🔵 Not a single UK act in Spotify's Top 10 of 2024. What gives?
How UK music is losing a culture battle and what we can do about it.
Hi there -
Today's article is another guest post, this time from my friend and fellow music industry professional Hugh Worskett. In his career in music Hugh has been a producer and label MD and co-founder - the latter two being of the very excellent Young Poet label (disclosure: also a Motive Unknown client).
He's also a terrifically smart man and someone with whom I really enjoy talking All Things Music Industry with, on the basis his insights really highlight angles I might have missed, and which therefore really get me thinking.
On this occasion a topic came up, and I near-demanded that Hugh write the piece himself (rather than me taking the job on) given the insight and lucidity of thought he had around it all.
Dive in below, and do let us know your thoughts on what I think is a serious - and seriously spot-on - point here.
We will back next week with a Best of 2024 roundup where I’ll be sharing the most-read posts of the year, along with what happened after each of them went out.
Have a great evening!
D.
🎶 listening to “Rcknrll” by Firefriend. This one came to me via JR Moores’ excellent “Best of 2024” roundup from his review column over on The Quietus, and my god I’m glad he highlighted it. Opener “Dreamscapes” sounds like Spacemen 3 reunited, hired a female vocalist and took even more drugs to get their groove on to. Absolutely incredible. Play loud. Then turn it up even louder.
📺 watching “Michael Kiwanuka - What's In My Bag?” on YouTube. I love Michael Kiwanuka. He could sing the alphabet and I’d be in heaven. He’s also a lovely man, at least in the sense of every interview I’ve ever seen with him, and this clip of him picking some choice LPs from the racks at Amoeba is no exception. Great man, great choices, eminently worth a watch.
🤖 playing with RoEx’s updated MixCheck Studio platform. The principle here is simple but brilliant: upload your mix, and the platform basically tells you what needs tweaking with it. I’ve tested it with a bunch of my own tracks, and every time it has highlighted things I might otherwise have missed (usually a slight lack of top-end shine, or a phase issue - the latter of which I’d never see coming). Super useful. I also found myself wondering if this could be used by catalogue businesses looking to check the quality of the masters of old tracks. Truly smart stuff. (Disclosure: RoEx are a Motive Unknown client)
Now, over to Hugh…
Spotify published their 2024 UK Top 10 last week, and worryingly it didn’t include a single UK act or album.
In an era where music markets are increasingly defined by common language rather than national boundaries, the UK is at a disadvantage because, proportionally, it is a tiny part of the English-speaking world. On the international stage, this serves as a sobering reality check on the relative soft power and cultural capital the UK holds in a globalised digital environment.
Within our domestic music market, however, something is clearly wrong. Why is local music failing to reach local ears? Why are UK fans listening to US artists over homegrown offerings? There is a glaring asymmetry between the dominance of English-language music globally and the growing sense that UK artists are struggling to compete on their own domestic stage, let alone an international one.
Numerous failings are regularly cited around the industry: lack of artist development, overpaying for new signings, reactionary marketing, an over-saturated release environment - the list goes on. However, none of these are the root problem. They are in fact symptoms of a deeper issue: a market under intense structural pressure, which drives participants to increasingly extreme decision-making.
A collective lack of agency comes in part from our misguided tendency to think of “culture” as a self-regulating phenomenon beyond our control. Increasingly, however, it comes from the growing realisation that we are subject to the architects of the digital environment in which we all operate, namely Big Tech and the engines that power their platforms: recommendation algorithms.
Algorithms are designed to deliver automated outcomes efficiently and at scale. They have achieved miraculous things, reshaping industries, aiding digital content discovery and bringing genuine pleasure and utility to consumers through products like Spotify’s Discover Weekly. However, they are also deeply fallible. They are agents of the quantifiable, making decisions based on laws of average, limiting their relevance to the cultural realm.
Algorithms are data driven, making them poor agents of the “new”, about which little to no data exists. Like any system of complexity, they are liable to unintended consequences. They are opaque by design, unregulated, and controlled by companies who prioritise profit over broader societal concerns. For their owners, they are valuable intellectual properties that provide competitive advantage.
Every day, algorithms shape what we see and hear, dictating the global cultural exchange and holding our culture captive to their decisions. They don’t just mirror societal interactions; they actively influence them, amplifying cultural discourse and shaping tastes and trends. Problematically, these algorithms are owned by monopolistic companies - or Big Tech - who operate without competition and with near-impunity. Their dominance enforces a cultural monopoly on us all.
The technology used to enforce this monopoly is unique in both its limitations and in its ability to impose the consequences of these limitations globally. Paradoxically this monopoly is achieved by perpetuating an atomised rather than monolithic culture - an insidious approach that disguises the vast scale of coordination conducted by Big Tech and their machines.
Predominantly US owned, these algorithms are tools of soft power, amplifying US culture on a global scale. As a result, their dominance is most keenly felt across the culturally close, English-speaking world. The disappearance of local scenes in the UK is testament to this and the contrasting fortunes of non-English speaking countries (German language music for instance is booming in the GSA), offer a useful point of comparison. This is not a conspiracy, but a simple fact of geopolitics: the ability to export culture around the world is a key component of any nation’s success.
There is a reason why Meta platforms are banned in China and why Chinese-owned TikTok is being forced to divest its western operation into a US-owned entity. Other players become captive to US hegemony: Swedish Spotify is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, part owned by American institutional investors, with the US representing its largest market.
This is not an argument against US success, technological advancement, or the industry's re-organisation around the new economic model: free-market capitalism remains the most efficient driver of wealth creation, and culture should be similarly Darwinian. It is however a critique of monopolies (or oligopolies), lack of regulation, and unilateral control over technologies that shape society and culture: these things are “ours” and their paths should be collectively determined.
All markets require regulation and cultural markets arguably even more so, where financial gain is not the sole objective. Solutions, therefore, are complex and cannot come solely from within the UK music industry.
Regulators should push for transparency in algorithmic design, establish metrics to assess market health, and identify levers of influence and control. Like markets, algorithmic systems are dynamic, and can be adjusted to encourage different outcomes in response to evolving external conditions (central banks changing interest rates to stabilise financial markets is an apt analogy).
Advancements in AI promise to make the next generation of recommendation algorithms more sophisticated, and it is critical for policymakers and the UK music industry to be part of the conversation, voicing concerns and priorities to help shape their development.
Easier access to capital is needed to boost investment in UK talent and help UK companies compete with better-funded US rivals. Fintech promises alternative financing routes within music but may struggle with high-risk early-stage investments, as their models rely on predictable streaming revenue.
A comprehensive state funding model, like those in South Korea, Canada, and Germany, should be considered to provide a safety net for the next generation of independent companies, countering external market pressures. Innovation should be central to this investment, with new technology seen as a tool for growth within the existing industry, not separate and in competition.
The UK music industry’s current struggles stem from structural market issues. Left unchecked, Big Tech will continue to unilaterally shape culture, and right now that appears to be at the UK’s expense. To counter this, politicians and industry leaders must force Big Tech to collaborate with the UK on supporting its domestic agenda whilst establishing standards around algorithmic regulation and intervention.
These efforts will take time, particularly in a divided world, so the UK should simultaneously seek to strengthen its own soft power base through greater strategic investment in the creative industries and by encouraging domestic entrepreneurship to develop and retain ownership of the next generation of culture-enabling technology.
These are clearly large undertakings which I am advocating. However, this only reflects the scale of the issues at hand and the urgent need for the UK to take control of its domestic cultural and technological agenda. Ultimately if we don’t, the UK will find its once mighty cultural power and influence permanently diminished.
Essential Reading:
Glenn McDonald - You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song: How Streaming Changes Music
A fascinating account by Spotify’s ex-“Data Alchemist” discussing the mechanics of streaming, how data is leveraged to aid discoverability, genre, pro-rata vs user-centric payment models, and the engineering behind recommendation algorithms. It lifts the lid on Spotify as far as the presumed NDAs allow, dispelling many myths in the process.
'free-market capitalism remains the most efficient driver of wealth creation, and culture should be similarly Darwinian.
'All markets require regulation and cultural markets arguably even more so, where financial gain is not the sole objective.'
Both cannot be true. Free-market capitalism refers to the political/economic philosophy of people like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, who would not advocate regulating the arts. I assume you mean sensibly regulated markets. Music requires all sorts of state intervention to thrive, ranging from Art Council Funding to state school music education, not to mention a healthy welfare state and healthcare system. When British music was at its peak (1960-2000s) these were all in a good way. The Beatles would never have come about were it not for good state education and a cheaper standard of living.
I think it's impossible to ignore the B-word. Brexit has made Britain less cool and interesting, more insular, and less of a leader in the world. It makes it harder for artists to come in, and it makes it harder for artists to go out. Our nearest neighbours can no longer swing by, and no longer view us in the same way. I'm not suggesting everything is reducible to Brexit, but I can list many musician friends who left within 2-3 years of the referendum.
I hope Britain starts building bridges again with its neighbours, helping out those who are struggling to get by, and taking arts funding and education seriously. I can't see any short-term fix to long-term self-inflicted damage.
Why ‘worryingly’? What is it about Spotify that is supposed to be fair? Trying to find sense or reason in Spotify only legitimises this platform. It should be smashed into pieces and those pieces buried.