
• 26:00
  protected their image for many years, but now they're the, the,
• 26:04
  the level of sort of duplicity that's possible with AI is
• 26:09
  really high. And, you know, these artists
• 26:11
  have spent many, many years building up a loyal fanbase who
• 26:14
  will do whatever they say. And so it's kind of no surprise,
• 26:17
  you know, Taylor Swift has got a fanbase who, when she says, hey,
• 26:19
  I'd really like you to consider buying all 5 colour variants of
• 26:23
  this new album on vinyl. And a lot of them will go and do
• 26:25
  it. So that's a really, really easy
• 26:28
  attack vector for fraudsters to go.
• 26:31
  Well, maybe they'll also click on this link to this like crypto
• 26:34
  website as well. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:38
  He's a he's an interesting development in the world of
• 26:42
  vinyl because, you know, the research and supply is is great.
• 26:47
  The only problem is obviously albums maybe aren't seen as the
• 26:51
  most climate friendly bit of product, but that's that could
• 26:56
  be changing again now as a group of independent labels want to
• 27:00
  show you what you can do to make vinyl a more attractive
• 27:05
  proposition. Yeah, I mean, vinyl is.
• 27:07
  Great. I mean we can both agree on
• 27:09
  that. I'm sitting next to it, number
• 27:10
  of boxes of it right now. But environmentally it's pretty
• 27:13
  rotten. It's, there's a number of
• 27:16
  reasons for that, partly in the production of it, which is
• 27:20
  you're making these records out of materials, PVC materials that
• 27:24
  are, you know, the byproducts of that are very bad for the
• 27:26
  environment. They take a lot of energy and
• 27:28
  heat to make in the 1st place. People want to buy the 180 gram
• 27:33
  vinyls, not the 120 gram vinyls, even though they sound the same.
• 27:37
  So they cost a lot more to, to ship around.
• 27:39
  So there's, there's a carbon footprint to them and there's
• 27:42
  all these things which are not good about vinyl.
• 27:45
  Oh, and you can't recycle them and you can't, once a record is
• 27:47
  made, you can't melt, melt it down into a new one.
• 27:50
  So there's and I can think of if you've ever rummaged in a use
• 27:53
  record store, you can find lots of records that I would happily
• 27:56
  melt down. But the the James Last Orchestra
• 27:59
  springs to mind immediately. But you can't do it.
• 28:02
  So there's not even a way of reusing it.
• 28:04
  And except there is this new, this new way of doing it, which
• 28:12
  is about essentially about recycled vinyl.
• 28:14
  And this campaign involving secretly group Warp Records,
• 28:18
  Ninja Tune, Beggar Group and a a bunch of other ones have have
• 28:22
  launched this, this new way of producing vinyl.
• 28:25
  It's been time for World Environment Day on the 5th of
• 28:27
  June. And you've got records from
• 28:29
  Bonneville, Elliot Smith, Chuck Proffitt, Black Country, New
• 28:32
  road, and they're going to be re releasing 100% recycled vinyl
• 28:36
  editions. And the aim is to encourage
• 28:39
  other labels to do the same thing and to and to think more
• 28:41
  carefully about, you know, not look about doing this.
• 28:47
  It's really understandable that labels want to sell these
• 28:49
  products, physical products like vinyl that make them money in a
• 28:53
  time when it's really hard to do it.
• 28:55
  So to ask them also, hey, consider the environment.
• 28:58
  You're killing the environment is is a really hard thing to do
• 29:00
  for labels that probably care about it.
• 29:01
  But they're offering a new way. They're showing new ways of
• 29:03
  doing it. OK.
• 29:06
  And also sorry to. Sorry, I, I just want to take
• 29:08
  this opportunity to wave a Coldplay record at you.
• 29:11
  OK, Because there's actually, there's there's a few bits of
• 29:15
  progress in this space. There's a German company called
• 29:19
  Equal. It's it's a it's a German
• 29:21
  company. It's owned by BMG actually, or
• 29:23
  Bertelman Group, of course. And it's, they make a product
• 29:26
  called Eco Record. And this is, was used under the
• 29:29
  last Coldplay record album release.
• 29:33
  And it's basically a slightly different process.
• 29:35
  So instead of having these stampers that squeeze a piece of
• 29:38
  hot vinyl and then you that's the record.
• 29:41
  It's a bit like CD production. So it's like an injection
• 29:43
  moulding. And they've used the CD
• 29:45
  technology to make records. And the resulting thing is
• 29:48
  something that looks and sounds just like vinyl.
• 29:51
  It feels like vinyl. And except each one of these,
• 29:55
  this is Moon Music by Coldplay, still unopened, as you can see.
• 29:58
  Yeah. Yeah, I was.
• 30:00
  Going to, I was going to say that does look like a rather
• 30:02
  pristine copy. Well, each one of the with this,
• 30:06
  because it's made out of a different plastic, it can be
• 30:08
  made out of recycled materials. So the the plastic bottles that
• 30:12
  the ocean is full of can be melted down and turned into
• 30:15
  chips and made into new records. And each one of these records
• 30:18
  I'm holding right here is made of 9 or 10 recycled plastic
• 30:20
  bottles. This is a great way that
• 30:22
  Coldplay has been leading the way.
• 30:23
  Ed Sheeran's used this as well. And so there's lots of options
• 30:27
  now to make records in a much more environmentally friendly
• 30:32
  way that either use recycled materials and or severely reduce
• 30:38
  the amount of energy required to make them in the first place.
• 30:41
  And that, I mean, that's only a good thing.
• 30:42
  I mean, when you, you know, audiophile snobs may not say
• 30:46
  this, but to me, these records sound exactly the same as vinyl
• 30:50
  records. I can't tell the difference, and
• 30:51
  most people probably won't either.
• 30:53
  Don't put that. Quote on the posters, Joe
• 30:56
  Sparrow said. I couldn't tell the difference.
• 30:59
  And finally, well, I think, I think, I think as you're the
• 31:03
  guest, you, you choosing it and finally for us, such something
• 31:10
  you got something irreverent. We can finish with this week.
• 31:13
  Thanks, Steve. Yes.
• 31:14
  And finally, William Shatner has a full length heavy metal album
• 31:17
  coming, featuring 35 hand picked collaborators from across the
• 31:20
  genre including Dave Lombardo of Slayer and Rob Halford of Judas
• 31:23
  Priest. I thought Rob.
• 31:25
  Halford was dead. Sorry Rob.
• 31:28
  So, so right let's because the Shatner does have form when it
• 31:34
  comes to pop music, doesn't it? Exactly.
• 31:36
  He's made he's made albums where he's he's performed himself.
• 31:41
  I mean, singing on the record is he singing is generous, I think
• 31:47
  as a. Word well.
• 31:48
  Yeah, but he's are these going to be duets so under because
• 31:52
  he's. He's sort of following the the
• 31:54
  sort of modern release playbook here of of drip feeding the
• 32:00
  information around this. So he's only really released two
• 32:02
  big names that he's going to be collaborating with so far.
• 32:06
  And he's going to he's releasing more as we go forward.
• 32:09
  And we don't really know if these are going to be all
• 32:14
  original work or they're going to be covers.
• 32:15
  In the past, he's done a lot of cover versions, famously Lucy in
• 32:19
  the sky with diamonds from from the 60s, which unforgettable
• 32:23
  delivery if you've never heard it.
• 32:24
  And of course, common people, very famously he he covered and
• 32:28
  which that record apparently was produced by Ben Folds.
• 32:31
  I I didn't know that, but Dave Lombardo called his involvement
• 32:37
  a true privilege to contribute drums to William Shatner's
• 32:40
  ambitious heavy metal project, which is again one another one
• 32:43
  of those very inert statements. Shatner himself said.
• 32:46
  Metal has always been a place where imagination gets loud.
• 32:51
  This album is a gathering of forces.
• 32:54
  So some of them for. Good some of them for evil
• 33:00
  captain whether they I mean what that's a good way to finish.
• 33:03
  I think Captain Kirk does heavy metal.
• 33:06
  Thank you very much for listening if you are enjoying
• 33:10
  the show. I know I say this every week,
• 33:11
  but please do help us spread the words.
• 33:15
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• 33:18
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• 33:20
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• 33:24
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• 33:27
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• 33:32
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• 33:37
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• 33:44
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• 33:47
  stories you'd like us to cover, or questions that you have for
• 33:50
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• 33:56
  listening, everyone. We'll be back next week.
• 33:58
  Take care, Dora. Bye bye.