đ” Finding hope amid dark, uncertain times
The state we are in, and the positive paths forward
Hi there -
My apologies for the lack of updates in recent weeks. I took a weekâs holiday to Spain, then promptly came down with a nasty bronchial infection on my second day there which not only scotched the holiday, but has left me on antibiotics since, trying to shake this off. Iâm finally on the mend, but even now am running on constantly low batteries such that writing (and the contemplation required prior to doing so) has been difficult. For the next few editions, I may forego delivering wider news on top of my own article; compiling it all takes a long time, and right now I only have limited hours in the day to work at all.
Anyway - pity party done, letâs crack on!
I will confess that of late, conversations with fellow industry peers have felt rather bleak. As culture fragments into ever-more-tiny pieces, there is a palpable sense of confusion and even panic among labels, managers and artists. Many I am talking to are expecting 2025 to be a truly difficult year, as catalogue plays diminish, thus cutting much-relied-upon revenues, and the job of breaking new artists starts to feel harder and harder (as if it wasnât difficult enough to start with).
Alongside this, significant sums of money are being thrown around - more, some A&R colleagues suggest, than is realistic. It amounts to a solid pay day for artists, upfront anyway, but recouping any of that might prove dangerously difficult. Talk to some and it feels like a time bomb is ticking, in which none of these artists might recoup and a crash of sorts might happen further down the line when labels cannot deliver the returns required of such large outlays, especially labels who have shareholders or investors to answer to.
A bleak picture then, if one chooses to focus only on the negatives.
Amid all of this though, I am seeing some positive signs of change.
I think it might be fair to say that at times, marketing (and A&R) in music has been like ambulance chasing; labels, managers, agencies and others all running after the latest trends and fads, hoping for quick wins and often learning the hard way that this does not make for a workable long-term strategy.
Now though, things seem to be changing. Increasingly, in conversations I am having with industry peers, there is a realisation that we need to have more faith in the quality of what is being signed, and to return to more long-term approaches to A&R and artist development.
There is no question that culture has been fragmented - decimated, even - such that it is now spread so thinly that delivering artists around which high numbers of people can rally is a monumental uphill struggle.
âIâll say it: I miss the days of monoculture,â one industry friend remarked to me earlier.
I agree; itâs tough not to feel nostalgic for those days where getting on the A List at Radio 1 was a near guarantee of imminent success.
Those days have gone, however, and it is time to think more pragmatically about artist development. I still feel the basic tenets underpinning both music and marketing remain the same. Our role is to take artists to market, building connections with fans and giving them reasons to feel invested in this artist over thousands of others.
In music, especially this century, there has been a constant, uneasy, push-pull cycle around Big Tech and its involvement in our industry. For a good while, iTunes was the 600lb gorilla in the room that everyone needed to please. With near-total market dominance, Apple was able to dictate terms to labels and everyone had to follow that lead.
Then, Spotify, backed by the support of the majors and Merlin, was slowly able to build its own market position, until we get to today where it arguably sits at the top of the heap, and is again somewhat dominant in influencing the fortunes of artists and labels.
In 2024, however, something about that dynamic has slipped. I think the main factor is the removal (or reduction) of human editorial at Spotify, thus making the company something of a dead-end in terms of securing support, on the basis there are few people there to actually chat to in a bid to sell them on your artist over many others.
Big Tech, then, continues its march to try and decimate culture. Algorithms attempt to tell us what we should listen to next, and they need us to be reliant on that. Which, I appreciate, sounds rather âtinfoil hatâ, but I think the logic is plain to see.
For this reason though, I am increasingly seeing labels start to accept that perhaps this setup is not in their best interests, and that if artists and labels are to build audiences, they need to return to the strategies that used to work best - that is, accepting that this is not an overnight sensation, and that developing acts requires time, persistence and solid investment.
This may sound simplistic, but I feel it is nonetheless true. The audiences are out there, and have always been out there. Reaching them has at points been harder due to shifting dominant platforms (the ebb and flow from Instagram to TikTok being a case in point), but this does not mean they have vanished. Similarly, fandom has always been a constant. There is no less appetite for music now than ever before. Just look at things like Taylor Swiftâs blockbuster Eras tour for proof that Joe Public loves music - and, crucially, that it also loves coming together with other people who share that passion.
That, to me, is that core fact we must focus on. People love music, and they love sharing that passion for music. Social media, in 2024, can sometimes work against that, constantly trying to move people on from one band to the next. However this only underlines the need for more focus on owned channels. Social media can be the top of the funnel, but it should never be at the bottom; we should be working, constantly, to upstream fans from algorithmically-controlled channels into ones the artist or labels owns, where it can maintain direct comms with a fanbase, free of the filters of Big Tech.
Of course, simply owning channels is not the fait accompli of developing artists; obviously it is more complicated than that. However I think the positive, hopeful point to hold on to here is that we must have faith in the models that always worked when developing artists, and return to those if we are to break the current downward cycle.
It can be done, and in 2025, I think it is something everyone should be focusing on.
With stunning timing, my good friend Keith Jopling sent me a fantastic essay of his own, looking at three paths forward that the music industry can take in order to also find new spaces to grow and blossom. You can download that here (and I would strongly recommend that you do - it is an essential read!), but I will also focus on this in my next edition of Network Notes, offering my own thoughts on Keithâs vision for the future.
For now, donât lose heart: yes, things have felt a little bleak this year, and certainly the volume of people reflecting that view has increased, but it also feels that we might be at the bottom of that trend cycle, and that 2025 might be a pivotal year where a more proactive stance is taken to take back control of this space and truly own it once more.
Have a great evening,
D.
đ¶ listening to âYou Never Endâ by Moin, which I think is a late contender for my album of 2024. The âFugazi doing Slintâ analogy is a lazy one, and yet a tough one to counter in my view. For me though, that is both a risky comparison - given both Fugazi and Slint are comfortably among my all-time favourite bands - and a sightly reductive one, on the basis it suggests some kind of derivative vibe going on here, which isnât really the case at all. Sometimes though, you donât need to pontificate on music, you simply need to love it, and I absolutely love this. Truly a brilliant album - buy it and thank me later.
đș watching âBreakinâ & Enterinââ on YouTube. Remember the breakdance movies âBreakinââ and its meme-tastic sequel âBreakinâ 2: Electric Boogalooâ? Well, I never knew that prior to both was this 1983 documentary about breakdancing, which essentially led to the movies being made. The documentary is one of those terrific time capsules of a work though, showcasing a certain scene at a certain time. Itâs a fantastic watch.
đ reading Michael Palinâs diaries. Currently on Vol.2. These are a phenomenal insight into the birth of Monty Python, offering much to learn from in terms of the dynamics and creativity of the team. Perhaps what I notice more than anything else though is how much slower the pace of life is. It just left me wondering whether, for all this technological advancement, weâre actually more productive now. Iâve a feeling the answer might well be ânoâ.
đ€ loving my Boox Palma e-reader/android tablet. This is one of the best purchases Iâve made in years. The Palma is a phone-sized e-ink Android tablet. That means I can have both my Kindle and Kobo e-books on there, as well as my local library lending app. Crucially though, I can also have Spotify, YouTube Music and Bandcamp on there. What this means is that the Palma is now my media device of choice, allowing me to leave my phone elsewhere, and just enjoy a good book whilst listening to great music. Honestly, I cannot recommend them enough if youâre keen to disconnect from social media and the always-on lifestyle that bit more. They just updated it with a new version too, which doesnât drastically improve it, but is just a bit faster, but all for the same price as the original.
Notes In Dispatches:
Bluesky! Yes, like everyone else, I have moved across there, as has Motive Unknown. You can find me here and MU here. Please do follow both! Right now Bluesky feels like Twitter when it was great; just a solid feed of great people posting genuinely cool things. Doubtless it will go to the dogs at some point in coming years, but for now it feels like a welcome return to a better-quality social media, and I for one am all for that. Interestingly, it is also delivering serious results for publishers on there, with The Guardian Australia stating that it delivered more clicks to its website in one week than Twitter managed in all of 2024. Ergo, if your label or artist is not yet on there, maybe consider making the move. If you check the MU account youâll also find links to the amazing lists that Sean Adams created of notable labels, industry figures, artists and labels to follow in just one click.
I am going to be joining Scuba on his âNot A Diving Podcastâ next week to discuss 2024 from a music business perspective, chatting about that more from the artistâs side of things as much as anything else Iâm sure. It should be a great chat, so once the show is up Iâll share the link here. In the meantime though Iâd highly recommend his interview with the rather elusive Shackleton, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I am also going to be doing a presentation at Music Allyâs Connect event on Jan 21st next year. More info on that coming soon. (Thatâs if I donât get uninvited for my comments on their Campaigns of the Year round-up, which remains a really problematic exercise for me đŹ)
Our good friends over at Midia are hosting their predictions webinar this Thursday at 4:30 pm GMT / 11:30 am ET / 08:30 am PT. These have always been super valuable, and make for a great way to both round off your 2024 and start thinking about strategies for 2025, so Iâd firmly recommend checking them out. You can register here.
The Quietusâ 100 Albums of the Year list is now up, and as ever it remains a brilliant treasure trove of great records you may well have missed. Moin at #3 I note, proving once again that the team there have excellent taste đ