Latest / The Price of Music / The Weeknd’s big streaming milestone; ABBA Gold’s long chart run; Ready for friends to slide into your Spotify DMs?; Apple Music Radio expands; and Radiohead’s ‘Let Down’ gets a TikTok boost.Th

Transcript

The Weeknd’s big streaming milestone; ABBA Gold’s long chart run; Ready for friends to slide into your Spotify DMs?; Apple Music Radio expands; and Radiohead’s ‘Let Down’ gets a TikTok boost.Th · The Price of Music

• 0:08
  Hello and welcome to The Price of Music, brought to you by
• 0:10
  Music Ally, the show that's fascinated by all the fun and
• 0:13
  games and finances of the music world, as explained each week by
• 0:18
  me, Steve Lamac and him, Stuart Dredge.
• 0:21
  If you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music biz
• 0:24
  and how it all works with one or two revealing stats along the
• 0:28
  way, then here we are Every week.
• 0:30
  Back this week after a late summer holiday week off, but
• 0:34
  with, amongst other things, the relentless streaming success of
• 0:38
  the weekend and their future world domination plans.
• 0:41
  A surprise hit for Radiohead. New user features on both
• 0:46
  Spotify and Band Camp. And I can't believe I'm saying
• 0:48
  this out loud, but something about Apple Radio as well.
• 0:51
  But first this week's big figure.
• 0:54
  Now we're reversing the usual roles for this for for a week.
• 0:58
  I've got a big number for you, Stuart, which is 1216.
• 1:06
  Yeah, I mean given the some of the shade that's coming my
• 1:09
  direction for small, big numbers in the past, but OK, this must
• 1:13
  be an impressive 1. What is 1200 and?
• 1:15
  Sixteen, 1216 is the number of weeks that ABBA Gold, the best
• 1:22
  of ABBA, has been in the album chart.
• 1:26
  Or if you want that figure in a more stock and manageable way,
• 1:30
  that's 23 years ABBA Gold has been on the chart.
• 1:34
  Not obviously, not Consecut, not continuously for 23 years,
• 1:38
  because it came out in September 1992, I think.
• 1:43
  So unbelievably, there was a time when ABBA Gold wasn't in
• 1:48
  the top 100, but in total it spent 23 years in the album
• 1:54
  chart as ABBA Gold. If you want to dig a little
• 1:56
  further into this, I went there. I went through the top 100,
• 2:01
  which they publish every week. 11 of the albums in the top 30
• 2:06
  have been in the chart for more than 200 weeks.
• 2:09
  I see 11 of the top third of the top 30 has been there, well, in
• 2:14
  the chart at least for 200 weeks. 38 of the top 100 albums
• 2:19
  this week have been in the chart for four years or more, and 10
• 2:25
  of them, so 10% of the top 100 this week, 10 of those albums
• 2:30
  have been in the chart for more than 500 weeks.
• 2:35
  Do you want to speculate as to what they may be?
• 2:37
  There's a lot of hits albums, I can tell you that.
• 2:39
  OK, is it like Pink Floyd Queen? Queen, you're right.
• 2:45
  Queen Greatest hits, You're right.
• 2:49
  Who hasn't had greatest hits? I mean, there's one or two
• 2:53
  others which you know, inevitably have hung around and
• 2:56
  one back one album. What's the Oasis?
• 2:59
  Yes, yes, quite, quite right. So the 10 are time flies from
• 3:05
  Oasis then what's the story? And definitely maybe so.
• 3:09
  There's three Oasis albums, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, of
• 3:13
  course, ABBA Gold, Eminem's Curtain Call, Queen's Greatest
• 3:18
  Hits, Bob Marley's Legend and the Arctic Monkeys.
• 3:22
  Whatever People Say I Am and the Arctic Monkeys I Am album.
• 3:27
  Both of those have been in the chart for more than 500 weeks.
• 3:31
  And I don't know what the, you know, what this says or what we
• 3:33
  conclude that these stats signify about the era we live
• 3:37
  in. And maybe, I guess how much, you
• 3:40
  know, the impact of streaming familiar songs in recent times
• 3:44
  has to do with all this, but there you go.
• 3:46
  Make of that what you will. I mean, while there is, while
• 3:48
  there's a Mamma Mia stage show in the virtual ABBA experience,
• 3:52
  I can't their, their run will never end, will it?
• 3:55
  They'll be there forever. I was thinking maybe we should
• 3:57
  get in contact with our friend Martin Tolbert of the of the
• 4:00
  Official Charts Company and and suggest that once an album gets
• 4:04
  to 1000 weeks, we just stop counting.
• 4:08
  I mean, just just just take them out of the top 100 because you
• 4:11
  don't need them mate. Well, just take it as read that
• 4:14
  ABBA Gold is one of the top 100 selling albums of the week and
• 4:19
  then let someone else have a go. Because they do penalized
• 4:21
  singles. They're not penalized, but they
• 4:23
  wait singles, don't they? So if you're Mariah Carey at
• 4:25
  Christmas, it's actually a bit harder for you to get to #1 than
• 4:28
  it is for a brand new song. I didn't know that.
• 4:31
  I think there's there's a waiting, I think if they're
• 4:33
  older or been in the ground for a while.
• 4:34
  But yeah, but it's, it's weird, isn't it?
• 4:36
  Because I suppose ABBA, ABBA Gold, what, 20 years ago ABBA
• 4:40
  Gold would be been a chart because it was selling loads of
• 4:43
  copies every single week, wouldn't it?
• 4:45
  But now it's plays. And like you say, people aren't
• 4:46
  going to suddenly, unless, unless beyond from ABBA does
• 4:49
  something terrible to get them cancelled.
• 4:52
  No one's going to just stop listening to ABBA suddenly.
• 4:55
  No. So I can't.
• 4:57
  Yeah, I'm just going to be there forever until we do something
• 5:01
  about it. Anyway, our top three stories
• 5:04
  for this week. Let's start with this one about
• 5:06
  the weekend. So the weekends Blinding Lights
• 5:09
  has become the first track talking of streaming the first
• 5:12
  track to reach 5 billion streams on Spotify.
• 5:17
  And in the same way that that happens.
• 5:19
  So reportedly now that the weekend when they try to raise
• 5:25
  like a billion pounds of financing off the bat, using
• 5:29
  obviously the the catalog as collateral to do to do what with
• 5:34
  I couldn't. And that's the bit of the story
• 5:36
  I haven't got to. No, well, that's the kind of
• 5:38
  fascinating bit that that we, I'm going to basically randomly
• 5:41
  speculate about because no one knows.
• 5:44
  Yeah, I mean, so this is, this follows on quite nicely from
• 5:46
  ABBA because Blinding Lights like is I guess the the one of
• 5:49
  the, the the single examples of from the recent age that's
• 5:53
  equivalent of what ABBA did, you know, for the last 30 years.
• 5:55
  So Blinding lights came out in November 2019, I think.
• 5:59
  So 6 nearly six years old and it's got to 5 billion streams.
• 6:04
  And to give you a contest of the the long lasting nature, in
• 6:09
  2020, so the year after it came out, it was the biggest single
• 6:13
  track in the world on the Ifbi's chart.
• 6:15
  And then in 2021, the next year, it was the 7th biggest track in
• 6:18
  the world. And in 2022, so two years after
• 6:21
  it came out, it was the 14th biggest track in the world.
• 6:23
  So it basically hung around for ages and it's carried on and
• 6:27
  yeah, and it's it's like some distance head.
• 6:28
  And so on Spotify, the biggest track is this on by the weekend,
• 6:31
  Blind Lights. Ed Sheeran's Shape of You is
• 6:34
  second with just over 4 1/2 billion.
• 6:36
  And then third is the Weekends again with Starboy, which is
• 6:39
  sort of 4 billion. So this one bloke has two of the
• 6:42
  three biggest songs on Spotify with 9 billion streams
• 6:45
  collectively. It's kind of kind of insane when
• 6:47
  you think about it. I mean, that's you could sit at
• 6:53
  home and just, I mean, every second the royalty suggests
• 6:57
  ticking over, aren't they? That's it.
• 6:58
  He doesn't have to make any new music.
• 6:59
  He could just sit on his loud when he's not.
• 7:01
  He's got new music coming out. So it was crazy because I would
• 7:03
  be at home watching kind of much of the day.
• 7:05
  We went from 1990s, you know, while watching the money
• 7:09
  flowing. But yeah, but so this thing,
• 7:11
  this is going to be making him a lot of money.
• 7:12
  Like this is passive income. But as you said, there was a
• 7:15
  support the same week saying he's trying to raise a billion
• 7:18
  dollars. And and do we know what for
• 7:21
  then? We don't what?
• 7:23
  So what this is from Bloomberg, so a fairly good source.
• 7:25
  And it's it is using his share of his recording and publishing
• 7:28
  rights because he owns a part share of them as collateral.
• 7:31
  So it's one of these where he puts up that and then they'll
• 7:35
  give him a billion dollars and then they'll make money back
• 7:37
  from the royalties from his future.
• 7:39
  And it's a company called Lyric Capital Group, who are one of
• 7:41
  these financial investment firms that are interested in lyrics.
• 7:44
  But yeah, I mean, there was nothing nothing on.
• 7:47
  He's not announced it. So he hasn't talked about why
• 7:49
  he's doing it before. But I mean, he's he's kind of
• 7:51
  this interesting guy. So obviously his real name's
• 7:53
  Abel. He's talked about he's retiring
• 7:54
  the weekend persona after this current album.
• 7:58
  So he's obviously having a moment in his career where he's
• 8:00
  thinking I'm going to do something else.
• 8:02
  Like, he's not retiring from music, but he's retiring that
• 8:05
  whole era, that whole. Persona.
• 8:07
  And he's already like he Co founded a label back in 2011.
• 8:11
  He's done like partnerships in E sports and tech.
• 8:14
  He's launched like he launched an entrepreneurship scheme in
• 8:16
  Canada a few years ago for you sort of young entrepreneurs.
• 8:20
  He's done philanthropy, he's made ATV show.
• 8:22
  I think if you saw this the idol last year, I think it's fair to
• 8:26
  say he kind of starred in it and it was being and it was it was
• 8:30
  had mixed critical response. It's fair to say I'm being very
• 8:33
  polite that he's got a new film out that's equally so he's kind
• 8:36
  of got his finger in a lot of already.
• 8:38
  And a lot of those pies could be baked up quite bigger with with
• 8:42
  a billion dollars. Well, yeah.
• 8:43
  I mean, a billion dollars. What's he going to do, run for
• 8:46
  president? Oh God, I mean, that'd be.
• 8:50
  He's Canadian though, isn't he? You can't remember President.
• 8:52
  President of Canada? Maybe, Yeah.
• 8:55
  But I mean, if you think about like, imagine if you were
• 8:57
  starting up a new record label, how much money you might have to
• 9:01
  do it. And now imagine the weekend if,
• 9:02
  if he fancy doing, he fancy doing like a creating a brand
• 9:05
  new label and signing people and going, he could do lots with
• 9:08
  that money. But I don't know, he might.
• 9:11
  He might just use it to kind of buy loads of property, or he
• 9:13
  might use it to, I don't know, he might make the most amazing
• 9:17
  folly of an album. You know, people make those
• 9:19
  albums where they spend loads of money, you know, like 400 grand
• 9:22
  on a timpani solo isn't quite right.
• 9:24
  He might do that, and that would be wonderful to go and watch.
• 9:26
  But yeah, he hasn't said. We'll see.
• 9:29
  Do you want another inbox to check?
• 9:33
  Because Spotify? Talking of Spotify, Spotify
• 9:36
  thinks you do. Because it's so it's
• 9:39
  reintroducing a message messaging feature.
• 9:43
  What? What will tell?
• 9:45
  I don't think. I mean, obviously I've never
• 9:46
  really engaged in Spotify on any level apart from, you know, from
• 9:50
  selecting a song and pressing play.
• 9:52
  So what? What was the messaging feature?
• 9:54
  Why did it disappear and why is it coming back?
• 9:56
  Yeah, well, this goes back to the early days of Spotify when
• 9:58
  it had this inbox and you could message people and you could
• 10:01
  send tracks to people. And, you know, it was kind of
• 10:03
  like a little, you know, a sort of a social element of.
• 10:06
  And they got rid of it in 2017. And I remember the announcement,
• 10:09
  I looked it up recently when I was writing this story and they
• 10:12
  basically said this feature has very low engagement, like no
• 10:16
  one's using it. It's a lot of manpower to run
• 10:18
  it. So we're getting rid of it.
• 10:20
  And then here we are in what's this sort of eight years later,
• 10:23
  they're like, we've got a messaging again.
• 10:26
  And it's a big, but it's, it's, so it's only on phones, it's
• 10:29
  only in certain countries. And you have to be older than 16
• 10:32
  to do it. And they've obviously been
• 10:33
  thinking a lot about what's the worst thing that could happen
• 10:36
  here. Well, people can start messaging
• 10:37
  kids, something that's happening on other platforms.
• 10:40
  So they've been very careful, very limited.
• 10:43
  But the idea is the pitch. And you can, I'll judge your
• 10:46
  face and whether this pitch is good.
• 10:48
  It's a way to share songs, podcasts and audiobooks with
• 10:50
  your friends and family. And so when you log in, it will
• 10:53
  show you people you've already connected with on Spotify.
• 10:57
  So for example, if you're on a family plan, it will show you
• 10:59
  other family members. If you create a playlist,
• 11:01
  someone else. And I don't know about you.
• 11:04
  I mean, like the cynic in me says, if I want to share music
• 11:07
  with people, I will ping them on WhatsApp or I'll put it on a
• 11:11
  social network or I'll tell them.
• 11:13
  I mean, God forbid I'll talk to them.
• 11:16
  I don't know if I need another way.
• 11:18
  I don't know if I need. I don't know if having it within
• 11:19
  Spotify, I'm not sure how that helps me because actually if you
• 11:22
  use Spotify, there's a little button under every song and
• 11:24
  album, an artist to share it via WhatsApp, Instagram, all those
• 11:28
  things. Yeah.
• 11:29
  So I don't know, but how about you, I mean.
• 11:32
  I mean, I mean, you could fall out with people so very easily,
• 11:35
  couldn't you? Because doesn't it?
• 11:37
  So if it shows, does it show you what you know friends or
• 11:41
  contacts have been listening to? No, so they have it's very much
• 11:45
  them saying I want to share this song with you.
• 11:47
  Here it is. It's.
• 11:48
  Right, OK. 'Cause they used to have that
• 11:49
  too. You better see what everyone was
• 11:50
  listening to and then. They that, that's that.
• 11:53
  That's incredibly dangerous though, isn't it?
• 11:55
  You're listening to what I'm. I'm unfriending you.
• 12:00
  You're the reason ABBA Gold is still in the album chart.
• 12:03
  Are you OK? Yeah.
• 12:05
  It's explicit. So it's like, I mean, so for
• 12:07
  people, I mean, I don't know, maybe people do it, but I feel
• 12:10
  like if you are someone who loves telling your friends to
• 12:13
  listen to this track, you probably have ways to do it
• 12:16
  already. And I'm not sure this offers
• 12:17
  enough to make you change. Does this do anything for
• 12:22
  artists? Would artists be able to
• 12:24
  essentially set themselves up as a friend of yours and send you
• 12:28
  music? Is this another way of
• 12:30
  distributing a new artist music for instance?
• 12:34
  Well, this is a thing I think because if, if this catches on
• 12:37
  and there is an inbox as part of and people are using it and
• 12:39
  people are used to checking their inbox and Spotify, it
• 12:42
  could be this. It could be really powerful for
• 12:43
  music marketing. It could be a place where, like,
• 12:45
  artists say I've got a new release out, I've got some
• 12:48
  tickets going on sale, I've got whatever's happening and they
• 12:52
  could ping you. And like, I think that hasn't
• 12:54
  been talked about. I don't think that's part of the
• 12:56
  launch. And I wonder if what reason for
• 12:57
  that is you have to do this really carefully to avoid it
• 13:00
  becoming spammy or overwhelming. Like I don't want an artist I
• 13:04
  listened to once six years ago to be messaging me every day
• 13:07
  about the new single. So there has to be some kind of
• 13:09
  checks and balances and who can use it and how.
• 13:12
  But I remember I went to this talk.
• 13:14
  It was last year, I think by Instagram, and Instagram has
• 13:17
  this thing called broadcast channels where you can say, I
• 13:20
  like this person on Instagram, I'm signing up to their
• 13:22
  broadcast channel and then they can send you messages saying hi,
• 13:26
  I've got this new thing. And the guy at Instagram was
• 13:30
  saying this is a really powerful feature.
• 13:31
  This is how you reached your super fans without any algorithm
• 13:35
  filtering you out. If they've signed up to you,
• 13:37
  they'll get your message. It's like building a maiden this
• 13:38
  inside that. I mean, Spotify could do that
• 13:41
  here, could make this inbox a place where you're the artist
• 13:44
  you genuinely love, could ping you without running the kind of
• 13:48
  the gamut of the algorithm saying, well, I'm not going to
• 13:50
  show it to these people. But that's all entirely me
• 13:54
  speculating because they haven't talked about that.
• 13:56
  It's very much about people sharing songs and podcasts and
• 13:59
  stuff with each other at the moment.
• 14:00
  But and the other thing is, would you charge artists to use
• 14:04
  that feature? Because Spotify does have a
• 14:06
  bunch of tools that it charges artists and labels to use.
• 14:09
  I suspect if they were going to let anyone, any artist, ping
• 14:13
  listeners, there might be a case for them saying, well, you have
• 14:16
  to pay us to do that. So we'll see.
• 14:19
  OK, our third story this week. Apple Music's six radio stations
• 14:25
  may may now possibly be reaching a few more listeners thanks to a
• 14:30
  new partnership which they signed last week.
• 14:34
  Yeah, This is why I almost want to pick your brains about Apple
• 14:37
  Music Radio, because I suspect you've got much more of the
• 14:39
  gossip than I have. But I mean, she actually, I get
• 14:42
  the background people who haven't listened to it.
• 14:44
  Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
• 14:45
  Yeah, definitely. I mean, it goes back a decade,
• 14:47
  isn't it's the early days of music.
• 14:49
  It launched with a live radio station as part of it.
• 14:51
  This is one of the the surprises was it was a streaming service,
• 14:54
  but it had live radio and, and over that sort of 10 years, it's
• 14:58
  added five more. So it's like there's no Apple
• 14:59
  RIP music hits. There's a country 1A Latin
• 15:03
  American dance and chill out. So it has these six stations and
• 15:05
  they're all live round the clock radio with DJs and interviews
• 15:09
  and stuff and they've never really proudly figures.
• 15:12
  Like I went digging, there was a press release about 3 years ago
• 15:15
  saying they had 10s of millions of listeners across the whole
• 15:17
  network and that's the only figure that's came out.
• 15:21
  This is what has always amused people in the radio industry, I
• 15:25
  think, particularly when it's particularly when Beats launched
• 15:29
  and everyone said, well, this is the death for radio because, you
• 15:32
  know, Apple have so much power within the music industry that
• 15:36
  they'll get all the exclusive first plays and people will
• 15:38
  flock to it for ease of use. And, and for a while, for the
• 15:43
  first six months maybe sure enough, you know, record labels
• 15:47
  were putting, were sending a lot of their big artists and their,
• 15:51
  you know, exclusive first plays and use that all went to Apple
• 15:56
  for a while. And then I think they started to
• 15:58
  realise that maybe not as many people as expected were
• 16:01
  listening to it. And since then, yeah, we've
• 16:04
  never, it's not like they have to file any figures for they
• 16:09
  don't come out with the Ray jars, which is when, you know,
• 16:12
  every quarter there, there are stats for how many listeners are
• 16:16
  listening to radio stations. Normal, you know, school radio
• 16:19
  stations doesn't apply to Apple. So we've never really known
• 16:22
  really. And I'd sort of, I mean, apart
• 16:25
  from that speculative maker or the figure which they've, they
• 16:30
  want you to believe. I would have thought they'd have
• 16:32
  made more of the fact that they had a lot of listeners publicly
• 16:38
  if they actually had a lot of listeners.
• 16:40
  But I'm, you know, that might be the cynic in me.
• 16:42
  Well, Apple click keep things closed, though they haven't
• 16:44
  announced a figure for Apple Music for a long time.
• 16:46
  So but yes, I think the thing, I suppose the thing about it is
• 16:48
  it's always been part of Apple Music.
• 16:50
  And so if you didn't pay for Apple Music, you probably
• 16:53
  weren't listening to it or aware of it really.
• 16:54
  It's been part of that. And so what's happened this week
• 16:57
  is this is that called TuneIn? I don't know if you've ever used
• 16:59
  it or seen it. No, it's like a, it's a radio
• 17:02
  aggregator basically. It collects radio streams from
• 17:04
  around the world and puts in one place.
• 17:06
  So I can go on there and I can listen to UK radio stations, but
• 17:08
  I can also listen to, I don't know, some of the big American
• 17:12
  independent college stations, or I can find something from
• 17:14
  Australia. Or you can basically go around
• 17:16
  the world and find radio broadcasting live.
• 17:19
  And it's got like 75,000,000 users.
• 17:21
  So it's kind of quite big. And now it will have those Apple
• 17:24
  Music radio stations sitting alongside those traditional
• 17:27
  radio stations. So.
• 17:29
  It's kind of the first time you've had apple Apples radio
• 17:32
  sitting side by side with the kind of the traditional.
• 17:35
  Yeah, with and do you? Do you have to put the pay
• 17:38
  fortune in? I think you can pay to get extra
• 17:41
  features but it's also it's a it's free.
• 17:43
  Right. So, so in a so in a way at the
• 17:45
  so this is the change is that rather than having to be a
• 17:49
  subscriber or essentially having to pay then to listen to the
• 17:52
  radio stations, you can get these radio stations for free.
• 17:55
  Yeah, so it should boost their for, I mean, it's weird because,
• 17:58
  you know, I've noticed something recently that Apple they're
• 18:00
  they're they're putting a bit more, I guess promotional way
• 18:03
  behind the radio stations. So they've always had artist
• 18:05
  interviews, they've always had people coming in and now they do
• 18:09
  a good job of, of putting the key quotes out to journalists.
• 18:11
  So often when, when I see a story now saying Cardi B said
• 18:14
  this about her new album, it's come from an Apple Music radio
• 18:17
  interview. And they're sort of trying to
• 18:19
  make it like, right, this is a place where artists are talking
• 18:21
  and things happen. But it's, I think it's weird
• 18:24
  because like in a way, I think as Brits, we may be, we may be
• 18:28
  kind of have a different view of it because I think we're used to
• 18:30
  the stations we have on the BBC in the UK where there's no ads
• 18:34
  and there's a lot of music specific shows.
• 18:37
  Whereas people around the world who only have commercial radio
• 18:40
  look at this and go, wow, there's no ads.
• 18:42
  And I remember when they were like, we've got artists doing
• 18:44
  shows and I remember thinking, but we do have that on 6 Music.
• 18:46
  Like, you know, many of your colleagues are actually
• 18:48
  musicians. But so I think globally maybe it
• 18:51
  feels more different to what's locally enabled than maybe in
• 18:55
  the UK here. But yeah, but the other thing I
• 18:57
  was thinking was it's quite a fun contrast because though
• 18:59
  Apple's got live radio and it's making a bigger deal of it and
• 19:02
  it's kind of still supporting it.
• 19:04
  And you know, Spotify as it's a IDJ where you can put that on
• 19:07
  and have the AIDJ talk to you. So like, and I'm oversimplifying
• 19:11
  it because Spotify has a lot of humans doing cool stuff and
• 19:14
  Apple has a lot of clever algorithms too.
• 19:16
  But it is these almost these two visions of how radio fits into
• 19:20
  streaming in the future. So Apple is like, we're going to
• 19:22
  build amazing studios, hire loads of DJs and artists and do
• 19:26
  live radio and Spotify saying we we can use AI alongside this to
• 19:30
  kind of make a. So I'm, I'm kind of fascinated
• 19:33
  by like, I know, I suppose if radio's got a place within
• 19:36
  streaming, there were these two quite different attitudes of
• 19:39
  what it might be from the two of the biggest companies.
• 19:41
  So yeah, it's interesting. That's the three stories for
• 19:45
  this week, the three which we picked out as being possibly the
• 19:48
  most interesting. Having said that, though, any
• 19:51
  other business could actually there was one which we nearly
• 19:55
  did as one of our three big stories, which is, which is
• 19:58
  interesting because it's it's, it's a massive band.
• 20:02
  Who are having a big single, which was never really a big
• 20:05
  single. And of course, where do we trace
• 20:08
  this back to TikTok? But let down from Radiohead's OK
• 20:12
  Computer album is having something of what was a what?
• 20:16
  How would you describe a streaming moment?
• 20:18
  That's it is. A chart moment.
• 20:20
  Do you know the the thing that really shocked me is this is
• 20:23
  this came to my attention when Let Down went into Billboard's
• 20:26
  Hot 100 chart in the US. So the singles chart there, and
• 20:29
  it was only it's only Radiohead's fourth ever song to
• 20:32
  reach the top 100 singles chart in the US.
• 20:35
  Really. Is that right?
• 20:36
  Wow, Yeah. Like, very surprised, I suppose,
• 20:39
  in a way. There were an albums band over
• 20:41
  there and and singles weren't quite as big as they were here.
• 20:43
  Like, yeah, but yeah. So, so let down when it was like
• 20:46
  a computer. Was it 2019 96?
• 20:52
  No. I, you know, I can't do years
• 20:56
  packing the release dates out of out of the sky me.
• 20:59
  That's, that's what I do. You know, it was, it was the
• 21:02
  90s. I mean, that's enough.
• 21:05
  That's all you need to know. You weren't there.
• 21:07
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I wrote about it, I, I
• 21:09
  miscalculated how long it had been out by 10 years because I
• 21:11
  just, my brain refused to believe it was that.
• 21:14
  But yeah. So what happened, basically?
• 21:15
  So it was never a single. It was never one of the big
• 21:17
  songs. It's a lovely song, but it was
• 21:18
  never one of the big kind of, you know, songs.
• 21:21
  But someone on TikTok, as far as I can make out, someone on
• 21:23
  TikTok posted a clip of it and almost issued a challenge saying
• 21:26
  make the saddest edit that ever exists with it because it's
• 21:29
  quite good for soundtracking sad videos.
• 21:33
  And people have been doing that. Like I dug some stats out from a
• 21:35
  company called Chartmetric who kind of analyse everything
• 21:38
  TikTok. Spotify apparently let downs
• 21:41
  been used in more than 464,000 TikTok posts in the last month
• 21:45
  alone and they've been seen nearly 256,000,000 times.
• 21:51
  So that gives you a sense of the scale.
• 21:52
  Once something blows up on TikTok, there's this culture I
• 21:55
  think of when something's going viral, everyone jumps on that
• 21:58
  bandwagon as well. I've got to use this song in one
• 22:00
  of my videos now. And that's what's been
• 22:01
  happening. So everyone's been rushing and
• 22:03
  then what happens and this is this is like a happens over and
• 22:07
  over again with different songs that crosses over to streaming.
• 22:11
  So now on Spotify, there's this whole subculture of Spotify
• 22:13
  playlist I hadn't heard of before.
• 22:15
  So there's one called big on the Internet, which I guess is just
• 22:18
  what's going viral. Now.
• 22:20
  Here's the playlist. There's like 4.2 million people
• 22:22
  following this playlist and obviously let down is quite high
• 22:25
  up it. There's a playlist called sad
• 22:27
  indie on Spotify that has 2 million followers and that that
• 22:31
  sounds like such a niche, but it's not Obviously it's not a
• 22:34
  niche because Sandy music has always had lots of listeners.
• 22:36
  But again, this track got put on there once it started blowing up
• 22:39
  on TikTok and then that's so now it has like I think it's got is
• 22:43
  it 390,000,000 streams on Spotify now, which is and I
• 22:47
  can't do it. It's more than Paranoid Android.
• 22:49
  It's more than Exit music. It's not more than Karma Police,
• 22:52
  which has 737,000,000 streams. And it's not more than No
• 22:56
  Surprises, which has a billion streams on Spotify but Let Down
• 23:00
  is suddenly in the upper echelon of Radiohead streaming hits.
• 23:03
  Because. Because it's the soundtrack to
• 23:05
  people's sadness. Well, do you know, it's also
• 23:09
  like, I think people who don't really know TikTok have this
• 23:12
  view of it as somewhere people just doing happy dances to big
• 23:14
  upbeat dance songs. You know, that's like that whole
• 23:16
  thing of dance challenges have made it.
• 23:18
  But it turns out people are also being sad on their to Radiohead,
• 23:21
  which maybe maybe like everything changes if it stays
• 23:25
  the same. Like people have been being
• 23:26
  having sad moments to Radiohead for a long time.
• 23:28
  They want those bands that unlock your emotions.
• 23:31
  And that's true, as true of TikTok as now as it was of
• 23:34
  people in their bedrooms in the. 90s yeah, we mentioned this the
• 23:38
  the Spotify reintroducing the messaging feature.
• 23:41
  We also last week we talked about, well, the week before we
• 23:45
  talked about band camp preparing to announce a new feature which
• 23:50
  is called clubs. And I think we've got some more
• 23:53
  details on that now, haven't we? We have.
• 23:55
  I like this kind of cadence where we mentioned something and
• 23:57
  then before we'd forgotten about it, they announced it.
• 23:59
  So. Yeah.
• 24:01
  So this came out. So basically this is this is
• 24:03
  clubs as in like you know, fan clubs or like minded clubs.
• 24:07
  So the idea is you subscribe to a club and each one of these is
• 24:11
  for the starting is curated by a DJ or a journalist.
• 24:14
  So actually one of your 6 Music colleagues, Jam Supernova is one
• 24:17
  of the first to do it. And so you pay $13 a month and
• 24:21
  for that you get, you get a monthly record recommended by
• 24:24
  the curator and you get, you get that, you know, you own it.
• 24:28
  You get a listening party to kind of you and the other
• 24:30
  subscribers can TuneIn and kind of chat about the record and
• 24:32
  listen to it together. You get an exclusive interview
• 24:35
  with the artist behind the record.
• 24:37
  And then the curator is going to post throughout the month,
• 24:39
  hopefully giving you other recommendations and talking
• 24:41
  about, you know, the stuff they're doing.
• 24:43
  So it's, it's kind of a, it's weird.
• 24:45
  It's like what you're, what you're the fan of is the person
• 24:48
  who's curating the, the, the club.
• 24:51
  Although they kind of have like a couple of them have like
• 24:53
  genres. 1 is about jazz, 1 is about heavy musics, heavy heavy
• 24:57
  rock, metal. I think Jam Supernova is more
• 25:00
  about eclectic kind of stuff from around the world.
• 25:03
  But it's all driven by these humans choosing it.
• 25:06
  And that that's quite a big part of this, of the the pitch is
• 25:09
  like, it's not algorithms, it's humans choosing stuff for you
• 25:12
  that you may love and it's worth paying for.
• 25:16
  That's, that's an interesting theme then, isn't it?
• 25:18
  Going back to what you were saying about the difference
• 25:20
  between Apple's vision of radio and Spotify's vision of radio is
• 25:23
  that Apple's is about people choosing what you would hope the
• 25:27
  DJs are choosing their own records.
• 25:29
  And here, you know, it's the curate, as you say, it's the
• 25:32
  curator. Again, it's, it all comes back
• 25:34
  to whether you believe in gatekeepers, I suppose.
• 25:37
  And and also do you prefer the personal touch?
• 25:40
  But actually, I mean, actually that engagement is quite good
• 25:43
  though, isn't it? If you're particularly I like
• 25:45
  the I like the idea of listening parties and I like the idea of
• 25:48
  people being able to share their thoughts, you know, about a
• 25:51
  record or when it comes to you know, someone, someone who knows
• 25:55
  their stuff, offering insight into a record that I think is
• 26:00
  that's interesting. Whether whether I pay how
• 26:02
  whether I'd pay, what was it 1313 dollars, $13?
• 26:07
  I don't know. But having said that, would you
• 26:09
  pay $13 to sit down with, I don't know, Plucker pluck any
• 26:16
  name out of the air with Graham Chatten from Fontaine's DC.
• 26:19
  Would you pay him? Would you buy him 22 points,
• 26:23
  almost 2 pints depending on where you live?
• 26:26
  Would you would you buy? Would you buy green a pint and a
• 26:30
  half to sit in a pub and listen to him tell you about the music
• 26:33
  that he likes? Yes, actually you might.
• 26:36
  So it seems to. I don't know.
• 26:38
  I think that there's relatively few people in the scheme of
• 26:40
  things who have that level of trust in a way.
• 26:42
  I mean, obviously artists like DJs, journalists and we're
• 26:46
  because I mean, you're probably in similar networks to me.
• 26:48
  Like, I see a lot of the music journalists who I grew up
• 26:51
  reading posting online about how they're kind of struggling a bit
• 26:55
  because the the market has gone for the things they wrote for.
• 26:58
  And it's quite tough, isn't it? But those people are still
• 27:00
  around. And I'm always quite excited to
• 27:03
  see something that can support people who know their know their
• 27:06
  shit about music. And, and so, yeah, I kind of the
• 27:10
  one thing I was thinking was I kind of want more than just one
• 27:12
  recommendation a month. Like, I love the idea that they
• 27:14
  recommend an album and you own it and you can then you have no
• 27:17
  barrier to listen to it. But I hope they're also pointing
• 27:20
  you to lots of other things because I want to, if it's
• 27:22
  someone I'm surprised, I would like to know a bunch of things
• 27:25
  they're liking. So I hope that's out.
• 27:27
  And that seems to be the only part.
• 27:28
  But I think, yeah, band camp, I mean, we talked about them being
• 27:31
  good eggs in the past, but I think this is, I like the idea
• 27:33
  they're saying this is not only a cool thing, but we think it's
• 27:36
  worth paying for. And that's that's one thing Band
• 27:40
  camp people do pay for stuff. One last piece of other business
• 27:43
  I think, which again I teased this in our last episode, this
• 27:48
  adding to our thread about badly track listed albums.
• 27:51
  We are indebted to Ben Cardew who got in touch among other
• 27:55
  people, but Ben has I think has raised the bar here somewhat.
• 28:00
  I don't know how contentious this might be, as I mean, we
• 28:03
  have already challenged one or two big artists over their
• 28:06
  ability to get an albums, you know, track, track all the
• 28:10
  album, all the tracks on the album in the right order.
• 28:14
  But in this case, I mean, I mentioned Blur's Great Escape,
• 28:17
  but we're taking, taking it up a notch here.
• 28:19
  This offending, badly sequenced album is, according to Ben, The
• 28:24
  Queen is Dead by The Smiths. If you'd like to see his full
• 28:29
  argument, he's written a piece about what's wrong with the
• 28:32
  running order, which you'll probably find you can find
• 28:35
  online hopefully. But for our purposes, what's
• 28:38
  wrong with the running order of the Queen is Dead?
• 28:42
  Well 1st 2 tracks fine then it all goes to pot.
• 28:48
  I know it's over. Never Had No one ever shouldn't,
• 28:51
  says Ben should not be side to side because side by side
• 28:55
  because two similar same time signature, same pace.
• 29:00
  Also both of them too early in the album.
• 29:03
  So suggest Ben Cemetery Gates should be in fact track 3,
• 29:08
  followed by Big Mouth Strikes Again.
• 29:10
  And then there are one or two minor changes to follow.
• 29:12
  But the biggest mistake, The Smiths there is a light that
• 29:17
  never Goes out should be the closing song.
• 29:21
  It's a classic album closer, says Ben.
• 29:24
  And that I'm actually not going to argue with.
• 29:27
  But if you'd like to, dear listeners, agree or disagree
• 29:30
  with us or Ben, do let us know. And any other albums that I mean
• 29:36
  clearly to misquotesomefamouscomedianstheyreclearlyalltherightsongsjustnotnecessarilyintherightorderthepriceofmusicpodcast@gmail.com.
• 29:51
  And finally, this week, music speakers.
• 29:56
  How do you fancy a pair of speakers made out of something
• 30:01
  out of this world? Stuart.
• 30:04
  Yeah, rocket fuel tanks. Actual space rocket fuel tanks.
• 30:11
  So what is this? Who's I mean this this for
• 30:15
  collectors only? I can't imagine this comes
• 30:17
  cheap. No, no, this is like a Japanese
• 30:20
  company called an space projects.
• 30:22
  I'd never heard them before, but they've made this speaker called
• 30:24
  debris, which I think is a nice touch made out of the tank of
• 30:28
  of, of test fuel tanks of rockets in in Taiki, which is
• 30:31
  like the home of Japan's space industry.
• 30:33
  So this company is based there and they're like these these big
• 30:36
  long canisters with like a floating golden planet
• 30:39
  Shakespeare on top. So they look quite spectacular.
• 30:43
  I my, my, I really want to know how much they cost.
• 30:45
  That's the obvious question. I think they're a concept for
• 30:48
  now. But I do suspect, like you, it's
• 30:50
  it's Elon must star money or he could probably make them for
• 30:51
  free. Couldn't he just grab a canister
• 30:53
  from his his nearby rocket? And how?
• 30:55
  How big? How big are they they're.
• 30:57
  Kind of like, you know, they look person sized, although I
• 31:00
  don't see a person next to them, but they're like they're they're
• 31:03
  they're like you say, statement speakers.
• 31:05
  Like you have them in the room and people come in and go, wow,
• 31:07
  look at your speakers with the floating sphere.
• 31:09
  So it's kind of. You, you just know who the
• 31:12
  clientele is for this. I mean, and you say?
• 31:14
  Did you know they're made from rocket?
• 31:15
  Yes. Yeah, it's every marketing
• 31:18
  company or ads, you know, ad company or something.
• 31:22
  When you walk into their foyer, there'll be the two statement
• 31:26
  speakers. That's the people who are going
• 31:27
  to buy this. It's going to be in office
• 31:29
  receptions and stubble. The reception to A to a building
• 31:33
  in, you know, New York which is full of creatives.
• 31:37
  That's where those speakers are going that.
• 31:39
  Whole I mean this, this world of high end speakers is really
• 31:41
  fascinating to me. Like so like a long time ago, I
• 31:44
  used to work for a gadget magazine and we, we talked, we
• 31:46
  wrote about speakers and I once went for this almost like a
• 31:48
  primer they sent me on it saying you need to go and learn about
• 31:51
  speakers because I knew nothing. I had this demo that started
• 31:55
  with like £250 speakers and then went up to 500 a thousand.
• 31:59
  I think it ended in like 20 grand speakers.
• 32:01
  So you could hear the difference all the way.
• 32:03
  And then I went home to my lesson, you know, much lesson to
• 32:06
  and was like, oh God, my speakers are terrible.
• 32:10
  How much how much music though, Stuart, which you had in your
• 32:13
  collection at the time would have actually sounded better on
• 32:17
  20,000 LB speakers though? That's a lot of the music I
• 32:20
  like. I mean, you know, there's
• 32:22
  there's what are you going to hear more, more hiss and crack
• 32:25
  what you're going to hear. You're going to hear the
• 32:27
  drummers heavy breathing. What can What is going to
• 32:30
  improve your average indie record between the price range
• 32:33
  of 520,000? I think maybe it exposes the
• 32:37
  flaws, which maybe it's good or bad.
• 32:38
  I wasn't the other thing when those days I once went to a
• 32:41
  thing in Japan where I had a demo of it was DVD audio, which
• 32:44
  was at the time was that format that came out as like this is
• 32:46
  going to be the new CD and it wasn't right.
• 32:48
  OK. And they play it as that it was
• 32:50
  surround sound. They play this album called I
• 32:52
  think the Bam are called bass, bass, bass, bass and bass.
• 32:55
  And so this was 5 double bass players twanging all around you.
• 33:00
  And it was the like the quality of the audio was, I can't, I
• 33:05
  couldn't fault it, but the music was terrible because it was just
• 33:09
  people. But it's just like people
• 33:10
  twanging bases in different ears.
• 33:13
  The only thing they had to show off this system because they
• 33:15
  didn't have any of the new music in it at the time, kind of
• 33:18
  speaks your point. You know, you can.
• 33:20
  Yeah. Anyway, but rocket, rocket
• 33:21
  speakers, if anyone, if can, we have like a wish list or, you
• 33:24
  know, can we should put a thing out saying if you want to buy us
• 33:27
  a Christmas present, rocket fuel tank speakers would do.
• 33:30
  Thanks. We'll get we'll sort of
• 33:32
  something out. We're out of time for this week.
• 33:34
  Thank you very much for listening.
• 33:36
  If you are enjoying what we're trying to do here, please do
• 33:39
  spread the word, tell your friends or leave us a review
• 33:42
  online if you get a chance and that would also help and would
• 33:47
  be much appreciated. Alternatively, you can support
• 33:51
  us via Patreon. In fact, if you sign up to be a
• 33:53
  super fan, you get an extra. I don't have 15 minutes or so of
• 33:56
  us pontificating over various music related matters.
• 34:01
  That's coming up next for you subscribers.
• 34:04
  And we'll include discussion about a different sorts of
• 34:08
  speakers. Speakers for kids, I think is
• 34:10
  one of the topics which we'll be touching on this week.
• 34:13
  Oh, and queuing. How long have you spent in a
• 34:16
  queue for, well, a music related queue?
• 34:20
  We'll get to that in just a second.
• 34:23
  Subscribers, if you'd like to join us and become a super fan
• 34:27
  of the show patreon.com/the Price of Music, you can also get
• 34:31
  in touch with us via Our socials Will drop us a line including,
• 34:34
  as I always say, any questions or advice that we might be able
• 34:38
  to offer you, which we can do in the next week or so.
• 34:42
  We're going to do an all question special again and I
• 34:45
  think possibly next week. So anything you don't understand
• 34:48
  about how the industry works that you think we might be able
• 34:51
  to make sense of for youthepriceofmusicpodcast@gmail.com.
• 34:57
  Till next time, take care of yourselves.
• 34:59
  Bye for now.