The shortlist for this year’s Mercury Prize has been announced and – as ever – it’s eclectic.

Designed to celebrate the best in British and Irish music over the past year, the 12-strong list includes one bonafide living legend, several artists who are arguably at their commercial peak, a revitalised Britpop-era band and a number of up and coming names. And, for the first time, a various artists compilation album is included.

The living legend is Paul McCartney, who probably doesn’t have the space on the mantelpieces of all his various homes for another gong for The Boys Of Dungeon Lane. Neither, arguably, does Raye, after all those Brit awards she took home the other year. Nevertheless, her second album, This Album May Contain Hope, is nominated.

Traditionally, the Mercurys’ panel has been shy of giving the award to conspicuously successful artists, though they bucked that trend last year with Sam Fender. So Raye could be in with a shout, as could Olivia Dean for The Art Of Loving and Jade, with her solo debut That’s Showbiz Baby!

Two previous winners have been nominated – 2019’s victor Dave is in there again with his third album The Boy Who Played Harp – as well as the revived Suede, who won the second ever Mercury way back in 1993.

Both, you’d say, would have to be outside bets (only one artist, PJ Harvey, has won the Mercury twice) as are Florence + The Machine, who have been a consistent presence in British pop for a decade and a half. With Everybody Scream now being their fourth Mercury nomination, they're probably not getting their hopes up.

Nia Archives might be a good bet with her second album Emotional Junglist, as might Kojey Radical for Don’t Look Down. Outsiders, you’d have to say, are the only Irish nominee on the list – indie folk fella Dove Ellis – and Knats. The latter are a Newcastle-based jazz trio, who certainly sound intriguing. But given that Sam Fender won in the first year the awards were moved to Newcastle, would the panel really give the prize to a North East artist for the second year in a row?

And finally there’s that Various Artists album. Help (2) is nothing if not a deserved nominee and, given that the project lacked the cut through its predecessor achieved 30 years ago, could certainly do with the publicity.

Inevitably, there's also been some chatter in regard to the albums that have missed out. Lily Allen's critically-acclaimed West End Girl and Harry Styles' Kiss All The Time, Disco Occasionally are two of the more notable omissions from the shortlist, though Styles' album wasn't greeted as warmly as some of his previous efforts, so its absence is less of a surprise.

The Awards ceremony will be held in Newcastle’s Utilita Arena on Thursday 22 October, with live performances from “many” of the 12 artists promised. The BBC are to provide coverage of the event, which will presumably include a TV broadcast.

Mercury Prize 2026 nominations

• Dave – The Boy Who Played Harp
• Dove Ellis – Blizzard
• Florence + The Machine – Everybody Scream
• Jade – That’s Showbiz Baby!
• Knats – A Great Day In Newcastle
• Kojey Radical – Don’t Look Down
• Nia Archives – Emotional Junglist
• Olivia Dean – The Art Of Loving
• Paul McCartney – The Boys Of Dungeon Lane
• Raye – This Music May Contain Hope
• Suede – Antidepressants
• War Child Records – Help (2)

The CEO of the Grammys, Harvey Mason Jr, has responded to BTS’s decision not to participate in the 2027 Awards due to the introduction of a new ‘Asian Pop’ category.

On Monday just gone (27 July), the South Korean megastars put out a message via Instagram simply saying: “We decided not to participate in the Grammys this year” and adding that they “hope that music can be heard and loved by itself rather than being divided by region or language.”

This was widely seen as a response to the announcement in June of five new categories, including ‘Best Asian Pop Performance’. Having released one of the biggest albums in the world this year in Arirang, BTS would surely have been favourites for the award. Their withdrawal arguably renders the category somewhat redundant.

Mason Jr has defended the original decision and said it was introduced with the best of intentions: “I am saddened to hear that BTS has chosen not to participate in the Grammy Awards process this year, but as a music creator, I understand and respect their decision.”

He continued: “I do want to clarify something that seems to be getting lost in the conversation. The Asian Pop category was created to celebrate the depth, diversity and extraordinary growth of pop artistry coming out of Asia. The spirit of this new category is to shine a dedicated spotlight on these important artists. More categories mean more artists’ work is recognised. It’s never to divide, but to expand who is recognised by our 15,000 Grammy voters.”

Mason pointed out that if artists submit music to the Asian Pop category that does not rule them out from being nominated in the more general high-profile categories: Record Of The Year and so on.

“As we continue to expand the reach, our membership and our awards, regardless of geography or language, I want to emphasise that we will continue to listen to the global music community and work to honour and celebrate all the artists whose music moves the world,” he explained.

The Grammys, of course, is known for having endless categories that ensures the actual ceremony itself can be something of an endurance test. There have been separate awards for Latin music going back to the first Awards in the late 1950s and a Best African Music Performance category was added in 2024.

But there has never been a ‘Best European Music Performance’ and perhaps this is BTS’s point. One man’s ‘dedicated spotlight’ is another person’s ghetto. Depending on where you stand on the globe.

The UK has a new Prime Minister from today, as Andy Burnham takes over from Keir Starmer. The former Mayor Of Manchester is known as a keen music fan – there is much evidence of his love of The Smiths, Radiohead and The Strokes online – and many in the music industry will be keeping a close eye on whether that (seemingly genuine) enthusiasm gets translated into policy.

Indeed, in a statement today, UK Music CEO Tom Kiehl has set out five key tests for the new premier regarding the music sector.

These are, in no particular order, “delivering on the Government’s manifesto pledge to root out ticket touts,” “Ruling out any new copyright exceptions in relation to AI,” “Ensuring that a strong and well funded BBC continues to showcase and support UK music,” and “Devolving power to grow music in towns and cities right across the UK.”

The latter is something Burnham will surely be on board with, since he has already made loud noises about dispersing political power more widely from London to the regions.

The final test - “removing costly and prohibitive barriers to touring the EU” - may well be more difficult given that it would involve negotiations with the UK's erstwhile European partners as well as a determined effort on behalf of the government to make a public argument for closer ties with the EU.

Kiehl has said in the statement: “We welcome Andy Burnham back in Westminster as the new Prime Minister and look forward to continuing our work championing the music industry with him.

“As a former Culture Secretary and big music fan, he has a deep understanding of what makes the music industry tick. He also knows the challenges facing a sector which is one of the Government’s best international calling cards with the £4.8 billion we generate in annual exports.”

Of course, it was less than a week ago that the Culture Secretary outlined the government’s Music plan, which included a cash injection of £15 million to fund new music projects, an extra £10 million for a mentoring scheme to give children and young children the chance to explore creative disciplines such as music, and reform of the licensing system for live events, which will increase the number of Temporary Event Notices.

There’s no indication that Burnham would row back on any of that. Indeed, given the sounds he has made about music and its importance in his life, one might expect him to, if anything, go further. But given the turbulence of UK politics over the last decade, it would be unwise for any of us to raise our hopes too high...

Leading music industry bodies such as the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) have launched a joint labelling program to help make fans aware of when generative AI has been used in recorded music.

The project sets out a unified approach to voluntary track labelling, with a distinction between 'AI-generated' and 'AI-assisted' labels, which will be used across digital music services and other partners.

This announcement comes after the revelation in April that a concerning 44% of all new music uploaded to the streaming service Deezer is AI slop. Meanwhile, Apple Music has confirmed that over a third of its uploads are 100% AI.

This move from record industry professionals is all about attempting to combat this significant shift.

“Fans want to know whether and how generative AI has been used in the music to which they listen," said Vikki Oakley, IFPI CEO and Mitch Glazier, RIAA Chairman & CEO, in a joint statement.

They continued: "Given how important human artistry and authenticity is to music lovers all over the world, these labels will provide an immediately understandable and easily scalable approach to transparency. We acknowledge the many ways AI is being used creatively, so we expect to offer fans additional information as adoption of generative AI labeling grows and technology evolves."

According to Noemí Planas, CEO of WIN (Worldwide Independent Network), “For artists and fans around the world, true connections and trust are everything. Clear labeling of AI-generated content is central to this: it gives fans the transparency they deserve and supports the human-centered, safety-first approach that the global independent community has championed through the WIN Principles for Generative AI."

Amid widespread controversy regarding anonymous AI-driven artists such as The Velvet Sundown, those behind the program will hope it can begin to clear up confusion about the origins of recorded music.

“As AI continues to be integrated into the creative process, artists and fans alike deserve a clear way to communicate how and when it’s being used," said Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of The Grammys. "This initiative ensures that creativity, authorship, and artistic intent remain at the center of every song. Giving artists the ability to tell that story strengthens trust and supports a more sustainable future for music.”

The next two weeks will see a change in British Prime Minister as Andy Burnham takes over from the departing Keir Starmer, but there is already movement regarding the government’s approach to the music sector with the announcement yesterday of a national strategy.

It’s called Turn It Up: Our Plan For Music and marks the first time a UK government has not only stressed the importance of music to the UK’s economy but backed it up with concrete investment and proposals.

The Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said in a statement: “Music is our shared language. It brings people together, breaks down barriers and gives voice to every community. At a time when too many people feel disconnected, music has never mattered more.

“As the song says, 'Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts.' But pop is getting posher, and that must change. Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. After a decade of mindless vandalism that stripped culture and creativity from too many classrooms and communities, we are putting music back at the heart of education, investing in creative careers and backing grassroots music across the country.

“We believe music belongs to everyone, not just the privileged few. That's how we widen opportunity, strengthen our communities and ensure the UK's incredible fans and extraordinary musical talent continues to inspire the world for generations to come."

Fine words, but where’s the meat to back it up? Well, the Music Growth Package that was announced a while back will receive an extra £15 million from Arts Council England. There’s an extra £12.5 million for a Music In Libraries initiative that means libraries and Music Hubs will be able to apply for funding for free studio spaces and equipment.

There’s an extra £10 million for a Creative Mentoring scheme which will give children and young people the opportunity to receive mentoring from creative practitioners, and opportunities to explore creative disciplines such as music. There will also be reforms to the licensing system for live music events, increasing the number of Temporary Event Notices from 15 to 20 and total event days from 21 to 26. Festival licences will be extended – three-year contracts for new events and five-year for existing events.

There’s also more money for the Music Export Growth Scheme, which will continue up to 2029, and a 50% investment in the government’s music trade mission programme.

What there isn’t – as yet – is any proposal to alleviate the burdens of Brexit on UK musicians touring in Europe. But that is doubtless something that will have to be negotiated with the UK's erstwhile partners in the EU.

The plan also outlines already-announced measures such as the 15% business rate relief for live venues and the Every Child Can programme, which aims to open up opportunities for kids to take part in extra-curricular music and arts activities.

The great and the good of the music industry have reacted positively to the plan. Tom Kiehl, the CEO of UK Music, said: “It is welcome that the government have listened to our calls and are launching a Music Plan.”

"This [plan] comes at a time when it is more crucial than ever that we join forces to find solutions to the challenges facing our world-leading sector. These include the impact of artificial intelligence on music creators and companies, the barriers to overseas touring, the threats music spaces face, the challenges small businesses and freelancers experience, and the need to protect music in schools.”

Roberto Beri, CEO of the Ivors Academy said: "This plan is an important step, but there is much more to do. Songwriters and composers are the foundation of the music industry, and they must share fairly in the value they create while received the protections they are due."

There seems to be general agreement that the plan is a positive step. Whether it represents a genuine turning point or is just another sticking plaster remains to be seen.

This writer is old enough to remember the days when picking up a CD album emblazoned with that iconic black-and-white sticker; ‘Parental Advisory: Explicit Content', triggered a giddy rush of subversion.

If anything, the warning made us even more eager to take it to the till.

Here in the streaming age of course, those kinds of parental advisory warnings appear more subtly as tiny 'E' tags on Spotify and Apple Music. Indeed, in the era of smartphones, social media and grandiose world leaders, music’s power to shock has certainly waned.

But even so, we were quite surprised to learn just how much today's listeners no longer seem to be drawn to those acts that don't hold back lyrically…

A fascinating trend, spotted by pop culture data journalist Daniel Parris on his Substack (Stat Significant) has exposed that listeners have largely turned away from explicit lyric-fuelled music.

Back in 2018, 74% of Spotify’s top 50 songs were tagged as featuring explicit lyrics. In 2026, that number has plummeted to just 13%.

So what gives? When did we all become so puritanical?

Well, it transpires that this ‘clean-ification’ - as Daniel puts it - is largely the result of a pair of factors…

“The clean-ification of mainstream music can be attributed to two mutually reinforcing trends”, writes Parris. The first being the increased consumption of classic songs.

“Nostalgia strikes again! Increasingly, listeners are using Spotify to revisit older, radio-friendly hits like Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams and Michael Jackson’s Thriller,” he writes.

The second factor is the declining popularity of hip-hop relative to our now broader chart listening habits.

“Once a cultural behemoth, hip-hop is no longer the dominant force it was a decade ago, at least on Spotify,” writes Daniel.

It’s an unlikely place for the ‘explicit music’ label to end up, then.

It was back in the late 1980s when Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center campaign first proposed the sticker. After a bit of wrangling, the music industry would eventually relent to the pressure and roll it out across releases in the early 1990s.

But, as this writer and millions of other listeners can certainly attest to, the sticker had the reverse effect of drawing us ever closer to these potentially incendiary records.

As Daniel implies, Gore will surely be delighted by the modern shift away from explicit lyrics.

As these stats clearly indicate, seemingly perennial trends in music can suddenly change in often wholly unexpected ways.

So might we see a swing back to the type of parent-enraging acts of yesteryear? Or, are we all so fundamentally un-shockable now, that there’s little point even trying?

An array of bona fide A-listers was out in force at the funeral of Clive Davis in New York on Monday morning, paying heartfelt eulogies to the record company man who mentored so many huge-selling artists.

Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Hudson, Dionne Warwick, Alicia Keys and Barry Manilow were all there at the Central Synagogue in Manhattan’s Midtown. Kenny G opened the service with a clarinet piece, and was followed by Hudson, who sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and I Will Always Love You, a song made famous by Davis’s one time protege Whitney Houston.

Warwick sang Over The Rainbow and recalled how Davis convinced her to persist during a period in the 1970s she was considering leaving the music industry altogether. She also spelled out an acronym of his name: “Completely loyal, incredibly valuable and everlasting.”

“He was always asking, ‘Where’s my Dionne?’ Well, I’m here today, Clive, for you,” she said. “I’ll always be here for you.”

Another artist Davis mentored, Barry Manilow, who has been recently battling cancer, said in his speech: “A few months ago, surgeons removed a piece of my lung Last week, I lost a piece of my heart.”

It was Davis, he explained, who suggested he re-write his song Brandy, which became his breakthrough hit Mandy. “He would show me a song; I would turn it down; we would argue; I would rearrange it; I would record it. This went on for nearly 50 years. He believed in me from the very beginning.”

In an emotional eulogy, Alicia Keys said of Davis: “You saw the music that was still sleeping inside me, waiting for someone with the wisdom and the courage to call it forward. In a world that so often reduces art to commerce and genius to product, you held the line. You reminded me again and again that what we were doing was about truth and legacy and about the human heart reaching out to another human heart and saying you’re not alone.”

Springsteen remembered his own ‘golden moment’ with Davis, when he came into his office at Columbia Records in 1972 and played a couple of songs on an acoustic. “It’s the moment, the one where, if you’re talented, if you’re lucky enough, it comes but once in your life,” Springsteen said. “If the right man is listening to you from across that big desk. For me, now and forever, Clive Davis was that right man.”

After the speeches, Davis’s family left for a private burial with a string quartet serenading him on his way. His exit music? Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) and Springsteen’s Born To Run.

Blur drummer Dave Rowntree has lost an appeal against the PRS in a case over the distribution of so-called ‘black box’ royalties.

What are ‘black box’ royalties? Good question. Well, they refer to the increasing number of live gigs where PRS takes a cut from the ticket sales but has not been able to allocate it to the appropriate songwriters because of a lack of information about a setlist. And it’s a growing problem – according to PRS’s own website, there are over 106,000 gigs where performance royalties have been collected but not distributed. Most of these are from small-scale gigs in grassroots venues.

The amount in the so-called black box is a substantial one too. According to a news feature in the Guardian last year, it amounted to £2.7 million for one year – 2019 – alone. PRS distributes them to its members according to market share.

Rowntree’s action claimed that PRS was handling the black box royalties in a way that was favouring publishers more than songwriters, who make up the vast majority of the PRS membership, and because of the lack of transparency over them, they were breaking UK and EU competition law.

The drummer’s action was thrown out by the Competition Appeal Tribunal last August and has now been rejected by the Court of Appeal. Lord Justice Miles said a "true" or "accurate" distribution of these royalties could not be known "because the root of the black box royalties problem is the absence of accurate information - and, conversely, if accurate information were available, the relevant royalties would be matched".

Essentially, because of the very lack of information, no PRS member can say they are entitled to any specific amount of the black box royalties.

"Once one accepts that the PRS has to adopt some rule of distribution for the black box royalties, the fairness of its chosen rule can only be assessed by comparison with some other rule," the judge added.

"In my judgment the reason why no counterfactual has been advanced, even in general terms, is manifest: it is that the very data failure problem which has given rise to the black box royalties means that there is no plausible basis for suggesting a more accurate, let alone fairer, distribution."

Rowntree has issued a statement saying he accepts the Court’s decision but said the action "succeeded in shining a light on the magnitude of PRS black box royalties".

He added: "I would welcome the opportunity to work with the PRS to find ways to shrink the value of black box royalties for the benefit of its 160,000 songwriter members. There must be better ways for royalties to be identified and paid to the correct songwriter, especially given the pace at which technology is evolving.”

Thomann’s beat-making contest has returned for 2026 and is officially open now.

Prizes are...well, a whole bunch of Thomann goodies, including a Shure large condenser microphone and EastWest Hollywood orchestra bundle. The aim, as ever, is to conjure up the best beat from the raw materials Thomann supplies you with in their sample pack.

Announcing the competition on their website, Thomann describes the pack thus: “From unique instrument recordings and live performances to unexpected textures, field recordings and pure sample magic: this pack is packed with sounds designed to spark ideas and push your creativity further.”

“All you have to do is create an original beat and turn these sounds into something entirely your own. Whether you make boom bap, trap, house, lo-fi, drill or experimental music – we want to hear your unique style and vision.”

The pack features recordings made by Paul Marx, Thomas Opstal, Olha Violinist, Gustavo Strauss, David Lap and Gnarly. Any genre is allowed – the only limitations are that your beat must be between 30 and 60 seconds long and you must use at least three samples from the Thomann pack.

Crucially, though, you are allowed to manipulate the samples in any which way you fancy: chop them up, stretch, reverse, pitch, layer, warp, add effects. Your only limit is your imagination.

The use of any software or hardware is permissible – as long as you use those three samples.

And most importantly, the deadline: you’ve got three weeks to get creative. The closing date for entries is July 12. Entries can be uploaded onto Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and TikTok as long as you use the #ThomannBeatmakingContest hashtag.

To get yourself a sample pack and for all the other relevant information, terms and conditions and all of that palaver, head over to the Thomann website at www.thomann.de.

Musical theatre has supplied a steady gig for generations of musicians, but an interesting – and alarming – feature in the Guardian today suggests that those days are coming to an end. Orchestras are shrinking and musicians are being asked to work harder – for no extra money.

Part of that is down to KeyComp, a piece of software that allows musicians to perform alongside prerecorded parts without sacrificing that live ‘feel’. It’s banned in New York and in Washington DC, but not elsewhere in the world.

In Australia certainly, it is making its presence felt – during the Lion King’s debut Sydney season in 2003 there were 17 musicians in the pit, now there are just 11.

Brisbane-based woodwind player Diana Tolmie is interviewed about the trend, which she puts down partly to the fashion of jukebox-style musicals, which require smaller bands, and partly to KeyComp.

“Years ago, you could learn the ropes safely with less stress being part of a larger section,” she suggests. “That’s all different now. Where there used to be four reed parts, there are now one or two; where there used to be six string parts, there is now one or two.

"Where there used to be percussion and drum kit, the expectation now is that a drummer does both. Some instruments are completely gone from the live pit – the oboe, the bassoon, even the upright and electric bass.

"That’s all due to KeyComp.”

The doubling-up doesn’t make for a better performance. Tolmie says she “hit a peak” last year when she ended up playing seven different instruments in one show - “It was hectic and rarely gave me any time to rest.”

Essentially, producers are turning to KeyComp to cut down costs. Understandable, you could argue, at a time when the cost of everything – theatre hire, transport, set-building – has been going up.

But some of the biggest shows gross huge amounts of money. James Steedman, the Federal President of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) in Australia, suggests that increased overheads are just an excuse. “Musicians are being paid around 20–25% less now than they were in 2003 if we adjust for inflation, so they are not the reason costs are blowing out.” He calculates that cutting six musicians might save £9,500 a week – peanuts, when you consider The Lion King is the highest earning musical of all time.

Worrying times, then. Tolmie warns that: “if we embrace KeyComp, the audience will no longer understand what ‘live music’ is, will not be discerning, and then that will extend to other areas of the music industry.

“For pit orchestras, we are out of sight – therefore the most vulnerable.”

Matchbox 20 frontman Rob Thomas has been paying tribute to the late Clive Davis – and giving us a fascinating insight into what it was that made him such a music industry legend.

In an essay for Rolling Stone, Thomas goes back to the making of Smooth, the 1999 smash hit single that he co-wrote and eventually performed with Santana. Both the song and its parent album, Supernatural, were released on Davis’s Arista Records label, and Davis was involved in the creative process almost from the start.

Smooth was Thomas’s first project with Davis, but he was originally intended to be just the songwriter, alongside Itaal Shur. After hearing his demo, though, Santana and Davis had other ideas.

“We were sitting in his office debating whether George Michael or Jon Bon Jovi should sing it,” Thomas remembers. But Carlos was like, ‘I like this guy’s voice,’ and Clive loved the idea of getting this older generation guitar player together with newer generations.”

Thomas has mentioned the George Michael possibility before. “It was George I had in my head when I recorded the vocals in the first place,” he told Billboard in 2017. “If you listen to the melody and the cadence, it’s an attempt to emulate his style in so many ways.”

Davis knew what he was doing, though: Smooth hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and remained there for 12 weeks. What’s more, Supernatural was stuffed with cross-generational collaborations, and went on to sell 30 million copies.

This is just one example of Davis trusting his instincts rather than going for the biggest name, and Thomas says that there was another during the making of another Santana album, 2002’s Shaman. It came when Davis was considering what to do with lead single, The Game Of Love.

“He played me The Game of Love with Tina Turner singing on it, before Michelle Branch came on,” says Thomas. “Only Clive would get the magic of Tina Turner on a track then have the wherewithal to say, ‘I’m not sure this is the right look for Carlos.’”

It was Davis’s willingness to go with his gut rather than listen to voices around him that made him so special, believes Thomas, and possibly the last of his kind.

“Losing Clive is the end of an era,” he says. “There were a handful of people like him, people like Ahmet Ertegun [co-founder and president of Atlantic Records] – the last ones who weren’t weren’t all about the algorithm.

“There are fewer and fewer people running labels today who are COMPLETELY guided by their own taste meter. If you come to a label or a management company today they present you with a five-page report on your fan base, how they skew, and what brands they buy.

“I’m sure Clive was aware of those things, but they never informed what he did. Even if everybody around him said, ‘I don’t get it,’ he would say, ‘You don’t have to get it.’”

StubHub has been ordered to refund more than 50,000 of its customers after they were shown to be underhand regarding hidden fees.

It comes after an investigation by the Competition And Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK which found that the ticketing platform was guilty of ‘drip pricing ’, where consumers are told about fees and charges on top of the initial price. The practice was banned in the UK last year.

The CMA found that between April and December last year many customers buying tickets for gigs and sports events via StubHub were required to pay mandatory costs such as delivery and service fees – ie unavoidable costs, but, crucially, only added at the final checkout stage.

In a statement, Emma Cochrane, Executive Director of Consumer Protection at the CMA said: "Hitting customers with hidden fees is illegal. It's not fair to draw people in with what looks like a good deal, only for them to find the real price is higher when they get to the checkout due to extra charges that can't be avoided.”

StubHub has also been fined, but because they admitted breaking the law, they have received a 40% reduction to their penalty, meaning that they will have to cough up just £900,000. Their customers are liable to receive, on average, a £10 refund – enough for a pint and a packet of crisps, then.

The platform has said it has taken steps to end the conduct, and said in a statement: "Our UK platform is designed to display all fees upfront," adding it had "identified and corrected the issue promptly, and all affected customers will receive an automatic refund".

The CMA have a number of organisations in their sight regarding the practice of drip pricing, including BSM Driving School, Appliances Direct and one of StubHub’s rivals: Viagogo. The CMA has said that its investigation into Viagogo over its fees was ongoing and that an update was due “later this summer”.

Meanwhile, Cochrane added that: "Going to a live gig or sports game is an event many people save for – and our action today means thousands of fans will get back money taken unfairly through hidden fees”.

"Our message to businesses is simple: be transparent on costs or risk CMA action."

PLUGIN WEEK 2026: Today's plugin instruments require a lot of processing power. Whether that be the latest analog modelling synthesizer with a sound that’s comparable to hardware, acoustic physical modelling for ultra-realistic violins without samples, or experimental instruments recreating physics and other state-of-the-art processes, your bog-standard CPU is getting increasingly more taxed by all of the heavy lifting. Now add that instrument to a DAW session with other synths and effects, and your poor computer is ready to throw in the towel.

Enter the GPU. The Graphics Processor Unit may have started as a dedicated pixel cruncher but, thanks to its unique structure, it’s now being pressed into all kinds of new duties, including artificial intelligence, neural networks, and lately, audio.

Because of this largely underused chip, powerful new processes are now becoming available to audio plugin developers willing to think outside the box.

We recently spoke with three of them - GPU Audio, Anukari and sonicLAB - to find out how they’re harnessing the GPU to create software instruments of astonishing realism, scope and power.

The GPU has traditionally done the work of rendering a computer’s graphics, and it does this very well. But lately, some very clever developers have been using it to process audio as well. Can it really make that much of a difference, though? We asked Chris D, the Head of Pro Audio Partnerships at GPU Audio, a leader in the field, about this.

“If you’re happy with one soft synth and a delay, there is probably not much call to get your GPU involved in audio processing,” Chris says. “What the GPU offers for audio processing is an almost unbound level of processing.”

The key to this, he stresses, is the GPU’s ability to process in parallel. It can handle multiple processes at any one time, unlike conventional DSP audio, which is sequential and therefore limited. “Think of the processes like cars on a motorway,” he explains. “Our CPU has one lane for traffic to flow; the GPU has thousands of lanes.”

Evan Mezeske of boutique developer Anukari points out that GPUs, such as the ones in Apple’s M-series chips of from company NVIDIA, remain largely unused when we work with audio.

That idle GPU could be tasked to push the limits of how many plugins or tracks we can run simultaneously, or for single plugins that require a lot of computational power. Evan’s instrument, also called Anukari, falls into the second category.

“I personally find category two more interesting,” he enthuses, “because it raises the question of what kind of plugins simply couldn't exist without this kind of processing power? I'm interested in new kinds of audio processing that haven't been thoroughly explored before because they were previously computationally infeasible.”

Markus Steinberger, GPU Audio’s R&D Scientist, sees this new evolution of computation as part of the ‘evolving spirit’ of Moore’s Law, an observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965 that posits that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles - and so gets more powerful - every two years.

Now, rather than relying just on more transistors, we can take advantage of smarter architecture and workload distribution. “By offloading demanding audio tasks to the GPU,” Markus says, “GPU Audio unlocks high-throughput, real-time processing that significantly outperforms conventional CPU-bound workflows.”

Evan at Anukari puts it this way: “Insofar as audio processing can translate transistor count into ‘audio goodness,’ this just means that to take full advantage of what modern processors have to offer, the GPU is becoming increasingly attractive. But it's not always so easy to turn more transistors into audio goodness.”

But isn’t this difficult to do? “Yes and no,” answers Evan when asked if it’s difficult to get the GPU to process audio. “The GPU is very, very different from the CPU, and to take full advantage of its power requires a different approach to how a plugin's DSP code is written.”

“Graphics cards were not designed to process audio,” points out Chris at GPU Audio, which has put in about 10 years of R&D on its tech.

“They are designed to continually pump out an insane amount of pixels across your computer screen. When you’re not playing games, or rendering complex images, your GPU does next to nothing. Imagine what could be done with all of the unused resources.”

Sinan Bokesoy, the founder of software company sonicLAB and parent company sonicPlanet, explains how he uses the GPU to calculate scene data in some of his applications, which is then used in audio calculations.

“Instead of calculating this data on the CPU alongside the audio waveform processing,” he says “I use the parallel processing structure of the GPU, which is very efficient for such scenic calculations. GPUs can work together with CPUs to calculate data that feeds audio algorithms efficiently and without low-level programming efforts.”

Ultimately, says Evan, “it's a question of creativity in terms of how to utilize the strengths of GPUs in an interesting way.”

Although gamers will try to get the best GPUs that they can, the good new for music producers is you don’t need a special GPU to process audio. The one you already have in your computer is likely good enough, such as an NVIDIA chip or the ones built into Apple’s M-series chips.

“Normal GPUs are fine,” explains Evan. “Generally, what you get when you pay more is a GPU that is a tiny bit faster, but is massively more parallel. But any modern GPU is pretty much a marvel of technology. All of the Apple silicon GPUs are incredible, and anything from the last few years from NVIDIA is great.”

GPU Audio recommends a minimum spec of NVIDIA Series 10 upwards on Windows, or M1+ for Apple. “NVIDIA released its series 10 GPUs in 2014 and the M1 came out in 2020,” says Chris, “so we’re not talking about the very latest hardware. Our aim is for as many people as possible to experience what the GPU can do for audio.”

Looking at diagrams of Apple’s M chips, especially the Pro and Max models, a significant amount of the IC is devoted to the GPU. That’s a resource just waiting to be exploited. “The Apple M chips have a dedicated GPU which we are harnessing for DSP on Mac OS,” Chris comments. “These parallel processing juggernauts are redundant when you’re making music. It seems crazy not to use the GPU!”

GPU Audio doesn’t make instruments itself; it partners with other developers, allowing them to use its technology to offload processing to the GPU. One of its partnerships is with Audio Modeling and its SWAM line of physical-modeled orchestral instruments. These include SWAM-B for brass instruments, SWAM-W for woodwinds, and SWAM-S for strings, plugins that offer a high degree or real-time realism that doesn’t rely on samples.

“A major advantage of the GPU in this context is its extremely high memory bandwidth,” says Markus. “While incoming audio typically arrives at 44.1 to 96 kHz, computing the effect of a room on that signal can require accessing trillions of contributing samples per second.” This can lead to bottlenecks; GPU to the rescue. “This makes GPU Audio a natural fit for high-fidelity, real-time room modeling and immersive spatial audio experiences.”

You can also access the company’s tech with the Vienna Power House add-on for VSL’s Vienna MIR Pro 3D and Vienna Synchron Player. This add-on offloads convolution processes to your graphics card, “which is otherwise redundant in music making machines,” says Chris.

GPU Audio has also recently made its SDK (software development kit) available to third-party developers, so we’re likely to see more instruments and effects that make use of the GPU in this way soon.

Now, let’s look in more detail at a few of the specific plugins that are fuelled by parallel GPU processing. Anukari 3D Physics Synthesizer is a unique physical modeling synthesizer that lets you build your own 3D instruments with various physics components like masses and springs as well as oscillators and the usual synthesizer bits. It’s incredibly flexible and powerful, sort of like a modular synthesizer but for physical objects rather than synth modules. Something this complex requires a lot of computational power, both visually and in terms of sound.

“Anukari is doing this great big complicated physics simulation, where the entire physics world needs to be stepped forward in time for each audio sample,” explains Evan, likening it more to the kind of physics engine that you'd find in a video game or something like the analysis tools that an automaker might use to understand physical stresses in a mechanical part.

“This fits very naturally into the way that a GPU works, where many calculations can be done all in parallel,” he says. “Anukari does virtually all of its audio processing on the GPU.” In terms of the audio, almost nothing happens on the CPU except commanding the GPU to do its work.

“Of course,” adds Evan, “that's really only half the story, because Anukari has these beautiful 3D graphics that depict the 3D instrument the user has constructed. The graphics also happen on the GPU, but that's not so interesting from an audio perspective.”

Another instrument that uses physics to help generate sound is Protean from sonicLAB. But instead of physical modeling, it uses a combination of additive and FM synthesis along with particle physics to create wild and experimental sounds, up to more than 1000 of them at a time.

“I use multi-core processing for audio algorithms in our Protean software since there are several hundred sine waves calculated simultaneously using multithreaded jobs,” says Sinan. “This is how parallel processing is implemented on CPUs using their multiple cores. A modern GPU might have thousands of cores versus a CPU's eight to 16 cores.”

In a recent article, we highlighted GPU audio processing as one way in which music production will change going forward. We asked the developers how they see this technology figuring into things.

“I would say that it's a part of the future,” agrees Evan of Anukari. “I believe there is still infinite potential with really simple stuff. But at the same time, I obviously am interested in what is possible now that really wasn't possible before.”

GPU Audio also sees it as playing a big part in tech moving forward. “If you want ultra low latencies, multi-channel spatial mixing, thousands of convolutions, and real-time machine learning then the GPU is the only way to go,” says Chris, pointing out that CPUs suffer from a physical restriction to their size and also processing capacity due to inherent thermal distribution. “GPUs on the other hand,” he notes, “are designed to be scalable, to run with multiple devices, and also to be used for cloud processing.”

Here is where things really get interesting. Cloud processing, which is something the GPU Audio team is looking into, could provide a way to not only shunt processing power over to another chip - but to another computer entirely. Says Chris: “This would be handy for example if your mobile device doesn’t have a powerful enough CPU but you still want to access incredibly high levels of processing.”

Another possibility for GPU audio processing is in hardware applications. “Imagine a mixing desk doing complex spatial processing on multiple live inputs,” says Chris. “There is scope for really advancing these existing technologies and harnessing the GPU for so many things.”

And, to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies like AI, we’re going to need the added boost of a GPU. “If we consider machine learning and live AI processing,” says Chris, “which is genuinely forging a new path for audio, these can only be processed in real-time with a GPU. So if you want a mixing desk which can de-noise your live space over multiple channels using live machine learning, it can only be achieved with a hardware-embedded GPU.”

The future just got a little brighter - and a little faster.

Tributes have been cascading in for Clive Davis, one of the great record company men, who died yesterday, aged 94.

Davis’s career stretched from the early 1960s – he joined Columbia Records at the age of 28 – to the 21^st Century. He’ll be best known as a nurturer and backer of talent who established close relationships with a number of artists across a wide range of genres. Among those he mentored are Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Whitney Houston, Barry Manilow, Carlos Santana and Alicia Keys.

Springsteen has written in an Instagram post: “Over here on E Street, we mourn the death of the great record man and close friend Clive Davis. At 22 years old, he changed my life when he signed me to Columbia Records.

"He treated me with the same respect and kindness as a 22-year-old nobody as he did after all my success. A great man. All our prayers and love.”

Meanwhile, Patti Smith has posted, also on Instagram: "Thanking Clive Davis for transforming music, and on a very personal note, for believing in me, shepherding my efforts and a half century of your love and support."

And Alicia Keys has also paid tribute, saying: “To Clive Davis, the visionary who transformed dreams into reality, leaving an indelible mark on music and lives worldwide.”

Record companies are invariably portrayed (often by disgruntled artists) as being staffed by faceless suits who know nothing about music. Interestingly, Davis once remarked that he had “zero” interest in music before he joined Columbia and clearly learned on the job. "I didn't necessarily have an ear, but I think I developed one," he later said.

It was Davis who decided that the title track should be the lead single from Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water album, much to the duo’s horror. "Yes, it was a ballad; yes, it was lengthy," he said in an interview with the New York Times. "But you've got to know when you have a home run. You can't play everything by the rules."

Davis also once advised Springsteen to step away from the mic when he performed. Talking to People magazine, Davis remembered: "I said, 'Don't do it if it's not natural for you, but I know that the potential of the songs would lend itself to more physical movement on your part,'"

Two weeks later he saw Bruce at a gig in Greenwich: "I was flabbergasted," he said. "He jumped on every table... He was a whirling dervish. It was not just the movement, it was the spirit of it. It was electrifying."

Other inspired Davis moves were adding an a cappella 40 seconds to the beginning of Whitney Houston’s monster hit I Will Always Love You, and persuading Carlos Santana to record an album of duets with contemporary artists: Supernatural sold 15 million and instantly rebooted the guitarist’s career.

If there was a secret to his long-lasting career, it was very simple he said in a 2016 interview with The Talks: trusting in music. “Music is a necessary ingredient in people’s lives. No matter what revolution is occurring in technology, it has to understand that music will not be obsoleted. People need music.”

“It’s a very, very natural basic ingredient that’s essential to the full enjoyment of life.”

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” is a famous paradox that has left many of us scratching our heads over the years. A similarly sticky question could be for music industry marketeers to ponder; if an artist writes a song and no one discovers it, how valuable can it be?

This is the rub of where business and art collide. Viewed via this lens, music marketing - the process of promoting and ultimately selling a song or composition to an audience - is an essential imperative for the industry.

Ever since the supposed commodification of music and its growth into a global business, the sales cycle is a vital cog which, in theory at least, keep creatives in credit.

But some, such as music journalist John Tanners, have a cynical take on the tensions between music and money. As he writes, “[Record labels] are marketing-driven sales businesses whose product happens to be music”.

While there’s always been a kind of vague awareness that music marketeers have engaged in slightly underhanded methods of getting music on their roster heard, the recent debate surrounding the viral rise of New York indie success story Geese and their 2025 record Getting Killed has left some feeling incensed at feeling, for want of a better word, duped.

The controversy, highlighted by a widely-shared story by Wired, has focused on a paid marketing campaign by the Chaotic Good agency which involved utilising its network of linked social media accounts to generate an online buzz for the band.

In an investigative Substack piece by Eliza McLamb (the angle of which was later picked up by Wired for their eventual feature), the dynamic was summed up neatly; “If 100 people think your song sucks, Chaotic Good will create 200 people who think your song is awesome.”

Cue frenzied debate across the music world, all grappling with the question of just where the ethical boundaries lay when it comes to promoting music.

Is it ever fair to cultivate audiences via deceptive means?

One thing’s for sure, this certainly isn’t the first time controversy has arisen when revelations around ‘dodgy’ music marketing have come to the fore.

Defenders claim that, without a marketing strategy in place, some of the world’s best music may go unheard. In this context, Geese are working with experts who have an intimate knowledge of how they can cut through the noise of an oversaturated digital world.

When removed from the discourse, a simple question remains; is their music great? Yes, many love it. Critics have hailed them as ‘the new saviours of rock 'n' roll’ and their songwriting and musical talents are unquestionable.

However, naysayers would argue that the tactics of Chaotic Good and their ilk are underhanded. And, well, it's just not a good look for a supposed authentic indie rock band, like Geese.

But, in 2026 the walls between pop and rock, mainstream and underground, feel more flattened than ever. The very notion of ‘selling out’ is now seen as a somewhat antiquated idea.

And, as the defenders will repeatedly stress, these different kinds of marketing practices - some nefarious, others ingenious - have surrounded the music we love for years. Decades in fact. But does that make it alright?

In light of these recent discussions then, we thought we’d look back and highlight some similarly sketchy tactics, where they’ve been deployed throughout music history, and the resulting outrage when they’ve been found out…

1. Alan Freed and the payola scandal

In all kinds of sectors, financial bribes have always fuelled malpractice. The early days of the music business were no different to other industries.

It was back in the 1930s when Variety magazine invented the term, ‘payola’, to describe the concept of record companies offering gifts, favours and cash to orchestra leaders and DJs to give airtime to their releases.

Many of the early rock and roll acts were caught up in this, most infamously through was the extremely popular DJ Alan Freed in the 1950s.

Some say that it was Freed himself who was the first to use the term ‘rock and roll’, thusly, he was one of the most well-known figures to be caught up in the first U.S. Congressional Payola Investigations in 1959.

Chuck Berry’s track Maybellene was frequently championed by Freed during his broadcasts on WINS in New York. Championed for a price, that is, as Freed was gifted a lucrative songwriting credit on the release by way of saying thanks… much to Berry’s surprise.

It transpired this was a pattern that Freed had engaged in with other artists, too.

The DJ was caught out, ultimately blacklisted by broadcasters WABC and WNEW and famously quoted by Billboard magazine on his downfall as saying, “My career has gone down the drain.”

Sadly, that career never recovered. Indicted for tax evasion for unreported earnings which were speculated to be from his payola earnings, Freed became unemployable and ultimately resorted to alcohol. He passed away in 1965 from liver disease at the age of 43.

In the US, government legislation came into force in the form of the 1960 Amendments to the Communication Act which would make engaging in payola-type financial relationships illegal.

More than 20 years after his death, Alan Freed was better remembered for his role in shaping music history, when was acknowledged as he became one of the original inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in his hometown of Cleveland.

2. Are they even a real band?

Prepare to be shocked, but many bands have been put together by shadowy Svengali figures, targeted at specific audiences…

And, well yes, there’s nothing at all controversial about that really is there?

The entire premise of shows like The X-Factor and American Idol based their often unkind structure on the brutal model of the industry.

Today, we also have the illusion of knowing our favourite artists better than ever via their personal social media channels, cultivating a facade of realism for even the most pre-packaged stars.

But in the past, the mechanics of manufacturing were often more shady and covert. The core of sixties pop band, The Monkees, and their associated controversy stems from their fabricated origins.

Put together as an American response to the rise of British export The Beatles, the four men - Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork - were initially cast in an NBC sitcom, primarily for their looks and personalities rather than musicianship or songwriting skills.

Their first two albums, 1966’s self-titled debut and the following year’s More of the Monkees, were recorded by a group of legendary session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew.

When the latter was released, Nesmith spoke out, describing it as “probably the worst album in the history of the world”.

He was also quoted as telling a journalist: “I don’t care if we never sell another record … tell the world we don’t record our own music.”

Later of course, The Monkeys DID become a genuinely creative band who would compose their own music, beginning with 1967's Headquarters.

But, it would be a long time before they escaped the widespread perception that they were nothing more than a naff, manufactured conceit.

One of the most notorious examples of artificial pop going big is Milli Vanilli, a project which foregrounded vocalists Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus.

The duo launched their career with All or Nothing in 1988. The record was acquired by Arista in the US, retitled Girl You Know It’s True which was so good, it propelled them to global super-stardom.

After bagging a Grammy for Best New Artist in February 1990, the two men were outed as merely a front for German producer and songwriter, Frank Farian later that year.

He was the creator of disco-pop group Boney M and had discovered Morvan and Pilatus in a Munich club.

According to Los Angeles Times reporter Chuck Phillips, they didn’t even sing a single note on their debut album. They were credited with ‘visual performance’ however, with the real vocals being supplied by professional vocalists.

Once the word got out, they fell from fame, and sadly Pilatus tragically died from an alcohol and drug-related overdose in the nineties.

As Morvan later told Rolling Stone: “It’s like when you watch those mob movies, and the Feds have a chart on the wall with the faces. They go down from the top: ‘You got this dude, he’s the boss, then this guy’s a capo, that guy’s a worker.’ But the journalists never saw that - they just said, ‘Rob and Fab, you’re responsible.’ Nobody wanted to touch the powers that be.”

3. Manipulating the charts

Chart manipulation, also known as ‘chart buying’, has long been a challenge for the music industry to navigate.

During the heyday of physical sales, there were instances of marketing execs, labels and music industry professionals being caught out trying to tip the charts in favour of certain releases.

In the nineties, the Los Angeles Times reported on instances where retailers have attempted to falsify sales in a bid to manipulate the data system used to create the Billboard Top 100.

Elsewhere, label reps have been accused of providing certain stores with free promos, then paying to scan additional copies to push releases into becoming hits.

Here in the streaming age, the fraudulent practice of chart (or at least, statistical) manipulation is frustratingly in rude health.

But things are a little bit different in 2026…

Michael Smith, a 52-year old resident of North Carolina, pleaded guilty to using AI to create hundreds of thousands of songs, then automating programs to stream the songs billions of times across various platforms such as YouTube and Spotify.

“Although the songs and listeners were fake, the millions of dollars Smith stole was real,” stated US attorney Jay Clayton, as quoted by The Guardian. “Millions of dollars in royalties that Smith diverted from real, deserving artists and rights holders. Smith’s brazen scheme is over, as he stands convicted of a federal crime for his AI-assisted fraud.”

But the while the legal deterrent might dissuade similar human-directed schemes, the looming possibility of bots and AI agents eventually engineering a fraud of this nature themselves might result in an unmanageable hellscape of fake music being listened to by fake people, again and again, forever…

While we're not quite there yet, the influx of AI-generated tracks - and their mirrored AI listeners - is increasingly becoming the bane of real musician’s careers, particularly those self-releasing, and trying to get heard in an ocean of often artificial noise.

4. The pianist who wasn't

Classical music might be deemed to be one of the most highbrow genres within the musical world but it has still been susceptible to scandal.

Over her lifetime, British pianist Joyce Hatto was revered as a gifted and prolific pianist, with more than 100 critically-adored classical albums seeing release before she passed away in 2006.

However, an eagle-eared listener noticed that something wasn't quite right in one of her later releases.

It started when they placed a Hatto CD in their computer disc drive, and an online database identified it as the work of another artist. Suspicions were raised.

It was eventually revealed - following an intensive investigation by Gramophone magazine - that these were not her actual recordings.

Instead, Hatto’s husband, William Barrington-Coupe, had taken work by other musicians and made small audio edits to the tracks in a bid to convince customers and critics into thinking these were originally made by his wife, across a stream of CD releases. “If the allegations are true” said a BPI spokesman, as quoted by Time magazine in 2007, "this would be one of the most extraordinary cases of piracy the record industry had ever seen."

After his fraud was discovered, Barrington-Coupe said: “I became adept at this [fraud] and, as all too often happens, gaining in confidence, I took larger portions of ready-made material to ease the editing time. I am desperately unhappy that foolish decisions I made then to make her last months happier have dragged her name into the mire."

The editor of Gramophone, James Inverne was asked by Time why this wasn’t noticed before. He stressed that it’s impossible for everybody to be that familiar with the vast range of interpretations of classical music recorded by various performers. “The art and literary worlds are often hit by accusations of copying," Inverne said. "We've never experienced a scandal like this before."

5. Not quite human, not quite machine

The story of fake artists on streaming services such as Spotify has been rumbling on for the last decade, but has now become an unavoidable reality of the modern ecosystem.

The idea refers to music released by composers under pseudonyms without any social media or online presence in a bid to generate income via inclusion on key playlists.

According to reports, Swedish composer Johan Röhr has released music on Spotify under “50 composer aliases and at least 656 invented artist names”.

His music released via these pseudonymous artist accounts have been streamed approximately 15 billion times, making him one of Spotify’s most popular artists.

“Röhr published music across many different artist profiles and became a pioneer in the mood music space, which is hugely popular today,” said Niklas Brantberg of Overtone Studios, the record label that released his music onto streaming platforms, in an interview with The Guardian.

But is it ethical? “We maintain that diversely talented artists should be able to publish music across different artist names - which is commonplace in the industry - spanning various genres and vibes, with different collaborators, and at different points in their musical journey.”

Well, that’s alright then… isn't it?

As artificial intelligence (AI) advances, the lines between human output and AI’s facsimiles are frequently blurred for publicity or social experiments. Take The Velvet Sundown - one of the most headline-grabbing AI-generated bands of recent times.

This group, billed as ‘Not quite human. Not quite machine’, racked up hundreds of thousands of streams when their first two albums were released in June 2025.

With a bio feeling a little ChatGPT-coded, no real online presence beyond the streaming platforms, and obviously AI-generated imagery representing them, questions were raised with the fictitious band eventually being outed as “a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction”.

“The Velvet Sundown is a multidisciplinary artistic project blending music, analog aesthetics, and speculative storytelling," the ‘band’ officially stated. "While we embrace ambiguity as part of our narrative design, we ask that reporting on us be based on verifiable sources - not fabricated accounts or synthetic media."

As Roberto Neri, chief executive of the Ivors Academy, said: “AI-generated bands like [The] Velvet Sundown that are reaching big audiences without involving human creators raise serious concerns around transparency, authorship and consent.”

As technology continues to evolve, there will clearly be more opportunities - and means - to leverage dubious marketing tactics and strategies to get tracks listened to.

It’s just too tempting for some to not try to exploit these loopholes. Indeed some have even dubbed many of the aforementioned streaming-gaming practices as, fittingly, ‘payola 2.0’.

That being said, the outrage caused by these examples seems to underline that fundamentally, the vast majority of people just want to listen to real musicians, expressing themselves on an equal playing field, where talent and merit are the real barometers of success.

We can dream, can't we.

Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that floated your boat this year.

We've heard some strange stories in our time, but this one sounds like a tale so long it must surely be made up. Only it's not. Back in 1982, the Musicians Union in the UK, while claiming to be working in the interests of its members, tried to ban the synthesizer and other tech music gear.

That's right: a union working for musicians banned a musical instrument. Well, things were a lot different back then…

In the early 1980s in the UK, the Musician's Union was often in the headlines. In 1981, for example, this most vocal of unions, along with the British Phonographic Industry and Music Publishers’ Association, took an advert out in The Guardian and The Times claiming that “Home Taping is Wiping Out Music”.

These ads were meant to wage war on evil pirates who were using cassettes to record vinyl records, threatening the livelihoods of the music business (which, from memory, seemed to be doing very well for itself at the time).

The problem was that the vast majority of the home taping was done by people like us who were recording vinyl we'd already bought, or making compilation tapes – remember those – for mates who, more often than not, would go onto buy the albums. If anything, home taping was spreading the word and promoting music.

The campaign was, then, essentially a waste of time, and greeted with dismay. Indeed, we also recall another ad aimed at evil home recordists titled 'Home Taping is Killing Music', presumably put out by the same team. But then some clever wag changed it to 'Home Taping is Skill in music'. That was the kids sticking one to the grownups in the '80s.

But in 1982, the MU went even further, again apparently in the interests of its members. The union decided to try and ban synthesizers and drum machines, which it feared were literally taking food out of the mouths of real players.

So how did this ridiculous state of affairs come about? Believe it or not - and we really do believe this - it was all down to crooner extraordinaire Barry Manilow.

Manilow had replaced several orchestral players with synthesisers for a tour – putting synth players in work while taking string players out of work. The MU was furious.

On the 23rd May 1982, Bob Moog’s birthday no less, the organisation passed a motion for an outright ban on synthesisers. In his excellent book, From Club Culture to Style Culture, the Story of the New Romantics, author Dylan Jones summed up what happened.

“By 1982, the synth had become so pervasive. When Barry Manilow toured the UK in January, he used synths to simulate the orchestral sounds of a big band, after which the union passed a motion to ban the use of synths, drum machines and any electronic devices ‘capable of recreating the sounds of conventional musical instruments’.

"They were particularly concerned about the possible effect on West End theatrical productions, imagining orchestra pits full of ‘technicians’ instead of musicians.”

According to MUHistory.com it was never actual MU policy, but an 'executive committee' did pass a resolution to ban synths later that year.

We're not quite sure how the committee intended to police the ban; whether it would merely ban synth players from being in the union or even try and ban the actual selling of synths.

Maybe the union even wanted to make it an offence to own a synth, driving the likes of Howard Jones, The Human League and Gary Numan into a seedy criminal underworld, only able to play in secret speak-easy venues, with audiences only discovering the gigs through whispered conversations with an underground network of Korg, Yamaha and Roland 'dealers'.

OK, we have overactive imaginations – but that would make a great film, wouldn't it?

Whatever they meant it to be, that ban actually being passed now seems like one of the most ridiculous acts in the history of music and technology. While that's easy to say in hindsight, it also riled actual synth players a lot at the time – many of whom were MU members – and they decided to set up an organisation called the Union of Sound Synthesists.

To be fair to the MU – and we're trying to be balanced here – we can see why synths that were trying so hard to imitate 'real' sounds (brass strings and so on) in the early '80s might annoy a musician's body fearing for the livelihood of its members.

But the NME called the MU 'Loonies', and we're not even sure that many orchestra players would have agreed with the ban, mostly because orchestra players tend to have very good hearing.

While the synths in question were trying to copy real instruments, they were absolutely rubbish at it – and orchestra players could probably spot that. Synths were much better at making their own sounds, which thankfully they did, for tracks like this classic from the year in question.

Nor was this the first time the MU had been involved in trying to ban something. The union had tried to stop the use of the Mellotron in the 1960s because of its string playing abilities. And, according to The Guardian the MU even once tried to insist that bands appearing on UK TV show Top Of The Pops would record their backing tracks the afternoon before appearing on the show – to provide proof they could actually play it!

Amazingly, the synth ban apparently stayed in place, although it was hardly enforced. We certainly can't find any reports of synthesizers actually being banned, nor Rick Wakeman and Nick Rhodes being given lengthy prison terms for owning them. Although, again, either of these scenarios would make for a great TV show.

Thankfully, the MU has become a much more welcoming and sensible organisation. In 1997, the body relaxed its anti-technology stance somewhat when it allowed DJs to join – we'll leave you with your own thoughts on that one. In the same year, the pretty ineffectual ban on synthesizers was lifted.

The irony is that this was pretty much the same year that software instruments first started being developed commercially. And if you look at how much they have advanced – orchestral libraries these days are amazing – they could have been seen as more of a threat to musicians than the synthesizer ever was.

Luckily, the MU seemed to miss the rise of the computer in music making - otherwise that could have been for the chopping block, too.

Since the MU's spat with technology, there have been several other run -ns between musicians and studio tech. In 2013, the Guardian ran a story about two high profile film composers complaining that 'synthesized orchestras' were taking over.

Carl Davis (who scored the World at War documentary series) apparently said that synthesised soundtracks lacked "the heart" of symphonic music. He'd clearly not seen Blade Runner, some three decades before.

Christopher Gunning (who wrote the Bafta-winning score for La Vie en Rose) was also quoted in the piece as saying, "A lot of television music has got to the stage where I have to turn it off. I find the music so blooming irritating. Part of that is, I am afraid, the poor quality of the musical composition."

More than a decade on from that, we're at the stage where software is perfectly able to recreate a lot of orchestral content, so where is the MU now? The truth is that hiring a 70-odd piece orchestra was always a costly exercise, and only the biggest budget films and TV shows have ever had the cash to do that, whether that was in the 1980s or now.

Orchestras are also hired – somewhat ironically – to produce the very orchestral libraries that are currently big business in the music technology world. We witnessed one such orchestra recording at Teldex Studios in Berlin for an Orchestral Tools library a few years back, and not one member of that orchestra was complaining about technology putting them out of work.

Of course, you could argue that the MU was right: technology has gone on to replace real musicians in certain areas of the music business. But another way of looking at it is that technology has increase the actual size of that business.

It has levelled the playing field so much that many more people can get involved and actually make music – it's not now just about those who can move a bow in the right way and at the right time; instead, all of us can have a go.

And on the other side of the playing dice, there will always be an audience eager to watch an 80-piece orchestra in full flow, and films with big enough budgets to record them.

Looking back, then, that MU decision seems – to put it politely – a little rash. But whatever you think, please don't tell any Musician's Union that we're in the grip of another technological explosion in music production. You can just see the headlines now: "Loony Tunes! MU bans AI".

The UK Musician's Union is thankfully now a much more welcoming organisation with lots of benefits for musicians and gear of all shapes, sizes and electrical persuasions. You can find out more about the excellent work they do at the organisation's website.

It looks like Spotify has jumped on board the AI music gravy train. It was announced yesterday (21 May) that the Swedish streaming giant has inked a deal with Universal Music that will enable users to create AI covers and remixes of songs from participating artists and songwriters.

The new tool will apparently be a paid add-on for Spotify Premium subscribers and, once tracks have been created, all Spotify users will be able to stream them. However, Spotify has not yet revealed any details about the AI technology that will be used in the new feature, nor mentioned a launch date.

“Solving hard problems for music is what Spotify does, and fan-made covers and remixes are next,” Alex Norström, Spotify’s Co-CEO said in a statement. “What we’re building is grounded in consent, credit, and compensation for the artists and songwriters that take part.

“Through each technological transformation, we have worked together with Sir Lucian (Grainge, chairman of Universal) and his team to evolve the music ecosystem into a richer, more beneficial experience for fans and a more rewarding outcome for artists and songwriters.”

For his part, Grainge said in his statement: “The most valuable innovations in the music business always bring artists and fans closer together. That principle is at the heart of this pioneering AI-enabled superfan initiative, which is designed to support human artistry, deepen fan relationships, and create additional revenue opportunities for artists and songwriters… this initiative is firmly artist-centric, rooted in responsible AI, and will drive growth for the entire ecosystem.”

It's the latest agreement that Universal has struck regarding AI-generated music. Last October it settled its copyright lawsuit against Udio and agreed to collaborate on a licensed AI music creation platform. The idea of this, it seems, was to create a ‘walled garden’ outside of which AI music cannot be downloaded or distributed. A similar approach seems to be behind the Spotify deal.

It should be reiterated that the Spotify system is opt-in and will only be available for songs from artists and songwriters who have specifically agreed to take part. So, whilst it might well generate a whole avalanche of AI slop, at least it would be legal AI slop that the original artists are being paid for.

Record companies were breathing a sigh of relief this week, after the news that a lawsuit about performers’ property rights to the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s albums was defeated in London’s High Court.

The case was focused on the deal Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell had signed in 1966. The relatives of the two musicians, who died in 2003 and 2008 respectively, were arguing that they were owed a slice of the performers' property rights relating to the three Experience albums – Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland.

As with The Police royalties case earlier this year, this is another lawsuit where a fresh light is shone upon agreements that were signed decades before the advent of streaming, a revenue, ahem, stream that the three Experience members could not have conceived of when they first signed a record contract.

Sony – who these days has custody of the three albums – argued that back then the band signed away the rights to exploit ​the recordings "by ⁠any method now known or hereafter to be known". It also cited the fact that Redding and Mitchell both dropped similar lawsuits in the early 1970s.

Judge Edwin ⁠Johnson ​agreed and ruled in Sony's favour. He dismissed the relatives’ claim, ​saying in a written ruling that the deal Redding and Mitchell signed "was not limited to any ​particular methods for the delivery of music".

Had the Redding and Mitchell estates been successful, it would have opened up a slew of similar lawsuits from relatives of other dead musicians. For the music industry, it very much represents a bullet dodged.

You may have wondering what the Music Venue Trust has been doing with all those £1s it's been saving up from the levy some arena and stadium artists have been placing on their shows.

Well, good as its word, it's announced that it'll be putting the money to good use. Yesterday (27 April) it launched a coordinated programme of infrastructure upgrades for small venues across the country.

The first of what it's promising will be a number of campaigns is the Raise The Standard project, which is focused on improving the essentials that every working venue needs: sound systems, lighting rigs, backline and microphones (ie, the things that actually make a gig work).

In a statement, Beverley Whitrick, Strategic Director of Music Venue Trust, said: “Grassroots music venues cannot keep being expected to survive on goodwill and admiration alone. If the UK music industry is serious about protecting the talent pipeline, then it has to get serious about the economics that underpin it.

“This funding and the initiatives we are delivering are about practical change, lowering costs, improving infrastructure, rebuilding touring and creating a sector that is more resilient, more investable and fit for the future. Our goal is clear; don’t just fund problems, fix them.”

Other initiatives, it says, are in the pipeline. There is Stay The Night, which is designed to make it easier for artists to tour by providing accommodation for them. Announcing this via social media, the MVT said: “ This is about fixing some basic problems. Hotel costs are rising. Touring margins are shrinking. Bands are playing less shows per tour. Too many artists are out there trying to make it work without proper rest or support.”

Meanwhile, there is the Off The Grid programme, which the MVT hopes will ease and ultimately eliminate the long-term energy costs that many small venues face. As well as all this there is the Emergency Response Hardship Fund which targets small venues that are in immediate financial distress.

Last year only 8.8% of arena and stadium shows were signed up to providing the levy, the main refusenik thus far being Live Nation, who as we know is the dominant commercial force in live music all over the world.

The UK government has so far waited for the music industry to do the right thing regarding the levy. With a new King’s Speech due next month, it will interesting to see if it feels the time is finally right to legislate to make it compulsory...

Thomann has announced that during May they will be throwing open their legendary campus in Treppendorf, Germany, for a series of events that “will bring the live event sector to life” and “create an inspiring meeting point for professionals, creators, and tech enthusiasts alike.”

It’s called Live Days and in a statement, accompanying the announcement, Thomann says that: “Renowned manufacturers will be on site to present their own technologies as well as exclusive product launches at dedicated trade show booths, giving visitors the chance to experience innovations and engage with industry experts in person, as well as gain first-hand insights into current trends and solutions in the world of event technology.”

“In addition to traditional exhibition formats, the event offers a wide range of networking and content creation opportunities, with the unique setting of the Thomann Campus providing the ideal environment for participants to expand their knowledge, establish new contacts, and gain creative inspiration.

Aside from the opportunity to buy gear and network, there will also be a number of workshops – both paid and free – training sessions and talks from leading industry figures, including Anselm Görtz, Toni Kern, and Thomas Mundorf.

It runs from May 11 to 30, but within that timeframe, there are a number of what Thomann calls ‘focal topic areas’.

The first week is reserved for training and educational sessions, May 19 to 20 sees the focus move to pro audio, networking, and lighting and on May 22 to 23 on to in-ear technology.

If your particular interest is microphones, mark the dates May 26 to 27, whilst May 29 and 30 is all about loudspeakers, lighting and video technology.

Full Live Days schedule

11–18 May and 21 May: Pre-Live Days with a focus on training
• Training sessions, talks and seminars for pre-registered customers with d&b audiotechnik, L-Acoustics, Truss Academy (Global Truss), t Academy, HKademy, TW Audio, Yamaha, DiGiCo, Avid und ChamSys, MA Lighting, ETC and Obsidian Control Systems

19 and 20 May: Focus on Pro Audio, Networking & Lighting
• Training sessions, talks and seminars for pre-registered consumers, professionals, rental companies and theatre professionals
• Lighting and sound equipment manufacturers in the Expo Area and line array demos at the PA Playground

22 and 23 May: Focus on In-Ears
• Training sessions, talks and seminars for pre-registered consumers, professionals and musicians
• In-ear and accessory manufacturers in the Expo Area

26 and 27 May: Focus on Mics
• Training sessions, talks and seminars for pre-registered consumers, professionals and musicians
• Microphone and accessory manufacturers in the Expo Area

29 and 30 May: Focus on speakers, lighting and video technology
• Training sessions, talks and seminars for pre-registered consumers, professionals and musicians for rental companies, consumers and bands
• Lighting and sound manufacturers in the Expo Area and a large PA system demo at the PA Playground

• Head over to the Thomann website here for more details >>

• To register for Thomann's Live Days head to Eventbrite here >>

Bill Ackman, one of the most well-known investors in America, has made an offer to buy Universal Music Group (UMG) through his hedge fund Pershing Square Capital at a staggering $63bn (£48bn).

UMG is the largest music label globally, with an estimated 31-38% market share and is home to huge stars including Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Adele, Post Malone, Kendrick Lamar and Drake to name but a few. It’s one of the ‘big three’ major record labels, alongside Sony Music Entertainment (20-25%) and Warner Music Group (15%).

In the past, UMG has made unprecedented acquisitions itself, including a monumental $1.9bn (£1.2bn) takeover of EMI back in 2012. The corporation owns many smaller record labels such as Republic Records, Interscope Records, Columbia, Geffen Records and Def Jam under the UMG umbrella. So it’s perhaps not too surprising that it’s valued in the tens of billions of dollars.

If the deal were to be accepted, it would see UMG sold to Pershing Square Capital for a record $63bn and its stock market listing would also be moved from Amsterdam to New York, where Ackman’s hedge fund also has its headquarters. Shareholders would receive $11bn in cash and 0.77 shares in the new company for every UMG share currently owned.

The company’s share price is clearly very central to the deal. UMG shares, which have been listed in Amsterdam for the past five years, have lost 25% of their value in just the last year alone. Ackman hinted that the poor share price performance was in part due a delay of UMG’s listing in the US, but that its “languishing” share performance was “due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business and importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.”

Referring to UMG’s current CEO, Sir Lucian Grainge, Ackman said he had done “an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance”.

One of the most powerful executives in the music industry, Grainge has held the title of CEO at UMG since 2010 and was paid a €4.4m base salary last year with an additional €30m in bonuses.

Universal Music Group issued a statement on Monday saying its board of directors will “review the proposal in accordance with its fiduciary duties and analyze its implications for shareholders, employees, artists, songwriters and other stakeholders.”

“The Board of Directors has complete confidence in UMG’s strategy and the leadership of Sir Lucian Grainge and the Company’s management team,” the company said. “UMG will have no further comment on the proposal until the Board of Directors completes its review.”

The question ‘Is mayonnaise an instrument?’ has beguiled the minds of the greatest thinkers ever since it was first posed by that inimitable starfish Patrick, way back in a 2001 episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. A few days ago, some of Northumbria University’s top minds finally concluded, yes Patrick, it absolutely is.

We know what you’re thinking, ‘Ah - look at the date, this is an obvious April Fool’s gag’, but we’re genuinely reporting hard fact here.

Four of the British university’s professors have come together to explore the ways that mayo could be harnessed as an instrument. Giving a whole new definition to the term 'egghead'.

It's putting academic rigour behind a slightly silly idea which has had a long, viral second life ever since that SpongeBob episode. Becoming a recurring internet meme, TikTok and Instagram Reel creators in particular have been conducting their own research for years.

“Music has always evolved through experimentation,” said Dr Rachael Durkin, the Head of Global Music Technologies at Northumbria University and one of the four co-writers of the report. “When you look at the core principles of how instruments create sound, you realise the possibilities for unconventional materials are endless. Exploring something like mayonnaise isn't just about fun; it challenges our assumptions and invites us to think far more creatively about what music can be.”

In collaboration with leading mayo brand Hellmann’s, the four professors at Norhumbria University have produced an interim report, which breaks down exactly why they’ve agreed that mayo can be an instrument across six distinct categories.

“Organology - the scholarly study of musical instruments - has long recognised that instrument status is not reserved for purpose-built objects,” the report states as part of its breakdown. “What matters is whether an object can produce or modify sound in a controlled, intentional way. Mayonnaise can.”

Further evidence is elaborated upon under various sub-sections which underline that mayo ‘becomes’ an instrument the moment it is played.

Most interestingly, they also highlight that mayo has some distinctive acoustic and material properties, while also citing examples of other out-there, food-based artwork from the likes of Ed Ruscha and Dieter Roth.

“The Hornbostel-Sachs system - the global standard for classifying musical instruments - organises instruments by what vibrates to produce sound. Mayonnaise in a jar, mayonnaise in a squeeze bottle, and mayonnaise without a vessel each behave differently and each maps onto a different part of the classification system. Far from resisting categorisation, mayonnaise turns out to be remarkably versatile: it can be classified in more ways than many conventional instruments.”

In conjunction with this report comes an entirely mayo-constructed track, squeezed, scraped and swirled to life by Andy Arthur Smith. You can hear the results below.

“Seeing people actually make music with mayonnaise and turning it into a real track has been wild. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does,” Smith said of his collaboration with Hellmann’s. “We’re bringing a new texture to music!”

Perhaps the most interesting point on the report is the fourth, which explores in more detail the niche properties of mayo when applied as an instrument;

“Food science and acoustic research shows that mayonnaise has measurable, reproducible acoustic properties shaped by its physical composition. The sounds it produces are not arbitrary - they are determined by its structure as an emulsion. More remarkably, sound actively changes mayonnaise at a physical level, meaning that playing it alters it. This two-way relationship between object and sound is a hallmark of musical instruments.”

While this is all clearly tied to a fun marketing campaign by the mayo giant, the university report does leave us pondering our assumptions about what qualifies as an ‘instrument’ and where the boundaries between music and just making a squidgy-sounding racket lay…

It’s actually got us thinking quite deeply about what else in our fridge could form the basis of our next track.

Northumbria University’s full report should be published shortly. We’ll life the lid and scrape out the findings as soon as it drops.

If you're as much of a music nerd as we are, then you take pleasure in not only listening to songs, but discovering the stories behind them, the tangled web of creative collaboration and cross-fertilization that led to their existence.

First previewed in November last year following its acquisition of WhoSampled, Spotify's SongDNA feature is designed to do just that. An "immersive music experience" that gives listeners an insight into a song's creative lineage, SongDNA has now rolled out to Premium users worldwide in beta as of yesterday (March 24).

Hit the SongDNA icon in the Spotify app's Now Playing view, and you can now check out a list of the writers, producers, engineers and collaborators that worked on a song, discover the origin of any samples it uses, find out which other songs have sampled or interpolated it and even see which artists have covered it.

An interactive map that links a song to its broader creative context, SongDNA lets you click on a songwriter or producer and see a list of other artists they've worked with, following the connections between tracks to "see how artists, eras and genres intersect".

SongDNA draws on a combination of artist-provided information and community-sourced data from the WhoSampled database. As the feature continues to be developed, artists and labels will be able to review and manage SongDNA information in their Spotify for Artists profile.

SongDNA complements Spotify's existing Song Credits view, which shows you who performed, wrote and produced a song, and the recently launched About The Song feature, which displays story cards for certain songs that reveal "interesting details and behind-the-scenes moments" and explore the meaning behind the music.

“SongDNA is designed to make a song’s creative lineage more transparent so fans can easily explore the people and influences behind the music they love,” said Jacqueline Ankner, Spotify’s Head of Songwriter & Publisher Partnerships.

“By bringing collaborators, samples, and covers together in one place, we’re making it easier for fans to discover new music and see how songs connect and come to life—while giving songwriters, producers, and rightsholders meaningful recognition for the role they play in creating it.”

SongDNA is now rolling out in beta for Premium users globally on iOS and Android devices, and will become available to all Premium users throughout April.

Some good news regarding AI in music. The government has announced that it is dropping plans to let tech firms train their AI models on copyrighted works without artists’ permission.

You may recall that at the end of 2024, the then-new Labour government opened a consultation on copyright and AI. It presented three options, one of which was the government’s preferred outcome of allowing tech firms free rein to train AI copyrighted works, but to only allow artists and musicians an opt-out. When the outcome of the consultation was published last year, an overwhelming majority (88%) backed tighter copyright laws, with a minuscule 3% preferring the opt-in approach.

Anyway, the government appeared to have performed a U-turn on this (as they have on many other issues). In a statement, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall confirmed the decision, saying: “We have listened. We have engaged extensively with creatives, AI firms, industry bodies, unions, academics and AI adopters, and that engagement has shaped our approach. This is why we can confirm today that the Government no longer has a preferred option.”

This will come as some relief to most artists within the music industry.

In a statement, UK Music Chief Executive Tom Kiehl said: “We’re delighted the Government has scrapped what would have been a deeply damaging change to the use of copyrighted works. We urge them to go further and rule out resurrecting this plan throughout their period in office."

“It remains vitally important that the Government does not now consider any kind of alternative copyright exception that would negatively impact creators and rights holders in the music industry.”

He continued: “The 220,000 people in our sector which generates £8 billion for the UK economy should be entitled to work and earn a living without the constant fear that the fruits of their labour could effectively be taken by AI firms without payment or permission."

“We support the Government’s decision to push the reset button on the debate on AI and copyright. This now gives us the opportunity to engage in a more detailed discussion with the Government about key issues such as digital replicas, transparency, labelling and independent creatives.”

The climb down represents a significant victory for the music industry. A number of high-profile artists openly criticised the proposed plans, including Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, Dua Lipa, Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and Damon Albarn: a multi-generational show of strength. A number of these ‘contributed’ to last year’s protest album Is This What We Want?, a collection of silent tracks that drew attention to the possible outcome of unregulated AI.

For the UK government, it’s back to the drawing board. In her statement Kendall said they would indeed be looking at the labelling of AI-generated content, creator control and transparency and the issue of digital replicas among the “next stage” of their work. She said there will be another consultation on the latter this summer.

The vinyl revival still shows no sign of stopping – it’s been reported that US sales of records have topped $1 billion for the first time since 1983.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sales of the format totalled $1.04 billion in 2025, with 46.8 million records sold. That’s the nineteenth consecutive year of growth. And also a rise of 7.9% from the 2024 total of 43.4 million.

And guess who is being credited as the figure behind this most recent surge? Yes, that’s right: Taylor Swift.

The Life Of A Showgirl was 2025’s best selling album on vinyl with 1.6 million sales. But then the record did come out in eight vinyl variants including one exclusive for the Target store with unseen photos, a poster and a poem penned by the artist herself. All catnip for the more obsessive Swifties out there.

Swift also worked the CD and cassette markets as well. In fact there were 34 variants of the album for sale in total. Is that exploitative? A discussion for another day, perhaps.

But it wasn’t just Swift. Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend shifted 292,000 copies in vinyl and Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-winning GNX sold 272,000. Even Carpenter’s 2024 album Short n’ Sweet sold 262,000, a remarkable figure given it had been out for a year at that point.

And it seems that fans are buying vinyl versions of classic albums too: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Thriller by the seemingly un-cancellable Michael Jackson were also amongst the US Top Ten vinyl sellers.

Many industry pundits assumed that the vinyl revival would plateau as prices for the format have risen over time, and the cost-of-living crisis has continued unabated. But in an era when so much of our engagement with music is conducted via a phone screen, it turns out that punters still very much like tangible, tactile, wonderful things. Who’d have thought it?

In a statement, the RIAA Vice President of Research Matt Bass said he welcomed the findings, saying: “Fans are consuming music from the artists they love in more ways than ever, and that passion is reflected in today’s report.”

“U.S. recorded music has demonstrated sustained growth globally, reaching $6.4 billion alone in paid subscriptions and tallying 50% of global vinyl revenue, leading the way for fans to listen and connect with their favourite music whenever, wherever and however they want.”

The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has published its annual Inclusion in the Recording Studio study, which examines the representation of women and people of colour in the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End charts as artists, songwriters and producers.

The report's conclusions are troubling, finding that 2025 saw "no progress" for women in music, with a decrease in participation across every single category measured. The percentage of female artists dropped by 1.6% year-on-year to 36.1% in 2025, while the percentage of women credited as producers fell from 5.9% in 2024 to 4.4% in 2025.

The USC Annenberg report also found that more than 90% of 1400 songs evaluated across 11 years did not feature a female producer – in comparison, only seven of those songs did not credit a man in a producing role.

The numbers are even less encouraging when it comes to female representation in songwriting: the percentage of women credited as songwriters decreased from 18.9% in 2024 to 14.5% in 2025, a ratio of 5.8 male songwriters to every one woman.

"There has been no change for women songwriters since we began this research," the report summary reads. "The numbers are going backward and now are not significantly different than the 11% of songwriters in 2012 who were women. Half of the songs on the Hot 100 Billboard Year-End Chart were missing women songwriters entirely. Across 14 years, women held 13.9% of all songwriting credits."

“The lack of women songwriters does more than prevent women from working,” added USC Annenberg's Dr. Stacy L. Smith. “It means that some of our most culturally pervasive ideas and beliefs are crafted by men and exclude women’s creativity and perspective. Of the 1,400 songs we examined, 11 men were credited on 21.7% of those tracks. This gives a very small group incredible influence to shape culture and ideas.”

While the report's findings on gender representation in the music industry are concerning, the overall picture is a little more heartening when it comes to race and ethnicity. Of the 147 artists on 2025's Hot 100 Year-End Chart, 42.2% were white and 57.8% were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. Although that demonstrates a 13.2% increase from the previous year, it's still 3.2% down from 2023, a year in which the percentage of underrepresented artists in the Hot 100 peaked at 61%.

On the surface, it's easy to assume that female representation in the music industry is stronger than it really is: we live in an era dominated by hugely successful female popstars like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, producers like PinkPantheress are being recognized at the BRIT Awards, and songwriters such as Amy Allen are penning Grammy-winning tunes for the likes of Harry Styles and Sabrina Carpenter.

But, as the USC Annenberg report makes clear, the reality is much bleaker, and there's still much more to be done. "Change can be created by viewing each song as a means of improving the trends reported here," the study concludes.

"Over half of songs are missing women songwriters, and more than half are without women producers. Changing the constellation of personnel working in the recording studio is a significant step toward changing the industry. To do this, it means the industry must evaluate a variety of factors and find a new path forward.

"This includes who participates in songwriting camps, who is identified to work with talent, and whether artists are given the chance to work with women. However, by viewing each song as a way to create long term change, executives, managers, and artists can begin to take the steps needed to ensure an inclusive industry."

The UK's Creative Industries Minister has called on Live Nation to “step up” and help Britain’s ailing grassroots music scene by paying into the arena and stadium levy, and said that a failure to do so will force the government to make it mandatory.

The minister Ian Murray was speaking to NME about the levy – a £1 surcharge on tickets for arena and stadium gigs that goes back to supporting grassroots venues. It is needed because of the ongoing crisis in UK live music, which we’re sure you’re all aware of – in the year to July 2025, we lost 30 grassroots venues in the UK and 6,000 jobs, with half of the venues that remain surviving on zero profit.

So far, the £1 levy is voluntary. The plan was that half of arena and stadium gigs would be paying it by the end of 2025, but in the end, that target was missed. The deadline has been extended to the end of June 2026 and many in the industry, including the Music Venue Trust CEO Mark Davyd, have blamed the failure to reach the target on Live Nation.

“It is clear that there is more to do,” Murray said. “At present, only 30 per cent of tickets for 2026 shows are currently supporting the voluntary ticket contribution. More major venues, tour operators, agents and artists need to step up. In particular, while several major promoters have thrown their unequivocal support behind the Trust, a small number have not.”

“Live Nation, given its hugely influential position in the market, could make a major positive impact if it changes its stance. I urge them to reconsider and step up to help the next generation of talent. The government has consistently said that we are prepared to explore legislative options to ensure the sustainability of our world-leading live music industry, and I would reiterate this message to those promoters who can make a real difference.”

It adds to the pressure on the music industry giant. Speaking at the launch of the Music Venue Trust’s annual report, Mark Davyd praised those live music platforms that have supported the levy, but said: “Live Nation, you know, and the whole industry knows, you are not. If the voluntary levy fails, it will not be the fault of the companies who have already embraced it, or Music Venue Trust, or the government, or any will to do it on behalf of individuals, artists, managers, agents, audiences or anyone else.

“It will be a direct consequence of the overwhelmingly dominant force in the arena and stadium market deciding not to deliver a voluntary levy. That’s your choice, Live Nation, and everyone in the industry hopes you make the right one.”

A new study has found that the number of road traffic accidents increases on days that a major album has been released.

The paper - entitled Smartphones, Online Music Streaming and Traffic Fatalities - has been produced by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US, with research being conducted by a team from Harvard Medical School.

How did they do that, we hear you ask? Well, Spotify streaming data, you see. Looking at the period between 2017 and 2022, on days of major album releases, smartphone use rocketed by 40%. But so did traffic fatalities – by 15%.

The presumption is that some drivers get so caught up in hearing their favourite artist’s new album that their attention wanders and they make mistakes at the wheel. This theory does have a certain logic behind it.

But Friday is also the start of the weekend and a far busier time on the roads than earlier in the week anyway. The study, sadly, was not able to look back more than a decade. It was only in 2015 that release dates for new music were synched up around the globe. Prior to that, they varied from territory to territory. In the US, Tuesdays were the day to look forward to. In the UK, it was Monday.

(Incidentally, if you want to blame someone for this dull homogeny, then look no further than Beyonce. She released her self titled album on Friday 13 December 2013 reputedly because she wanted her fans to listen to it over that weekend, after which the music industry gradually began to shift its release dates as a result.)

Anyway, the study also found that fatalities were also more likely on days with good weather, perhaps because drivers are less likely to concentrate than if it’s raining. Also deaths were higher among single occupant vehicles on release days. Presumably because they had no passengers to fiddle about with the stereo.

So the message is… drive especially carefully on Fridays, kids. You can have a look at the Smartphones, Online Music Streaming and Traffic Fatalities paper by clicking here.

It's perhaps the most criticised player in the modern music ecosystem, but also its most central. Today, the world's biggest streaming platform, Spotify has redoubled its efforts to dampen claims that its payouts to artists have been unsustainably small.

In the latest Loud & Clear report, the streaming giant has emphasised a few key areas where it, you might be surprised to learn, has massively increased the proportion of royalties paid out to a wider array of artists and rights-holders.

Spotify’s Loud & Clear reporting began back in 2021, as a way of demystifying the way its royalties and payouts are actually allocated - and stressing Spotify’s central position in the global streaming economy.

Some have criticised Spotify’s previous Loud & Clear reports, arguing that the numbers provided headline figures and overall growth which actually buried the day-to-day struggles (and typical returns) of being an artist in the streaming eco-system. Loud & Clear, some say, has been more of a PR exercise than a genuine attempt to really dig into the granular detail that makes up most artists' true experience.

That being said - and taken at face value - the numbers provided by Spotify in the report are undeniably impressive, and do much to build a more agreeable perception of the company as being concerned about widening economic distribution.

We've yet to fully scrutinise, but on paper these metrics certainly paint a picture of genuine progress in terms of making sure more genuine rights holders (including artists) are rewarded.

The key headlines from the new report are listed below, with Spotify’s own claims quoted beneath:

1. More artists making at least $100,000 a year
“In 2025, there were more than 13,800 artists who generated at least $100,000 a year from Spotify alone - nearly 1,400 more than last year.”

2. More millionaires
“A decade ago, the very top artist on Spotify reached $10 million in annual royalties for the first time. Today, the 80 top artists each generate over $10 million annually from Spotify alone.”

3. 50% more international listeners
“Only two years after debuting, artists already see more than half of their royalties coming from outside of their home countries, on average.”

4. More language variation
“Today’s biggest hits speak more languages than ever. In 2025, songs in 16 different languages reached Spotify’s Global Top 50 - more than double the number in 2020.”

5. The growth of the ‘100,000th’ artist
“In 2025, the 100,000th highest-earning artist generated more than $7,300 in royalties from Spotify alone. In 2015, the artist in that same position generated about $350. That’s more than a twentyfold increase in just a decade.”

6. Fresh Finds aiding financial rewards for artists
“More than 1 in 10 artists generating over $100,000 annually on Spotify today were first playlisted on Fresh Finds. That’s more than 1,600 artists who Spotify helped break early, and who have since gone on to build six-figure careers.”

7. More DIY artists finding success
“In 2025, more than a third of artists generating $10K or more in royalties from Spotify were DIY or started their careers as DIY (meaning they self-release their music through independent distributors)”

8. Spotify is the highest-paying retailer globally
"For another year, Spotify was the highest-paying retailer globally - paying the music industry more than $11 billion in 2025. This brings total lifetime payouts to nearly $70 billion."

9. $1.5 Billion in ticket sales
“By the first half of 2025, Spotify had driven $1 billion in gross concert ticket sales for artists. That total has now exceeded $1.5 billion.”

10. More songwriter payouts
“2025 marked the largest annual music publishing payout in Spotify’s history. Over the past two years alone, Spotify paid approximately $5 billion to the publishers and organizations representing songwriters”.

One aspect that we were somewhat surprised wasn't mentioned was Spotify's efforts to tackle the scourge of AI artists flooding the platform, and the contributing issue of botted playlists artificially inflating stats and chart positions.

Despite it not being a factor in these headline Loud & Clear stats, Spotify has been cracking down on bots, hitting hard at streams that ‘don’t reflect genuine user listening intent’ and trying its best to prevent botted listens from contributing towards royalty payments or chart positions.

With regard to AI music, Spotify has recently began paying more attention to impersonation violations (AI voice clones etc) and a new ‘spam filtering system’ that cracks down on mass uploaders.

It has also enabled users to disclose that they’re using AI on their tracks with industry-standard credits. Whether these moves will ultimately lead to a reduction in AI-generated tracks on the platform - and a more human-weighted landscape - remains to be seen.

You can read the full Loud & Clear 2026 report here

In the latest skirmish between big tech and the music industry, video game platform Steam is being sued by PRS, the UK's music rights collection authority, for using music without a licence.

It’s an action that has been a long time coming. Since launching in 2003, Valve has never obtained a licence for its use of rights-managed music. They’ve had plenty of time to sort it out.

Valve - Steam's owner - is a big player in the video games market. Its digital distribution service encompasses 75% of the PC gaming market, with 147 million monthly user and over 120,000 games.

Many of those are some of the biggest video games of all time – including the FIFA/ EA FC series and Grand Theft Auto, which you'll know, even if you are casually acquainted with the gaming world, feature a significant presence of music.

The PRS has said that they have made efforts across “many years” to come to an agreement with the games platform similar to the ones they have in place with Sony Interactive Gaming and Microsoft Gaming, despite the alleged absence of “appropriate engagement from Valve.”

They’ve confirmed that the legal action will go ahead “unless Valve Corporation engages positively with discussions and takes the necessary license to cover the use of PRS repertoire, both retrospectively and moving forwards.”

Dan Gopal, the Chief Commercial Officer of PRS For Music said in a statement: “Our members create music that enhances experiences and PRS exists to protect the value of their work with integrity, transparency, and fairness.

Legal proceedings are not a step we take lightly, but when a business’s actions undermine those principles, we have a duty to act. Great video games rely on great soundtracks, and the songwriters and creators behind them deserve to have their contribution recognised and fairly valued.”

It’s been reported that there has been a settlement in the US Justice Department’s action against Live Nation that could have resulted in the company being broken up under antitrust laws.

The Politico website has broken the story, which suggests that the deal – which is expected to be announced today (March 9) – involves Live Nation having to make a number of comprises in the form of changes to their business.

One of them is that Ticketmaster (which is owned by Live Nation) will be required to open up its platform to rival ticketing companies and allow third-party sellers such as Eventbrite to list tickets directly through Ticketmaster’s technology.

The deal will also place limits on the long-term exclusivity contracts that Ticketmaster has historically used to lock venues into its system. Henceforth, those agreements will be cut to four years and venues will be allowed to allocate a portion of their tickets to competing platforms. Live Nation will also be required to divest of “more than” 10 amphitheatres which they own.

So whilst this isn’t quite the fall of the house of Live Nation many were licking their lips at in anticipation, it does constitute a clipping of its wings.

“This will revolutionise the ticketing marketplace,” said one of Politico’s anonymous sources. “These are innovative technological solutions to a very difficult problem with prying open the marketplace.”

Live Nation will also be required to pay millions of dollars in damages to the US states that joined the Justice Department in suing the company in 2024, a joint action that was in the range of $200 million - $300 million. The Department argued the company has gradually built an illegal monopoly over its control of ticketing, venues and artist promotion which it used to squeeze competitors and ultimately drive up prices for artists and fans.

The deal will still require signing off by a federal judge, and even if it receives the go-ahead, it doesn’t mean the end of the legal action. A number of state attorneys general have said they plan to continue their suits even if the government reaches a settlement.

Indeed, New York’s Attorney General Letitia James confirmed as such in a statement, saying: “We will keep fighting this case without the federal government, so that we can secure justice for all those harmed by Live Nation’s monopoly.”

Marshall has launched a membership scheme to raise funds to support grassroots music venues.

Sign up to the Amplify initiative, and the British guitar amp giant will donate 1 per cent of your order on its official web store to partner venues.

Amplify members get a number of benefits, including free shipping on all orders, plus priority support on customer service and early access to limited run launches and special offers. Marshall CEO Jeremy de Maillard described the Amplify scheme as a long-term model to support partner venues.

“For over 60 years, Marshall amplified live music, from local independent venues to the world’s biggest stages” says de Maillard. “Small venues are where the next generation of musicians turn first time listeners into lifelong fans. Through Amplify, Marshall is building a long-term model to support the future of live music.”

The scheme arrives at a time when grassroots music venues are struggling. In the UK, the Music Venue Trust’s annual report made for stark reading, describing the sector as “fragile” and just “one shock away from a crisis” – and independent venues face similar challenges across the world.

In the US, the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) says rising costs, such as artist fees, insurance and rent, are “eroding already razor-thin margins” and pushing many small venues to the brink at a time when ticket revenues are being threatened from “forced ticket transferability, unchecked secondary resale, and unfair platform practices”. Income from beverage and alcohol sales are “under pressure” too.

“When both of these primary revenue streams are squeezed, there’s no backup plan,” read NIVA’s 2025 report on the independent live sector.

Marshall says it will support grassroots venues by funding live events, providing backline and by establishing long-term partnerships, with partner venues selected for their contribution to local music communities and emerging artists.

“Independent venues aren’t just part of music history - they’re where the future is written,” says Nick Street, CMO, Marshall. “Amplify is how we connect our community more closely to that future. As Marshall grows, grassroots music will grow with us.”

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Supersonic, in Paris, is one of Marshall’s grassroots partners. Its comms director, Cecilia Sparano, says its partnership with Marshall provides “genuine support for the fragile economy” of small venues, and is vital for the Parisian venues festival programming.

“This partnership represents genuine support for the fragile economy of small concert venues,” says Cecilia Sparano, communication director, Supersonic. “It plays a key role in allowing festivals such as Supersonic’s Block Party and They’re Gonna Be Big to continue to exist. It is a real pleasure to work with a brand that truly respects our DNA and places full trust in us when it comes to both the actions we lead and the programming we curate.”

Amplify is free to join – and you can sign up over at Marshall.

Have you ever bought anything from Thomann? Do you have an interesting or inspiring story about that instrument you bought? If so, you might be interested in a promotion that the German retailer is running.

They’re calling it the Thomann Customer Stories campaign. Apparently, they’re searching for “the most emotional, powerful, and extraordinary real-life experiences from musicians - stories that truly move people and spark inspiration.”

It could be anything. In a statement launching the campaign, they suggest: “Maybe music helped you overcome a major challenge, brought your family closer together, or led you to craft a completely unexpected sound?”

“Stories from across Europe already show just how transformative music can be - from a blind multi-instrumentalist who turned his home into a recording studio, to a drummer who picked up the sticks again after 20 years and positively influenced the course of his Parkinson’s disease.”

They continue: “Maybe someone is recording icebergs in the Arctic? Maybe you play music for animals at a sanctuary? Maybe you found a way to play despite physical limitations? We want to find the hidden musical magic across Europe.”

You get the idea. It’s moving, inspirational stuff they’re after.

Those musicians whose stories fit the bill will be filmed and recorded and become part of the Thomann Customer Stories campaign, which launches in June across all of the firm’s media channels.

And what’s in it for you? Well, anyone who’s filmed will receive a €1,000 Thomann voucher as well as an invitation to a ‘special, one-of-a-kind’ event at Thomann later this year. In addition to this, another 20 entrants will be randomly selected to receive a €50 voucher.

Submissions should include a short description of the music story as well as a photo. You might want to add a short video. That’s not essential, but Thomann say that it gives “a better sense of the participants”.

There doesn’t appear to be a hard deadline to get submissions in: February/ March, according to Thomann. So don’t leave it too late.

To enter, head over to the Thomann blog here.

Reaction to Amazon MGM's Melania documentary has certainly been divisive – it currently holds a critics’ rating of 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, but an audience rating of 98% – and that sense of polarisation was also evident during production, when producers were sourcing music for the film.

After Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood claimed that he wasn’t consulted about the documentary’s use of a portion of his score from Phantom Thread, the 2017 movie that was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Melania producer Marc Beckman – who’s worked with Melania Trump for more than two decades – has been speaking to Variety and giving his account of what happened both in that case, and those of several other artists.

Beckman insists that he and the rest of the Melania crew created “a nice film that doesn’t get into any kind of political policy or anything like that,” but accepts that others might take a different view. He’s satisfied, though, that all the music rights issues were handled correctly.

Discussing the Jonny Greenwood/Phantom Thread issue, he says: “We work with the best lawyers; this is Melania Trump. We spent top dollars for all that music, and we’re thrilled to have that song included in the film. If they’re trying to distance themselves from us, for political reasons, that’s just unfortunate. But, honestly, I’ll still remain a fan and listen to [Radiohead’s] music every single day.”

Beckman says that Trump herself chose all the music for the film, but admits that not every request for usage was accommodated.

“For example, the guys from Guns N’ Roses split down the middle politically,” he claims. “There was a beautiful song we wanted to use, and one of the guys – I don’t want to name, it’s not fair – said, ‘You got it. Go.’ And the other one was basically like, ‘There’s just no way.’ We needed everybody’s approval to get it in the film.”

Grace Jones was another artist who refused permission for her music to be used – “She apparently couldn’t get over the political hurdle, notwithstanding the fact that the film is not a political film,” says Beckman – and then there was the music from Prince’s catalogue.

The complex approval route that needs to be navigated if you want to use Prince’s music in a film or TV project was highlighted earlier this year when The Duffer Brothers wanted to incorporate two songs from the Purple Rain album in the finale of Stranger Things (permission was granted in the end), but in this case, Beckman claims that he fell at the final hurdle.

“I think Prince sold the rights to Primary Wave [Primary Wave actually acquired a stake in the Prince estate in 2021, more than five years after Prince’s death], and the Primary Wave guys were like, ‘Oh yeah, we’d be happy to go ahead and give you guys the rights to this Prince song.’ But in that instance, it’s my understanding that the deal was such that the estate now needs to approve what Primary Wave does with it.”

“Literally we were ready to go, and this lawyer that manages the estate was like, ‘Prince would never want his song associated with Donald Trump.’ And we’re like, ‘But it’s not a Donald Trump film! He comes into the movie once in a while, but this is all about Melania. It’s not political.’ And that guy blocked it. It’s so ridiculous.”

Variety says that representatives of both Guns N’ Roses and the Prince estate were contacted but didn’t provide comment on Beckman’s claims.

Despite these disappointments, Melania does also have some undeniable musical wins – the use of The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter at the start, for example. It’s worth noting that the rights to this are owned by ABKCO, so the band would have had no control over its usage, but Beckman claims that Mick Jagger “was actually involved” and “gave his blessing”.

Representatives for the Stones told Variety that they “couldn’t speak directly to Beckman’s account of the group’s approval.”

An instrumental version of Tears for Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World is also included; in this case, Beckman denies that the lyrics were removed because there could be an implication that Melania’s husband has some kind of ‘king complex’.

Beckman also claims that the Melania team spoke to “a lot of the classic rock artists that were true freedom fighters in the ‘60s,” who would have been happy to let their music be used but had permission blocked by rights holders. None of these artists are named.

Having previously put in the hands of users from the US and Canada, Spotify is now rolling out its Prompted Playlists feature in the UK and Ireland.

This enables you to create custom playlists from text prompts, and could be viewed as Spotify’s attempt to address concerns that, increasingly, its algorithm is dictating what people listen to. Instead, says the company, “it’s a new way to put meaningful control of the algorithm directly in your hands, with your ideas, your logic, and your creativity.”

Prompted Playlists are based not only on “real-time information about the world of music” (trends and charts, for example), but also – gulp – your entire listening, which may lead you to discover that your tastes aren’t quite as ‘credible’ as you thought they were.

Trying to find your ‘most-played’ songs at certain times in history might also highlight another problem: if you often have Spotify’s ‘functional playlists’ on in the background (for studying and sleeping, for example), you’ll quickly realise that some of the tracks on these are the ones you’ve listened to more than any other, despite the fact that you don’t even know what they’re called.

In this case, you might have to think a little bit harder about the kind of prompts you’ve giving, as just asking for lists of favourites probably won’t give you the results you were hoping for.

As you’d expect, you can use the new feature to create broad ‘mood’ playlists, but you can also be more granular in your approach. You could, for example, use a Prompted Playlist as the starting point for a DJ set – both BPM and key information is accessible, making it possible (in theory, at least) to find collections of songs that will work well together.

We’ve tried this and have to say that the results have been hit and miss so far – some of the supposedly ‘mix-friendly’ Prompted Playlists we’ve generated would probably lead to a very odd atmosphere at a house party – but the good news is that prompts can be edited at any time. You can also set Prompted Playlists to update automatically (either daily or weekly) so that the same prompt will keep delivering you fresh results.

“We hear from listeners all the time that they love playlists, but making their own can feel daunting,” says Sulinna Ong, Global Head of Editorial at Spotify. “Our editors spend a lot of time thoughtfully curating playlists, and that level of intention can be hard to replicate when you’re starting from scratch. Prompted Playlist offers a more intuitive entry point, letting users begin with moods, moments, or ideas in their own words, and build something that feels personal.”

Currently in beta, the Prompted Playlist feature can be accessed via the Create option in Spotify. Find out more in Spotify’s blog post.

If you live in the UK, you will have doubtless heard much about the death of the British club scene and dire warnings about the future of the night-time economy. However, a new report into UK electronic music has revealed a much more nuanced picture.

The Fourth Electronic Music Report has been produced by the Night Time Industries Association and uncovers some interesting stats. Whilst UK clubs are undeniably struggling – since March 2020 we’ve lost 36% of our nightclubs, leaving just 823 in the whole of Britain – electronic music as a whole in the UK generated £2.47 billion in measurable economic activity in 2025, a rise of 3% on 2024.

In terms of the actual music, the UK continues to be one of the most influential countries in the world. It ranks second in the world for electronic artist development, with 13 of the global Top 100 DJs and 72 in the Top 500 and 11% of the global electronic music creators.

Breaking that down within genres, the UK has 30.5% of drum n’ bass artists and 14.7% of dubstep producers. Britain’s dance music exports account for some £86.8 million, an increase of 8% from 2024 and a cause for some cheer considering the increases in cost and red tape that Brexit has produced.

That’s the good news. Against that, clubs – traditionally the laboratories for dance music – are in difficulty. Just 15% of UK venues could now be described as ‘mid-range’, the crucial 500 – 2,500 capacity clubs. Below those, grassroots venues are operating on shoestrings – their average profit margin is just 0.48% - with their operators taking home an average £26,000 whilst working 60+ hour weeks. The super-club era of the 1990s seems a long time ago.

But people still want to dance. The survey has picked up a significant increase in free parties – a rise of 34% since 2024, with more events taking place in cafes, art galleries and record shops. Free events now account for 15% of all electronic music programming.

And the North is leading the way in this. For the first time since the survey began, a majority (51%) of dance music events take place outside London. The Northern region has seen an overall increase of 93% between 2022 and 2025, with events in Newcastle growing 72% between 2024 and 2025 alone.

In a statement about the survey, Michael Kill, CEO of the Night Time Industries Association said: “Electronic music remains one of the UK’s most powerful cultural and economic assets, but the domestic ecosystem that sustains it is now in crisis.

“We are seeing free parties rise, mid-tier venues disappear and audiences pushed out of licensed spaces - not because demand is falling, but because the sector is being squeezed by sustained economic pressure.”

He continued: “At the same time... this report shows extraordinary resilience, but resilience is not a policy. Without urgent reform - from VAT alignment and business rates relief to meaningful planning protections - we risk dismantling the very foundations that made the UK a global leader.”

Some new research published by Live DMA, a Europe-wide network that represents promoters and live music stakeholders, has revealed the grip just four companies have on European live music.

Those four are Live Nation (surprise, surprise), AEG, CTS Eventim and Superstruct Entertainment Together, they apparently control 150 of the continent’s largest festivals. Of those, Live Nation is the dominant player, controlling some 120 European subsidiaries and with a turnover of $16.7 billion. Superstruct controls more than 80 festivals across 10 countries and CTS Eventim has generated $1.9 billion across more than 20 countries.

The research also shows that the big four are tightening their grip. Between 2022 and 2025 the number of festivals linked to Live Nation increased from 74 to 78, and to CTS Eventim from 42 to 51. Meanwhile, both AEG and Superstruct almost or succeeded in doubling their share, increasing from 5 to 10 and 34 to 63, respectively.

And of course, a crucial factor in this control has been ticketing. "Ticketing appears as another key node in this configuration,” Live DMA explains. “Several major live music groups also control or operate large ticketing platforms, raising questions already documented in policy and market analyses regarding speculative resale, high-demand events, and access.”

Then there is the increasing tendency of the big four to own the venues as well. AEG owns London’s O2 Arena and Berlin’s Mercedes-Benz Arena and the much-loved Hammersmith Odeon hasn’t been the official name of the Hammersmith Odeon for years. It’s now the Eventim Apollo.

Live DMA said in a statement that whilst their research does not claim to be “exhaustive...(it) makes visible a reality that has long been overlooked. They invite institutions, professionals, and citizens to ask a simple question: when we buy a ticket for a festival or a concert, who do we really support, and what kind of ecosystem do we want for live music in Europe?”

That, really, is something for Europe’s policy makers to get to grips with. Reacting to the research, Emma Rafowicz, the MEP and Vice Chair of the Committee on Culture and Education said in a statement: "More than ever, the growing concentration in the live music ecosystem, highlighted by this new map and study, threatens cultural diversity and the independence of artists and producers."

"Europe must take action by limiting vertical integration, separating activities across the value chain, and restricting the ownership of multiple events within the same country or across Europe single operator.”

The research can be found on the Reset Network website here.

Campaigners are trying to change the law so that artists’ lyrics cannot be used against them in a court of law.

At present, this is the case, and indeed, there have been incidents where drill artists have had their own words or even appearances in videos used as evidence that they are affiliated to a particular gang.

So a group calling themselves Art Not Evidence is arguing for an amendment to the Victims and Courts bill, which is currently making its way through parliament, that would prevent police from being able to present lyrics as evidence except when they are “literal, rather than figurative or fictional”.

In a statement, Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, who is tabling the amendment, said: “We’re in a ridiculous position at present where somebody’s musical taste is somehow probative of their criminal intent. It is like saying that my love of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather makes me a mobster. It’s extraordinary.”

It also makes no allowances for the idea that often an artist is adopting a persona in a song, or that they might be presenting an exaggerated version of themselves, often blown up to ridiculous proportions.

Take, for example, Snoop Dogg’s Drop It Like It’s Hot, in which the now-cuddly 50-something rapper says ‘I’m a gangsta/ but you knew that’ before affirming his allegiance to LA’s Crips gang. At the time of release in 2004, Snoop had been a major recording artist for over a decade, rather than an, ahem, ‘gangsta’.

Anyway, the Art Not Evidence group has sent an open letter to Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, arguing: “These creative expressions have no connection to the serious crimes alleged, and are used to paint a misleading and prejudicial picture, conflating art with evidence.”

Chakrabarti also said they wanted to end the practice of ‘independent' witnesses with little or no knowledge of the music in question being used in such cases. She said that often they amounted to “retired police officers enjoying a nice little side hustle as independent experts on rap and drill, which is where something that is abusive becomes positively absurd.”

For their part, the Crown Prosecution Service has said that it “has never prosecuted anybody solely on the basis of their involvement with drill/rap music” but that “drill/rap music may be of specific relevance to the case against a suspect, in which case it may be used as evidence.”

It’s known that between 2020 and 2023 there have been more than 70 criminal trials in which lyrics, videos and audio recordings have been used to police and prosecutors.

There’s a well-established part of the popular music canon that mythologises the ’27 Club’. That oddly numerically-aligned group of famous artists who all died at age 27.

Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse all passed away at that particular age. While scientific research has disproven that 27 is in any way a statistically relevant age for the passing of musicians, the notion of ‘live fast, die young’ is persistent.

Musicians and other music professionals may not be statistically dying at that specific same age, but it does transpire that they are at an increased danger of an early death, with one study finding American musicians’ lifespans 25 years shorter on average than the general population. Alarming stuff.

Neil Young once sang that it’s better to ‘burn out’ than to ‘fade away,’ but this actually may be happening to musicians more frequently than they realise.

According to research, musicians are dying statistically earlier than the rest of society. An Australian study done in 2016 (titled, Life expectancy and cause of death in popular musicians: Is the popular musician lifestyle the road to ruin?) seemed to show that musicians who’ve attained popularity have shortened life expectancy.

Furthermore, it showed that overall mortality rates were twice as high compared with the population when averaged over the whole age range.

Interestingly, it found that mortality impacts differed by music genre, with excess suicides and liver-related disease observed in country, metal, and rock musicians, and - startlingly - excess homicides seen in six of the 14 genres, in particular hip-hop and rap musicians.

“This is clear evidence that all is not well in pop-music land,” said the author Dianna Kenny of the University of Sydney in The National, with findings indicating that American musicians die up to 25 years earlier than the general population based on seven decades of death records from 1950 to 2014.

Another study looked at mortality across a wider variety of musicians, including not just singers but also classical musicians and conductors. It found that rock musicians on average lived shorter lives than classical musicians.

The science is in: musicians tend to live less than the general population. But just what is it about musicians in particular that leads so often to an early grave.

MusiCares is an affiliate of The Recording Academy, the organisation that gives out the Grammy Awards, and supports music professionals with health and welfare needs. According to the organisation’s 2024 Wellness In Music survey, limited access to preventative healthcare services remains a major hurdle for those in the industry in the United States.

While 87 percent of survey respondents reported having health insurance (a figure close to the 93 percent national coverage rate), only about half have dental insurance because of the extra cost involved.

“Because so many music professionals work freelance or gig-to-gig,” says Theresa Wolters, MusiCares’ Executive Director, “access to comprehensive employer-sponsored healthcare is limited. Many do have insurance, but it’s often catastrophic or bare-bones coverage that doesn’t fully support ongoing or preventive care, such as dental, vision, or mental health services.”

This can cause music professionals to put off treatment until it becomes a major issue, which can lead to severe impacts on health.

For example, according to the survey data, 70 percent of people aged 45 and over missed recommended colonoscopy screenings, and 62 percent of female respondents aged 24 and older went without cervical cancer screenings.

“Music professionals are not accessing preventive health care and treatment services at the same rate as the general public,” continues Theresa. “Data from our Wellness in Music survey shows that 40-70 percent of people in music are not accessing routine, preventive care.”

Another issue that ties into the difficulties faced by music professionals is financial insecurity.

“Financial instability is deeply tied to the gig-based nature of the music industry,” explains Theresa. “Many music professionals rely on freelance or project-to-project work, which can be unpredictable even in the best of times. Work in music is also incredibly physically demanding for many roles, and vulnerable to so many elements that can affect a gig happening. For example, if the lead artist or a key member of the band gets COVID, that can result in the cancellation of a gig affecting dozens of individuals. Missing even one pay-check can mean missing rent, utilities, or access to basic necessities.”

More than just the loss of a pay-check, though, financial instability can have grave health consequences. “Financial instability and health are deeply interconnected,” notes Theresa. “Our survey data shows that 30-40 percent of music professionals attribute their stress and anxiety to financial issues. Chronic financial stress can significantly impact mental health, increasing anxiety, depression, and feelings of hopelessness. Over time, that mental strain can manifest physically, affecting sleep, immune health, cardiovascular health, and overall well-being.”

Particularly alarming is the prevalence of suicide within the industry. Kurt Cobain, Avicii and Ian Curtis of Joy Division are just three high-profile instances of musicians who took their own lives.

According to MusicCares’ survey, 8.3 percent of their respondents had serious thoughts of suicide in the previous year, a figure that is unfortunately higher than the 5 percent rate among the general population.

“The music industry can be incredibly rewarding, but it can also be isolating and emotionally demanding,” explains Theresa as to why this might be the case. “Music professionals often face intense pressure, irregular schedules, and long periods away from support systems, all while navigating financial uncertainty. When those stressors accumulate without adequate support, they can significantly impact mental health. What the survey underscores is not a lack of resilience, but a lack of systemic support.”

Academic research has also shown that suicide rates are high among music professionals. In fact, according to a 2025 study, musicians, actors, and entertainers rank among the five occupational groups with highest suicide mortality in the United Kingdom.

“The statistics are alarming - shocking,” said study co-author Dr George Musgrave in the Guardian. A sociologist at Goldsmiths, University of London. “The rates of suicide among musicians … paints a picture of a music industry which is demonstrably unsafe. No other industry would tolerate this level of loss of life and neither should we.”

The study also found high rates in the United States, with the arts, design, entertainment, sports and media category, which includes musicians, having the highest female suicide rate of any occupation group in 2012, 2015 and 2021. Men in the same category had the third highest rate, at 138.7 per 100,000 population, a figure that is almost 10 times higher than the national average.

“Multiple occupational and psychosocial stressors characteristic of music careers warrant examination,” says the study, “including exploitative industry practices, financial instability, heightened social media exposure, performance-related anxiety, internal achievement pressure, and irregular sleep patterns.”

Substance abuse has been an undeniable factor in a great many early deaths of many high-profile musicians, and can also be seen as a contributor within the broader study.

“Musicians as an occupational group have been seen to use illicit substances for various social, cultural and artistic/creative reasons, as well as exhibit higher levels of problematic drinking compared to non-musicians,” says Musgrave and additional author Dr Dorian Lamis in an editorial commenting on the study.

“Both alcohol and drug use disorders have been shown to be associated with suicide in empirical studies, and more work on this potential association among musicians is needed.”

Beyond just being a musician, fame itself has been shown to be a contributing factor to early death.

The study, entitled The price of fame? Mortality risk among famous singers ), conducted last year, discovered that famous singers had a 32 percent higher mortality risk compared with less famous singers.

“A 32 percent increase sounds dramatic because it is a relative number,” explains study co-author Michael Dufner of the Witten/Herdecke University. “Personally, I find a different metric more intuitive: on average, the famous singers in our study died about 4.6 years earlier than the less famous ones. That is a non-trivial difference, but it is not extreme. In terms of size, it is comparable to established risk factors such as light smoking versus non-smoking.”

According to the study, the results, “offer the strongest evidence to date linking fame with a higher mortality.” Some possible contributing factors suggested include increased stress levels, an unhealthy lifestyle, substance abuse, or a combination of these factors.

“Future research should try to disentangle these possibilities by taking factors such as childhood experiences, eating and sleeping habits, stress and drug abuse into account and by looking more closely at different causes of death,” says the study.

So, what can we do?

The data paints a bleak, and emotive picture. The particular industry-specific conditions that musicians and other music professionals have to navigate certainly seem to increase their risk of mortality. It’s far beyond time that we start addressing this problem.

Professor Dufner recommends targeted interventions: “Our findings suggest that elevated mortality risk among highly famous musicians may warrant increased attention to preventive measures. Potential interventions might include structured recovery periods during tours, access to mental health and stress-management resources, and programs designed to maintain social connectedness.”

Theresa from MusiCares recommends that music professionals themselves be aware of their own needs.

“Staying healthy starts with recognizing that wellness is not a luxury, it’s essential,” she says. “Prioritizing sleep, nutrition, and hydration while on the road can make a meaningful difference. Just as important is building in mental health check-ins, staying connected to trusted people, and asking for help early rather than waiting for a breaking point. Using available resources is a sign of strength, not weakness.”

To reduce the number of suicides within the industry, Dr Musgrave and his colleagues suggest that the industry adopt the seven-part approach provided by the Zero Suicide Framework framework, which includes calling on industry leaders to facilitate conversations about suicide prevention; encouraging training programs within musicians’ wider networks; identifying risk factors and warning signs; engaging those at risk of suicide with proven interventions; musicians maintaining care with providers when coming off tours; and continually improving “through data-driven research to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions in this understudied occupational group.”

Sums up Theresa: “Longevity in music isn’t just about sustaining a career, it’s about sustaining a life. The industry thrives because of the people who pour their creativity, labour, and passion into it, often behind the scenes. If we want music to continue enriching our lives, we have to care for the people who make it possible. Supporting the health and well-being of music professionals isn’t optional, it’s essential to the future of music itself.”

If you’re a struggling musician or music industry professional, please reach out to an organisation like Help Musicians in the UK or MusiCares in the United States.

Mick Mars has lost his court case against Mötley Crüe. It seems that the 80s hair metallers were within their rights to dismiss him as an official for their business affairs, as well as a band member, after he quit touring in 2022.

The guitarist brought the action the following year, alleging that the band had forced him to sign a severance agreement that would divest him of his 25% ownership in Mötley Crüe in return for a 5% stake in the band’s 2023 tour.

He also accused the band of partial or complete miming of live performances, saying that he was the only one playing completely live.

However, a federal judge Patrick Walsh has now ruled in Crüe’s favour. Explaining his decision, Walsh said: “Mars proffered uncontroverted testimony that other rock bands, like Earth, Wind & Fire and The Beach Boys, have provided for their founding/legacy members even after they stopped performing with the band. I do not doubt that that is true and, had the parties agreed to such an arrangement, whether formally or informally, I certainly would have upheld it. But they did not. And I am not at liberty to simply create such an arrangement out of whole cloth.”

“Mars argues that it is immoral for him to be cast aside after forming the backbone of this group for more than four decades. I am not unsympathetic to this argument but it is not for me in the context of this arbitration to weigh in on the morality of the band’s decision.”

It seems that Mars didn’t do his case any favours with his mud-slinging about alleged miming. The band’s lead attorney Sasha Frid said in a statement: “Those accusations collapsed under scrutiny. Faced with extensive live performance recordings - and testimony from his own retained expert, a New York University professor specializing in music technology - Mars was forced to admit under oath that his statements were false. His expert confirmed that the band performed live, and Mars formally recanted his prior claims during sworn testimony.”

The decision has also turned out to be expensive for Mars. Walsh ruled that whilst the band owes him $500,000 for his quarter stake after he was fired, that is more than wiped out by the $750,000 in advance money he owes for the 2022 tour he dropped out of, meaning that he must pay his erstwhile bandmates approximately $244,000.

Now 74, Mars has struggled with poor health in recent years, though he hasn’t fully retired from music just yet – he released a solo album, The Other Side Of Mars, in 2024.

One of the more unusual winners at last night’s Grammys were the 8-Bit Big Band, who picked up the Best Arrangement Instrumental or A Cappella for their Super Mario remix.

Who are the 8-Bit Big Band, you might well ask? Well, they’re a jazz orchestra whose USP is that they re-work classic video game music. Remember that wave of cheesy early-'90s rave tracks like Super Mario Land? (And if you’re over 40, how could you not?) Well, they create more credible versions of those, with a full brass section.

Formed in 2017, they’ve built up a fair following in the decade since and released five albums, the most recent of which was last year’s Orchestrator Emulator.

The band greeted the news of their win on Instagram with: “Holy shit we just won another Grammy. So incredibly honored to have won this award along with my overwhelmingly talented friends and collaborators.”

“More thoughts to come on this insane moment soon as they may have moved on with the show before I could speak (it happens!), but another huge win for the video game music scene as a whole.

"Thank you all so much for your continued listening and support of all of the incredible musicians that give us their time and talent to make this project happen!! Long live video game music!!”

As they indicated, it’s the group’s second Grammy. They won in the same category in 2022 for Meta Knight’s Revenge from the game Kirby Super Star. This year the Big Band won for the Super Mario Praise Break, a medley of four tunes associated with the titular game franchise: the Super Mario Bros theme, Bob-Omb Battlefield, Gusty Garden Galaxy and Athletic Theme.

In case you were wondering, there is a Grammy category for Best Video Game soundtrack. It was picked up last night by the soundtrack for Sword Of The Sea. So now you know.

Nearly 80% of musicians say that they are “worried” about the rise in AI music.

That stat leaps out from a new survey commissioned by PRS For Music. Over 2600 of the society’s members were interviewed last September, and whilst it seems there is greater understanding about how AI works now compared to two years ago, this hasn’t assuaged fears about the technology’s impact.

More than 70% of respondents said they “understand how AI music creation works” – an increase of 19% from 2023, while 76% said that AI has the potential to “negatively affect” their livelihoods (up 7% from 2023), and yes 79% said they were “worried” about AI music competing with human created music – a 5% increase.

Among PRS members, there seems to be an overwhelming desire for regulation of AI and protection for human musicians. Some 93% say artists deserve to be compensated if their music is used to train AI models, the same amount as those that they would like to decide if their music is used design AI tools. Meanwhile, 92% say tech firms should be “transparent” about how AI works.

In a statement, PRS For Music’s Chief Strategy Officer John Mottram said: “It is clear why creators are concerned. Tech firms train models on copyright works without permission or payment building commercial services designed to compete with or replace the human creators.”

“Music creators are already using AI to find new ways to enhance their creativity, but it is up to policymakers to make sure that livelihoods are protected, not diminished to cater to big tech.”

“We will continue to champion the value of songwriters’ and composers’ works and advocate for a future where innovation and artistry can thrive together.”

The UK government had been suggesting that they were ready to make changes to UK law to allow tech firms to use copyrighted material to train their AI models, with artists only being allowed an opt out (instead of tech firms having to opt-in). Since a consultation exercise last year came out firmly against the government’s preferred option, all has gone quiet on this front. There will be a King’s Speech this spring and by then we’ll know whether the government has decided to go ahead with their plans, or if they’ve quietly opted to execute a(nother) U-turn.

British icons Massive Attack are as revered as much for their music as for their commitment to the environment. Their Act 1.5 Climate Action Accelerator event in Bristol, UK in 2024 made headlines for its sustainable ambitions.

Among the Adam Curtis-produced messaging and green infrastructure, collaborators Horace Andy, Liz Fraser and Young Fathers performed with the band on classics ranging from Teardrop to Unfinished Sympathy.

Taking inspiration from Massive Attack, the city has since unveiled a new initiative aimed at decarbonising major music events across 2026.

“The event was hugely significant because it showed what can be done when the right expertise, willingness and resources come together,” says Claire O’Neill, CEO of A Greener Future. This not-for-profit company helps organisations, events, festivals and venues go green and played an important role in supporting Massive Attack’s mission.

“The sponsor Ecotricity, the headliner of course, the promoter, management, production team; everyone was on board with the cause to create a super low carbon and greener event at scale without compromise. It was the first time that a main stage of that scale had been powered by a battery without diesel backup, not to mention the entire site.”

The gig proved to be a huge success story, breaking the world record for producing the lowest ever carbon emissions, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change post-event research revealed.

Attended by more than 32,000 fans, it slashed energy-related greenhouse gas emissions by 98 percent, sold 100 percent vegan food, avoided single-use plastic, and was completely powered by batteries.

With audience travel accounting for almost 80 percent of a live event’s emissions, ticket priority was given to those in the immediate area, electric shuttle buses utilised and rail travel incentivised.

Bristol’s recently unveiled low-carbon scheme aims to build on what the band have started by decarbonising more than 20 major events across 2026 using a similar logistical template.

“The recycling rate was 89 percent, and no general audience car parks were provided along with incentives for public transport,” says Claire on Act 1.5. “The collective effort and clear objective was remarkable and deservedly attracted a lot of media, industry and artist attention.”

In recent years, growing numbers of high-profile bands and artists have started to explore ways to enhance their sustainable live activities.

Coldplay’s Music Of the Spheres tour saw a 59 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions compared with their previous world tour due to reducing air travel and a commitment to planting a tree for every ticket sold.

Elsewhere, the 1975 played the first carbon-removed arena events at London’s O2 in 2024 while Radiohead, like Massive Attack, have long been green champions, commissioning sustainability agency Best Foot Forward to calculate the carbon footprint of two previous US tours and create a roadmap for future events.

According to stats discussed in UK Parliament, festivals generate 25,800 tonnes of waste, 22,876 tonnes of CO2 and use 185 million litres of water annually, underlining the need for action.

Jamal Chalabi is Massive Attack’s Tour Manager, Head of a Greener Tour and a key player in discussions surrounding live event industry sustainability.

“I’ve been a touring and production manager for over 30 years now and climate change is an issue I’ve long been aware of,” says Jamal. “As a global production manager, you see and experience it every time you travel the world - from turbulent flights to extreme heat to lightning strikes at outdoor events.”

According to Jamal, the live music community used the unwanted pause of Covid to hit reset on a variety of issues around welfare, equality, diversity and inclusion and sustainability. As restrictions eased, he worked with Bring Me the Horizon and Yungblud on their live gigs to implement sustainable best practice.

“The big thing for us as a group of tour and production managers coming together after Covid was to make sustainability seem financially viable,” he says. “As long as everyone got on board and followed the green code, then we thought it would make sense and work financially. On the Bring Me the Horizon tour after Covid restrictions eased, we reduced our carbon footprint trajectory by 38 percent by simply ticking a few boxes and following transport, power, food and waste.”

Conversations surrounding going green have certainly grown louder in recent years, thanks in part to the work of artists like Massive Attack and switched on industry professionals such as Jamal.

At the same time, technological advancements have also come in which make embracing sustainability easier for artists and their production teams.

“Since 2019, the landscape professionalised, and ‘Sustainable Event Manager’ became very much a normal job option, unlike in 2005 when sustainable event management wasn't really a thing yet,” Claire O’Neill explains. “The options now available to events have hugely professionalised too and the suppliers and support services to do things better are there, be that energy, waste management, electric buses, vegan food as standard.”

Taking its name from the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C climate target, Jamal was entrusted by Massive Attack to lead their landmark 2024 event off the back of his work with other touring artists. To start off with, Jamal collaborated with Power Logistics, a company that provided a power plan, to realise what the energy requirements for the show would be. One of the main pillars of their approach was to avoid using any diesel generators which festivals have traditionally relied on.

“We didn’t want to burn any fossil fuels at the festival so we had the pleasure of getting Grid Faeries involved and it was their battery that powered the main stage,” says Jamal.

“All of our power was sourced from Ecotricity who supply 100 percent green electricity, generated by wind and solar power. We then worked with Volta Trucks to move batteries around the site, using these vehicles like energy tankers. We had one charging a truck and battery and then another moving around the site and dumping charge into batteries.”

It was the power plan that allowed Jamal to get a more accurate picture of what energy was required and where in a bid to streamline their requirements.

“The biggest issue is that many production teams come into a festival and give you their power requirements by the size of the plug socket,” he says. “A production might want to ensure there is 1000-amp power capacity on stage but only draw on 250 amps, so there is huge overcompensation. We wanted to counter this by getting a more accurate picture of what we needed - this gave us a better idea of what our battery needs and charge capacity was.”

Initially, Jamal recalls some of the power experts within the production crew being concerned by the reliance on the batteries. This was one of the first occasions that they had been used for an event of this scale.

“A lot of the power guys came on site and were initially really nervous about our approach,” Jamal explains. “However, once we had everything in place, it became apparent how much easier this process was compared to relying on generators. We could very easily monitor the charging status of the batteries, where charge was in terms of the electric trucks, how much power we had - having the data in front of you is key.”

Zenobe is an electric vehicle fleet and battery storage specialist that initially started working in motorsport gaining experience around replacing diesel generators at events with greener solutions. The company worked across various projects before lending their expertise to Massive Attack’s Bristol show.

Zenobe’s team was responsible for sourcing five different types of battery - seven of their own 100kW/150kWh Powerskid, three AMPD Enertainer L 449kWh batteries from Select Plant Hire, two AMPD Enertainer M 172kWh batteries from Select Plant Hire, five Voltstack 5kWh, one 20kW/80kWh EGEN and a 100kWh EGEN, all from Green Voltage. The batteries were put together as ‘farms’ to power different areas of the site while electric trucks would take them to and from the charging site.

“The charging location was at the Ecotricity site about 40 minutes away from the festival,” says Robert Long, Head of Portable Power at Zenobe. “It would have been more efficient to have a charging location that was closer to the event - if you could drive round the corner, you could streamline the logistics.”

“In terms of other learnings, we could have used a smaller battery to power the main stage and the batteries themselves were mobile but not strictly designed to be moved. So for future events, lighter batteries that are quicker to plug and unplug could be utilised. But now we have the experience of putting this together, we can implement these efficiencies to make events like this even more sustainable.”

Now the dust has settled on 1.5, it's clear Massive Attack are spearheading a generation of switched-on headliners attuned to the needs of the environment. Act 1.5 demonstrated that it is entirely possible to run a huge outdoor event entirely from batteries without any diesel generator backup.

According to the Tyndall centre’s post event report, emissions associated with onsite electricity were at least 81 percent lower than the counterfactual show running on diesel generators.

Massive Attack’s event has already seen a significant impact on the live event sector. AEG Present’s LIDO Festival, held in London’s Victoria Park in the summer of 2025, took many of the learnings from Massive Attack on the Downs, as well as A Greener Future's work with them and LS Events over the years on BST Hyde Park and All Points East, to create London's greenest gig of this scale.

The main stage was run on a Grid Faeries battery, this time connected to the grid with green energy from Ecotricity. In 2025, Communion One hosted Idles on Queens Square in Bristol with Impression One and Greener Power ensuring that the site was run on 100 percent battery and grid.

“One of the hardest aspects of sustainability is convincing others to invest in it,” says Jamal on the challenges of working in this field. “We are all aware of what is happening with climate and we know what we need to do - it’s getting everyone facing the same way, that is the challenge.”

“One of the most exciting things with the Downs event was my 'Team of Rivals'; seeing the power companies who would usually work in competition with each other start learning from each other and collaborating. It was great to witness and for me that’s the most exciting thing, to see how we can work together to make a difference.”

Another important element in the success of the Downs event was including sustainability ambitions from the beginning of the event production plans.

“By implementing sustainable best practice from day one, you unfold sustainability with everything else,” Jamal says. “What I would love to see in the future is for events and festivals to avoid running generators overnight at a festival. We have to leave lights and amps on to keep them warm and it’s hugely inefficient to run them like this as well as highly polluting.”

While bands are leading the charge, other organisations are working tirelessly to make a positive impact on the climate. Music Declares Emergency is a group of artists, music industry professionals and organisations that have declared a climate and ecological emergency and called for an immediate governmental response to protect life on Earth. Earth/Percent invites artists and the music industry at large to donate a small percentage of their income to support organisations addressing the climate crisis.

Claire at A Greener Future is busy with a CO2 analysis of Massive Attack’s latest tour while A Greener Future is also digitising its certification and analysis tools for events.

“An exciting legacy project from Massive Attack on the Downs is now underway with Act 1.5, WECA, Bristol City Council and Grid Faeries x Ecotricity, which includes the Battery Hub project with 20 events which was announced in November, and the ongoing electrification plans to connect key Bristol event sites to grid,” Claire says on future endeavours for her and the industry.

“What the Massive Attack show has done is demonstrated what is possible at scale,” she continues. “Other artists now want and expect the same standards, and this is something we're experiencing in the appetite from promoters to replicate and build upon what was done there.”

Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny were the big winners at last night’s Grammy Awards.

Lamar took home five awards, including Record Of The Year for Luther, his collab with SZA, Rap Song and Rap Album. Meanwhile, Bad Bunny scooped the prestigious Album Of The Year for Debí Tirar Más Fotos, the first time a Spanish-language record has won that award. He also brought home Best Global Music Performance and the Urbana Musica album award.

The other two big awards went to Billie Eilish, who won Song Of The Year for Wildflower, and Olivia Dea,n who capped an incredible year by winning Best New Artist. Expect her to add more silverware at the Brits later this month.

Many of the above took the opportunity to speak out about the febrile political situation in the US. Bad Bunny – who is performing the Superbowl Half Time show next weekend, much to Donald Trump’s chagrin – said: “Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say ICE out. We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens, we’re humans and we are Americans … The only thing more powerful than hate is love, so please, we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love.”

Meanwhile, Billie Eilish made the pertinent point that: “No one is illegal on stolen land... we need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting.”

Elsewhere at the awards, Yungblud – and friends, including Nuno Bettencourt - won Best Rock Performance for his version of Changes at the Back To The Beginning Concert. Tame Impala won Best Dance/ Electronic Recording for End Of Summer, not a category you’d ever have thought Kevin Parker would have ended up in when he started a decade or so back. Lady Gaga won two awards, for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Dance/Pop Recording for Abracadabra.

Meanwhile, South London’s very own Lola Young won Best Pop Solo Performance for Messy and proceeded to say a rude word live on air. “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! It’s messy, do you know what I mean?” she apologised quickly.

Other British winners were FKA Twigs, who scooped Best Dance/ Electronic album for Eusexua and The Cure who won two awards for Best Alternative Album for Songs Of A Lost World and Best Alternative Music Performance for Alone.

You might assume that Robert Smith and co would be the oldest winners last night. Not so. Steven Spielberg (aged 79) won Best Music Film for the documentary Music For John Williams, which means he now joins the hallowed fellowship of Egots: individuals who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and a Tony.

But even Spielberg isn’t as senior as the winner of the Best Audiobook Narration: the 90-year-old Dalai Lama, who won for Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness The Dalai Lama. Sadly, he was not there to pick up his award in person.

The three major record labels, and Spotify, are suing Anna’s Archive for a mind-boggling $13.4 trillion, alleging that the site has illegally scraped more than 86 million sound files.

That is a lot of money. For context, the GDP of the whole of the United Kingdom is currently $4.25 trillion. For the US that figure stands at $24 trillion.

So what is Anna’s Archive? Well, they are another, somewhat elicit, startup who seem to be doing what startups do: moving fast and breaking stuff. Initially, this was focused on pirating books and papers, though they deny that term. Instead, they describe what they’re doing as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture” and say they aim to “build a music archive primarily aimed at preservation.”

However, they have since moved on to pirating music, which has brought them into conflict with the record industry. In a statement given to Billboard last month, a Spotify spokesperson said: “Spotify has identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping. We’ve implemented new safeguards for these types of anti-copyright attacks and are actively monitoring for suspicious behaviour. Since day one, we have stood with the artist community against piracy, and we are actively working with our industry partners to protect creators and defend their rights.”

Anna’s Archive has denied piracy, saying that it does not directly host any files and the music is distributed on peer-to-peer networks. The scraping though, is on an industrial scale – some 86 million files, which is thought to be nearly all the world’s commercial sound recordings.

Remember Napster? Of course you do. Now the enfant terrible of the early Internet age is back and attempting to muscle in on the AI music race by launching its own AI app.

It’s slightly different from Suno and Udio in that it involves using a chatbot character so it’s more like interacting with a ‘real’ AI artist. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Napster CEO Edo Segal said: “What we’re trying to do is create more of an experience. The human experience of interacting with other parties, and a kind of multi-turn creation process, in the same way that humans jam and create stuff together.”

Interestingly, Segal also said that the new Napster app will be licensing “ethically trained” copyright-friendly music generating models. This, of course, contrasts to the company’s approach back in the day, when their whole business model was based on defiance of copyright law.

Much has changed at Napster since then. The brand was bought last year for $207 million by AI firm Infinite Reality. Some $3 billion for the relaunched brand fell through when the investor apparently disappeared and the company still owes Sony an alleged $9.2 in royalties for streaming their catalogue after a licensing agreement was terminated last June.

What remains though, is Napster’s anti-music industry stance. “I think major labels have been a suppressant and a problem in people owning their content, owning their data, and I think they’re continuing to be a suppressant,” says Segal. “So we just don’t really have an interest in having a relationship with them. We don’t think that the future of music involves the labels anymore.”

“The old label model is dead. I think we’ve seen that with TikTok and other distribution platforms - Instagram - that are doing a much better job at distributing and getting the public aware of music than labels ever have in this new digital age. I just think they’re dead.”

Segal sees Napster then as now as being on the consumer’s side. “If you recall, the core of Napster was that I would buy my CD in the store with all 27 tracks on it - I only wanted one, by the way - and then I would load that in my computer and I wanted the right to share the things that I owned. I owned it, I bought it, and I felt like I had a right to share it. Napster was attempting to help protect data. The core of our business is truly protecting and preserving data.”

When asked how they would compete with Suno and Udio, who have both struck deals with the major labels, Segal described those as “A very IBM move... You’ve now allowed the major labels to figure out how they’re going to own the data, own these things. This is the opposite of what we want to do. I want you - literally you - to own your data, own the content that you create.”

“What we continue to see are people taking old business models and trying to attach them to new things, and that’s just not how it works. I can’t have a horse and buggy in a car.”

Amidst all the usual doom and gloom, here, at least, is some positive news: Backline has launched a 24-hour mental health and crisis support line created exclusively for musicians and anyone working in the music industry.

It’s called B-LINE and the idea behind it is to connect musicians with trained counsellors who know the unique pressures of working in the sector. It’s staffed around the clock, and though it is based in the US, international callers will be able to access it. The all-important number is 1-855-BLINE99 or you can text 254-639.

The genesis of the idea was last year’s Grammy Awards when Chappell Roan used her acceptance speech to highlight issues of mental health among artists. Soon afterwards, Roan launched a fundraising campaign for Backline called We Got You, with many other artists matching her generosity. A year later, B-LINE is the result.

In a statement, Backline Co-Founder and Executive Director Hilary Gleason said: "This has always been the dream. We’ve supported thousands of music industry professionals in their mental health and wellness journeys, but one critical piece was missing: real-time access to care. B-LINE changes that.”

The initiative has also picked up some significant sponsors: to their credit, Spotify and Live Nation have dipped into their considerable pockets. Gleason added: “These are close partners that have been key in advancing our mission over the past six years. When we started to bring up B-LINE with them, it became more and more clear that this was the initiative that could change the industry for good.”

Among the artists who have contributed towards the fundraising campaign is Noah Kahan, who has said in a statement: “I started working with Backline to provide mental health services for my touring band and crew in 2023. Support for the well-being of the incredibly hard working artists and people that make the music industry function has long been neglected.

"A dedicated 24-hour hotline is the first step toward accessing critical mental health support. I’m proud to work with Backline to create a pathway toward a healthier future and an entry point for accessing resources.”

Founded in 2019, Backline is a Denver-based non-profit organisation that connects music industry professionals with mental health resources.

It’s an issue that they have played no small part in increasing the spotlight on. To throw out some alarming stats from Backline’s own surveys – suicide rates for musicians are ten times that of men (which are in any case too high), and 73% of independent musicians have reported symptoms of mental illness.

Independent Venue Week kicked off last night, and so begins the annual celebration of small music and arts venues and the people that own and run them.

IVW 2026 is, apparently, the second biggest to date; a healthy sign at a time when – as we know – small venues are feeling the pinch as never before. In total, 236 venues across the UK are taking part, with over 700 gigs and events lined up over the week - a 10% increase from 2025.

In a statement, founder and CEO of Independent Venue Week, Sybil Bell, said: “It’s brilliant to see our second highest ever number of venues taking part in IVW. I think that’s a very clear sign that venues want the opportunity to enjoy a positive and celebratory week that shines a light on the brilliant work they do year-round.”

“With over 700 shows on sale all around the country, IVW allows artists and the public alike to come together and recognise what these spaces mean to them – supporting local creative businesses whilst kicking off 2026 with some epic live music.

"More than ever, fans are also showing that they want to be out, in person with mates, being in the moment and not on a screen. I’m really excited by the sheer range and diversity of shows on offer, and this year looks set to deliver some magical moments, creating lasting memories for the future.”

While at the top end, live concerts are increasingly concentrated in the major conurbations, what’s impressive about IVW is its sheer geographical spread. Participating venues are as far north as John O’Groats and as far south as Falmouth.

You can see IVW shows in towns far off the established gig circuit in places like Dumfries, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Basingstoke, Truro, Pembroke, Port Talbot, Hartlepool and Cleethorpes, to name just eight.

IVW has also appointed three Artist Ambassadors who are playing a series of exclusive performances. The Mercury-nominated rock duo Nova Twins will be playing The Amersham Arms in New Cross tonight (January 27), folk punk five-piece Brògeal play MacArts in Galashiels on Friday (January 30), and singer-songwriter Eve Goodman plays a couple of tiny shows in Swansea (January 30) and Pembroke (January 31).

Some of the other participating artists include – deep breath – The Bug Club, Sorry, Craig Finn, Buzzcocks, She Drew The Gun, Mad Professor, Dave Rowntree, Jah Wobble and the Invaders Of The Heart, The Orielles, Dodgy and Eliza Carthy. There are many many more, of course.

For full details go to the Independent Venue Week website at independentvenueweek.com.

Pharrell Williams is being sued by the other member of the Neptunes, Chad Hugo.

The dispute is over unpaid royalties, dating back to the final NERD album, 2017’s No One Ever Really Dies. Hugo is claiming that his erstwhile partner is refusing to hand over crucial financial documents and that he owes him up to $1 million for work on that album.

In a statement, Hugo's attorney, Brent J Lehman, claimed that: “Williams engaged in self-dealing, concealed material information, and, upon information and belief, diverted revenues owed to Plaintiff. Such wilful, fraudulent, and malicious conduct warrants the imposition of punitive damages.”

As yet, Williams has yet to comment on the lawsuit.

It’s not the first time Hugo and Williams have clashed swords. Back in 2024, Hugo accused his ex-partner of ‘fraudulently’ seeking sole control of the Neptunes’ trademarks.

The upshot of that was that the two fell out and are on longer on speaking terms, though Williams said in a 2024 interview with Hollywood Reporter: “I love him, and I always wish him the absolute best, and I’m very grateful for our time together.”

Together, Williams and Hugo were the dominant force in early noughties pop, producing a long succession of hits that flattened forever the boundaries between pop, soul, funk and hip hop.

Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Jay Z, Nelly, Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani and Kelis all scored landmark hits with songs written by the pair. Williams later stepped out from behind the production desk and became a star in his own right. In contrast, Hugo seems – on the surface at least – to have chosen a more reclusive life with production credits becoming few and far between in recent years.

The Music Venue Trust has published its annual report for 2025. It reveals a sector that is still “structurally fragile” and operating on very small profit margins.

The report shows that over half of the UK’s grassroots music venues (GMVs) showed no profit at all in 2025 (53%, in fact). It suggests that much of that is down to the government’s changes in national insurance and business rates, which has led to 6,000 jobs being lost in the sector.

The report also states that “the majority of GMVs are now one financial shock away from crisis, while the national touring circuit continues to contract.”

It also says that we lost 30 small venues last year and 175 UK towns and cities, home to 25 million people, no longer receive touring shows from professional artists.

Grim news, then. The report concluded “that current economic models for grassroots live music are no longer working.”

Speaking at the launch of the report yesterday at the V&A Museum, Mark Davyd, the MVT’s CEO said that the body will invest £2 million immediately into a number of targeted programmes designed to permanently reduce costs and improve sustainability.

He also laid down an ultimatum to the government regarding the grassroots levy on stadium and arena shows. So far, this is voluntary, and it has been left to individual artists to do the decent thing. Some have - Coldplay, Sam Fender, and Katy Perry being high-profile examples. But most, it has to be said, have not.

“We have reached the limits of what venues can absorb on margins of 2.5%,” Davyd said. “This sector has done all it can to keep music live in our communities; it now needs permanent protection, structural reform, and leadership that recognises grassroots venues as essential national infrastructure. That obviously needs to come in the form of a coherent strategy from government, but they are not the sole solution. The music industry itself is in the last chance saloon with regards to the levy; if voluntary industry action does not deliver by June 2026, the government must legislate.”

In addition to this, Davyd called on the government to put in place permanent legal protection for venues through enshrining Agent of Change in law, and the creation of a permanent Live Music Commission to “implement the Fan-Led Review and provide national leadership.”

There will be a King’s Speech this Spring. Small venues up and down the country will be hoping that the government will take the opportunity, at the very least, to make the grassroots levy mandatory.

The full MVT report for 2025 can be seen here.