Latest / The Price of Music / Los Campesinos! share US tour costs; Blue Dot Fever; 37% of UK grassroots venues in danger; AI label has AI band making AI music for AI fans; Drink beer, support artists!; and much more...

Transcript

Los Campesinos! share US tour costs; Blue Dot Fever; 37% of UK grassroots venues in danger; AI label has AI band making AI music for AI fans; Drink beer, support artists!; and much more... · The Price of Music

• 0:03
  Hello and welcome to The Price of Music, brought to you by
• 0:06
  Music Ally, the show that both looks at the finances of the
• 0:09
  music industry. We're also bringing you stories
• 0:12
  and comments from the pop business in the past week.
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  He's Stuart Dredge. I'm Steve Lemack.
• 0:17
  If you want a guide to what's going on in the music industry
• 0:21
  and how it all works, then here we are every week.
• 0:24
  Let's start with a financial fact which caught our eye this
• 0:28
  week. I mean, we, we sort of get numb
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  to this because we so often see eye watering financial figures
• 0:34
  in the music business which will without a shadow of doubt make
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  you sit up and go, how sorry, how much?
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  But here's one which is definite sign of the times.
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  What's your big number this week, Stuart?
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  My big number is $5 billion coming in strong. $5 billion
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  relates to what? This is how much, well,
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  controversial I should say AI music firm SUNO could be worth.
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  And this is based on it's raising a funding round at the
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  moment. And when you raise the amount of
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  money, the investors value a company, how much they're worth
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  and they reckon it could be worth 5 billion, which is is
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  double its valuation just six months ago.
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  So the last time it raised money, it was worth $2.45
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  billion. Now it's worth supposedly 5.
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  I mean this, this, this reminds me sort of the growth of Spotify
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  in the early days as it went and found more money to fuel more
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  expansion. It seems to be source of along
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  similar lines. I guess this this appetite to to
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  grow. Yeah.
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  And it's kind of this is, this is based on a billboard report.
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  They had some news and they were they were reporting on what it's
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  going to spend the money on because they haven't said how
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  much is raising, but it's probably hundreds of millions of
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  dollars. And they reckon probably 15% of
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  that has been earmarked to be spent on, and I'll do quote
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  marks data, which, which is the the cuddly phrase used to refer
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  to the actual music that Suno trains its model arm.
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  So that means and like actually producer Joe crunched these
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  numbers while I was away last week.
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  And if they raised $250 million again, like their last funding
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  round, that can mean around 37 and a half million dollars to be
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  spent on data, IE licensing deals and music labels.
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  So, so I guess that's the thing like the when they, when they
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  raise money, that increases the prospect of them being able to
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  dangle more cash in front of the record good labels who are still
• 2:22
  suing them to make those lawsuits go away and you know,
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  and, and get licensed. So that could be when, when they
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  close this round, which hasn't happened yet, that could be the
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  next thing that happens. They sign a couple of deals
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  because they'll have the money to kind of throw at people.
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  Right. OK, three other talking points
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  from the past week. Here's the interesting one,
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  because we cover the world of live music a lot on this podcast
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  and the workings of the live industry.
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  In fact, there's two or three live music related topics this
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  week, but this one in particular I think is worth discussing.
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  And this actually prompted by a piece that our very own Captain
• 2:56
  Joe Sparrow wrote for Music Ally last week, which is about blue
• 3:01
  dot fever. Explain Blue dot fever.
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  It sounds something sounds rum, doesn't it?
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  Well, it's when actually quite when you're, you know, when
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  you're booking seats in a venue. So like a big venue, it's got
• 3:13
  seats rather than all selling. I think this is Ticketmaster.
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  I think is it the grey dots? The seats have been sold, so you
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  can't get those. The blue dots are the ones still
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  available. So if you're an artist and
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  you've got a stadium gig and there are a lot of blue dots on
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  Ticketmaster seating, that's bad news.
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  That's what we seats And, and it's now been coined as this
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  phrase blue dot fever to cover basically a whole bunch of big
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  tours that have been cancelled or delayed or scaled down.
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  They rarely say we aren't selling any tickets so we're
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  cancelling. There's there's a whole
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  multiplicity of reasons that are given spend time with family,
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  get the show right, work on new material.
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  But these seating plans are public so people can see and the
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  thing. And I don't want to pick on one
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  group in particular, but one of the big spurs for this store
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  were The Pussycat Dolls. So, you know, they I don't know
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  if, you know, they were formed recently or three of them did.
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  And this big comeback to us announced, I think Sky News
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  running on the figures. And apparently there was the
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  opening night was an 11,000 capacity arena and they'd sold
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  4000 seats to plan for that. There was another one that was
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  20,000 venue. They'd sold 1500 tickets.
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  So this was an example. And then the tour was called off
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  and they kind of the statement came out, didn't really try and
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  avoid. They were saying, yeah, we've
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  got to cancel this. But there've been a bunch of
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  different ones. And some of the artists in these
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  stories are like Zayn Malik from One Direction, Meghan Trainer,
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  Jennifer Lopez, Post Malone, Jelly Roll.
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  They've all cancelled tours or dates recently.
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  Even if the reasons weren't necessarily ticket sales weren't
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  given that, but people could see that they weren't selling well.
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  Right. What what's?
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  I don't know what's at the root of this, because I guess it
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  could be all manner of reasons why this is happening.
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  Is the, are we saying this is happening more than more than
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  usual? The the fact that actually there
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  there are maybe too many tours out there or the tickets are too
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  expensive at this particular point.
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  I mean, also when you talk about somebody like Zayn Malik, is
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  there just of, you know, certain genres is they're just
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  saturation in the market and if you paid out for Harry Styles,
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  you haven't got any money left for Zayn Malik or something
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  like. That no harands often to her as
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  well, so they. Were they?
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  Yeah. I mean, or is it, or is it, you
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  know, as as, as, as we've as we've pondered on this show in
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  the past, our promoters getting just a bit too bold in their
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  venue choices of, you know, our artists are artists
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  miscalculating how many tickets they are worth and therefore
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  they're booking venues that are just too big for them.
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  Well, I think that's it. I mean, so some of these some of
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  these concerts have been come back to us.
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  So, for example, Pussycat Dolls, Jennifer Lopez, where there's I
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  guess they must be the hardest to gauge, aren't they, if
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  someone has been off for a while and come back.
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  But I think you're right, the competition, I mean, like as
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  this was all happening, I got a press release about Olivia
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  Rodrigo announcing a load more big gigs and selling out the
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  ones you had already. BTS are selling out stadiums
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  around the world. So I think this is it.
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  There are some big, big shows that are selling out really
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  quickly and are expensive. And then if you're up against
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  them and you've kind of slightly misjudged it, yeah, you're and I
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  think maybe what's happening is so it's maybe happening a bit
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  more. But I think what's also
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  happening is the decision to cancel is is also being bolder.
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  Like I think it's becoming really, really quickly obvious
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  this tour is a struggle. And maybe some of those things
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  we'll talk about the cost of touring, everything that goes
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  into it mean that if you see it's going to be a disaster or
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  or underwhelming, maybe it is better to cancel early than to
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  try and press on and hope people will buy tickets in the run up
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  to it. So basically that's one thing
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  that's changed that people are people would make decision to
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  cancel more quickly and more firmly rather than saying, well,
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  ticket sales will pick up closer to the actual dates, won't they?
• 6:55
  Yeah. I mean, this is just a much,
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  much larger version of what we've been talking about, about
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  buying tickets early, because obviously this is happening at
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  grassroots level where promoters are on very tiny margins.
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  But then again, at this point, when you're at stadium arena
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  level, then there's a lot of money involved that you stand to
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  lose. And that going back to the cost
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  thing, you know, with somebody like Pussycat Dolls, you wonder,
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  you wonder how much the artists themselves have asked for, which
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  will then dictate how many tickets you need to sell and
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  what cost those tickets are going to be for the promoter and
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  everyone. So for the promoter to be able
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  to pay the artist and make some make their own money back, it's
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  quite high risk I guess, which is why maybe they are pulling
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  the plug a little early. Yeah, but it's, I should say,
• 7:45
  actually, we wrote this, Joe wrote this story last week, and
• 7:47
  then Live Nation came back with a statement for us, and they're
• 7:51
  pushing back on this idea. And they said of all the shows
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  Live Nation has on the books this year, less than 1% have
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  been cancelled. That's not Blue dot Fever.
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  It's a normal touring year. So they're.
• 8:02
  Pushing back on this. Yeah, I did see that.
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  They're basically saying, look, this is just the cut and thrust.
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  Just because somebody has noticed that some tours have
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  been called off doesn't mean to say that this hasn't happened
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  before because this has happened before.
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  But I do think, I mean, I'm going to rather smugly refer
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  refer listeners back to the very first show of the year where we
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  were making some predictions for what was going to happen in
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  2026. And I did mention then tonight
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  about the bands overestimating their pulling power.
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  And again, it was very much but artists in the same area as
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  Pussycat Dolls, artist bands reforming.
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  It was those where I think maybe the promoters were getting a bit
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  carried away. What at the time we used the
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  example of The Hives, whose last UK tour included at least a
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  couple of venues that had to be downsized.
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  And obviously they're just overestimated how how popular
• 8:57
  they were or how many tickets they weren't going to sell.
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  So it's not, it's not new exactly, but it's worth
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  certainly worth keeping an eye on this, I think.
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  Well. Also, I think we might see some
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  more that, you know, we talked about recently about was it, was
• 9:09
  it on Vogue and salt and pepper and TLC going out on the road.
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  Together the package the big package tours.
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  Maybe we're going to see more like, for example, what if
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  Jennifer Lopez and The Pussycat Dolls did a tour together, Maybe
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  that could fill those those stadiums, those arenas.
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  So I think maybe we might see a few more of those where people
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  are going, right? We've got so and so coming back.
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  So and so else is on the road. If we match them together, we
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  think we can be much more confident of filling the arenas
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  rather than having to cancel, embarrassingly so.
• 9:36
  Talking about the cost of touring, actually the you may
• 9:38
  have already seen this, but our friends, the legendary indie
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  band Los Campesinos have been dishing some data.
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  Again, you remember that they they came clean over how much
• 9:49
  money or how little money the band earned via streaming
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  royalties. But this time they've broken
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  down how much it costs to tour North America.
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  Yeah. And this is really interesting
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  and I and I think the interesting thing here is this
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  was a successful tour. They played like 11 concerts and
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  they sold 99.2% of the tickets. So they and that's they played
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  about just under 12,700 people. So obviously it's a scale.
• 10:16
  It's club gigs me about. Yeah, this was a good tour.
• 10:19
  They filled rooms. Yeah.
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  And I mean, this is it seems to be the tab of this saying, look,
• 10:24
  no one puts figures out there. So we're going to which.
• 10:27
  Is really, yeah, yeah, we are, by the way, Lost Campus seen us.
• 10:30
  We are very grateful to you because it's something it's
• 10:33
  usually quite hard shoehorning figures like this out of out of
• 10:37
  people. But this is yeah, it's really,
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  it is fascinating, isn't it? Because it shows you how much
• 10:42
  they earned and then how much everything cost.
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  Yeah, so on the top line figures they got after taxes and booking
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  fees, they got just under £100,000 for the for the tour.
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  Which which just to stop you there, which you think 100,000
• 10:59
  lbs for 11 shows. I mean, that's, that's not bad.
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  And you think that's kind of looks like a nice, a nice
• 11:06
  figure. And then then you go to the till
• 11:08
  receipt for all the costs. All of a sudden that 100,000 lbs
• 11:12
  doesn't doesn't look so big. Yeah, and I'll just do some of
• 11:15
  the highlights. So visas cost them nearly 5 1/2
• 11:17
  grand before they even got on the plane.
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  The play the flights cost just over £7200 insurance.
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  Basically the band spent 14 and a half 1000 lbs before they even
• 11:28
  got to the US, right? No, this is my favorite cost,
• 11:31
  which sounds absurd, but then it makes sense.
• 11:33
  The tour bus cost just under £46,000 for this car.
• 11:38
  Right. So that's hiring one of those
• 11:40
  sleeper buses. It's a sleeper bus, yeah.
• 11:43
  So, yeah. They're actually it's they're
• 11:46
  not, they're not spending on hotels for a lot They did.
• 11:47
  They spent I think a few, a couple of nights in a hotel and
• 11:50
  the bus driver needs a hotel room because he needs a good
• 11:52
  sleep. But this is somewhere they can
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  sleep. And there's, there's seven of
• 11:55
  them in the band as a crew. And there's also there was a
• 11:58
  couple of their kids were along because you can't just leave the
• 12:01
  kids at home. So The thing is 12 people were
• 12:05
  sleeping on the bus. So that saved them on hotel
• 12:08
  freeze elsewhere. Crew wages was £23,000.
• 12:13
  That's tour manager, roadie, merch seller.
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  So yeah, they got paid. It was £99,738.05 and the
• 12:23
  expenses were 100 and 1827 pounds, 95 pence.
• 12:28
  So they were about what is it, 1 1/2 grand down?
• 12:31
  No more than that. Yeah, about two grand down on
• 12:34
  the tour. But there is a silver lining
• 12:37
  because they sold just, they sold 2266 T-shirts, which was
• 12:42
  around £88,600 of sales. So they made nearly as much from
• 12:47
  selling T-shirts as they did in fees for the tour.
• 12:51
  I mean that, I mean, that is, I mean, that's great.
• 12:53
  The, the only part of that which I think would, would phase me is
• 13:01
  having to find the money to make all those T-shirts in the 1st
• 13:05
  place because, yeah, the upfront cost of manufacturing all that
• 13:10
  merchandise, I mean, that would make me slightly nervous.
• 13:13
  Please buy AT shirt. No, no, please buy AT We've got
• 13:16
  14 boxes of T-shirts left. And if you don't, if we don't
• 13:20
  sell these, we ain't getting home.
• 13:22
  Yeah, £38,408 Teresa. So the, the, the basic, the end
• 13:26
  of it came with, they came out of this tour with an overall
• 13:28
  profit. Once merch work team was it was
• 13:30
  just over £38,200, which between the seven band members is about
• 13:35
  5 and a half, 1000 lbs each. Which and, and they, they made
• 13:40
  the point in the post. They made two points in the post
• 13:41
  that I thought were really important.
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  One was that a lot of this one, one of the point was we pay for
• 13:46
  a lot of this upfront and then we got the money back and the
• 13:48
  point was, well, that 5 1/2 grand isn't, you know, we're
• 13:51
  going to be investing that into what we do next in future
• 13:54
  projects. But they also said we're not
• 13:56
  touring to make a massive profit.
• 13:58
  We're touring as we love touring and we want to go out and play
• 14:00
  to people and we've and we've managed to do it without making
• 14:04
  a big loss. So it's kind of a positive story
• 14:06
  in that sense. I think they managed to do this
• 14:07
  to all those fans, saw them live and they had a great time, but
• 14:11
  they didn't make a load of money, even when you look at the
• 14:13
  big numbers for merchant fees. And yeah, it's a, it's a
• 14:16
  fascinating kind of insight, isn't it?
• 14:17
  And. Emphasizes as well how how multi
• 14:21
  talented you have to be. Not only do you have to write
• 14:24
  songs and be able to perform, you also need to be a tour
• 14:27
  accountant. You have to be good.
• 14:28
  You've got to plan these tours, you know, in, in terms of how
• 14:34
  much money it's going to cost you.
• 14:36
  Otherwise I can, I can imagine a band who haven't really haven't
• 14:41
  done the sums properly could walk away thousands of pounds
• 14:45
  down. You've got to, you've really got
• 14:46
  to keep an eye on where the money is going and how much
• 14:49
  everything is going to cost, don't you?
• 14:51
  Yeah. And I think the other thing is
• 14:52
  is they, I mean, these were full rooms.
• 14:54
  So I can only imagine the gigs were good, good atmosphere,
• 14:58
  which I guess next time they go back, maybe they can step up to
• 15:01
  the next rung of venues up And the people who went with it.
• 15:03
  Yeah, I saw them last time. They were great.
• 15:05
  It was a really good night again.
• 15:06
  So I think that's the other thing is I guess by doing this
• 15:08
  well, by planning it well, by not playing to half empty rooms,
• 15:12
  you are hopefully building that fanbase for next time.
• 15:15
  People bring a friend along. So it's all investment.
• 15:18
  But I think they said it's a yeah, if anyone sort of I think,
• 15:22
  and I think this is what they said in the blog post, isn't it?
• 15:24
  People often say, oh, you make your money on the road, don't
• 15:26
  you? You make it for merch and it's a
• 15:28
  very good repost to anyone who thinks that don't worry about
• 15:31
  streaming royalties because you'll make all your money
• 15:32
  playing live. This kind of breaks down why
• 15:35
  it's not quite as quite as rose tinted as that.
• 15:39
  Third story of the week. And this is what was a
• 15:43
  developing story over the past few days where we've we, we
• 15:47
  heard Sony Music Publishing is buying Recognition Music Group.
• 15:53
  And I thought I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't recognize
• 15:56
  Recognition Music Group. Who are they?
• 15:58
  But it actually is a company that you might remember under
• 16:02
  another name. But anyway Sony are buying
• 16:05
  recognition for something like 4 billion U.S.
• 16:09
  Dollars and as part of this some very famous musicians rights are
• 16:14
  going to be changing hands as part of this deal.
• 16:17
  They are, they are so recognition Music Group.
• 16:20
  It's actually a company we talked about a lot in the first
• 16:23
  days of the podcast. It's it's a company that owns
• 16:26
  music rights, mainly publishing and it's a new name for a group
• 16:28
  of companies used to be called Hypnosis.
• 16:30
  Oh, it's those, it's those companies, them right which.
• 16:33
  I mean, if you think about how many stories we did about that.
• 16:36
  Yeah, and none of them are all of them complicated.
• 16:39
  All of them left me with some sort of headache because they
• 16:41
  were all they were all different branches of the same, almost the
• 16:44
  same thing. That's it.
• 16:46
  Yeah, Yeah. And it's so, you know, just talk
• 16:48
  about who was who and who was buying who and who was
• 16:50
  worthwhile and so on. But yeah, so basically this is,
• 16:54
  yeah, a group of companies. And a few years ago, hypnosis
• 16:58
  ran into financial trouble. It got, and it got kind of
• 17:00
  bought by a company called or funds belonging to Blackstone,
• 17:03
  which is one of the biggest kind of investment companies out
• 17:06
  there. And they have owned this and
• 17:07
  they renamed it Recognition Music Group.
• 17:08
  And it's been carrying on since then.
• 17:12
  So it's got around 45,000 songs and recordings.
• 17:14
  And this is like among the people, they've bought stuff of
• 17:17
  a Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fleetwood Mac, your favourites,
• 17:20
  $0.50, Barry Manilow, Blondie, Leonard Cohen, Justin Bieber and
• 17:25
  Timberlake, Shakira. So a lot of real heritage stuff
• 17:29
  and then some new artists too. And yet now Sony Music
• 17:33
  Publishing is buying that catalog.
• 17:34
  And what's interesting is earlier in the year, this was
• 17:36
  rumoured or Sony Music might buy Recognition Music Group.
• 17:40
  And earlier in the year, they said it'd be more than $2
• 17:42
  billion it would pay for it. But this week, both Bloomberg
• 17:46
  and the Financial Times, you both know they're onions, reckon
• 17:48
  the price is more than $4 billion.
• 17:52
  I think, I think at the time weren't we saying it's very it's
• 17:55
  hard. We didn't know whether the
• 17:57
  valuation was a true valuation because you know what I think
• 18:02
  there was there was a suggestion that when when hypnosis were
• 18:07
  selling, selling themselves off is are they really worth that?
• 18:12
  And I think you made the point that, well, I think the
• 18:16
  catalogues that they own will retain value, if not increase in
• 18:20
  value. So it could be speculative that
• 18:23
  actually this can this can only grow.
• 18:25
  But it felt like a lot of money at the time.
• 18:28
  But it turns out maybe this was a good investment than if
• 18:32
  they're selling on so quickly. Yeah, well, I think they bought
• 18:36
  the Blackstone funds, bought Hypnosis for, I think it's like
• 18:38
  $1.83 billion or something. But at the time, I think the,
• 18:42
  the, it's portfolio of rights, the, the actual songs were, were
• 18:45
  thought to be worth $2.2 billion.
• 18:47
  So it kind of got them at a bargain.
• 18:50
  And now they're worth 4 billion. So yeah.
• 18:52
  And it's, I mean, the other thing is it's quite the week for
• 18:54
  the Red Hot Chili Peppers because in a separate deal,
• 18:57
  Warner Music and its investment partner Bain Capital, another
• 19:00
  big investment, they just bought their accordions catalog for
• 19:03
  more than $300 million. Have they?
• 19:05
  Yeah, and the and the registrars sold their publishing rights to
• 19:08
  hypnosis for 140 million in 21. So the red hot chippers rights
• 19:13
  publishing what is a worthwhile. I don't know what the publishing
• 19:16
  is worth nowadays, more presumably, but I mean that's a
• 19:19
  lot of money to spend on socks and whatever else you spend on.
• 19:23
  We all know what you think of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which
• 19:26
  is something I shall take out, bring take you up on later in
• 19:30
  the lock in, I think because you should move on.
• 19:33
  We've got quite a bit of any other business to deal with.
• 19:36
  Talk us through this. The British charity Youth Music
• 19:39
  has warned that 37% of grassroots music projects in the
• 19:43
  UK are in danger of shutting down and are obviously asking
• 19:49
  for support. This is when we say grassroots,
• 19:52
  grassroots music projects. This is, this is stuff more
• 19:55
  aimed at young people. It's not just, you know, venues
• 19:59
  around the country. These are when we say projects,
• 20:01
  it's, you know, it's community things where and it's a lot
• 20:04
  about learning and people coming together and opportunities for
• 20:08
  younger people to get into music.
• 20:11
  Exactly this, yeah. So youth youth groups, music
• 20:13
  clubs, schemes to help people and get the industry.
• 20:17
  And it's a kind of a good news story with bad news within it.
• 20:19
  So the good news is they have this Rescue the Roots campaign,
• 20:21
  which is trying to fund these projects and they've raised
• 20:24
  £1,000,000 so far, which youth music has said it's going to
• 20:27
  match with another million. So this is £2,000,000 to go on
• 20:30
  these projects. And I think they mentioned a
• 20:31
  list like Sam Fender supported them, Georgia Smith, Bicep
• 20:35
  Bastille. So a lot of artists chipped in,
• 20:37
  but also Spotify, Apple and Sony Music and other industry
• 20:39
  companies also back this campaign.
• 20:41
  So they're getting support. But the bad news is the reason
• 20:45
  the Roots need rescuing this campaign, apparently, I think
• 20:48
  it's like 37% of these projects have considered closing because
• 20:52
  they're just financial pressures and 67% so they can't meet the
• 20:55
  demand. Like they've, they've got too
• 20:57
  many young people wanting to take part and they can't help
• 20:59
  them all. So they kind of just this
• 21:01
  announcement was well, £2,000,000 is good.
• 21:03
  We're going to help these more than stay open, help them
• 21:05
  expand, but it doesn't solve all those problems.
• 21:08
  And that they, the youth music issue just kind of cool.
• 21:11
  And I think it's particularly to people in the music industry,
• 21:13
  companies in the music industry saying, look, can you back our
• 21:15
  next phase of this because this stuff is important.
• 21:18
  Like the people who come through these projects will be the
• 21:20
  future stars that make you a lot of money.
• 21:22
  So yeah, back us now. We, we, we have talked about how
• 21:27
  integral alcohol sales are to keeping small venues open.
• 21:32
  This is a slight twist on that. There's now there's a new bearer
• 21:35
  that's a specific beer that you can buy to support artists on
• 21:40
  tour. Tell us about the I know the
• 21:43
  Music Venue Trusts have a range of fight back lagers done.
• 21:47
  A Fight Back Lager contributes, you know, a percentage of all of
• 21:52
  its sales to the Music Venue Trust.
• 21:55
  But this is this is another new one now.
• 21:57
  Yeah, and yet another story that leaves us cider drinkers out,
• 22:00
  which fairly fairly fast. Do you know what?
• 22:02
  I I, I was going to moan about that and then I had a look on
• 22:05
  the Fight Back site and Fight Back.
• 22:07
  Now, do cider have a cider? Yeah, they do have a cider.
• 22:10
  So. So don't worry.
• 22:11
  Give me, give me a month and we'll have saved the entire
• 22:14
  grassroots and everything. Yeah.
• 22:17
  Can't be screwing money. But there's, yeah, there's,
• 22:20
  there's another one coming along.
• 22:22
  Yeah, and this is a good thing. So it's a part trip between the
• 22:23
  featured artist coalition here in the UK we've had on the show
• 22:26
  before and Signature Brew is a brewery and then an amplifier
• 22:29
  brand called Orange Amplification.
• 22:31
  And yeah, the beer is called Backstage.
• 22:33
  IPAI think, I think you can get it online, but it's the idea is
• 22:37
  it's been sold in independent music venues and then profits
• 22:40
  where pipe will go to the FAC to help with things like it's UK
• 22:43
  artist touring band. So, so yeah.
• 22:46
  So if you get, I'm going to quote the press release here
• 22:48
  because I love, I love reading about how to describe alcohol.
• 22:51
  It's a bold and punchy modern IPA stacked with passion fruit
• 22:55
  Tangerines and berries with pine and crisp citrus notes.
• 23:00
  Which? To me, sounds like, I don't
• 23:03
  know, maybe I'd like, maybe I'd maybe as a star drink, I'd like
• 23:05
  that They've mentioned enough fruit to make it bring it into
• 23:08
  my wheelhouse. But by a point of that and
• 23:10
  you're helping balance the tour. And I think there's going to be
• 23:12
  a promotional campaign in grassroots venues this summer.
• 23:14
  So if you're somewhere you may then see this being promoted.
• 23:17
  And yeah, I don't know. Will it?
• 23:19
  Will it be competing with the music?
• 23:20
  Like, is there a beer battle here?
• 23:22
  No what? Venues are artists.
• 23:24
  Yeah, I think there's plenty enough venues to go around for
• 23:27
  everybody. But yeah, they yeah, they
• 23:29
  manufactured the beer. I think they were really.
• 23:32
  I bumped into David Martin from the FAC last week.
• 23:37
  Well, at the live, we had a board meeting of Live, the live
• 23:40
  music trade body. And he was, you know, delighted
• 23:45
  because here's, you know, here's a company, we've gone, we've got
• 23:48
  an idea and we'll make you a beer and we'll, we'll give you
• 23:51
  some money. And I thought it was, you know,
• 23:53
  yeah, it was just, it's not often organisations have people
• 23:57
  approach them. I think it's, you know, provided
• 24:01
  some respite from always thinking, where can we get
• 24:03
  funding from to help to help artists, how artists get out on
• 24:07
  tour and stuff. But I think there's signature
• 24:09
  brew. I think they do two different
• 24:11
  sorts of beers, don't they? And there's one which is, as you
• 24:14
  say, punchier than the other. And I think this one is, is more
• 24:18
  like a roadie beer. But it's.
• 24:21
  Yeah. But I think well played, well
• 24:24
  played, signature brew, well done.
• 24:26
  The prestigious said that roadie beer, I think, I think the
• 24:28
  passion fruit, Tangerines and berries maybe is the better
• 24:30
  selling point. I'll tell you one thing, it's
• 24:32
  the this next story came, came up once again, which we touched
• 24:38
  on last week. But Can you imagine the response
• 24:41
  of the board members of the live, the organization live all,
• 24:46
  you know, all very much involved in live music promoters, agents,
• 24:50
  people who run venues, people who look after artists, managers
• 24:55
  there. Do you think anyone was in had
• 24:58
  any sympathy for the for the government for possibly delaying
• 25:03
  the ban on ticket touts or at least those, you know, the ban
• 25:06
  on the resale of tickets above a certain level?
• 25:10
  Do you think anyone around that table was, you know, was lay
• 25:13
  safer? Well, you know, never mind.
• 25:16
  Well. Doing their best.
• 25:18
  Least it's least it might happen next year.
• 25:21
  There have been. So this is the the story, as I
• 25:24
  say, which we covered last week, This is the rumour which by now,
• 25:30
  because we're recording this on Tuesday lunchtime, The King's
• 25:32
  Speech, which will contain all the bills, all the proposals
• 25:36
  that the governments are going to put into the comments in the
• 25:40
  next session. That's being announced probably
• 25:43
  as you listen to this on Wednesday.
• 25:47
  So we'll definitely know by then whether this is in the list of
• 25:52
  topics to be debated. But it was announced last year
• 25:56
  that the government wanted to crack down on the resale of
• 26:01
  tickets by basically saying, no, you can only resell tickets at
• 26:06
  essentially face value. And that, you know, should they
• 26:11
  were saying that should help wipe out the practice of
• 26:16
  exploiting fans by selling tickets at ludicrous prices.
• 26:19
  Anyway, So it turns out that that piece of potential
• 26:23
  legislation we don't think is going to be in the in The King's
• 26:27
  Speech in the list, as I say tomorrow, as we record this
• 26:32
  today, as you as you listen to it.
• 26:34
  And I mean, it's not news which has gone down well, is it?
• 26:38
  It hasn't, no. And I had every music industry
• 26:40
  probably came out last week. I think you may have talked
• 26:42
  about some of them last week, but the MF Live UK Music Fab for
• 26:46
  allowance all basically saying we feel let down.
• 26:48
  You know, you promised this and you made all these words about
• 26:50
  it and then you haven't. Well, it seems like you're not
• 26:54
  going to do it. And again, these are just
• 26:55
  reports that it might be delayed for a year.
• 26:57
  No one knows until tomorrow as we talk today or possibly in
• 27:01
  parts if you're listening to this.
• 27:03
  And if it's not in The King's Speech, that means it's not
• 27:04
  happening for another year or so.
• 27:07
  But the weird thing is, I mean, this is this is something I
• 27:09
  never expecting. So the Prime Minister Keir
• 27:13
  Starmer, who is currently and for readers outside the UK, he's
• 27:15
  kind of battling for his political life this week.
• 27:18
  Like there's a talk of a of a challenge to his leadership and
• 27:21
  all this stuff. But he found the time to write a
• 27:24
  letter to fans, to music fans shared exclusively on enemy.
• 27:29
  So Prime Minister Keir Starmer has written to the.
• 27:32
  Enemy. I should have seen this and I
• 27:34
  haven't done this. What?
• 27:36
  What did he what was he saying in his open letter to fans via
• 27:40
  the enemy? Well, he was basically saying
• 27:44
  don't, don't give up on us, we're still doing this.
• 27:47
  And he said we will crack down on ruthless ticket touts praying
• 27:50
  on music fans. They said we'll make progress on
• 27:53
  the legislation to protect fans and create a policy that will
• 27:56
  stand the test of time. This is the first step to
• 27:59
  stamping touts out for good. Which reading between the lines,
• 28:03
  I, I wondered if that meant this is going to take more time than
• 28:07
  we thought. So it's not going to be in The
• 28:09
  King's Speech next week, but we are still doing it.
• 28:11
  And that's why, which I don't think is going to really go down
• 28:14
  that well with the industry. Like you say, even if they are
• 28:16
  saying they're committed, I mean, what they're saying that
• 28:19
  they definitely want to do it. They're not retreating from the
• 28:22
  policy itself, it seems to be a combination of other stuff that
• 28:26
  they want to do instead. Maybe.
• 28:28
  Yeah, yeah. But there's two issues here.
• 28:30
  One obviously is that the bill won't be discussed in Parliament
• 28:33
  until at least next year. And then by that, then you've
• 28:35
  got obviously a, the legislation will have to be rubber stamped
• 28:39
  and so it doesn't become law for possibly, you know, two years.
• 28:44
  But the other thing is, I think the worry around the industry is
• 28:47
  that the delay could even lead to some sort of watering down of
• 28:50
  the proposals, because the arguments will start all over
• 28:53
  again, won't they? As you know, sites that
• 28:56
  specialized in reselling tickets that are profit will start
• 29:00
  lobbying all over again, won't they?
• 29:02
  Because there's now this gap before we see it discussed in
• 29:06
  Parliament. And that's all.
• 29:07
  Most politely I will say that is most unsatisfactory.
• 29:12
  Well, also and, and I, I could do the politics bit sometimes,
• 29:14
  can I? So as I said, Kier Starmer is
• 29:17
  facing a leadership challenge. He may not be the Prime Minister
• 29:20
  in a couple of months. If there's a new Prime Minister
• 29:23
  who knows what happens then. But equally there's it's not
• 29:28
  entirely impossible. There could be a general
• 29:30
  election next year if things went badly for the current
• 29:33
  government and then everything is thrown up, bills that haven't
• 29:36
  been done don't get done. There might be a new government
• 29:38
  coming in and we don't know what they think about ticketing
• 29:40
  reform. So there is that idea of a
• 29:43
  year's delay, but trust us, it relies on the government still
• 29:48
  being in place next year to do that.
• 29:50
  So I think I think a lot of people are probably looking at
• 29:51
  this going, we don't feel very comfortable with this.
• 29:54
  We don't want this to be kicked into the long grass based on
• 29:57
  other things going on. So we'll see.
• 29:59
  And finally, this week, wait for it.
• 30:02
  Clankers with Attitude are an entirely AI group.
• 30:07
  They release, well, entirely AI generated music on a record
• 30:12
  label that is yes, entirely run by AIS.
• 30:16
  But if you want to listen to their new album, you have to be
• 30:20
  an AI too. Do.
• 30:22
  You think we've reached this is the kind of this is this is the
• 30:25
  the climax that we've been waiting for?
• 30:27
  Yeah. This is this is the point where
• 30:30
  the whole podcast just gets absorbed into a black hole.
• 30:34
  Yeah, well, the AIS all listen to a different podcast industry
• 30:37
  people from AI, but yeah, I mean, this is, I mean, this is
• 30:40
  kind of quite funny. I mean clan, because we've asked
• 30:43
  you a quite like a name. They've got an album called
• 30:44
  straight out of Crompton. It's the reference to a famous
• 30:48
  inventor with a surname Crompton.
• 30:49
  But I see what they've done there, obviously.
• 30:52
  And they put this album out on the website.
• 30:53
  And if you go there and you're not an AI agent, if you are
• 30:56
  human, it basically tells you F off at least until this Friday,
• 31:01
  15th of May, when they're going to release it on streaming
• 31:03
  services. So it's kind of a marketing
• 31:04
  wheeze. Right.
• 31:06
  I see. Right.
• 31:06
  OK. But it does highlight, I mean,
• 31:08
  to me, there's this weird 1 and I'm still getting to grips with
• 31:12
  it, but this world of where the next phase of AI is all about
• 31:15
  these agents. And it's basically you have a
• 31:17
  little AI that goes up and does stuff for you.
• 31:20
  It might book flights for you, it might coordinate your diary,
• 31:23
  it might do new things. And there's going to be this
• 31:26
  world where all these AI agents are talking to each other.
• 31:28
  So my, my, my ticket buying AI agent might talk to
• 31:32
  ticketmasters agent to book me tickets and so on, right.
• 31:35
  And so there's going to be this world where like a is, are
• 31:38
  interacted with each other with no humans involved.
• 31:40
  So I guess why wouldn't they make music for each other and
• 31:42
  listen to it? You know, it's kind of like a,
• 31:44
  it's like a logical conclusion of all this, but I don't know
• 31:47
  where it leads us. Does your does your AI agent do
• 31:50
  they have to have five weeks off so they all go off from holiday
• 31:53
  these. Yeah.
• 31:54
  And you suddenly have to do everything for five weeks that
• 31:56
  they've been doing for you and you're in trouble.
• 31:59
  But I mean, it's like, this is like this is a this is kind of a
• 32:03
  marketing wheeze and we're going to see more of those.
• 32:05
  But it's it's, I don't know, this idea of label entirely run
• 32:10
  by AI isn't that far fetched. Like we talked about one
• 32:12
  recently, I think, didn't we? Yeah.
• 32:14
  So it's kind of a proof of concept.
• 32:16
  That's not silly and in some ways it is kind of spooking
• 32:20
  people in industry thinking. Will I have a job in two years
• 32:22
  time? Yeah, yeah.
• 32:25
  And on that bombshell that's here from us for this week,
• 32:30
  thank you very much for listening.
• 32:32
  If you are enjoying the show, please do spread the words.
• 32:34
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• 32:38
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• 32:42
  where you get to stay behind after hours for an extra, an
• 32:46
  extra 1520 minutes of bonus material.
• 32:49
  You can gain access to that, as I say, by becoming a Super Fan
• 32:51
  at patreon.com/the Price of Music.
• 32:55
  Alternatively, if you'd like to get in touch with us about,
• 32:58
  well, anything we discussed today or on recent programs, or
• 33:02
  you have any questions about how the music industry works,
• 33:05
  anything behind the scenes or the mechanics of the music
• 33:08
  business that you'd like explained, we should do our best
• 33:12
  for you. Drop us a line with your
• 33:13
  questions, thepriceofmusicpodcast@gmail.com.
• 33:17
  That's the price of music. musicpodcasts@gmail.com.
• 33:20
  Until next week, Cheerio. Goodbye.