Latest / The Price of Music / Over 50 million songs got zero streams in 2025 – and other eye-popping data on music streaming

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Over 50 million songs got zero streams in 2025 – and other eye-popping data on music streaming · The Price of Music

• 0:02
  Hello and welcome to The Price of Music brought to you by Music
• 0:06
  Ally, the show that both looks at the finances of music
• 0:09
  industry. We'll also bring you stories and
• 0:12
  comment about the past week in the pop business.
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  I'm Steve Lemack, he's Stuart Dredge.
• 0:17
  If you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music
• 0:20
  industry and how it all works, then here we are this week
• 0:23
  because we usually start with a list of stories that we're going
• 0:26
  to cover and then we'll unveil Stuart's big number of the week.
• 0:30
  Actually the big stats this week is also in many ways is the big
• 0:35
  story. At least big enough that we are
• 0:37
  going to dedicate quite a bit of time to pulling this apart this
• 0:41
  week so that when you walk away from all this you'll be able to
• 0:44
  blow your music friends minds with some of the statistics and
• 0:47
  the implications which they suggest.
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  So we will touch on the latest report into grassroots venues
• 0:53
  later on and Band Camp banning AI generated songs from its
• 0:57
  platform, both of which could have been lead stories in other
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  weeks. But I think in terms of the
• 1:03
  modern music landscape and just how much it's changed in the
• 1:07
  past 15 odd years, this is the statistic which we should
• 1:11
  probably focus our minds on. And not just for how big it is,
• 1:15
  but also what it actually means on, well, several levels really.
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  It's the total number of songs currently available on streaming
• 1:23
  services, which was announced last week.
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  The number of tracks available on streaming sites has now risen
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  to 253,000,000. That's 253,000,000 songs
• 1:41
  available right now for the stuff.
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  For starters, who's, I mean, who's sat down and counted them
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  all? Where, where does where does
• 1:49
  this figure come from and can we trust it?
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  I mean, I did, it's been my personal project this year so
• 1:55
  far and they've finished it slightly early.
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  No, this is from Luminate, which is a company, a research company
• 2:01
  who they do a lot of number crunching for the music
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  industry. They get chart data in the US
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  and around the world. So they are probably the, the,
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  the most well known analytics research company in the music
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  world. So they're, they come with, you
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  know, they, they have the chops to make their figures worth
• 2:17
  listening to. OK So what?
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  Where should we start? I was interested in the
• 2:21
  breakdown of how many songs you know are at the top level, the
• 2:25
  popular songs, but also just how many songs are on the streaming
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  services but barely ever get played, if at all.
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  Can you split them almost into categories of how many plays
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  some of these 253,000,000 songs have had?
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  Is that possible? I can there's a very neat
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  pyramid graphic in the report and where this came from.
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  So yeah, but just to to a bit of context, 253,000,000 that's up
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  from 202 million last year, so 51 million new tracks in the
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  last year, which means that a fifth of all the music you can
• 3:02
  stream was released in the last year alone.
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  So 1/5 of the world's music catalog came out in 2025, which
• 3:08
  is kind of crazy, but yeah, so what's getting played?
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  So 253,000,000 tracks is what we start with. 55.3 million got 0
• 3:19
  streams last year. No streams at all.
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  Run any service. Just say that one more time.
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  So out of the 253,000,000 songs, how many 50?
• 3:29
  55.3 million. 5055 million songs are up there and have never been
• 3:36
  played. OK.
• 3:38
  Not in the last year at least. Yeah, OK.
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  Then there's another 65.2 million that got one to 10
• 3:45
  streams, 62.6 million got 11 to 100 streams.
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  So to add that up, 146,000,000 tracks, which is nearly 58% of
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  everything that's available. Yeah, got 100 streams or fewer
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  last year. And as we've discussed before,
• 4:00
  that is negligible money, you know?
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  Well, we'll come to that in a second whether they get paid or
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  not, but the so upwards from then.
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  So what are we left with? About 100 million.
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  Yeah. And then there's another 40
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  million or so that got between 101 and 1000 streams.
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  So basically 223.8 million tracks got 1000 streams or fewer
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  last year, and only just over 2929 million tracks got more
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  than 1000 streams. So if we're talking about what's
• 4:32
  really getting played at that level, it's 29 million tracks.
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  OK, so see, I've got so many thoughts of which I just need to
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  get out of my head really. Come, let's deal with the with
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  the money then, because wasn't there a point where certainly
• 4:53
  Spotify, I think of the streaming services, didn't they?
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  Didn't they come up with a suggestion that we're not going
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  to pay people who have earned less than 1000 plays on the
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  surface? That's true.
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  This happened a couple of years ago.
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  So yeah, on Spotify you don't earn the royalties in your songs
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  until you get more than 1000 streams in the last year.
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  I just see. I'm sorry to stop here.
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  That's not that's not fair, is it?
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  I mean, you've still been played.
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  So I mean, even though it's a tiny amount, the idea that we're
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  just not going to pay the we're just going to not going to pay
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  any of these small artists, even if they're artists just starting
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  out. I'm afraid you don't count.
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  And I'm not sure that's fair. Well, it's, yeah, this is on
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  something that's been an ongoing debate because this originally
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  came, I mean, there's there's certain parts of the music
• 5:47
  industry which support this idea.
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  So this came from the major labels really.
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  Well, what a shock. What a shock there.
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  And, and the argument the, the, the argument that's been put
• 5:56
  forward in favour of it is that those are, those things aren't,
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  aren't even much money. But if you reroute that money
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  towards artists who are getting more streams, who are the ones
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  that they think of as more professional, who are actually
• 6:06
  getting momentum, you're putting money in the pockets of artists
• 6:09
  who are trying to make a living. That was the argument in favour
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  of it. But yeah, you're right.
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  I mean, independent labels have been protesting about this
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  recently, saying we think this penalises smaller artists, newer
• 6:19
  artists, independent artists. So it's an ongoing argument.
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  The one thing that's come out in the last week, there's been a
• 6:25
  few people making this point online is if you if you cross
• 6:28
  reference these stats. So this Illuminate report said
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  there's like 223 million tracks, got 1000 streams of fewer last
• 6:34
  year. Of course, all services, not
• 6:36
  just Spotify, if you applied at Spotify, that's like 88% of
• 6:40
  songs on its service. It's not paying for.
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  And that sounds in isolation. That sounds like what bastards
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  evil. They're not paying 88% of the
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  money they have. But then you do then have to
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  think, OK, but remember 22% of those tracks didn't get any
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  streams. So they don't need to be paid
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  anyway. You wouldn't pay.
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  But yeah, what this. And I was thinking about how to
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  kind of explain this because I think you're right.
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  In the history of music, if you sold a record, there were
• 7:07
  royalties weren't there every time, every sale.
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  And you may have a terrible contract when you didn't get
• 7:12
  those royalties. And that's a whole other biscuit
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  of cats. But generally, every sale would
• 7:18
  create royalties. Whereas if you think about a
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  different world, if you think about YouTube, so on YouTube, I
• 7:24
  can upload a meal, you can upload a video whenever we want.
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  It might get hundreds, thousands of views, but we don't get any
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  money from that. We have to get to a point and I
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  think you need to have like 1000 subscribers in your channel and
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  you have a certain amount of watch time where you can join
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  YouTube's partner programme and start earning money from the
• 7:41
  ads. So in that world, YouTube and
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  social media, you, you have to get to a certain level before
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  you earn anything. And before that you're just
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  posting your stuff and not earning money from it.
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  So this, this change in Spotify moved music from this old model
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  where every sale is a royalty towards that, well, where, you
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  know, you have to reach a certain level, be a certain
• 8:02
  level of popularity before we start paying you.
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  And that's the change that's happening.
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  And that's that again, like you say, some people look at that
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  and go, that's, that doesn't feel fair.
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  You should get paid however little you've been streamed.
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  It's hard though, you see, I think comparing YouTube and
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  Spotify, Spotify being is, you know, is a primary prime is a
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  music service, isn't it? Well, primarily, obviously it
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  does other things, but primarily the music service trying to get
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  essentially sell what is these days people's records.
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  And I just I just just feel slightly wrong.
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  And of course, as you say, the major labels, they want the
• 8:43
  money for the artists who've got somewhere.
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  So so that, you know, that their share of the money, I mean, the
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  major labels aren't interested in the bands who are earning
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  less than, you know, getting less than 1000 plays because
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  they're not on the major labels and they want the money for.
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  And this is the other thing, you know, I understand the point
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  that more of the money will go to some of the artists who have
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  got more than 1000 plays and are trying to get somewhere, but
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  also more of that money is going to Britney Spears.
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  Yeah. That's a bad example.
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  Taylor Swift. Let's try and get up to date
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  kids. Do you know what I mean?
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  So but you know, it's going to the top bad bunnies getting some
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  of some of the money that would have gone, you know, would have
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  been hype knees. But I think it's all my it's the
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  principle of the thing as much as anything, because I realise,
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  you know, if you if you've got 900 plays, you are not going to
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  make a fortune. You're not going to make a
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  living out out of that. But isn't it?
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  Isn't it partly the the principle of this?
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  I think so. I mean, some of the argument
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  coming from independent labels as well is that they may have a
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  lots of a bunch of artists in their catalog getting fewer than
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  that. But when you add that up for a
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  label that can be quite meaningful.
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  So yeah, that's where so, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it was
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  announced at the time and it was kind of came with these positive
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  ideas of, yes, this will put more money in the pockets of
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  professional musicians. But it has it's, I mean, I've
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  got some, I've got some more stats again, which shed a bit of
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  context on all this on, on what these companies are trying to do
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  and why they're doing that kind of move.
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  According to Illuminate, 106,000 new tracks were delivered to
• 10:19
  distributors every day last year.
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  So 106,000 new songs every day. So here's your pub stat.
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  To listen to all of that, to listen to all the music that's
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  gone up this morning, it would take us more than 7000 hours, as
• 10:33
  committed as we both are. And I found a Billboard stat.
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  So in 2000, Billboard said just over 35,000 albums came out that
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  year. In 2000, and right now it's the
• 10:45
  equivalent of more than 10,000 albums released.
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  Every single. Day.
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  Oh well. That gives you a sense.
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  Oh, are we absolutely certain because you said, when you said
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  at the start, there's around what 50 million new tracks have
• 10:56
  gone up in, in the past year. But is, is that all new music,
• 11:01
  new artists releasing new music? Or does that 50 million also
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  include people who've put their catalog on Spotify or Apple?
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  Because there are still, there are still bands now who you
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  know, have managed to get their rights back so finally they can
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  put their music up. So.
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  So there will be old music as well amongst that won't there?
• 11:22
  It won't all just be brand new releases.
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  Yeah, old music, remastered music, remixes of old music,
• 11:29
  yeah, everything. So the what limit is it's called
• 11:32
  Isrcs, which for kind of if any listeners interested in this,
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  it's international standard recording codes.
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  I think it's like the code that every track gets assigned when
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  it's uploaded so that so it can tell what's different.
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  So this is this includes multiple versions of a track.
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  So if you, for example, if you're a label and you upload a
• 11:49
  new single of a band and also then the TikTok speed up
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  version, which is quite popular, that's 2 tracks, not one.
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  So yeah, there's, it's in terms of the actual number of new
• 11:58
  releases, yeah, it's, you can do some sums there, but it is a big
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  load. And it's it's a kind of a, the
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  other thing is this report breaks down.
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  So around 102 thousand of those daily tracks are independent and
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  DIY releases. So they're not from major
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  labels. And then the other thing, and
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  we're going to get into AIA bit later, aren't we?
• 12:19
  But AI is a big part of this. So why has this been growing so
• 12:23
  fast? Why have there been 50 million
• 12:24
  net new tracks since last year? We know from Deezer last year we
• 12:29
  talked about this, around 50,000 AI generated tracks a day are
• 12:33
  being uploaded to its service. And that isn't how that was
• 12:37
  about 34% of its daily uploads, which suggests that it's getting
• 12:41
  about 147,000 new tracks a day. But yeah, so when we talk about
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  104,000 new tracks a day, nearly half of them could be AI
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  generated now, which is is the other thing.
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  Yeah. And that ties into the fact that
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  lots of them aren't being played because before that helped come.
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  So that's the this is what's all swinging around and This is why
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  this is what's swimming around. Like, I think we're going to
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  talk about what is a problem, what can be done.
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  I think people have been realising the number of tracks
• 13:08
  has been increasing and increasing and there's a lot, a
• 13:10
  lot of noise for years. And we're now in the period of
• 13:14
  people saying, well, what do we actually do about this?
• 13:16
  How big a problem is it and what can be done?
• 13:19
  Just just before, just before we come up with some possible
• 13:22
  answers for for that and what the music industry thinks.
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  There's also obviously there are implications elsewhere, aren't
• 13:29
  there, for companies like Spotify.
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  Because if you are now, if we're up to 253,000,000 songs, how
• 13:38
  much tech do you need to store all those songs?
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  And how much is it costing a company like Spotify annually to
• 13:47
  host all these songs? How many supercomputers do you
• 13:52
  need? And how much of our monthly 12
• 13:55
  lbs is going on is going on the equipment, which is just to keep
• 14:00
  the thing running? Well, so I spent a bit of time
• 14:03
  digging around this morning and I don't really have any good
• 14:05
  answers because basically Spotify declares its costs in a
• 14:08
  bunch of big buckets and one of them is R&D.
• 14:11
  And this, these costs come under R&D, which also includes
• 14:15
  everything else Spotify does in terms of developing its service,
• 14:17
  building things. I did find, I mean, it's
• 14:19
  slightly a slight tangent, I did find a stat actually for it's
• 14:22
  the climate impact of all this. So Spotify's emissions in 2024,
• 14:29
  so it's carbon dioxide equivalent.
• 14:31
  It was 195,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
• 14:35
  That's, that's a kind of figure that's kind of meaningless if
• 14:37
  you don't understand what that means.
• 14:39
  I don't. But 35.8% of that came from
• 14:43
  cloud. That's how you described it,
• 14:45
  which is servers, the cost of storing and transmitting music.
• 14:50
  Again, this isn't just music, it's also podcasts.
• 14:52
  It's all the videos now. And this is also, this is, this
• 14:56
  is a mixture of people playing stuff and then the storing of
• 15:00
  it. But yeah, so about in terms of
• 15:02
  Spotify's climate impact, more than 1/3 of it comes from
• 15:06
  hosting and storing and transmitting other music.
• 15:09
  And this has an impact on that, obviously.
• 15:11
  So it's, it would be then wouldn't it follow that you'd be
• 15:14
  in the interest of the streaming services to push back on the AI
• 15:20
  tracks that no one is listening to because they're spending
• 15:23
  money on hosting these tracks, which no one is interested in
• 15:30
  and no one's making any money out of.
• 15:33
  And it's that that doesn't make any economic sense apart from
• 15:38
  anything else, apart from, you know, before we get into the
• 15:40
  creativity argument about AI, it's just financially, it's not
• 15:44
  doing anything for them. Well, that's it.
• 15:47
  And this is the this is the dilemma these companies face I
• 15:49
  think. And this comes back to the
• 15:50
  bigger question of those 253,000,000 tracks, so 104,000
• 15:54
  new up new tracks a day. If you're a Spotify or an Apple
• 15:58
  Music or an Amazon Music, whoever you are, I don't think
• 16:01
  any of them want to to, to say we're not taking that.
• 16:05
  If it's human music, like they don't want to say to any human
• 16:08
  person uploading music, no, you can't put it on here.
• 16:11
  Like I think that would that they'd be people would be cross
• 16:13
  with them. That wouldn't be a good look.
• 16:16
  So they have to let everything on for humans, and I'm not sure
• 16:21
  they really want to be taking stuff off.
• 16:23
  I'm not sure they want to be in the position of saying, well,
• 16:25
  that song, What for My Human wasn't streamed last year, so
• 16:27
  we're going to kick it off again.
• 16:29
  I think there's this. They'd be storing up trouble and
• 16:32
  protest themselves. People will be happy.
• 16:34
  So you're right. Where they can take action is AI
• 16:38
  music. And they could choose, they
• 16:41
  could choose to not have it on at all.
• 16:45
  Again, that's a little bit dicey because maybe some people want
• 16:48
  to listen to it. Some of these songs have been
• 16:49
  popular. So how do they decide which AI
• 16:52
  music might get listeners and which might not?
• 16:55
  Is is AI don't know how they would decide that before it goes
• 16:57
  on, they have to let it on and see.
• 16:59
  They could check off the AI music that's not being streamed.
• 17:01
  And they already do check off anything that's being streamed
• 17:03
  by bots. If they detect like fraudulent
• 17:05
  activity with an AI song, they kick it off.
• 17:08
  But yeah, that's the dilemma I have.
• 17:10
  I think they they have to figure out how do they, if they're
• 17:12
  going to be not letting something on or taking it off,
• 17:16
  is there a danger it's a real human behind it?
• 17:18
  He'll be cross and if not, is it something that might be listened
• 17:21
  to? But that does seem to be the
• 17:23
  only place they have wiggle room if they want to reduce this
• 17:26
  number of tracks and this noise. I mean, the other, the other
• 17:29
  approach would be to leave it all on there, but say actually,
• 17:32
  we're going to not give pay royalties to the songs that
• 17:35
  don't have many streams, but we're also not going to pay any
• 17:37
  royalties at all to AI generated music.
• 17:38
  They could say that, again, no one's quite taken that step yet,
• 17:43
  but that may be what's coming next.
• 17:44
  So yeah, there's a few things I can do, but it's very, very
• 17:46
  sensitive because I think when we all think this is too many
• 17:52
  songs, Spotify should do something about it.
• 17:54
  But many of the things it could do the easiest things would
• 17:57
  would get people equally cross, if that makes sense.
• 18:00
  So what does the music industry think and are there any
• 18:05
  suggestions then apart from the ones you've just come up with of
• 18:09
  what can be done? Because if AI the, you know, the
• 18:14
  AI steamroller, he's going to carry on bulldozing it's way
• 18:18
  through the music scene, then this increase of 50 million this
• 18:23
  year might be outstripped next year.
• 18:25
  So what? Where do we see this going
• 18:28
  further down the line? Yeah.
• 18:30
  Well, as I said, so this idea of having thresholds above which
• 18:33
  you have to have a certain amount of streams to get
• 18:34
  royalties, that came from the major label side of things.
• 18:38
  It's still controversial for independent labels, but that's
• 18:40
  one approach, OK. We need to have some kind of
• 18:43
  bar, some kind of quality bar based on listeners.
• 18:45
  And then that's the other thing I think, I think everyone in the
• 18:49
  industry is unhappy at the idea of this deluge of AI slop music,
• 18:54
  even if no one's listening to it.
• 18:55
  So I think, remember there's that stat from Deezer saying
• 18:57
  it's only half a percent of streams, even though it's 34% of
• 19:02
  all the uploads. So I think people are looking at
• 19:06
  this and saying, well, it's not taking lots of money away from
• 19:10
  human artists at the moment, but it could do.
• 19:14
  And we don't like that. Another stat, actually,
• 19:17
  interestingly so Deezer said that AI music was was not half a
• 19:21
  percent of it all its streams. Now in this Illuminate report,
• 19:24
  there's a big stat that says there were 5.1 trillion streams
• 19:27
  last year of music audio on demand.
• 19:30
  Well, OK. So 5.1 trillion streams nought
• 19:35
  .5% of that is 25 1/2 billion. So there could be 25 1/2 billion
• 19:41
  streams of AI music, which sounds enormous, but at the same
• 19:44
  time it's small in terms of all the streams, in terms of the
• 19:48
  money being paid out. It's just it's mind boggling,
• 19:52
  isn't it? I was trying to calculate, you
• 19:54
  know, you've you came up with a figure for how long it would
• 19:56
  take us to listen to songs coming out now if you wanted to
• 20:00
  listen to all the music on our streaming service.
• 20:03
  I think, I think it's something like, what is it?
• 20:05
  12 million hours? Probably got that wrong.
• 20:07
  I mean it's. It's just mind boggling how much
• 20:10
  music is out there. And as I say, what is going to
• 20:13
  what is going to happen in the in the future.
• 20:16
  But I mean, I mean, strangely, I guess we should have seen this
• 20:19
  coming because with a service, with any of these services,
• 20:23
  there is nothing apart from rights issues of, you know, who
• 20:27
  owns, who owns the music. There is nothing to stop all
• 20:30
  music from all time all over the globe being available.
• 20:34
  So we're probably getting off lightly with 253 million.
• 20:38
  Well, you think, think about the old days like so I could sit
• 20:40
  here now. I mean, I, I am AI, am a
• 20:42
  terrible, terrible guitarist. I Can't Sing for toffee.
• 20:47
  I could sit here and record a song of me playing guitar,
• 20:50
  singing, and it could be on streaming services next week and
• 20:55
  no one would step in and go. But it's terrible.
• 20:58
  It shouldn't be on there. Whereas in the old easy industry
• 21:00
  that you'd have to get someone to agree that it was worth
• 21:02
  putting out. You'd have to get a label to say
• 21:05
  yes, you'd think you're terrible.
• 21:07
  So that's the thing. Those barriers were the first to
• 21:09
  come down. Anyone can now release anything
• 21:11
  they want, and that's humans. And like you say, now there's
• 21:15
  AI, which means that a human really, I mean, how many tracks
• 21:18
  could a human, single human being make in a day with the
• 21:21
  best will in the world, even if you're just sort of singing.
• 21:24
  But with an AI, you could, you could crank out 1000 songs a day
• 21:26
  easily. So we should have seen it
• 21:29
  coming, and we did. We did see it coming.
• 21:32
  So yeah, I think the big focus in the music industry right now
• 21:35
  is the initial focus now is on AI generated music and fraud.
• 21:40
  So people who are creating loads of tracks with AI to put them on
• 21:44
  streaming service and then are getting bots to stream them to
• 21:47
  earn royalties. That's something that everyone
• 21:49
  is united streaming services, labels, F1.
• 21:51
  It's saying that's bad, we don't want to have them.
• 21:53
  That's taking money away from human artists.
• 21:55
  So let's stop that. And then beyond that, we do get
• 21:58
  to this tricky thing, which I think is about, again, I think
• 22:02
  it's about thinking who's trying to make a living from music,
• 22:05
  which humans are trying to make a living from music.
• 22:07
  And how can we, how can we give them the best chance to make
• 22:12
  money and progress and develop and sustain themselves in their
• 22:16
  career? And so actually, some of the
• 22:19
  stuff that that that you were talking about you, you fair is
• 22:21
  intrinsically unfair. The tractor.
• 22:23
  That's what they're that's, that's getting at.
• 22:25
  How do we, who are this group of musicians that we do want to
• 22:28
  support? And is there a cut off point?
• 22:30
  And as you've seen, even just from one Spotify trying to do
• 22:33
  it, it's very touchy and sensitive.
• 22:35
  But that that is once. I think the AI stuff is quite
• 22:37
  simple and everyone agrees on the basic, get rid of the
• 22:40
  fraudulent stuff. But I think it's really, really
• 22:43
  tricky because I don't know, say I was really good at singing and
• 22:47
  playing the guitar and I put a song up and no one listens to
• 22:50
  it. That doesn't mean I shouldn't be
• 22:53
  encouraged. You know, think about the bands
• 22:56
  you love. Yeah.
• 22:58
  So I think it's, it's, it's tricky and I think, but I, I
• 23:02
  don't really detect anyone really talking about in the same
• 23:05
  way we're sitting here going 250 million.
• 23:07
  This is, this is a worrying thing that hasn't really been a
• 23:09
  big industry debate. But I do think it's something
• 23:12
  that a lot of musicians feel. And that's the other point of
• 23:15
  this actually. If you're an artist releasing
• 23:17
  your first single and you're aware that 104,000 tracks are
• 23:21
  coming out the day you you release yours, I mean, it's, I
• 23:24
  mean, I'd be, I'd find it hard to stay positive really.
• 23:27
  How on earth do you cut through that noise?
• 23:29
  And so that's the other aspect of this, which is like, how do
• 23:31
  musicians feel about this and, and would they feel more
• 23:34
  confident if they knew that stuff was being done to make
• 23:37
  give them the best chance of reaching the people who might
• 23:39
  like them? That is the other thing.
• 23:42
  Actually, the other thing that Spotify, Spotify would say about
• 23:44
  music is there's work they can do there because they have, they
• 23:48
  have put a lot of money and a lot of effort in people.
• 23:52
  How do you find music and recommend it to people who'd
• 23:54
  like it? So that is the other part of
• 23:56
  this. Maybe there is a world in which
• 23:58
  it doesn't matter how much music is uploaded every day.
• 24:02
  What matters is if the good stuff is being recommended to
• 24:04
  people who'd like it and there is work they can do there by,
• 24:07
  you know, whether it's the clever algorithms where it's the
• 24:09
  people listening to the releases from like proven labels and
• 24:12
  saying this band are great, I'm going to put them on this
• 24:14
  playlist quite high up. All that stuff becomes maybe
• 24:17
  more important the more tracks there are I think.
• 24:20
  So it's not just about kicking stuff off on or not paying more.
• 24:23
  It's about how do you identify stuff, if it's good and help it.
• 24:27
  Your thoughts on any of this jobbersalonthepriceofmusicpodcast@gmail.com
• 24:32
  Very quickly then a couple of bits of any other business what
• 24:35
  this one, this. The timeline of this is quite
• 24:39
  confusing because once again we're recording on Tuesday
• 24:41
  lunchtime, which means this evening, Tuesday evening, after
• 24:46
  we've finished this, The Music Venue Trust.
• 24:49
  It's tonight that the Music Venue Trust, the charity which
• 24:51
  supports and champions the UK's grassroots music venues.
• 24:55
  They're launching their annual reports tonight at the V and A
• 25:00
  in London and obviously we'll report back on that next week.
• 25:04
  We do know some of the details which we can bring you before
• 25:08
  because they'll be available to you by the time this podcast is
• 25:11
  out. But we do know some things, some
• 25:13
  of the details in the report and one or two stats.
• 25:18
  I just, if I just throw one or two things at you, Stuart.
• 25:21
  So for starter, let's do the basics.
• 25:24
  So this year they will reveal that they currently.
• 25:28
  The Music Venue Trust currently represents 801 venues which put
• 25:33
  on 174,000 live events in 2025, contributing around £580 million
• 25:43
  to the economy. That's the basics.
• 25:46
  The average profit margin for a grassroots venue went up
• 25:51
  slightly last year, but it's still only 2 1/2%, while more
• 25:58
  worryingly, it's. Elsewhere in the report, it says
• 26:01
  half of grassroots venues reported no profit at all over
• 26:07
  the past 12 months. So the margins working at
• 26:11
  grassroots level are still very precarious.
• 26:15
  Also a number of people employed by venues, that's around 25,000
• 26:20
  people working for grassroots venues around the UK, although
• 26:23
  that is down by, I think the report says by about 20%, which
• 26:28
  I think they point to the increase in the employer
• 26:31
  National Insurance contribution as to why venues had to cut
• 26:35
  staff because with higher staff costs just couldn't afford to
• 26:39
  keep all the staff on. So I think there has, there has
• 26:42
  been unfortunately a case of one or two people being laid off,
• 26:46
  which I think is actually a problem across a lot of small
• 26:48
  businesses. But the number of venues closing
• 26:52
  appears to have slowed down. To balance that up though we
• 26:56
  should also point out, as the report does, that the music, so
• 27:00
  the Music Venue Trust, it has its own emergency response team.
• 27:04
  This is like a team of experts who are ready to help out venues
• 27:08
  who've reached a crisis point or other for whatever reason.
• 27:11
  And, and it could be things like disputes with landlords, noise
• 27:16
  complaints, threatened redevelopment, all those sort of
• 27:19
  things. But last year, the MBTS
• 27:22
  Emergency Response team dealt with 205 cases.
• 27:27
  That's a quarter of all the venues faced a point where they
• 27:32
  thought they might have to close before the MBT stepped in, which
• 27:39
  sounds. But the only thing about having
• 27:41
  having read what I, you know, what I have of the report so
• 27:44
  far, you do get the impression. And I think talking to one or
• 27:47
  two people in grass roots, there is also the impression that I
• 27:51
  think people feel that we may be about to turn a corner.
• 27:55
  Because I mean, there are noises coming from the chancellor that
• 27:58
  the, you know, that awful business rate increase, which we
• 28:02
  talked about, which happened, which was, which was unveiled
• 28:06
  just before Christmas. We're hoping that that might be
• 28:10
  mitigated for the hospitality sector and that would help.
• 28:13
  There's also potentially there's money coming from the live
• 28:16
  trust. So I think there is there's a
• 28:20
  cautious note of optimism, but we'll obviously find out more
• 28:24
  tonight. Well, yeah, I saw there was a
• 28:26
  sentence I picked out in that. I think, I think it's the press
• 28:28
  release or the report, but it's no longer just about rescue.
• 28:32
  It's about working with partners to deliver investment and
• 28:34
  reform. That is a key message to me that
• 28:37
  because I think that this venues are closing, we have to save
• 28:40
  them. That's been a really strong
• 28:41
  message, hasn't it? But they seem saying, but that's
• 28:43
  not the only story. There's a positive story to be
• 28:45
  told here about investing and making them better and and
• 28:48
  building it and building savings.
• 28:50
  So that's the other thing I picked out was this, the
• 28:53
  voluntary levy stuff about tickling and there's some quite
• 28:57
  punchy stuff on that, isn't it saying June, are they setting
• 29:00
  June as a deadline, saying that's when there has to be a
• 29:03
  levy agreed by the whole new live industry, otherwise the
• 29:06
  government should step in. Well, it's about the take up, so
• 29:11
  obviously the voluntary contributions have started
• 29:13
  coming in bands, loads of bands. We can't list them all, but
• 29:16
  thank you very much to all the bands and promoters who have who
• 29:22
  bought into this where any gig above 5000 capacity in arena or
• 29:28
  a stadium. The idea is that a pound from
• 29:31
  each of the tickets sold goes to the Live Trust and the Live
• 29:34
  Trust then spread the money out through the grassroots
• 29:38
  ecosystem, whether it's to the venues themselves or new and
• 29:41
  emerging promoters or micro festivals of any and all the
• 29:46
  artists themselves actually to help artists go out on tour.
• 29:50
  So the money will go there. The the ask of government,
• 29:53
  government who have got back behind this idea that the
• 29:55
  industry should find a way of solving the problem of small
• 30:00
  venues closing, that they the industry should do it
• 30:02
  themselves. So it's backed by governments.
• 30:05
  Though there is a obviously there's a new minister has
• 30:09
  arrived on the scene, a new culture minister who very early
• 30:13
  on said, I'm really backing this scheme, but I would like to see
• 30:18
  the take up of it as a voluntary scheme.
• 30:21
  Even though it's a voluntary scheme, I'd like it to be to
• 30:24
  feel more like a statutory scheme.
• 30:26
  I'd like more by yeah, I want and I want to see the, the, the
• 30:33
  take up of this up to 50% by X time.
• 30:37
  And then, you know, ultimately we should be as close to 100% of
• 30:41
  people taking part and giving, contributing a pound from their
• 30:46
  big gigs. But yeah, there are, there are
• 30:49
  deadlines along the way, which will obviously we'll see the and
• 30:53
  as you say, The thing is if they set an ultimate debt, if
• 30:56
  government sets them, if DCMS ultimately sets a final
• 31:02
  deadline, which is possible, I guess that they will say, right,
• 31:06
  you haven't done well enough and not enough people have entered
• 31:10
  into the spirit of this. You can't be trusted as an
• 31:13
  industry to save yourselves. So we are going to bring in,
• 31:17
  we're going to table a mandatory levy and we'll put that across
• 31:21
  the top end of the industry. It's up to you.
• 31:25
  So that's, that's where we are. But the first, the first money
• 31:31
  which has arrived at the trust, the first set of, do you call
• 31:37
  them grants? No, I think you do it the first,
• 31:40
  the first tranche of awards, financial awards will go out
• 31:47
  pretty soon. I think so.
• 31:49
  And then it will be interesting to see, you know, how that
• 31:52
  affects how, how that affects the grassroots.
• 31:55
  But I, you know, I think it's, it is a bit positive.
• 31:58
  It is more positive and I think it'd be great this year.
• 32:02
  As I said, last weeks program and just before Christmas.
• 32:05
  No one wants us banging on about venues closing down and it would
• 32:09
  be much better for everyone if the narrative was do you know
• 32:12
  what your venue down the end of your Rd.
• 32:14
  It's just got a new sound system.
• 32:16
  Or, you know, the bogs are nicer, the lights have been
• 32:19
  done, they've got better inclusive access at the venue
• 32:24
  due to the fact that we, we've raised some money to make the
• 32:27
  venue a nicer place for and a more inclusive place for people
• 32:31
  to go. Those are the stories that we
• 32:33
  would much rather be telling. This is what I want from Ed.
• 32:36
  We should tell the Music Venue Trust next year's report.
• 32:38
  I want to start percentage stat for nicer bogs.
• 32:41
  Yeah, what what percentage of venues funded last year by the
• 32:45
  trust have nicer bogs now? Because that's that could be a
• 32:47
  strong. Starting in King Tuts, it's
• 32:50
  stunning in Glasgow at King Tuts World War Hut, there's a there's
• 32:54
  a running gag for regular listeners.
• 32:56
  Finally this week, I mean, we've been asking recently or even
• 32:59
  last week we we mentioned this, we've been asking what and even
• 33:03
  earlier in the show, what are streaming services going to do
• 33:06
  about AI and what's, you know, angle some leading investors in
• 33:13
  music might take. Well last week band camp came
• 33:18
  out and banned all music which is entirely or substantially
• 33:25
  created by AI and I didn't see this coming.
• 33:28
  No, no, it came out of the blue, really.
• 33:30
  And yeah. And if anyone, I mean for for
• 33:32
  listening to Band Camp, Band Camp's not.
• 33:34
  You can stream music on there, but it's more of a stores
• 33:37
  platform where artists and labels can sell music to their
• 33:41
  fans directly. And yeah, and and I think you've
• 33:45
  got to another it there. Music and audio generated wholly
• 33:49
  or in substantial part by eye is not permitted on Band Camp.
• 33:53
  And you can, even as a listener, you can file a report if you
• 33:56
  think something is AI generated which could be misused for the
• 33:59
  band you don't like. I think they're AI, but very
• 34:03
  clear, very clear right now. And they've also banned any use
• 34:08
  of AI to impersonate other artists or styles.
• 34:11
  So if you are using AI to kind of make, you know, do vocal
• 34:15
  clone of another artist. So the whole point here is we're
• 34:19
  putting human creativity first. I said it's a very kind of
• 34:21
  strong stance. And like you say, it's kind of
• 34:23
  come out. It's been the first big music
• 34:25
  platform to say we're banning it entirely.
• 34:27
  The little question I have, which is not poking any kind of
• 34:32
  any shade at them, is that line of substantially generated is is
• 34:37
  is quite blurry and make it blurrier still.
• 34:40
  Like, how much, how much of A work has to be the human before
• 34:44
  you let it on? And how do you tell?
• 34:46
  You know, at some point, someone might be in a studio using AI to
• 34:49
  create the samples, then using traditional tools to make a
• 34:52
  song, then singing over the top of it, and then using AI to make
• 34:55
  their voice sound different. That all gets quite blurry.
• 35:00
  But if you're going to set a policy, you know, you'll deal
• 35:03
  with those things. So yeah, I'm sure they're aware
• 35:04
  of it. But yeah, And I think it, I
• 35:08
  don't know, I've been thinking about this for a while.
• 35:09
  I mean, let me run this past you and see if you think it's good.
• 35:12
  You know, that whole thing about fair trade goods, you've got
• 35:15
  people, people buy fair trade goods because they want to know
• 35:17
  they're buying something ethical.
• 35:19
  I wonder if human music is going to become a little tag like
• 35:23
  that. Like the more you say this is
• 35:25
  human music or the more as a platform you say we don't allow
• 35:27
  our music. Does that encourage people to
• 35:29
  come and use you? Like is that, does it become a
• 35:31
  selling point in that way? Yeah, well, this, I mean this
• 35:34
  did you see Will I Am's statement on AI last week?
• 35:40
  Oh no, go on. Well, I'm not, we don't have
• 35:44
  time to do it all here. We made money come back to it in
• 35:46
  the lock in. But he was trying to and he's
• 35:49
  part, isn't he? He's an investor in an AI
• 35:50
  company himself. And he was basically saying,
• 35:53
  look, oranges, do you know if your oranges are organic?
• 35:57
  Do you care if your oranges are organic?
• 36:00
  Otherwise you just buy oranges. And it was a really complicated
• 36:05
  kind of an analogy, but I think he was coming at it from that
• 36:09
  angle of, well, you know, if you want, if you only want organic
• 36:13
  oranges, then, you know, don't get involved in these oranges.
• 36:19
  Thank you very much for for that clarity.
• 36:22
  And that will do it for this week.
• 36:24
  Thank you very much for listening.
• 36:26
  We may come back to that band camp story.
• 36:29
  Certainly, as I say, possibly more on the Music Venue Trust
• 36:32
  Live report next week and what it really means to us as fans
• 36:38
  going to see bands in small venues.
• 36:41
  We'll possibly do that more next week, particularly if we can get
• 36:45
  a guest on to talk about it with us.
• 36:47
  But in the meantime, thank you very much for listening.
• 36:50
  If you are into what we're trying to do here, which said
• 36:53
  last week is basically trying to demystify the industry, one very
• 36:56
  small step at a time. Do feel free to pass the word on
• 37:00
  to friends, family, colleagues, somebody on the bus you sat next
• 37:05
  to who's listening to music, anything, anyone.
• 37:09
  Bring them this way, direct them this way.
• 37:12
  You can of course, in the meantime support us via Patreon
• 37:15
  and and sign up to be a Super Fan, which gets you an extra bit
• 37:19
  of the show which we call The Lock In.
• 37:21
  It's an extra 15 minutes of bonus material for anyone who
• 37:25
  chooses to become a Super Fan at patreon.com/the Price of Music.
• 37:31
  Or if you just like to get in touch with us, it'd be nice to
• 37:33
  hear from you with any thoughts. Send us an e-mail to
• 37:37
  thepriceofmusicpodcast@gmail.com. Till next week, take care,
• 37:43
  goodbye.