Latest / The Price of Music / Elon Musk versus the music industry; AI slop vs human artists - who gets paid?; How can YOU make and sell vinyl records?; and all hail the London Metal Ladies

Transcript

Elon Musk versus the music industry; AI slop vs human artists - who gets paid?; How can YOU make and sell vinyl records?; and all hail the London Metal Ladies · The Price of Music

• 0:02
  Hello and welcome to The Price of Music, brought to you by
• 0:05
  Music Ally, the show that both looks at the finances of the
• 0:08
  music industry but also brings you stories and comment about
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  the past week in the pop business.
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  I'm Steve Lamack, He's Stuart Dredge.
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  If you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music
• 0:19
  industry and how it all works, then here we are.
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  This week or nothing in the world of music is going to
• 0:25
  compare to what's happening in the world in general this week.
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  But this week, Eli John Musk versus the music industry
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  Universal Boss spells out hopes for 2026.
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  And how much does it cost to get a small run of vinyl records
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  pressed? But to start, as is tradition,
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  Stuart will now fry your mind with this week's big figure.
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  What is your mind blowing number that you have for us this week
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  Stuart? It's a mind blowing round Number
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  this week. 1 billion dollars 1000000000.
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  And that is, what's the billion the billion pound figure
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  represents? Billion dollars.
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  This is how much Beyoncé is worth.
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  This is according to Forbes magazine who are kind of the go
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  to publication for being nosy about how wealthy rich people
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  are. And it says that Beyoncé has
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  become the 5th musician to become a billionaire.
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  And so who are who? The other 4 then?
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  Taylor Swift is probably 1, don't know Jay-Z.
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  Jay-Z, Mr. Beyoncé, He's a He's a billionaire.
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  Right, that's three. I don't know the other two.
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  OK. One of them has a really popular
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  laundry brand and the other one very much doesn't.
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  So Rihanna and Bruce Springsteen, can you guess which
• 1:44
  is which in that, in that? Really.
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  Bruce Springsteen is is a Billy is a billionaire.
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  Bruce Springsteen is a billionaire.
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  Based on his catalogues, well, this is this is what I was going
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  to think is that essentially there are three ways of becoming
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  a billionaire. If you're a musician, right, and
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  you're not inheriting Wales, you either can sell your catalog for
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  loads of money, which is the Springsteen main thing.
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  You can play massive stadium tours across the world, which is
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  kind of the Taylor Swift and Beyoncé route.
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  They've been doing that. They're tourists.
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  I think Beyoncé's last tour did $400 million, and the one before
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  that did $600 million. Or you can have other business
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  ventures. So Jay-Z made his money from his
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  staking companies of various kinds and selling them.
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  Rihanna made her money from her fancy brand.
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  So, yeah, so Beyoncé is the 5th. And then also I'm imagining, I
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  don't know how, I don't know how life goes on in the Beyoncé
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  Jay-Z household. But I'm sort of imagining them
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  sitting there on a Saturday night watching, I don't know,
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  celebrity antiques show or something, looking at their bank
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  balances and their phones, just saying, oh, what's yours minds?
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  One billion, $468, What's yours? So there's there's they're now
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  both billionaires that can stop competing if they are.
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  Right, This week's three big stories.
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  We've sifted through the news and these are the ones which we
• 2:57
  think might be of interest to you, starting with Elon Musk,
• 3:01
  who is unhappy about having to pay for music on X.
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  Yeah, from one billionaire to another, it's gone.
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  This is a long story that goes back to to a couple, well, three
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  years ago now, a new three years ago, when a group of music
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  publishers sued Twitter, which is what it was called then,
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  before it had been renamed as X for copyright infringement.
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  Essentially, they said that lots of music is posted on Twitter
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  all the time and no one's getting paid for it, doesn't pay
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  any royalties. And that kind of stands out
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  because Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok on
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  YouTube, all these other social media companies, they do pay
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  royalties and have licensing deals with the music industry.
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  And even though people can argue and say they don't pay enough
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  and it's not enough money, they do have deals and X and Twitter
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  have never had that. So publishing A suing them, this
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  case dribbled on for two years. And then last year there was
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  this, this filing where both sides said we'd like to settle.
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  Can you give us a 90 day pause so we can settle this case?
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  And then nothing happened. And now X is suing, I think it's
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  18 music publishers and also the industry body that represents
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  them in the US, the NMPA. And essentially what X is saying
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  is that the publishers have been colluding, which, I mean,
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  collusion is one of the famously bad words in the music industry.
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  You're not supposed to do it. Labels aren't supposed to act
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  together in that way. It's saying basically they're
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  colluding to make it license all of them at once.
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  And what it wants to do is license them individually and
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  make them compete with one another.
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  And one of the very weird parts of this lawsuit, and actually,
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  music business worldwide has got a very good article about this
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  this week, picking holes in this lawsuit.
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  X is saying it doesn't need to license all the publishers.
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  It wants to license a few of them, which is not really how it
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  works. Like if you're a big social
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  media platform, anyone can post any song.
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  So you really need licenses covering everything.
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  But yeah, it's suing them. So they're colluding.
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  It's this lawsuit. It's got lots of things where
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  it's like, look, this publisher posted a song on on X itself.
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  So it can't be cross about not getting paid.
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  So it's a kind of, it's a, it's a, it's a lawsuit that I think
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  it's going to be pushed back on very hard by the publishers.
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  The NMPA, which is the industry body included in it, has already
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  come out and said it's a bad faith attempt to distract from
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  the argument that they should pay royalties.
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  Well this is what I was going to say.
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  Is it a distraction or is it merely A stalling technique to
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  get around to push the problem further down the line by by
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  counter suing? Well, I mean, does seem to be
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  the, the, the, the way in the US sometimes if someone sues you,
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  if you're not going to settle, you sue them back.
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  And the other thing is there's a lot, I mean, we won't go into it
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  in detail, but there's a lot going on with X this week.
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  And it's, it's Grok chat bot. Like it's in a lot of trouble
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  over this, The AI being used to undress women sort of left,
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  right and centre. And so this week, exactly, X is
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  facing regulators across with it, politicians across with it,
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  lots of calls to change that. So in a way, punting the music
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  lawsuit down the road a bit might suit the company.
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  But yeah, from what I've seen so far, people are poking holes in
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  this lawsuit and saying it's not really, it doesn't really hold
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  water. It's not how music licensing
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  works. It doesn't seem to understand
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  what you need to do. And as I said, I think the big
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  thing here is that publishers are comparing what X does with
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  all the other social media platforms who even if they don't
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  pay enough, they've all said, yeah, actually we do need to
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  have license deals because we know people want to post music
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  so. Then all right, story to this
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  week and in fact some stats we alluded to last week, but give
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  us all some context of where the UK music industry is at the
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  beginning of 2026. Some more details from this the
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  annual report from the BPI for 2025, including how much people
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  listen to music and also how much money they spent buying and
• 6:47
  streaming music. Yeah, so this is interesting.
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  So it's it's two different sets of figures, one for how much we
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  listen and stream and how much we spend money.
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  And they're both positive on the face of it.
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  So the first set comes from the BPI, the labels body who says
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  that sales and streams of music in the UK grew by 4.9% last
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  year. And Brit stream 210.3 billion
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  songs, which could be in big number, couldn't, I suppose,
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  bigger than a billion. And it's the 11th year of growth
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  in a row. And they're very big on that.
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  And I think we talked last week in the podcast about the BPIA
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  lot of their announcement was about how British artists were
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  doing well as part of that. So I won't go over that again.
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  And then the other set of figures comes from ERA, the
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  Entertainment Retailers Association, which it used to
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  represent, I guess the record stores in high streets.
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  Now it is, it represents them, but also the streaming services
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  and according to it, spending on music.
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  So this doesn't include advertising.
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  So if you're listening to Spotify for free and hearing ads
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  that that's not included, it's just subscriptions and sales up
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  4.2% to 2, nearly 2 1/2 billion pounds.
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  Just over 2 billion of that was streaming subscriptions, which
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  is the new record in the UK. And then physical sales grew by
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  11.5% and vinyl sales were up 18 1/2%, which by my calculation is
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  just under £240 million on vinyl last year.
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  Really. Really.
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  Which is weird because I remember last year there was
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  some talk about when is the vinyl boom going to kind of tail
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  off again? And people were worrying about
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  was there enough capacity to keep growing because, you know,
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  the printing presses were going as fast as they could.
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  But yeah, up 18 1/2 percent, nearly not far off doubling CD
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  sales, which again, 10 years ago if you'd said vinyl we'd double
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  CD in 10 years time, people would have laughed at you.
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  And then the other thing I thought was interesting out of
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  this so again era, they talked about a strong showing for UK
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  artists. So the three, the trio that
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  everyone's mentioning, Olivia Dean, Lowly Young and Sky Newman
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  as the recent breakouts. But it also talked about how its
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  members, so era's members, streaming services and record
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  shops, how they're supporting new British acts.
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  And there was some couple of good stats that I like there.
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  One was that streaming service fund 60 different programmes
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  supporting music and a third of them focus on new talent.
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  A lot of that is British. But then record shops.
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  Here's a stat you might like. Record shops held more than 4000
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  in store and out store performances last year.
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  Really, that's I mean, because that that's, I mean, noticeably
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  there were more in stores there, you know, to the point where
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  virtually everyone you were out of step if you weren't doing an
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  in store tour instead of it being, you know, at the start it
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  was kind of a novels. Oh, that's a that's an
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  interesting idea. But now it seems to be written
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  into the marketing plan very early on, doesn't it?
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  At the in stores and the out stores to the point where I mean
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  some banks are out there for 9 days, 9 or 10 days promoting the
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  the new release. But that yeah, that is
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  interesting. I wonder how I'm.
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  Not sure it's a coincidence either that the physical sales
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  growing. Obviously there are other
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  reasons, but the fact that people are coming to record
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  stores to see these gigs as well.
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  I think you know, the more football you have, the more
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  people might buy stuff. So I think it's.
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  It's LinkedIn maybe. I mean, is that also playing on
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  the the concept of the superfan as well?
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  Because the superfan, what does the superfan want?
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  Well, they'll buy the vinyl. Well, if they've got the chance
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  to get the vinyl signed or there is a special limited edition
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  which is only available in one shop, then that is really the
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  domain of the superfan, isn't it?
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  Yeah, so. It's only good.
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  I mean the one, it's not really a sort of a setting, but the one
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  other point to make is that this growth is slowing.
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  So the spending was up 4.2%, but it was up 7.4% the year before
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  consumption. The streams and sales were up
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  4.9% last year, but 9.7% the year before.
• 10:36
  So there is a slowdown in the growth happening.
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  We're not reaching the point where we start shrinking again
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  just yet. But that is something they get
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  to get talked about in the industry.
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  I think that we're where, where is the ceiling for this and how
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  do we where do we find new ways of growing which those in stores
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  are part of that? I'm sure that's something which
• 10:54
  is on the mind of the person at the centre of Story 3 this week,
• 10:58
  which is a good one. Universal Music Group's Big boss
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  has written his annual State of the Nation address, otherwise
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  known as the annual New Year's memo to staff, in which this
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  year he talks about AI, streaming and independent music.
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  Tell us more about this. Yeah, so this is Sir Lucy and
• 11:19
  Grange just every year. And like, this is partly one of
• 11:21
  those messages where it tells everyone, geez, everyone up for
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  the new year. So he talks about all the
• 11:25
  successes that UMG had last year.
• 11:27
  We had these these artists did well, this was brilliant.
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  We're brilliant, hurrah, everyone.
• 11:32
  But he does tend to always put in a couple of this is what we
• 11:35
  think is going to happen this year.
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  This is where the market is going.
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  Like he puts in a couple of news lines for likes of me.
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  So one thing this year was interesting.
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  He talked about AI slop, which is a phrase we've talked about
• 11:46
  before, isn't it? This idea of AI generated music
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  clogging up streaming services. And he basically said that we,
• 11:52
  that UMG predicted this would happen three years ago when it
• 11:55
  was signing its deals with streaming services.
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  And he says apparently that that UM GS deals with companies like
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  Spotify. And the quote is prevent AI slop
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  from being counted in the same royalty pools as our artists and
• 12:08
  songwriters. So how how would spot if I
• 12:13
  define slop? I mean, well, that's what's not.
• 12:16
  One man's, one man slop. It's another man's gold.
• 12:20
  What? How?
• 12:21
  That's a gag, obviously, but how?
• 12:23
  How do you, how do you define it?
• 12:25
  Is it is is it AI music? Is it I don't know.
• 12:28
  You can't you you couldn't make a creative and objective.
• 12:32
  Well, a subjective decision about well, I don't like it.
• 12:35
  Blue singing grains doesn't like it and said, well, this is
• 12:37
  nonsense pilotless, That's that's not the way of doing
• 12:41
  business, is it? So how would that work if
• 12:43
  that's? I mean, I've got a few bands
• 12:44
  that I would put out the royalty pool if I could.
• 12:46
  I'm not a powerful industry mogul.
• 12:48
  I mean, yeah, I think this is where there's no detail on this.
• 12:50
  And I remember 3 years ago when these deals were being done,
• 12:53
  there was talk about royalty pools, but it wasn't about AI
• 12:55
  music back then. It was, it was noise was the
• 12:58
  phrase they used. And it was things like white
• 13:00
  noise. It's a playlist of white noise
• 13:02
  to listen to, to get to sleep. That was what was being chucked
• 13:05
  out back then. I don't remember anyone talking
• 13:08
  about AI slot, but this memo says, yeah, we had that in mind.
• 13:11
  And So what I think is interesting is like we know
• 13:14
  wherever we talk about an AI project getting loads of
• 13:16
  listeners and streams. And we, we particularly worry
• 13:19
  about that taking money away from human artists.
• 13:22
  What I took from this memo is that in terms for Universal
• 13:25
  Music, they don't want that to happen.
• 13:27
  They want to actually separate it off.
• 13:29
  And that there is a future where that's possible in theory, in a
• 13:32
  future where where every streaming service knows what's
• 13:35
  AI generated and what isn't, what's fully entered.
• 13:39
  And they could hide it off and say, right, well, it's not in
• 13:41
  the same royalties pool. If it's making, if it's doing
• 13:43
  well, humans aren't there. So what I'm interested in seeing
• 13:46
  how Universal takes that idea and what it does next time we
• 13:50
  need deals and what that means for how services treat this.
• 13:54
  The other thing that came through was he talked about, he
• 13:58
  wrote about how Universal is doing deals with AI companies.
• 14:01
  And I sort of, I sort of felt like what he was writing was
• 14:04
  aimed at musicians and artists a bit, I mean songwriters, because
• 14:07
  he sort of said we can't, we can't not engage with AI, we
• 14:10
  have to engage with this area. And he also said we, but we
• 14:14
  can't just let them do whatever they want.
• 14:15
  We have to do deals and we have to steer this, and I took that
• 14:19
  as a message to people because I think in the musician community
• 14:21
  who's saying we're not sure about these deals being done
• 14:23
  between labels and AI companies, I took that as him saying
• 14:26
  actually this is the best way to do it.
• 14:28
  Otherwise, otherwise we just ignore them and we get
• 14:31
  disrupted. Which I mean, yeah, in a way is
• 14:34
  is obviously, I mean, obviously that is true.
• 14:36
  I think what the artists and managers are thinking is why
• 14:41
  aren't we more part of these conversations as to what these
• 14:44
  deals, what form these deals take?
• 14:47
  And I think they feel a little bit, you know, voiceless in this
• 14:50
  whole thing. So.
• 14:52
  And obviously, again, this is the boss of a record company
• 14:56
  saying leave it to us. We know best.
• 14:58
  It's all fine. We'll do.
• 15:00
  We'll, we'll, we'll get this sorted.
• 15:02
  You just carry on making your pop songs and leave.
• 15:06
  Leave this grown up business to us.
• 15:08
  Well, yeah. And, and to be fair, there's a
• 15:10
  lot in there about him saying everything we do is about
• 15:12
  protecting our artists and songwriters work.
• 15:15
  So that's the strong message being put out.
• 15:17
  But yeah, I think the fact that it wasn't really mentioned about
• 15:21
  some of the tensions with those musicians and their bodies
• 15:23
  suggests because those are the talks that are going on right
• 15:25
  now. And so I don't think, I'm not
• 15:27
  sure there is anything to say. But yeah.
• 15:30
  And then the other things he mentioned just in passing were
• 15:33
  they're working on streaming superfan subscriptions with
• 15:35
  people like with with streaming services.
• 15:37
  So we can expect that this year to have those those higher
• 15:39
  priced superfan things that we talked about.
• 15:42
  And he also said about how important independent music is
• 15:44
  for Universal and said we expect our downtown acquisition to go
• 15:48
  through which we've talked about a lot and we want to invest in
• 15:51
  that community. So, I mean, there was, there was
• 15:53
  no news line there and but some of the people who've been
• 15:56
  protesting would have read that and gone.
• 15:57
  It would have put the hackers up.
• 16:00
  It's clear that Universal sees independent music is very, very
• 16:02
  central to its business. If it can get approval for its
• 16:06
  deal it's doing and if it can carry on.
• 16:09
  Any other business this way, I'll tell you this was a good
• 16:11
  one which you sent us earlier on in the week, Sun Records from
• 16:15
  the record label Sun Records, which helped launch.
• 16:19
  Johnny Cash, of course, was on the Sun Records for ages,
• 16:23
  classic albums on Sun, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, whole back
• 16:27
  catalog, which they they've got a they've got a slightly new
• 16:30
  spin on what a New Year's sales should be, because is this
• 16:34
  right? They're they're going to take
• 16:35
  the vinyl prices back to 1952. Is it?
• 16:41
  Yeah, well, they have and it at last it only lasted for I saw it
• 16:43
  was this morning. It was like I should go on and
• 16:45
  see what they've got and it's it finished yesterday as well.
• 16:47
  Really. But.
• 16:49
  That's annoying. That's because I was, I was
• 16:51
  going to get on to that later on.
• 16:53
  Never mind. So what was what was the 1952
• 16:56
  price and what sorts of records could we have got?
• 16:59
  Here's what you could have won. Yeah, well, this is all about
• 17:02
  Sam Phillips, who's the guy who founded some records.
• 17:04
  And I think he was quite a key figure in the Elvis Presley's
• 17:07
  early days as well, wasn't he? I think he was involved.
• 17:10
  So he died in 2003, but he would have been 103 this month, which
• 17:14
  is a slightly strange number to celebrate rather than 100.
• 17:17
  But yeah. So the labels still going and
• 17:20
  they put the prices at back back to 1952, which is when some
• 17:22
  records was found, ran for a week.
• 17:24
  And it was Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison.
• 17:27
  And I didn't catch the what the prices were, but I'm thinking it
• 17:31
  definitely wasn't what a vinyl record cost nowadays.
• 17:35
  But it's this is something that's happening a lot more.
• 17:37
  Like anniversaries are really big for marketing back
• 17:42
  catalogues, like bigger than ever.
• 17:44
  Like you used to maybe have like a 40th anniversary box set type
• 17:47
  thing, but nowadays with social media and we're streaming,
• 17:51
  everything is fair game. Like the anniversary of a label,
• 17:55
  the anniversary of a record. I was really, I got press
• 17:57
  release yesterday, I think it was Olivia Rodrigo celebrating 5
• 18:00
  years since her first breakout single and she got David Byrne
• 18:04
  from Talking Heads to kind of cover it for the celebration.
• 18:06
  So everything is, I think if you're a music, a label and a
• 18:09
  marketer, you're looking at this calendar and saying, right, what
• 18:12
  anniversary, what came out three years ago, What can we do with
• 18:15
  that? Even year album anniversaries
• 18:17
  are a thing now where an album might get a new version with
• 18:19
  some extra tracks because it came out a year ago.
• 18:22
  Well, it's probably it's probably popping up in with your
• 18:24
  social media feeds, isn't it saying one year ago or five
• 18:27
  years ago. So your marketing's being done
• 18:29
  almost all right. But I mean, is this, I mean,
• 18:32
  this is wholly part as well of the fact that so much music is
• 18:35
  sort of still in our minds isn't and is still available.
• 18:39
  But just what's the way of making us spend more on it or
• 18:43
  listen to it more just because it's out there?
• 18:46
  It's just you need to just put it in front of people again.
• 18:49
  But you're right. I mean, I've talked to people at
• 18:51
  record label. They're always looking for
• 18:53
  something to ways of repackaging music to, you know, make the
• 18:58
  make the most, you know, out of the catalog which they've which
• 19:01
  they've got. And the pricing is quite clever.
• 19:03
  I mean, anyone could do, you know, a label that released
• 19:05
  stuff in the 70s or 80s could do that and it would still be a
• 19:07
  good deal with prices of what they were.
• 19:09
  And so I suspect again, we'll see more of this where it's it's
• 19:12
  just a way of doing a cut price sale really to drive thingy.
• 19:14
  But you can peg it to something and say look, same price it was
• 19:17
  when the available person came out.
• 19:19
  That's sort of, I mean, not exactly, but it sort of leads us
• 19:21
  quite nicely into because we haven't answered any of your
• 19:25
  questions so far this year. And we will do loads more of
• 19:29
  these across 2026. And as always, say, do get in
• 19:32
  touch. You know, if there's anything
• 19:34
  you'd like us to examine a part of the music industry that you'd
• 19:37
  like to know more about, do drop us a line.
• 19:39
  We got this from listener Martin Bull, who says, hi, Steven
• 19:42
  Stewart. I've been a regular listener
• 19:44
  since the podcast was launched. And it's fascinating to see
• 19:48
  where the money goes. I run a podcast too called the
• 19:51
  Uncharted Sounds Podcast asked, and that's the thrust of my mail
• 19:56
  and ultimate question for you both.
• 19:58
  In January 2025, we had an episode of the podcast that
• 20:02
  featured one of our favorite 90s bands, Crash Lands.
• 20:05
  I think, Steve, you're also familiar with them.
• 20:07
  I am indeed. They were a good badge.
• 20:10
  Do you remember Crash Lands? That's all I remember.
• 20:13
  The name but. Not really.
• 20:14
  That's the front man, the singer, the songwriter Alex,
• 20:19
  Excellent, great lyricist. Anyway, Martin continues.
• 20:23
  It was it was an episode that reignited some interest in the
• 20:27
  band online. In fact, on the episode we
• 20:29
  featured a clip of a demo track that never been heard before.
• 20:33
  And after the episode, their previous record company Sugar
• 20:35
  Shack contacted us as they wanted to remaster and release
• 20:39
  these demos along with the band's final EP as a vinyl
• 20:43
  offering under the British, sorry, the Bristol Archive
• 20:47
  record label. This is a label which
• 20:49
  specialises in low volume vinyl releases and that is the crux of
• 20:54
  my question for you. How do bands that have a loyal
• 20:57
  but not large following get vinyl records produced and
• 21:01
  what's the cost associated to it?
• 21:02
  And is there a number to sell where the band breaks even or
• 21:07
  does it vary band to bands? Martin as the positive end to
• 21:11
  this story is that Crash Lands have a new release out at the
• 21:14
  end of January on coloured vinyl, the first release for 25
• 21:17
  years, all prompted by an appearance on our podcast.
• 21:20
  Thank you very much Martin as safe you've never heard him
• 21:24
  crash lands. It's on the streaming services
• 21:27
  now glued. They only put one album out but
• 21:30
  the singles from that glued album really good.
• 21:33
  Anyway to the crux of the matter so well for stars this morning.
• 21:38
  Can I direct you back to an early episode of this podcast
• 21:42
  where we did a vinyl special breaking down the cost of
• 21:45
  producing and distributing and selling vinyl, which was when it
• 21:49
  looks out this way back in it was March 2020, 4.
• 21:53
  But you'll still find that episode on Spotify if you want
• 21:56
  to have a listen to that. But it is one of those also,
• 22:00
  this is one of those questions which has no definitive answer
• 22:04
  because there are there's so many variables involved.
• 22:08
  But ask yourself, what are we doing?
• 22:10
  First of all, I guess you have to work out how many people you
• 22:14
  think will buy the record so that you don't end up with boxes
• 22:18
  of unsold stock under the bed. So how many people and what sort
• 22:21
  of record are you going to make? Which is this is where all the
• 22:24
  variables start to kick in. Because are you going for, are
• 22:28
  you going for the big premium release with heavyweight
• 22:31
  coloured vinyl and a gatefold sleeve that looks really
• 22:35
  desirable but obviously costs more?
• 22:37
  Or are you going to go for a basic album, single sleeve,
• 22:41
  white inner sleeve, because that'll be cheaper to produce
• 22:44
  and sell. So what what's the what's the
• 22:46
  audience and what will they be prepared to pay for will affect
• 22:51
  how many you sell and how quickly you can break even.
• 22:54
  And then, and then I'd say it's really worth shopping around
• 22:58
  looking at different pressing plants, because you mentioned
• 23:01
  Stuart pressing plant. There was a point where there
• 23:04
  weren't enough pressing plants and a lot of records being
• 23:07
  pressed in the UK. We're all being pressed in
• 23:10
  Eastern Europe. All the pressing plants here had
• 23:12
  shut down. But it the reverse now is, you
• 23:15
  know, it's been a reverse action where more and more pressing
• 23:19
  plants have started up over the last few years.
• 23:22
  And I think there is some competition between them for
• 23:25
  prices because they do vary. Just a quick look around last
• 23:29
  night, prices do vary quite a bit in some cases.
• 23:33
  So shop around. And then also, I mean, I'd
• 23:36
  recommend emailing, just find someone else who's done
• 23:39
  something like this before, whether it's a record label or
• 23:42
  someone who's put out a record if you like, and just ask them
• 23:45
  who they would recommend to press your records.
• 23:48
  I mean both, both so you know how they fare in terms of cost,
• 23:53
  but also reliability because if they say they're going to get
• 23:55
  you the records in eight weeks, you want to make sure they are
• 23:59
  the sort of company that will get you the record in eight
• 24:02
  weeks. And then it's then it's really
• 24:04
  down to working out the sums of what your costs are going to be
• 24:08
  and whether you want to make a profit or maybe just break even.
• 24:12
  So I mean, from the figures we used last time, and obviously
• 24:15
  these will be two years out of date, but they'll give you a
• 24:17
  rough outline. We spoke to a contact from a
• 24:20
  long running independent label who talked us through some of
• 24:23
  the costings. As I say, without doubt,
• 24:25
  probably these prices have gone up since last time.
• 24:28
  But as I say, do shop around. But sticking with the numbers
• 24:32
  that we had before. So let's say, let's say you're
• 24:35
  an artist, then with a small fan base, you want to press 300
• 24:39
  copies. Now obviously a vinyl pressing
• 24:42
  is all about economy of scale, which I think is what you may be
• 24:45
  into here, Martin. But at that point, if you press
• 24:49
  4000 albums, the unit cost, the cost per album quoted by the
• 24:55
  pressing plant that this label we're using was £2.50 a copy.
• 24:59
  That's without that, but £2.50 a copy for however a shorter run
• 25:05
  of 300 copies, the copy, the price per copy shoots up to 7
• 25:11
  lbs, or at least it was at the time with this particular
• 25:14
  pressing plan. And obviously that's because a
• 25:17
  lot of the costs involved, they're all the one off things
• 25:20
  you have to do at the start with the expensive stuff like we've
• 25:23
  got to cut the record, create the lacquers that we use to
• 25:26
  press the albums. And obviously the more you use
• 25:29
  this stuff, the more the price comes down, if you see what I
• 25:32
  mean. But anyway, 7 lbs, shall we say
• 25:34
  7 lbs per copy unit cost times 300.
• 25:39
  I make that. What's that 2100 lbs?
• 25:42
  But remember that's that's for your manufacturing costs if you
• 25:46
  are putting a record out for someone else.
• 25:48
  So if you're effectively acting as the record label, don't
• 25:51
  forget you'll also have to pay mechanical royalties as well to
• 25:56
  the band. So add that to your total
• 25:58
  mechanical royalties are currently is at 8 1/2%.
• 26:02
  I think it's 8 1/2 percent of dealer price.
• 26:06
  I'd check that. But the obviously the dealer
• 26:08
  price is the price that you sell your record to a record shop
• 26:11
  for. And we'll come back to that in a
• 26:12
  minute. But bear in mind are the royalty
• 26:14
  costs and other things which will crop up.
• 26:17
  But for the basis of this example, let's just say you're
• 26:20
  you're just the band. So you can look at not paying
• 26:23
  yourself royalties if you want to.
• 26:24
  So you have a cost of 2100 lbs in 2024.
• 26:27
  How you recoup that money by selling the album will then
• 26:30
  depend on how where you intend to sell the record and how much
• 26:34
  you think you can sell it for. So if you've got some gigs and
• 26:37
  you sell, you sell the records at your gigs for 15 lbs, say
• 26:42
  presuming the venue isn't charging you any Commission,
• 26:45
  then you could sell 150 copies and you've made your money back.
• 26:49
  But If however you want to put you want to put your albums into
• 26:53
  shops, then it becomes more expensive.
• 26:56
  But you will find more costs involved because one, you'll
• 26:59
  need a distributor to physically deliver the records to the
• 27:03
  shops. I mean that's if the shop wants
• 27:05
  to stop your record, they might not think it's going to sell, in
• 27:08
  which case they won't want it. They won't want it clogging up
• 27:11
  their racks. But they say, yeah, OK, we'll
• 27:15
  take one or two. The distributor will then take
• 27:18
  20% of the dealer price for doing their job.
• 27:22
  Now in the example we used before the dealer price and this
• 27:28
  was a reasonably well known band who's had Top 40 records in the
• 27:34
  past, but the dealer price was 16 lbs.
• 27:38
  So that's what you sell the record to the shop for.
• 27:41
  The shop buys it off you for 16 lbs.
• 27:44
  The shop will then add to cover their own, you know their own
• 27:48
  cost. There will be a markup that's
• 27:51
  like 9 lbs for for ease of maths and that will give you a retail
• 27:57
  price of 25 lbs. So your album costs of cost of
• 28:00
  fan in the shop, 25 lbs. As I say 9 of that goes to the
• 28:05
  shop. That leaves you with 16 lbs.
• 28:07
  The distributor takes their 20% of dealer price which is £3.20.
• 28:11
  That leaves you with £12.80 a copy.
• 28:14
  Although at this point I will say we haven't added in costs of
• 28:18
  getting the record to the distributors warehouse because
• 28:20
  obviously they can't distribute the record till you've sent it
• 28:22
  to them. And there's all sorts of various
• 28:24
  sundries and and breakages and things.
• 28:27
  So let's say, let's say we reduce the money you're getting
• 28:30
  to 11 lbs a copy, but that would still give you what's at a 4 LB
• 28:36
  profit. And again, you're even you're
• 28:38
  even after about 190 albums if you're not paying royalties.
• 28:43
  But this, of course, is, again, it all depends on whether it
• 28:46
  sells, what the demand is and whether the shops shops stock
• 28:50
  it. But yeah, just on costs, Yeah,
• 28:53
  you can probably recoup after a couple of 100 albums as long as
• 28:56
  there's no disasters along the way.
• 28:58
  And so, you know, if you're not playing mechanical royalties,
• 29:01
  which I guess will be between 3:00 and 400 lbs.
• 29:04
  So to come back to your point, Martin, a bandwidth, a small but
• 29:08
  loyal fan base. If you think you have 300 fans
• 29:11
  who will definitely buy the record, the best is the the most
• 29:16
  economical things to do is sell it at gigs.
• 29:18
  Or indeed sell it online, which is where websites like Band Camp
• 29:22
  become incredibly important. Because again, you can sell your
• 29:26
  record for £15, charge the fans postage and again, you're out of
• 29:29
  debt reasonably quickly. And I'm not saying don't put
• 29:32
  your records in record shops, because record shops are really
• 29:35
  important and it is, they all are.
• 29:38
  Also, they're really good gatekeepers.
• 29:40
  They're arbiters of taste, don't they?
• 29:41
  Most people who run record shots will always be giving people
• 29:44
  recommendations. So who knows?
• 29:46
  That's another way of actually almost publicising the band.
• 29:50
  If the guy or the girl at the record label record shop thinks,
• 29:54
  Oh yeah, this is great, I'm, I'm actually going to, I'm going to
• 29:57
  push this. So yeah, that's, that's
• 30:01
  reasonably how it works. You could of course.
• 30:03
  And again, if you think the demand is there, you can push
• 30:05
  the price up, make a few Bob and put it back into maybe putting
• 30:08
  out something else. But just remember, obviously if
• 30:11
  you are acting as the label, you obviously have to get the
• 30:14
  agreement of the band or the rights holders before you put
• 30:18
  the music out. You might have to, and you might
• 30:21
  have to pay the people who own the records a licensing fee for
• 30:25
  it. But that's, you know, that's I
• 30:28
  guess guess that's all we need to impart.
• 30:31
  I would say, you know, because there is no easy answer to it.
• 30:34
  If you are doing this for the first time, I will carry on.
• 30:38
  So I recommend talking to someone who's done it already
• 30:42
  because they'll tell you the pitfalls and the unexpected
• 30:44
  costs and they will be able to lay it out a lot better than I
• 30:48
  can, I think. But I hope that gives you a
• 30:50
  rough idea if, by the way, if anyone listening has any well
• 30:54
  further advice or up to date information, would like to add
• 31:00
  any detail to this or if we've got anything slightly wrong, do
• 31:04
  let us know and we'll pass it on in a future episode.
• 31:06
  But thank you very much, Martin, for getting in touch.
• 31:11
  We'll give you the e-mail address for your correspondence
• 31:14
  in just a second. One, one last piece of any other
• 31:17
  business very quickly. Spotify have got a new feature.
• 31:20
  I'm not sure anyone actually wants this.
• 31:22
  Tell us about it. Well, yeah, so it's part of its
• 31:25
  messaging features, which were added back to the app last year.
• 31:28
  And now you can see a feed of what your friends and family are
• 31:30
  listening to as they listen, which is something that was in
• 31:34
  Spotify a long time ago in its computer app, like a little
• 31:38
  sidebar with everything your Facebook friends played.
• 31:40
  And then they got rid of it because they write no wants it.
• 31:43
  And now it's back, which I don't know.
• 31:45
  I mean, what do you I don't want to think about.
• 31:46
  Well, I've got two thoughts on this.
• 31:48
  One is there are people who are my very close friends and family
• 31:51
  who I don't share any musical taste with and I don't want to
• 31:53
  see what they're playing and they don't want to see what I'm
• 31:55
  playing because it's useless. There are people I'm
• 31:58
  tangentially connected to who have amazing taste who I do want
• 32:00
  to see. So, and if the any feature like
• 32:03
  this has to kind of take that into account, I don't want to
• 32:05
  see what my mum is playing, for example, not not in sort of
• 32:08
  music taste, but I do want to see what the friend of a friend
• 32:12
  who I know shares my taste is. I wonder why?
• 32:15
  Why they do? Why if they put are they just
• 32:18
  it's one of the streaming services just looking to add
• 32:22
  what they believe is more value. So just going to add add any new
• 32:27
  features in regardless of whether we need them or not.
• 32:30
  I think there's a new push of like, so they all had social
• 32:33
  features years and years ago, and they got rid of them because
• 32:35
  they weren't really working. And so what's happened is you
• 32:38
  play the music on Spotify and its rivals and you talk about it
• 32:41
  elsewhere. You talk about it on Twitter as
• 32:44
  well. I think they're now there's a,
• 32:46
  there's a little move again to say actually, we want to try and
• 32:49
  build something. We want to have people seeing,
• 32:51
  you know, chatting to each other and chatting about music and
• 32:53
  commenting within these services.
• 32:56
  So I think this is part of a bigger wave of that of saying,
• 32:58
  can we become the place you talk about music as well as the place
• 33:02
  you listen to it? But I don't know.
• 33:05
  I mean, there's one example from when they used to have this
• 33:08
  feature. And I remember once I logged on
• 33:10
  and one of my friends was at the top of this little sidebar and
• 33:12
  she was listening to Hooray for the Riff Raff.
• 33:14
  And I was like, that's a weird band name.
• 33:16
  I'm going to, I wonder what they like, clicked on it and fell in
• 33:18
  love because I, I love them. Weirdly, I remember meeting that
• 33:21
  friend a couple of years later saying, Oh, I discovered Hooray
• 33:24
  for the riffraff because of you. And she was like, who are they?
• 33:26
  I don't remember them because they'd just been playing a
• 33:28
  playlist, I think, and they happened to be on it.
• 33:30
  So it's, it's a weird signal. It's not a very, you're not
• 33:33
  seeing what your friends are loving.
• 33:34
  You're just seeing literally what they're playing right now.
• 33:36
  And take you as an example. You might be playing music
• 33:39
  because you're listening to a band for research to see if
• 33:41
  they're any good, and you might be sitting there hating it, but
• 33:45
  they can't tell me that it can just say Steve Lamac is playing
• 33:48
  this song. But it's I think we're going to
• 33:51
  see more of this. So I think they're going to be
• 33:52
  trying to get us spending more time in these apps.
• 33:55
  And that's going to involve talking, commenting, you know?
• 33:59
  Oh good. And finally this week, what's a
• 34:03
  33 year old emo to do when her friends stop wanting to go out
• 34:08
  to gigs? Here's the heart warming
• 34:10
  Internet title of Chris Attridge and the London Metal Ladies.
• 34:16
  Yeah, well, you know, it's just not a great week for things
• 34:18
  happening to women on the Internet with all the Grok
• 34:20
  chatbot stuff. But this was a really
• 34:21
  heartwarming story. So Chris is an emo metal fan.
• 34:26
  And she gave an interview to. And she said that basically her
• 34:28
  friends were starting to settle down, buy houses, not really as
• 34:31
  keen on going to gigs. And she's still very keen on
• 34:34
  going to gigs. So she posted on Reddit, the
• 34:37
  Internet site, looking for like minded women, got nearly 50
• 34:40
  responses. And now there's a London Metal
• 34:43
  ladies WhatsApp group. They've got like a whole plan of
• 34:46
  what gigs are going to this year.
• 34:47
  They're going to clubs, they're going to metal karaoke, they're
• 34:49
  going to an emo craft night in Houston, which is sounds like an
• 34:53
  amazing thing. And just as this, the end of the
• 34:55
  story was her saying you should never be afraid to put yourself
• 34:58
  out there because it could end up being one of the best things
• 35:00
  you've ever done. And I just thought in all the
• 35:02
  stuff going on about like the Internet kind of driving people
• 35:06
  apart, this is a really nice story about it bringing like
• 35:10
  minded music fans together. So good on Chris and good on the
• 35:12
  London Metal ladies. I mean, that is a proper and
• 35:15
  finally story. Thank you very much.
• 35:17
  That is it for this week. Thanks for listening.
• 35:20
  If you are into what we're trying to do here, which is
• 35:23
  basically demystifying the industry one small step at a
• 35:26
  time, do feel free to pass the word on to friends, family,
• 35:30
  colleagues, and any rogue musicians you might know.
• 35:34
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• 35:36
  In fact, if you sign up to be a super fan, you get to join us
• 35:40
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• 35:44
  after hours for an extra 15 minutes or so of bonus material.
• 35:49
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• 35:52
  at patreon.com/the Price of Music.
• 35:56
  Alternatively, if you'd simply like to get in touch with us,
• 35:59
  drop us an e-mail at the usual address.
• 36:01
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• 36:04
  Until next week, take care, Cheerio.