🔵 Looking ahead to 2026 - some thoughts on how things will evolve

The wider trends I see emerging in the next twelve months.

Hello everyone -

Apologies for the slight pause since the last issue; as ever, December seems to creep up on me like some kind of sneak attack, and before you know it you’re in an insane cycle of Christmas parties, end of year catch-ups and all those deals that people want to get over the line before stopping for the year. All whilst attempting to dodge all the illnesses going around, which I failed to do last week. 😷

As we approach year end, I wanted to look ahead to 2026 and share some thoughts about how I feel things are going to change. Equally, some of those thoughts are about how we need to change within that, because ultimately there are two sides to this; the side that sees us reflexively respond to external developments (e.g. the Universal/Udio deal), and the other side that sees us change how we as an industry are approaching things, thereby influencing the outcome.

In my experience, a lot of people forget about that second element, choosing instead to let someone dictate how history is made.

These thoughts may be a little free-wheeling, so let’s dive in and I’ll header them up for easier reading…

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Art, artists and which side of history you wish to be on

Thanks to AI, I firmly believe that companies are being placed in a position in which the way they respond to AI and generative music may prove to be held against them, longer-term.

Universal and Warner have both made deals - with Udio and Suno respectively - that each company feels will allow them to offer up artist works in order for AI models to train on them. Then, within app experiences in both cases, users will be able to create their own (e.g.) Beatles tracks and god knows what else.

Somewhere in a boardroom, this all made a huge amount of sense; the march of AI was relentless, and it was better to engage with this tech rather than attempt to stuff the genie back into the bottle.

The problem with this logic, however, is that it does not reckon with the way in which the artists themselves will view this - and by extension, how they will judge those who chose to side with it.

Ultimately, selling out your artists to AI might stack up on any cold, spreadsheet-informed argument, but it fails to recognise a more basic truth: artists, unsurprisingly, place high value on their art, and will therefore be unlikely to view any company favourably that thinks their work is simply more ‘content’ on which to train a model for profit.

Simply put, by playing their hand and exposing that really what’s craved more than anything - certainly more than the support of artists and their art - is simply profit, even if that means eliminating the one thing that’s been the generator of that profit to date, I suspect that two of the three majors might have wildly overplayed their hand here.

(Sidenote: I read an interesting piece the other day, suggesting that Apple might yet be a beneficiary of the AI race because its decision not to go all in to the extent of others might now mean it is in a far better position, financially-speaking. Investors are apparently looking at it as a much safer bet now. I find this all very telling. Could Sony be making a similar strategic move here? Food for thought…)

The return to small communities and offline-led movements

A theme I keep coming across in more and more conversations with managers, but also in reading about latest trends etc, is that more and more people are craving offline experiences - even offline players to enjoy their music on (a topic that Emily White did a fantastic article on recently - have a read).

Much like the majors, Big Tech has overplayed its hand of late, and many have noted that the shift has been from one of great optimism of the 2010s to a more bleak, dystopian one in which the tech is no longer even trying to hide its nastier intentions.

Consequently, people are wising up to this, and thanks to the increasingly negative narrative around services like Spotify, it feels like artists are also sharing that view. More and more artists that I see (and support) are taking a windowed approach to releases, first dropping a digital version on Bandcamp, then a physical version, and only a few weeks after that dropping on to streaming services. Streaming is now the worst path to market for them: a superficially decent number of plays, but with little else to show for it.

Once upon a time, Spotify did a fine job of convincing people it was a force for good, even for those working class artists at the bottom. Now, it feels like artists have seen through that propaganda, and as a consequence are exploring alternative routes to market.

It is no coincidence that we’re seeing all manner of services either really take footing or emerge as entirely new contenders. Artists are desperate to find paths to market that 1) pay them a sensible amount back, and 2) ensure they’re not simply another tiny drip in an ocean of ‘content’.

For the same reasons however, I truly feel we will see returns to niche communities and geographic hot spots for emerging genres. Everyone has tried the hollow, unrewarding world of social media and most have come up wanting, unimpressed by the shallow, transient nature of ‘engagement’ that these platforms offer up. The attention economy is dying.

That death will be slow - very slow - but I think it is already in motion. More and more, I am talking to managers about how to take artists to market in a manner that avoids ‘the standard route’, because that route is viewed as borderline pointless now.

My colleague Tom remarked earlier that he felt streaming might have wiped out the middle class of artist, such that Spotify and co are little more than an updated take on the most commercial radio stations worldwide. I agree with him; artists never got their first breaks on Capital FM and co: they had to spend some time building attention elsewhere long before anyone gave enough shits to play them to their millions of listeners.

A thought occurred to me recently too: the music that’s part of my DNA never came from massive, global scenes. It might have grown into that (grunge being a case in point) but at the point of discovery, these were weird niche spaces that only a few knew about. Equally though, those small communities grew into global movements. Hell, even the record execs took that path: just look at former Warner Music head Max Lousada’s career start with Ultimate Dilemma (which I certainly recall - “Runaways Theme” from the self-titled EP by Runaways was a stone cold classic!).

So historically, everything about my own musical voyage through life was never informed by those big moments; it was the small scenes, the massively niche spaces, whether that was the Camden Lurch scene of the early 90s, the scratch scene of the early 2000’s, Wordsound Recordings, dub techno, or just all 50+ minutes of Sleep’s “Dopesmoker”.

All things are cyclical, and we will be returning to a world of emerging niche cultures that exist beyond public-facing social media.

I remarked earlier to colleagues that if I was investing in something right now, I’d sooner place my money into a network of live venues that support communities and scenes than I ever would a tech startup. With the latter you’re just following the herd. With the former, you could be part of an overdue resurgence - and it will come, of that I have no doubt.

Remember: you aren’t in the music business, you’re in the [your artist here] business.

A quote I am fond of repeating back to people comes courtesy of Rod Smallwood, the legendary manager of Iron Maiden. Someone asked him a question about working in the music business, to which Smallwood replied something to the effect of “I’m not in the music business; I am in the Iron Maiden business!”

Why am I sharing this?

Something I see often is an obsession on those wider developments in music. People talk about the Universal/Udio deal (for example) as if it is the end of days, or perhaps some kind of incredible development. In that macro-economic sense, it might prove to be. In reality however, artists simply need to focus not on the music business as a whole, but on their business.

This is why I love seeing artists like Mia Koden slowly working to build her community, both through smart use of less visible tools like WhatsApp, but also through IRL events. It aligns to a view I have that in order to be successful, an artist doesn’t need to have millions of adoring - but extremely casual - listeners. Instead, they can make a healthy living from serious fans who might be lower in total number, but who are also willing to spend a lot more on that artist.

Look around and you’ll see countless examples of artists who started out at the very bottom, working hard to ascend from there. Doing so required not a focus on the wider issues affecting the music industry, but on their own art, their craft, how fans connected with that and how they nurtured that over time. Yes, it really boils down to that.

Beware the Hot New Tech Platforms

At Motive Unknown we are seeing a lot of interesting new platforms emerging at present. Broadly speaking, there’s some excellent offerings out there too. However a trend we see developing alongside that is a kind of accrued data play, which in turn will inflate the value of businesses and make them eminently sellable to the likes of Universal or other parties interested in further securing infrastructure within the industry.

We are in danger of repeating some critical mistakes - in this case handing over far too much data and insight to companies who can then profit from it.

For the foreseeable future I suspect that will not change, but at some point I would expect to see two potential developments emerge. The first is the installing of clauses determining that, in the event of a sale, all data pertaining to an artist should be returned to them and not be retained by any new owner for the purposes of insight, AI training or market advantage. This prevents companies from being motivated to accrue enormous data warehouses and then parlay that into value for a high-priced exit.

The second development would be the ultimate replacement of most of these services by AI-fuelled DIY efforts. Right now, MCPs - the interfaces that service to connect LLMs like GPT or Gemini to platforms, allowing plain language interaction - are only growing in number, and at some point it isn’t crazy to suggest that we simply will not need these data insight tools - or even CRM ones - on the basis it will prove no great barrier to spinning them up for yourself. Vibe coding is in a nascent stage for now, but how long will it be before we can create our own email sending platforms, or data insight tools? I would think we’re talking 2-3 years at the very most.

Yes, AI present threats - but it presents opportunities too

As with all debates, things are painfully polarised now. There is no nuance to an argument; only extreme viewpoints. AI has proven no different.

I have long viewed AI as being like the synthesizer. Yes, it can do amazing things, and in the right (creative) hands it can deliver phenomenal works. But did synths kill guitar music? Absolutely not, and in that same sense, AI is not going to kill human-made art.

In his magnificent book “Nina Simone’s Gum”, Warren Ellis remarks that people “are ideas waiting to happen. Who and what we come into contact with, in our lives, determines if our better selves evolve”

Humans are many things, but one of them we profoundly underrate is our ability to be completely illogical. We are not as predictable as some might hope. Creative people make art not because there’s a profit involved, but often because they simply cannot conceive of a world in which not creating art is plausible.

Art, therefore, is immutable. It has been here since primitive man drew on cave walls, and it will still be here centuries from now. Culture might rise and fall in cycles, but it will never die off.

For this reason, AI won’t kill off human-made art. It might shift how that art is found, not to mention how it is created, but it is not a replacement and never will be. If anything, it might make us treasure human-made art (though is there any other type?) all the more.

What is going to happen is that AI will offer new and brilliant ways to explore creative process. Considering the use of any AI in a creative process as being unforgivable is once again like dismissing synth-made music as being somehow inferior to guitar work. Just look at how Kraftwerk’s image evolved, from those early days of being dismissed as kooks by some to now, rightly being lauded as pioneers of all electronic music.

Those AI opportunities also exist in your workplace

Music, as an industry, is terrible at evolving. Historically, it has largely waited for someone else to solve the big problems, and then simply jumped in with both feet on whatever that was. iTunes is a perfect case in point, and one might argue AI-generated music is pointing a similar way.

Beyond those frontline areas however is a simple truth: AI is now capable of providing many, many incredible ways to turbo-charge how you work, and in general, very few companies out there are leaning in to that.

Here at Motive Unknown, we have been training an AI on our own internal work and processes for some time now. This has enabled all manner of benefits. We are nearing a point where proposals are almost able to be created by the AI, having seen various meeting notes and fully understanding our vision and how we do things. Similarly, it ingests all our conversations, allowing someone who has been on holiday to simply ask “what key developments have I missed with Client X since I went away?” and have the AI provide a bullet-pointed list.

On a more personal level, I now work with an AI assistant (more on which below) which I find a huge help, as someone with ADHD. I can tell it the tasks I need to get done, when they need to be done by, and how long they will take. All of that info is stored, but I can then ask the system what I can get done in the next hour, and it will suggest jobs to get done based on how long those will take and when they are due. It can also take notes, store ideas and generally be the memory I wish I had when my own is rather more like that of a goldfish.

In short then, AI can deliver much into your business. At Motive Unknown, it has not led to any redundancies. Quite the opposite: we feel it is actually empowering staff to develop faster. So AI doesn’t have to be a threat to employment numbers either: if anything, it should be an empowerment tool to aid development and growth.

And hey, let me put my sales cap on for a moment: if you’re a business wanting to engage with AI but not really knowing where to start, drop me a line and I’d be happy to connect you with our team who can assist with that.

So there you go - just some thoughts as they occur. In general, I remain optimistic about the future. The negative stories get amplified to a ridiculous level and often drown out the more positive things going on, and 2025 has featured a lot of that happening. In general though, I feel the artists hold the power, and in the next 12 months or more, we will see that power coming back into play as frustrations boil over. That is a good thing; it is taking the power back, which is as it should be.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to share a few more articles about things I’ve enjoyed, and which either showed more positive glimpses of the future, or got me thinking about how the past is potentially predicting that future. But there are more people out there trying to solve problems and share wisdom than has been around for a while now, which is amazing.

We have much to look forward to. Remember: all problems require solutions, and within solutions lies opportunity.

Seize those; every last one.

Have a great day

D.

🎶 Listening to “Sensemilla” by Dillinger Presents Massive Dub Beats. I remember hearing this track MANY moons ago (and we’re talking turn of the century!) when its fusion of the Jeru Tha Damaja’s Come Clean break with one of the most gigantic basslines in history blew my socks off. Cut to last week and I finally tracked down a copy on vinyl. Heaven!! I also then “robustly” tested the foundations of my house by playing this mofo on a volume best marked “ahhh now you’re taking the piss” as my Irish friends might say. This track would lay waste to any dancefloor if you opened a DJ set with it, and I’ll die on that hill.

📺 Watching “DJing in Ibiza.. What they DON’T tell you” on YouTube. I’m largely oblivious to James Hype as he’s not really my kinda thing, but I loved this video that my colleague Tom shared on Slack, in which Hype breaks down just how much work went into his residency at Hi Ibiza. Genuinely interesting, but I also liked the down to earth tone and realism about it all. Refreshing to see.

📖 (Just finished) Reading “Nina Simone’s Gum” by Warren Ellis. I grabbed this in a charity shop yesterday, and finished it by 9am this morning, such was my love for it. This is a wonderful memoir of collecting things and how we attribute incredible - often spiritual - value to objects that might, to others, have no value whatsoever. In the age of AI, this is a glorious celebration of what it is to be human. It truly filled me with joy. Grab a copy and thank me later.

🤖 Playing with Notis.ai, an AI personal assistant that uses Notion as a kind of database back-end on which to run. This thing can connect to thousands of apps via (I assume) MCP, and you communicate with it via WhatsApp, using voice or text. The outcome is an AI which can send emails for me, find availabilities in my calendar, remind me to do things, set longer-term tasks… the list is endless. Genuinely brilliant.

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