Drowned in Sound

Music is upstream from politics. Drowned in Sound investigates how the music industry shapes society and how fans, artists, and workers can organise for systemic change. Hosted by Sean Adams, we decode streaming economics, sustainable touring, climate and tech, workers’ rights, and collective solutions with musicians, researchers, and changemakers.

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92 episodes
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Yesterday · 41 min
From Paris Hilton to Andy Burnham: Sean & Helena's Lord Brennan Interview Debrief
Did Sean ask a member of the House of Lords whether the House of Lords should even exist? No. Did he get into proportional representation? Also no... Helena Wadia returns to co-host, and rather than a straight interview this is proper yap of an episode, with Sean thinking out loud about everything that didn't make it into last week's conversation with Lord Kevin Brennan on the fan-led review of live music, and why, when you've got fifty recommendations and about an hour, you have to choose your battles. They get into why Andy Burnham becoming Prime Minister changed the shape of the conversation, and what it means that he's a shareholder in Music Venue Properties. They compare how differently society treats football fandom versus music fandom, from workplace leniency during the World Cup to Germany's cultural vouchers, and ask why a nighttime economy built around music doesn't get the same institutional understanding. Along the way: Bill Drummond's old campaign for a "no music day", Paris Hilton's unlikely transformation into a genuine political force, and a proper, honest conversation about how they each actually prep for an interview, what questions to ask first, how much to assume the listener already knows, and why every job now seems to come with the shadow of "but will it clip." The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the pioneering high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles. Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show. This week, Sean and Helena share their midyear playlists. Sean's has got Massive Attack and Tom Waits, Sofia Isella, PVA, and Art School Girlfriend on it. Helena's has Matt Berninger's strange, brilliant new solo single 'Martini Me Fatso', Naomi In Blue's debut, and Olivia Rodrigo's new record. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Referenced In This Episode Last week's conversation with Lord Kevin Brennan on the fan-led review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-can-music-fans-expect-from-the-pm-andy-burnham/id1037405920?i=1000778324142, on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IFhUww0DTvs, or wherever you get your podcasts: http://drownedinsound.org/podcasts Read Mark Davyd on Andy Burnham's stake in Music Venue Properties and a night out in Atherton: https://markdavyd.substack.com/p/a-night-out-in-atherton Naomi In Blue's debut single 'Naive': https://naomiinblue.bandcamp.com/ Matt Berninger's new single 'Martini Me Fatso': https://stereogum.com/2505525/matt-berninger-martini-me-fatso/music 'Boots on the Ground', Massive Attack featuring Tom Waits: https://massiveattack.bandcamp.com/album/boots-on-the-ground Bill Drummond's No Music Day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Music_Day Galaxy Brain: How Short-Form Clips Took Over the Internet: https://podcasts.apple.com/am/podcast/galaxy-brain/id1378618386 John Graham, the world's first Minister for Music (and Transport), NSW Australia: https://www.nsw.gov.au/nsw-government/ministers/minister-for-transport-arts-music-and-night-time-economy John Graham on the Sydney Opera House noise changes, "no longer will noise levels be dictated by the bedtimes of the residents": https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies/dciths/ministerial-media-releases/changes-coming-to-sydney-opera Hanna Kahlert on "every job is clips now": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-your-favourite-bands-fans-might-not-be-real/id1037405920?i=1000775834659 Art School Girlfriend on the podcast earlier this year: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-does-electronic-music-sound-like-shoegaze-art-school/id1037405920?i=1000754413709 Ella from PVA on the podcast earlier this year: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-hope-over-fear-trumps-no-music-on-a-dead-planet/id1037405920?i=1000747892636 Helena Wadia also co-hosts the Media Storm podcast: https://mediastormpodcast.com/about-us/ This episode was recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org Produced and edited by Sean Adams. 00:00:00 - Cold open: the things we never thought we'd cover 00:00:16 - Welcome back, Helena 00:00:41 - Recapping the Lord Brennan interview 00:09:17 - Qobuz and the midyear playlists 00:12:10 - Bill Drummond's No Music Day 00:16:33 - What if music was treated like football 00:19:39 - Andy Burnham's DJ sets and Paris Hilton 00:26:42 - How we actually prep for an interview 00:34:32 - Idea: politicians' favourite bands on election flyers 00:39:00 - Wrap up and thanks to Lord Brennan
July 25 · 1 hr 1 min
What can music fans expect from the PM Andy Burnham era? DiS meets Lord Brennan
Four thousand, one hundred and forty four music fans responded to a single Parliamentary survey, more than any committee inquiry has recorded before. What they said, over and over, is that going to a gig isn't a transaction like any other, it's closer to a communal, sometimes quasi-religious experience, and that's the starting point for this week's conversation. In this week's episode, Sean talks to Lord Kevin Brennan about the fan-led review of live and electronic music, the report he was commissioned to lead by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. We discuss what's happened since it was published, get his reaction to the Starmer government's response, and what we can hope under new our music-loving prime minister Andy Burnham. Kevin Brennan was the Labour MP for Cardiff West for twenty three years, from 2001 until he stood down at the last election, before being appointed to the House of Lords as Lord Brennan of Canton. While in the Commons he chaired the CMS committee's inquiry into the economics of music streaming and introduced what became known as the Brennan Bill, a private member's bill that never made it into law but helped push the government towards hosting streaming remuneration talks through the Intellectual Property Office. However, Brennan is also a musician himself. He was a founding member of MP4, the cross-party band of sitting MPs that has raised over a million pounds for charity (Andy Burnham, now Prime Minister, has played live with them), and in 2021 he became the first sitting MP to release a solo album, The Clown and the Cigarette Girl, produced by Gerry Diver with Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols on bass. He's currently recording a follow up. The conversation covers the origins of the fan-led review, which built on last year's Music Fans Voice Survey (8,108 respondents), and the resulting Fans' Charter, built around seven "essentials of live": celebration, ticketing, grassroots, safety, accessibility, transport and voice. They also talk about Andy Burnham's own history as a shareholder in Music Venue Properties, which has taken venues including The Snug in Atherton into community ownership. And yes, we discuss where AI and copyright fit into all of this. The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the pioneering high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles. Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Referenced In This Episode The fan-led review of live and electronic music and the government's response: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9161/fanled-review-of-music/publications The government's "Turn It Up: Our Plan for Music": https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/turn-it-up-our-plan-for-music/turn-it-up-our-plan-for-music Michael Dugher appointment as Music Champion: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/michael-dugher-appointed-as-music-champion Find out more about the FanFair Alliance's campaign against ticket touting: http://fanfairalliance.org Read Mark Davyd on Andy Burnham's stake in Music Venue Properties and a night out in Atherton: https://markdavyd.substack.com/p/a-night-out-in-atherton Read more on Suzanne Ashman and the £500m Sovereign AI Fund: https://bmmagazine.co.uk/news/suzanne-ashman-sovereign-ai-fund-managing-partner/ Read Victoria Derbyshire's column on Oasis ticket prices: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/furious-oasis-tickets-dont-know-who-angry-3258086 Listen to Kevin Brennan's album, The Clown and the Cigarette Girl, on Qobuz: https://open.qobuz.com/album/v097ngg6ijjkc, or on Bandcamp: https://kevinbrennanmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-clown-the-cigarette-girl Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org
July 7 · 1 hr 18 min
Why Your Favourite Band's Fans Might Not Be Real
There's a marketing agency that will build your band a small army of fan accounts for about a dollar per thousand views. They post the clips, they seed the captions, sometimes they write the comments underneath too. Until a Substack essay by the musician Eliza McLamb and a run of stories in Wired, New York Magazine and The Verge this May, most of us assumed - unlike MAGA and Reform supporters - the people posting about our favourite artists actually liked them. In this week's episode, recorded at the Shure Experience Centre in London, Sean is joined by returning guest Hanna Kahlert for a properly wide ranging mid-year check-in on where the music industry actually stands. It covers radio, playlists, spatial audio, AI, third spaces, and at some length, what's really behind the clipping campaigns turning fan accounts into an ad product. Hanna Kahlert is a senior social analyst at MIDiA Research, where she heads up the company's coverage on social media, cross-entertainment audience behaviour, the creator economy, and the platforms all of it lives on. She was our guest before Christmas talking about the year in tech, which makes her one of a very short list of returning guests on this podcast. However, MIDiA isn't her only hat. Hanna also mentors at Abbey Road Red, the studio's startup incubator, where she's currently working with founders building spatial audio for VR worlds and, more usefully for touring musicians, something like an Airbnb for recording studios. The conversation moves through Apple's rumoured smart glasses, why an AR filter over a headline slot might one day save a band three trucks of touring production, and why last year's poolside advert for Meta's camera glasses, endorsed awkwardly by Peggy Gou, has aged badly. This conversation also gets into how little has actually changed about the mechanics of a live show since Sean was a teenager, wireless guitars aside, and why a crowd full of phones sometimes means an artist is genuinely growing an audience and sometimes just means nobody real is in the room. The bulk of the episode is about the clipping economy: the marketing model behind fan accounts that turn out not to be run by fans at all. Sean and Hanna work through the Billboard interview with Chaotic Good that started it, Eliza McLamb's essay Fake Fans, and what it meant when that essay led to a month of think pieces asking whether the band Geese were, in the discourse's own phrase, an industry plant psyop. Hanna's own MIDiA research covers the same ground, and it's linked below. It also gets into third spaces, pubs, youth clubs, and Geoff Barrow's argument that five hundred million pounds would be better spent reopening youth clubs than almost anything else the industry could fund. It ends on why proper research, done slowly, might matter more to a working musician right now than any dashboard full of streaming data. The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the pioneering high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles. Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) Hanna Kahlert / MIDiA Research https://www.midiaresearch.com/analyst/hanna-kahlert Further reading MIDiA Research: Clipping campaigns, marketing's next move in a fragmented attention economy Eliza McLamb: Fake Fans Dazed: If Geese are a psy-op, so is everything else Eliza Hatch: Cheer Up Luv Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org
July 1 · 57 min
Gomez's Tom Gray: How to Fight Spotify in Parliament and Why One Difficult Conversation a Day Is Enough - Part 2
Spotify paid Joe Rogan over $200 million for his podcast. Then, in 2024, they did it again. Tom Gray has spent the last five years thinking about what that kind of money could do for songwriters instead and his answer at the end of this episode is fascinating. In this week's episode, DiS founder Sean Adams is back with Tom Gray for the second part of a two-part conversation. Part 1 was about the music and the person. This one is about the fight: where the #BrokenRecord campaign came from, how it works, what it has won, and where it keeps hitting walls. Tom Gray is a Mercury Prize-winning songwriter and founding member of Gomez. Since 2020 he has been the founder of the Broken Record campaign, which began as a Twitter thread during the first lockdown and grew into one of the most significant efforts to change how songwriters and performing artists are paid in the streaming era. He has been Chair of The Ivors Academy since 2022 and stood as a Labour candidate for Brighton Pavilion in the 2024 general election. The episode opens with the origin of Broken Record: a tweet, a discovery that UK music copyright law was last substantially reformed in 1988, and the realisation that performing artists have no right to the equitable remuneration that has applied to radio play since the 1930s, because streaming platforms treat a stream as a sale rather than a broadcast. Tom explains how the (Kevin) Brennan Bill came together, including the ten-minute phone call in which it was named, and why the word "remuneration" nearly derailed the whole thing. From there it goes into Labour's relationship with tech, Daniel Ek's visit to Downing Street, the AI consultation process that Tom describes as a failure, and what it feels like to run for Parliament when you have spent four years arguing with the government about copyright law. The metadata problem gets a sharp section of its own: no regulation currently requires streaming platforms to record songwriter information at the point of upload, which creates conditions for fraud and erases the attribution chain entirely. And there is a significant exchange on Spotify's AI remixing feature, Nick Clegg's position at Meta, and what Tom calls "the copyright gang" and "the tech gang" operating in direct opposition inside Whitehall. The episode also gets into the EU Copyright Directive and why the UK failed to implement it, the CMA's 2022 music streaming market study, and what Chicago School economics has to do with how governments think about music monopolies. But the last twenty minutes are about hope. The per diem proposal for songwriters has gained real traction. Tom's belief that one difficult conversation a day, with whoever is in front of you, is more useful than waiting for systemic change. And the case for cautious optimism from someone who has been fighting this for five years and can see things starting to move. The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the pioneering high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles. Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) Visit: The Ivors Academy Read: Tom's original Broken Record Twitter thread (April 2020) Read: The (Kevin) Brennan Bill (Parliament.uk) Read: CMA Music and Streaming Market Study, November 2022 Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org
June 23 · 55 min
How Gomez's Tom Gray Ended Up Taking On Spotify in Parliament - Part 1
How do you go from winning the Mercury Prize to writing music for a CBeebies series about a pig named Hector and a very glamorous chicken named Pru? The answer takes in a Tim Buckley obsession that lasted five years, years of touring America with bands like Frightened Rabbit, and a Brighton theatre company you've almost certainly never heard of. In this week's episode, Sean finally sits down with Tom Gray, songwriter, founding member of Gomez, and the person behind the Broken Record campaign that took on Spotify. This is the first bit of a two-part conversation. This episode stays close to the music and the person: what it meant to make Bring It On in 1997, before home recording was what everyone did, and what it felt like when it won. Tom Gray is a songwriter and composer and a founding member of Gomez. The band's debut album Bring It On, recorded in bedrooms and back rooms when its members were 22 and 23, beat Massive Attack and Pulp to win the Mercury prize. He went on to write music for theatre and film, including the CBeebies animated series Tilly and Friends, based on Polly Dunbar's books. However, since 2020, Tom has been at the centre of one of the most significant debates in the British music industry. He founded the #BrokenRecord campaign, which started as a Twitter thread during the first lockdown and became a movement that put music creator rights onto the parliamentary agenda. Alongside the campaign, Tom has been Chair of The Ivors Academy since 2022 and stood as a Labour candidate for Brighton Pavilion in the 2024 general election. The conversation covers how Gomez happened: what making records at home without a budget or a studio actually does for the music, and the aesthetic of limitation that defined the band's early sound. Tom talks through the years he spent chasing down a slice of Tim Buckley's back catalogue, the anticipation of finally hearing the Starsailor album, the disappointment of actually listening to it, and the one track, 'Dolphins', that made the whole rabbit hole worth it. The conversation also gets into what the other Gomez members have been up to, including an Empire of the Sun connection, and the first threads of the streaming frustration that becomes the whole of Part 2. Part 2 is next week: more on the Broken Record campaign, the Kevin Brennan Bill, and AI. The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the pioneering high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles. Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) Visit: The Ivors Academy Listen to: Dolphins - Tim Buckley (Sefronia, 1973) - original by Fred Neil (Fred Neil, 1967) Watch: Tilly and Friends on CBeebies Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org
June 16 · 1 hr 7 min
Geoff Barrow (Portishead) Made a Film with a Sleaford Mod and Every Penny Invada Had
What do you do when everyone tells you that you can't make a film without the right connections, the right funding, the right people saying yes? If you're Geoff Barrow, you spend everything Invada Records has on proving them wrong. And the result is a fantastic watch. In this week's episode, Sean Adams sat in the sun outside Geoff's home near Portishead to talk about GAME, the debut feature from Invada Films, a gripping rural thriller set against the backdrop of the 1993 British rave scene. It stars Marc Bessant and Jason Williamson from Sleaford Mods as a dealer and a poacher locked in a tense standoff deep in the Somerset woods. It was shot for £150,000 (essentially all the money Invada had), and it was written, produced and distributed from Bristol, by people who actually lived in that world. Geoff Barrow started out as a tape op for Massive Attack before co-founding Portishead. He runs Invada Records in Bristol, which has released soundtracks for Drive, Stranger Things and Red Dead Redemption alongside records by Gazelle Twin, Billy Nomates, Beak> and more. Alongside Ben Salisbury, Barrow has scored Ex Machina, Annihilation, Civil War, Black Mirror and many more. However, GAME is something different: his first credit as producer and co-writer of a feature film. They talk about why making GAME felt like a reaction to being told no, and how a five-hour session with a friend who had been both a poacher and a countryside rave supplier in the early 90s shaped the script. The conversation also gets into why casting Jason Williamson was an obvious call the moment it came up, why Geoff stripped the score back to almost nothing (he has spent enough years watching low-budget films drown themselves in music to know what it does), and how a football teammate called DJ Smudge ended up making the period-accurate 1993 bangers on the soundtrack. From there the conversation goes wider: the inside story of how Invada came to release the Drive soundtrack, why Mica Levi's Under the Skin changed what Geoff thought a film score could be, why Kangding Ray's Sirāt gave him a similar jolt more recently, what it was like working with Alex Garland and Ben Wheatley, why Low's Double Negative is one of the most important records of the 21st century, how the people who went to those countryside raves in 1993 ended up voting Reform, what he'd do with £500 million if he had it, and what all of his records would taste like. GAME has its live stream premiere on Thursday 18 June at 7:30pm BST. Tickets are £5 and available everywhere except North America. Geoff, director John Minton, Marc Bessant and screenwriter Rob Williams will all be in the live chat taking questions, hosted by Paul Weedon. Get your ticket at https://watch.eventive.org/invadafilms/play/69c69adff08307d6b404d921 🎧 The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the pioneering high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles. Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to hear our podcast companion playlist and discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality. To start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz head to https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) GAME (Invada Films) https://www.invadafilms.co.uk/ GAME tickets, Blu-ray, vinyl and more https://linktr.ee/InvadaFilmsGame GAME Limited Edition Orange Vinyl (300 copies, signed) pre-order https://www.invada.co.uk/collections/game Invada Records https://www.invada.co.uk/ Recorded, engineered and hosted by Sean Adams (seaninsound.com) at Geoff's home near Portishead, Bristol. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org
June 9 · 1 hr 1 min
Sathnam Sanghera on George Michael: Iraq, Wham!, Empire, Fandom, and The Best Hit Rate in Chart History
George Michael had the highest hit rate in the history of the US Hot 100. Nineteen entries, eight number ones. 'Last Christmas' has been covered more than four hundred times. Ten years after his death, there's been no big tribute concert, no statue, and almost no serious book about his cultural legacy. Until now... Sean Adams and Helena Wadia spoke to Sathnam Sanghera, historian, journalist, and lifelong George Michael fan, about his new book Tonight the Music Seems So Loud: The Meaning of George Michael. Sathnam Sanghera is the author of Empireland (British Book Award for Narrative Non-Fiction, Channel 4 documentary), Marriage Material (shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, adapted for stage in 2025), and The Boy with the Topknot (Mind Book of the Year, BBC film). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society, and has been a George Michael fan since inheriting the bug from his sisters during Wham! mania in the mid-1980s. Tonight the Music Seems So Loud is a portrait of George Michael that doubles as an account of a turbulent period in British history, and this conversation covers most of it. Sathnam explains why Wham! was essentially a solo act, why George's perfectionism mattered (twelve hours on the vocal for 'Kissing a Fool', six months producing 'Fastlove', gaps of up to five years between albums), and how 'Last Christmas' was written in an afternoon while Andrew Ridgeley watched Match of the Day downstairs. The conversation goes well beyond standard fan-book territory. Sathnam makes the case that George Michael's activism has dated better than almost any British pop star of his era: he was publicly opposing the Iraq war before the marches, campaigning on AIDS while the tabloids used every appearance as an opportunity to out him, and he split up Wham! partly in protest at the management's involvement with an apartheid-era South African company. The Sony lawsuit, which cost him five years and millions of pounds, was fought on behalf of all artists, not just himself. The immigrant angle runs throughout: both George's Greek-Cypriot father and Andrew Ridgeley's Egyptian father came to Britain as a direct consequence of the British Empire, the faith-era aesthetic owes as much to immigrant overdressing as anything else, and Sathnam traces surprising parallel lives between a Greek-Cypriot boy from Finchley and a Punjabi boy from Wolverhampton. The episode also asks what George would do with £500 million extracted from the music industry, whether his 1998 outing was a turning point for press homophobia, and why a musician playing in every shopping mall on earth still has no statue. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to hear our podcast companion playlist and discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality. To start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz head to https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) Co-hosted by Helena Wadia, who also co-hosts the Media Storm podcast: https://mediastormpodcast.com/about-us/ Sathnam Sanghera / Tonight the Music Seems So Loud https://www.sathnam.com/ instagram.com/sathnamsanghera Further reading Sathnam Sanghera: Empireland and other books Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org
June 4 · 48 min
Los Campesinos! Part! Two! On Class, Privilege, And The Economics Of Bands vs Solo Artists
What happens when you can no longer subsidize creativity with a second job? Part 2 of our conversation with Gareth David digs into the real cost of being a musician in 2026: visa fees, tour buses, the collapse of sync deals, and the brutal math that's turning bedroom producers into solo acts instead of bands. In Part 2, Gareth explains how the economics of live music are excluding new artists entirely, why class matters more than talent, what happens when a breakup tour costs 50 quid and a reunion costs 100, and whether music could ever work as a genuinely not-for-profit industry. We also discuss Los Campesinos! 20-year evolution, why they won't do reunion theatrics, the uncomfortable politics of being an openly leftist band, why low-income tickets matter (and why more bands won't do them), and what he'd do with £500 million to fix the industry. Plus: his actual dream for the next 20 years. Gareth is the lyricist and lead singer of Los Campesinos!, a band who've been walking the walk for twenty years: unconditional support for trans people, rejecting unaligned brand money, low-income tickets for fans, and now, brutal honesty about how much (or how little) the music industry actually pays. In Part 2, he gets into the systemic economics that are reshaping what kind of music gets made and who gets to make it. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to hear our podcast companion playlist and discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality. To start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz head to https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) Co-hosted by Helena Wadia, who also co-hosts the Media Storm podcast: https://mediastormpodcast.com/about-us/ Los Campesinos! https://loscampesinos.com/ Further reading How much Los Campesinos! made from Spotify US tour budget breakdown Explainer of Dublin show budget Recorded remotely. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org
May 26 · 47 min
You! Me! 10 Million Spotify Streams! How Much?!?!! Why Los Campesinos! Stopped Being Quiet - Part 1
What do bands actually make from ten million Spotify streams? About £32k... In Part 1 of this conversation, Gareth David from Los Campesinos! walks Helena Wadia and Sean Adams through the numbers and how he felt about Spotify's response. This radical financial transparency about streaming also goes into the platform's payout structure that puts artists in direct competition with each other, and explains why "just support artists on Bandcamp" misses the complexity of who actually owns the rights. Gareth is the lyricist and lead singer of Los Campesinos!, a band who've been walking the walk for twenty years: unconditional support for trans people, rejecting unaligned brand money, low-income tickets for fans, and now, brutal honesty about how much (or how little) the music industry actually pays. In part 1, Gareth explains the economics of streaming, the difference between artists and rights holders, and what happens when you release an album the same month as Taylor Swift. Next week, Part 2 goes into their sold-out 2024 North American tour accounts, where nearly £50,000 went on a tour bus alone. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to hear our podcast companion playlist and discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality. To start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz head to https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) Co-hosted by Helena Wadia, who also co-hosts the Media Storm podcast: https://mediastormpodcast.com/about-us/ Los Campesinos https://loscampesinos.com/ Further reading How much Los Campesinos made from Spotify US tour budget breakdown Explainer of Dublin show budget Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org 00:00:00 - Welcome, Los Campesinos, and radical transparency 00:02:13 - Starting the band on message boards 00:04:06 - Why Gareth decided to share specific numbers 00:06:39 - The shock of the real streaming numbers 00:09:21 - What's the most ethical way to support bands 00:11:52 - Rights holders vs. artists on Bandcamp 00:13:16 - Spotify's response to transparency criticism 00:17:22 - Taylor Swift and the algorithm's impact 00:18:44 - Keeping music on Spotify while critiquing the platform 00:22:11 - Newsletter break and topic switch 00:23:34 - Why tour transparency matters to Los Campesinos fans 00:24:30 - Come to Brazil, come to Australia (but why they can't) 00:27:30 - How touring with two children changes everything 00:28:55 - Making venue logistics work with kids on tour 00:31:44 - Qobuz sponsorship message 00:32:59 - Keeping ticket prices low as an ideological choice 00:35:35 - Low-income tickets and the ticket bank 00:39:47 - Part 2 announcement and tour income preview
May 20 · 1 hr 3 min
AI & Consent Special with Addison Rae, Dua Lipa and Taylor Swift featuring Dr Hayleigh Bosher
Helena Wadia and Sean Adams caught up with intellectual property expert Dr Hayleigh Bosher to discuss AI, Addison Rae, ICE, Taylor Swift, deep fakes, trademarks, consent, copyright, Samsung, and Dua Lipa. The episode begins with our reaction to this clip of Lambrini Girls on Channel 4, in which Phoebe says "AI is going to be the thing that kills art entirely." Don't worry, this isn't just doom-spiralling about our descent into technofascism, this episode hopefully answers everything you wanted to know about the contractions of the tech revolution we're living through. In this wide ranging chat about AI, consent, copyright, and double standards, we discuss whether Addison Rae might win her case against ICE for using her music without her consent (at the time of publishing, the video is still on Insatgram here). Explore why Taylor Swift is trademarking herself and whether it will it stop deep fakes. And we explore why Dua Lipa is suing Samsung for £15m?! We also touch upon the UK government's AI consultation. Dr. Hayleigh Bosher appeared on season 1 of the Drowned in Sound podcast. She's a goto for breaking news on BBC and Sky, because she's an expert in Intellectual Property Law at Brunel University London, specialising in copyright within the creative industries, particularly music, social media, and AI. She authored the book Copyright in the Music Industry (order the second edition), hosts the podcast Whose Song is it Anyway? You'll find all of Hayleigh’s links here. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to hear our weekly podcast companion playlists and discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) p.s. Helena's podcast Media Storm returns this week, make sure you're subscribed on Apple Podcasts.
May 14 · 40 min
Ticket Touts Rejoice! DiS & Which? React to The King's Speech
"Disappointing" is the word of the week in the UK music biz, after the UK government seem to have kicked the can down the road on tackling ticket touts aka "secondary ticketing". Why? The King's Speech happened yesterday. The Keir Starmer's Labour government promised to end ticket touting. And yet... What we got was a draft bill. Buried on page 64 of a supplementary document. Not in the speech itself. Not legislation. Not a law. A draft, which means more consultations, an uncertain timeline, and the door left open for the secondary ticketing platforms to shape whatever comes next. DiS podcast host Sean Adams revisits the full sixteen-year history of this fight, from Sharon Hodgson's Private Member's Bill in 2010, through the Channel 4 Dispatches investigation, the Waterson Review, the founding of the FanFair Alliance, the Digital Economy Act, the CMA's rejected recommendations, Labour's manifesto promise, the Oasis dynamic pricing scandal, and the November 2025 announcement that made everyone think change was finally coming. Then he's rejoined by Kat Cereda, spokesperson for Which?, to dig into what a draft bill actually means, why secondary ticketing websites getting involved in shaping the legislation is exactly what campaigners feared, and what Which? does next. And at the end of the episode, Adam Webb from the FanFair Alliance gives his reaction - he's someone who has been in the trenches of this campaign since 2016. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org Which? Stop Fleecing Fans campaign: https://www.which.co.uk/campaigns/stop-fleecing-fans FanFair Alliance https://fanfairalliance.org/ Music Fans Voice https://musicfansvoice.uk/ CMS Committee Fan-Led Review of Live and Electronic Music https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/378/culture-media-and-sport-committee/news/213147/ Further reading Everything you need to know about gig tickets: https://www.drownedinsound.org/gig-tickets/ Previous episodes in this series Kat Cereda (Which?) on the open letter to Keir Starmer: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-uk-government-promised-to-end-ticket-touting-so/id1037405920?i=1000764130066 Adam Webb (FanFair Alliance) on ticket resale and the FanFair campaign: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/uk-caps-ticket-resale-at-face-value-what-took-so-long/id1037405920?i=1000737461606 Z18i9TJgd0qOHYOLDtzN
May 5 · 41 min
Two Music Fans. One Astonishing Fan-Led Review of Live & Electronic Music
Over 4,000 music fans responded to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s Fan-Led Review into Live Music and Electronic Music and in this week's episode DiS founder Sean Adams and co-host Helena Wadia reacted to this important report that could revolutionise live music in the UK. Alongside the in-depth analysis of the state of live music and what music fans want, there's also The Fans' Charter. Much shorter than the 100-page report, the Fans' Charter has 50 recommendations that the government, the industry, and local authorities should implement, from ending ticket touting to improving late night transport and simple things like the live industry sharing timings so fans can plan their night out accordingly. We would urge you to head over here to read the fan-led review and then pop your postcode into TheyWorkForYou and WhoCanIVoteFor to gently encourage your representatives to read the report. The government have less than 2 months to respond and the more MPs, councillors, and mayors that read it, the better. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to hear Helena's playlist and to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality. Start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. This episode was edited by: http://tell.studio Co-hosted by Helena Wadia, who also co-hosts the Media Storm podcast: https://mediastormpodcast.com/about-us/ Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Sign up to our newsletter at http://drownedinsound.org
April 28 · 33 min
The UK government promised to end ticket touting. So why hasn't it?
Before the UK's general election, Labour's 2024 manifesto promised to "put fans back at the heart of events" by ending ticket touting. Then, when in power, the Labour government made confirmed the plan in November 2025. And yet here we are in April 2026, with no legislation, and reports that the Ticketing Bill may not even appear in the King's Speech on 13 May. But what we do have is the fan-led review of live music, urging the government to enact this change. This is the first episode of a new series on power and double standards in music - who has it, how it works, and what fans can actually do both individually and collectively to change things. To kick things off, DiS founder Sean Adams and co-host Helena Wadia are joined by Kat Cereda, spokesperson for Which?, to dig into the consumer rights organisation's open letter calling on Keir Starmer to include a Ticketing Bill in the King's Speech and cap ticket resales at face value. The coalition of signatories is striking: AEG Presents, the Featured Artists Coalition, ATC Management (Nick Cave, Radiohead), Wildlife Entertainment (Arctic Monkeys, Fontaines DC), Grumpy Old Management (Ed Sheeran), the Music Venue Trust, Live Nation, Ticketmaster and more - united in calling on the government to deliver on its manifesto commitment before the window closes. They cover: Why Which?, who are perhaps best known for testing washing machines, is exactly the right organisation to lead this fight How secondary ticketing has grown from "the old man in a trenchcoat outside the venue" to international criminal operations with links to Dubai and Delaware The numbers: resellers stand to make an estimated £24 million from fans this summer alone; a Harry Styles ticket at £200 face value listed at £3,622; an Ariana Grande ticket at £135 listed at £2,835; a BTS ticket at £450 listed at £4,872 that's a whopping 312% markup; and a Raye ticket at All Points East listed on Viagogo at £140,000 Speculative selling: listing tickets touts don't even own yet How fans could save £112 million a year if a price cap were introduced. This is the government's own figure! Why the King's Speech on 13th May is the only real accountability test, and what it means if the bill isn't in it The CMS Committee's independent fan-led review, published just this month, which calls on the government to act "without delay" (more on that next week) What 91% of over 8,000 Music Fans Voice survey respondents agree on Platforms like Twickets and Dice that are already doing it right What you can do right now to keep the pressure on Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. This episode was edited by: http://tell.studio Which? Stop Fleecing Fans campaign: https://www.which.co.uk/campaigns/stop-fleecing-fans Open letter to the Prime Minister (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/which_open-letter-to-the-prime-minister-activity-7453362314151469056-LwME Which? on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DXgfoKVFrtA/ Co-hosted by Helena Wadia, who also co-hosts the Media Storm podcast: https://mediastormpodcast.com/about-us/ Further reading CMS Committee Fan-Led Review of Live and Electronic Music (April 2026): https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/378/culture-media-and-sport-committee/news/213147/calls-for-new-music-fan-association-to-boost-fan-involvement-as-review-publishes-charter-to-safeguard-live-music-sector/ Previous episode Adam Webb (FanFair Alliance) on ticket resale and the FanFair Alliance's campaign: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/uk-caps-ticket-resale-at-face-value-what-took-so-long/id1037405920?i=1000737461606 Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Sign up to our newsletter at http://drownedinsound.org
April 22 · 22 min
Movements & Music - Introducing Sounds Like Change
Drowned in Sound is thrilled to reveal the first series in our new podcast network, with more shows to be announced soon. Hosted by music and social change expert, start-up founder, and campaign organiser Ariana Alexander-Sefre, Sounds Like Change brings together artists, thinkers, and changemakers to explore the profound role music plays in shaping our mental health, identities, and collective futures. The podcast manages to merge a fresh perspective on activism with an len through which we clearly can see music as a cultural force with the power to shift how we feel, relate, and act in a society that has left so many of us feeling hopeless Each episode starts with a song of hope chosen by the guest, then moves from personal stories to wider societal questions, and ultimately toward imagining better futures. Conversations are interwoven with moments of sound and reflection, creating space to feel and process. In this edition of the Drowned in Sound podcast, we introduce you to Ariana and share a taste of the pilot episode, with Drowned in Sound founder and our podcast host, Sean Adams, talking about the role artists like Dead Prez and David Bowie played in his political awakening. Ahead of the first episode, you can now subscribe to Sounds Like Change on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Give the show a follow on Instagram here. To contact the show or pitch ideas please email podcasts@drownedinsound.org. This week's playlist + Qobuz free trial. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to hear Sean's political awakenings playlist and discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality. Start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt)
March 24 · 33 min
Nobody Consented to This: How AI Is Using Artists' Music, Voices and Likenesses Without Permission
Is AI a human rights issue for musicians? And why isn't the UK government treating it like one? In Part 2 of our conversation with David Martin, CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition, we turn to the question that kept us talking long after we'd wrapped the UK Artist Touring Fund discussion: what happens when AI platforms train on artists' recordings, voices, and likenesses without their consent? David explains why the FAC and the Council of Music Makers see protecting human creativity as fundamentally important, why record contracts signed in 2020 couldn't possibly have granted consent for AI uses artists didn't understand, and why the deals major labels have struck with AI platforms are, in his words, a scandal. Sean connects this to the UK government's investment in AI data centres and tax breaks, while 125,000 music industry workers and the Music Export Growth Scheme's entire annual budget sits at just £1.6 million. They also get into David's answer to the £500 million question, why he thinks music in 2050 will be better than ever, the difference between AI hype and the NFT bubble, and why venues with broken dressing room windows in minus-four weather tell you everything about where the money actually goes. This is the final episode of our season loosely themed around resilience. Send your questions to podcast@drownedinsound.org for an upcoming Ask Me Anything episode. Links: Featured Artists Coalition https://www.featuredartistscoalition.com Council of Music Makers https://councilofmusicmakers.org Musicians' Union https://themu.org Music Managers Forum https://themmf.net Music Export Growth Scheme https://www.bpi.co.uk/fund/music-export-growth-scheme/ This week's playlist: artists who speak up about AI + Qobuz free trial. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) For 25 years our publication and podcast has recommended music. We now also spark conversations and create resources to help music fans discover their collective power.
March 17 · 47 min
Can £125,000 Make a Difference to the Crisis in Live Music?
The UK music industry generated £7.6 billion last year. Taylor Swift became a billionaire off the back of a tour. So why are some artists still losing money every time they play a show? That's the question at the heart of this episode, as Sean sits down with David Martin, CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), and musician and former FAC board member Roxanne de Bastion to talk about the newly launched UK Artist Touring Fund (UKAT). Applications are open now. If you are a touring artist, go to thefac.org/ukatfund before midnight on 20 March 2026. Or stay tuned for phase two. The fund distributes money raised through a voluntary £1 levy on arena and stadium tickets - contributed by tours from artists including Harry Styles, Katy Perry, Coldplay, Radiohead and Enter Shikari - to help emerging and mid-tier artists cover genuine shortfalls on their UK headline tours. In Phase One, artists can receive up to £7,000, covering up to 40% of tour expenditure. In this episode we cover: - Why the music industry can be booming at the top while artists on the road are losing money every night - and how British artists' share of the global market has fallen from around 17% to 9% in the last nine years. - The real costs of touring - from Travelodge bills and van hire to session fees, sound engineers and childcare - and how costs have risen sharply since 2022 while support fees have barely moved in decades. - Why record labels stopped providing tour support, and what that has meant for the generation of artists trying to develop their careers on the road. - How UKAT works: who qualifies, what it covers, why support tours are excluded from Phase One (and when that changes), and the separate access fund for artists with disabilities, caring responsibilities or other access needs. - The Live Nation question - how the UK's biggest promoter reports losses in its UK entity while the wider group generates billions globally through Ticketmaster and venue operations - and what it would take to bring major players fully into the levy. - Why funding touring is also a working-class issue: every genre the UK is globally known for - grime, drum and bass, early rock and pop - came from working-class underground movements, and rising costs are pricing those voices out. - The safety argument: as David describes, sending artists out on the road without the resources to do it properly is not just a financial issue - it is a physical safety issue. The death of Viola Beach is a reference point nobody in the industry has forgotten. - What Roxanne would spend £500 million on, and what both guests hope and fear music will be like in 2050. Visit drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at qobuz.com/dis. Links UKAT Fund - apply by 20 March 2026: thefac.org/ukatfund Featured Artists Coalition: thefac.org Roxanne de Bastion: roxannedebastion.com/ Los Campesinos! touring economics breakdown: https://community.drownedinsound.com/t/how-los-campesinos-lost-over-1000-playing-a-sold-out-show-in-dublin/87034 Enter Shikari / Rou Reynolds episode: https://youtu.be/gTkSAokv6UU?si=vBeWvwp7y2l78I3A Join the DiS community: community.drownedinsound.com DiS newsletter signup: drownedinsound.org Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt)
March 10 · 58 min
Why Does Electronic Music Sound Like Shoegaze? Art School Girlfriend on Lean In, positive nihilism, and making music for fun
What does it mean to lean in? Not to your career, not to the algorithm but to the act of making music itself? Polly Mackey, the artist, musician, songwriter and producer behind Art School Girlfriend, nearly walked away from releasing music altogether. Instead, she built a studio in East London, completed a Master's thesis on how electronic music can feel human, and made Lean In, her third album, out now on Fiction Records. It might be the most emotionally honest thing she's made. In this conversation, Polly and Sean talk about why she's drawn to the emotional geography between shoegaze and electronic music, the Ableton water-simulation plugins that shaped the record's sound, and what it felt like to study her own creative process while writing the songs. They also get into the bigger questions: Is the album format in crisis? Who actually benefits when music is "democratised"? And what happens to the music industry when the barrier to entry used to be £350 rent in Dalston? Plus: Polly's memories of trying to buy a Slayer album at 10 years old, what her three records taste like (one of them tastes like tears), touring as a three-piece with her wife Marika Hackman, and a genuinely lovely answer about what she hopes music looks like in 2050. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Links Art School Girlfriend: artschoolgirlfriend.co.uk Marika Hackman: marikahackman.com Shy Radicals (film/book): Good Press Foundation FM: Art School Girlfriend's Radio Show Join the DiS community: http://community.drownedinsound.com Subscribe to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) Chapters 00:00:00 - Introduction and Qobuz playlist 00:02:27 - Meet Polly Mackey 00:03:50 - Soft Landing vs Lean In 00:06:30 - Growing up on nu metal in North Wales 00:09:30 - What music would taste like 00:10:54 - Why electronic music sounds like shoegaze 00:13:50 - The Slink Devices water plugin 00:18:00 - Rewilding electronic music 00:19:15 - The MA thesis: sonic objects of intimacy 00:20:10 - Digital silence and The New Analog 00:24:00 - Positive nihilism 00:27:50 - Emma's newsletter ad 00:28:34 - Is the album format in crisis? 00:33:50 - Self-producing Lean In and mixing with Riley MacIntyre 00:34:10 - Sensory overwhelm and Doing Laps 00:36:00 - Translating the record to the live stage 00:38:57 - Qobuz ad 00:40:13 - Shy Radicals, Arlo Parks and the queer bookshop 00:43:40 - £500 million: geography vs class in the music industry 00:51:30 - How to ethically support artists you love 00:52:38 - What music should look like in 2050 00:54:35 - Outro
March 3 · 52 min
What If You Could Taste Music? kwes. on his "dreamy" new LP on Warp
What happens when a producer and musician working with Solange, Rosie Lowe, Loyle Carner, and Kelela burns out, and a spilled glass of water shows him the way back? Kwes. (Kwesi Sey) has spent fifteen years at the centre of London's most boundary-pushing music, from working with Bobby Womack to the Rye Lane soundtrack. But after years of studio sessions and collaborations, he needed a reset. The catalyst came from his daughter: she knocked over a drink mid-drawing, shrugged it off, and carried on. That moment became the blueprint for his new album Kinds, made in six months of late-night flow states, half-asleep at the keyboard. The result is a 29-minute meditation on colour, memory, and sound. Every track is named after the hues kwes. experiences through synesthesia / chromesthesia (hearing colours). We talk about making music without overthinking, why ambient records aren't minimal, the discipline of producing for other artists versus creating your own work, and what Beach Boys albums taste like. Sean and kwes. also discuss burnout and creative recovery, the London scene that connects Damon Albarn to Tirzah to Speech Debelle, and why London needs creative spaces with affordable accommodation. kwes. reflects on the Barbican and Tate Modern premieres for Kinds, working with visual artist Ryan Vautier, and his hope that one day we'll be able to smell sound. If there's a thread running through it all, it's this: rest is political. And sometimes the most radical thing you can do is stop overthinking and just make. Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis. Edited by: tell.studio (Phil, Louisa, Owen, Matt) Continue the Conversation: Head to the Drowned in Sound community to chat about the topics in this episode. Subscribe: Get weekly essays, interviews, and insights from the Drowned in Sound newsletter - exploring music, culture, and resistance. Links & Resources: kwes.: Official website: https://kwes.info Bandcamp: https://kwesmusic.bandcamp.com Warp Records: https://warp.net/artists/kwes/ Films & Soundtracks: Rye Lane (dir. Raine Allen-Miller): https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001k3tb/rye-lane Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story: https://www.londonsff.com/black-is-beautiful Some of the artists mentioned: Coby Sey (kwes.'s brother): https://cobysey.bandcamp.com Elan Tamara (kwes.'s wife): https://elantamara.bandcamp.com Loyle Carner: https://loylecarner.com Kelela: https://www.kelela.com Tirzah: https://tirzah.co.uk Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre in London Chapters: 00:00:00 - Introduction 03:00:00 - What is minimalism? 06:15:00 - Working with Solange and Kelela 10:45:00 - The spilled drink catalyst 14:30:00 - Making the record after burnout 19:00:00 - Flow state and late-night writing 22:25:00 - Newsletter ad break 25:00:00 - Barbican and Tate Modern premieres 28:30:00 - Synesthesia and colour-coded tracks 32:00:00 - Qobuz ad break 35:00:00 - Brian Eno and ambient music 40:00:00 - Inspirations: Beach Boys, Pat Metheny 47:00:00 - What does music taste like? 50:30:00 - Creative spaces and accommodation 54:00:00 - Hope for music in 2050
February 24 · 1 hr 10 min
The Grassroots Pledge: Wrestling Instagram, Spotify, and the Arts Council with promoter David Littlefair
What does it actually mean to be a grassroots music promoter in 2026? David Littlefair joins the Drowned in Sound Podcast to discuss the grassroots pledge he's made with Marrapalooza, the DIY festival in Newcastle's Ouseburn Valley - redirecting ad spend away from Meta, refusing to book artists based on follower counts, and putting money back into the local scene instead of offshore platforms. We also get into the bigger picture: why 85% of Arts Council music funding goes to opera and classical music while brass bands and folk get 0.6% each, how Spotify has spent fifteen years extracting hundreds of millions from British artists, and why the grassroots levy risks being offshored by Instagram ads. David speaks from twenty years of promoting in the North East - from £1-on-the-door pub nights in Sunderland to putting on Sam Fender's second ever gig, to building a festival with a clear political philosophy. He talks about "algorithm begging," the case for community-owned venues modelled on working men's clubs, nd what he'd do with Daniel Ek's £500 million. The Drowned in Sound Podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz - the ethical music streaming platform for music enthusiasts. Start your free trial at drownedinsound.org/playlists. This week's playlist (Jan/Feb 2026 favourites) + Qobuz free trial https://www.drownedinsound.org/playlists + Subscribe to the DiS Newsletter https://www.drownedinsound.org/newsletter Links: 🎪 Marrapalooza 4: Wild and Fierce and Not Bothered — June 5–7 2026, Newcastle https://marrapalooza.co.uk 📄 Youth Music — "Just The Way It Is?" report https://www.youthmusic.org.uk 📄 IPPR — State of the North (arts and culture spending) https://www.ippr.org 📗 Liz Pelly — Mood Machine (Spotify book) https://lizpelly.info 🎵 Portions For Foxes (David's promoting name) — named after the Rilo Kiley song Credits: Hosted, engineered, edited, researched, and produced by Sean Adams. Edited and mixed by Tell Studio. Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Guest: David Littlefair (Marrapalooza / Portions For Foxes). For 25 years our publication and podcast has recommended music. We now also spark conversations and create resources to help music fans discover their collective power. Mentioned in this episode: Marrapalooza · Portions For Foxes · Los Campesinos! · Soak · Milkweed · Lande Hekt · Jim Ghedi · Gwennifer Raymond · The Chisel · Militarie Gun · Mandrake Handshake · Sam Fender · Field Music · The Futureheads · Rilo Kiley · Caribou · Hundred Reasons · Kelly Lee Owens · PVA · Ella Harris · Gruff Rhys · Benefits · Ex Vöid · Justin Hawkins / The Darkness · Liz Pelly · Music Venue Trust · Arts Council England · PRS for Music · Help Musicians · Featured Artists Coalition · Democratic Business Alliance · Brass Band England · Qobuz · Spotify / Daniel Ek · Youth Music · Music Declares Emergency
February 19 · 56 min
When Boycotts Work: Arms, Hope and Soundtracking Brexit with Gazelle Twin
This is a conversation about what happens when artists discover their collective power. In May 2025, electronic artist Gazelle Twin withdrew from her Kings Place residency over the venue's decision to host an arms industry conference sponsored by Lockheed Martin. Eleven days later, after 1,200+ artists and fans signed an open letter, Kings Place cancelled the event. Elizabeth Bernholz (Gazelle Twin) talks about that moment and so much more. The musician meets Drowned in Sound founder to discuss creating Pastoral - the Brexit-adjacent album that Drowned in Sound gave 10/10 - moving from liberal Brighton to conservative rural England, the Fever Ray performance that changed everything, and why she performed unmasked for the first time for the album Black Dog after fourteen years... We discuss the practical tactics of organizing boycotts, how PRS Foundation funding enabled some of her most political work, balancing motherhood with touring and activism, film scoring (Nocturne, The Power) as financial stability, and why she believes Ireland's basic income for musicians could transform the industry. From "jaded, frustrated and largely insulted" by the music industry in 2009 to successfully being part of a boycott of the arms industry in 2025 - this is a story about resilience, solidarity, and the power of saying no. LINKS: Gazelle Twin: Official website: https://www.gazelletwin.com Bandcamp: https://gazelletwin.bandcamp.com Instagram: @gazelletwin Organizations Mentioned: PRS Foundation: https://prsfoundation.com Help Musicians: https://www.helpmusicians.org.uk Music Venue Trust: https://www.musicvenuetrust.com Drowned in Sound: Newsletter signup: https://drownedinsound.org This week's playlist (featuring Gazelle Twin, Björk, David Bowie + Nine Inch Nails, Halsey): https://drownedinsound.org/playlists DiS review of Pastoral (10/10): https://drownedinsound.com/releases/20441/reviews/4152045 Try Qobuz - Free 30-day trial of high-quality, artist-friendly streaming: https://drownedinsound.org/playlists (includes Qobuz free trial link) CREDITS: Host: Sean Adams (Drowned in Sound founder) Guest: Gazelle Twin (Elizabeth Bernholz) Recorded at: The Shure Experience Centre, London Mixed & Edited by: TELL Studios Presented in partnership with: Qobuz - the ethical music streaming platform For 25 years, Drowned in Sound has recommended music. We now also spark conversations and create resources to help music fans discover their collective power. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube Newsletter signup: https://drownedinsound.org Instagram: @drownedinsound Playlist: https://drownedinsound.org/playlists CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Introduction: Do Boycotts Actually Work? 03:48 - Pastoral and Excavating English Identity After Brexit 07:27 - Soundtracking National Horror 11:15 - The Fever Ray Epiphany: Costume as Liberation 14:30 - PRS Foundation Funding and DIY Sustainability 19:00 - Kings Place Boycott: How It Worked 23:45 - Advice for Artists Taking Stands 27:30 - Somerset House Residency and Continuing the Work 32:15 - [QOBUZ AD] 35:20 - Black Dog: Performing Unmasked for the First Time 38:45 - Film Scoring as Financial Stability 42:00 - Music as Therapy and Processing 44:30 - Motherhood, Touring, and Sustainability 47:15 - Ireland's Basic Income for Musicians 49:40 - £500 Million Question: Fixing the Music Industry 53:00 - Outro: The Power of Collective Action MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Gazelle Twin (Elizabeth Bernholz), Fever Ray, MF DOOM, Nigel Farage, Daniel Ek, Scott Walker, Björk, Halsey, David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, PRS Foundation, Kings Place, Lockheed Martin, Somerset House, Drowned in Sound, The Quietus, Ireland, Brighton, East Midlands. Film Scores: Nocturne (2020) The Power (2021, with Max de Wardener)