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In part two of our conversation with journalists Effie Webb and Harriet Williamson, we move beyond who created Danny Bones and ask what his existence means for music itself. We discuss the irony of a far-right AI rapper borrowing from Black music, the response from musicians, and what happens when technology can imitate creative work at scale with little to no consequence. We get into copyright, the devaluing of human creative labour, Spotify’s response to AI artists, whether Danny Bones is an outlier or an early sign of what’s coming, and finally, what music fans can do to help musicians, songwriters and artists to remain at the centre of music. 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 drownedinsound.org/playlists to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz. This week's playlist is songs that give you a bit of pride in where you are from. Amongst the picks, Harriet chose 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' by The Clash and Effie chose 'LDN' by Lily Allen, two London songs, one of them about race and punk and reggae and the other about what the city actually looks like underneath, which is a fairly pointed answer to a record trading on national pride.  What would you add? You can email us on [email protected] Referenced In This Episode: More than a third of new uploads to Apple Music are now AI-generated, reported by Music Ally: More than a third of Apple Music uploads are now AI music Australia banning fully AI-generated songs from the ARIA charts, announced two days before we recorded: AI-generated music to be banned from the ARIA charts Spotify’s AI persona labelling, announced this month: Spotify introduces an AI persona label and keeps AI-generated artists out of recommendations by default ‘Harbu Darbu’ by Ness and Stilla, the track mentioned in the episode, which calls for the deaths of Bella Hadid, Dua Lipa and Mia Khalifa and topped the Israeli streaming charts: Harbu Darbu Effie Webb, Bureau of Investigative Journalism Effie Webb’s profile Harriet Williamson, Novara Media Novara Media Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: Drowned in Sound Produced by Georgia Mooney.

What does it take to rack up five million YouTube views in ten months? In this case: a rapper who doesn’t exist, a political party paying thousands for AI-generated videos, and algorithms remarkably good at turning anger into attention. This week, Sean is joined by Effie Webb of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Harriet Williamson of Novara Media, who have spent months investigating Danny Bones. So, who is Danny Bones? An AI-generated British rapper created by the Node Project, whose songs and videos mix nationalism, immigration politics and visions of a broken Britain. He’s amassed millions of views and streams and "performed" at a Tommy Robinson rally. This manufactured persona has begun bleeding into real-world politics. In part one, Effie and Harriet explain how they uncovered the Node Project’s links to far-right party Advance UK, and ultimately discovered the real people behind it: a music producer and a video producer working in the arts. We discuss what far right actually means, why those described that way reject the term, and Harriet’s theory that the Danny Bones aesthetic looks like somebody watched This Is England, thought it looked cool and missed everything else about it. We also get into Danny Bones’ extraordinary algorithmic growth, whether reporting on him risks boosting his platform, the economics of streams versus political commissions, and what happens when an entirely fictional "artist" starts intervening in real elections.  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 drownedinsound.org/playlists to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz. This week's playlist is songs that give you a bit of pride in where you are from. Amongst the picks, Harriet chose 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' by The Clash and Effie chose 'LDN' by Lily Allen, two London songs, one of them about race and punk and reggae and the other about what the city actually looks like underneath, which is a fairly pointed answer to a record trading on national pride. What would you add? You can email us on [email protected] Referenced In This Episode: The first investigation, the AI rapper funded by a far-right party, by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Meet the AI rapper funded by a far-right party And Novara Media's version of the same story: Meet the AI Rapper Working for the Far-Right How the project turned the coverage into membership tiers and a crypto wallet within days: The hate economy in action: how an AI rapper tried to cash in on our coverage Effie's day at Tommy Robinson's rally, QR codes, crypto and an AI rapper: A day at Tommy Robinson's rally: QR codes, crypto and an AI rapper The story that named the two men behind it: Revealed: the music producer and animator behind far-right AI rapper Danny Bones And at Novara Media: Revealed: The Chart-Topping Music Producer and Animator Behind a Far-Right AI Rapper The Daily Mail's collaboration with the Bureau, which is where the platform responses live: Read the archived article Ben Habib winding up Advance UK to clear the way for Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain: Ben Habib winds up Advance UK to clear the way for Restore Britain The Gorton and Denton by-election result in full: UK Parliament election results   Effie Webb, Bureau of Investigative Journalism Effie Webb’s profile Harriet Williamson, Novara Media Novara Media Recorded at The Shure Experience Centre, London. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: Drowned in Sound Produced by Georgia Mooney.

In this week's episode Sean sits down with Steven Ansell, the singing drummer of Blood Red Shoes. They have known each other for around twenty five years now, since Sean first saw Steven's old band Cat On Form playing to a room of skinny, topless Fugazi obsessives in Brighton. Blood Red Shoes formed in Brighton in 2004, Steven on drums and vocals, Laura-Mary Carter on guitar and vocals, and released one of their first singles on the Drowned in Sound label. Twenty years on, they're still one of the more interesting duos working in guitar music, a band whose sound has been chased by plenty of others since (Royal Blood, for one, used to come and watch them). Their songs keep finding new listeners in places that have nothing to do with the traditional music industry, the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack years ago, more recently Directive 8020, the horror game that features their track 'Dead Air'. However, delves into their seventh record. Stay Lonely, which is out 18th September on V2 Records. The record features the single 'Screams', and it's the first Blood Red Shoes album the two of them have made entirely on their own, no outside producer, no outside mixer, nobody else touching it. The conversation gets into how a band that's been almost wordlessly instinctual for two decades actually functions day to day, who sings what and why. Steven also produces for other artists, including Brighton duo Arxx and Circe, and co-runs the Jazz Life label with Laura-Mary, who records solo too (her debut album, Bye Bye Jackie, came out last year). As with every episode, Sean asks Steven the question he now puts to every guest: how would you spend five hundred million pounds to improve music? The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the 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. Produced and edited by the team at Tell Studio. Recorded, engineered and hosted by Sean Adams (seaninsound.com) at Polygon Portal, Soho. Polygon Portal's immersive listening room is back for Season Two from October, with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Pixies' Bossanova and De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising among the album playback sessions on their listings, well worth a look if you're in London. Sign up to the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org

What's the best place to stand in the Electric Ballroom if you're under five foot five and don't fancy a six foot stranger appearing in front of you two minutes before stage time? Helena Wadia has worked this out for pretty much every venue in London, and this week's episode exists mostly so Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams could catch up with his co-host to to yap about gigs. This week's episode is a bit of a format experiment for us (we'd love you to send your feedback to [email protected]) because Sean's been buried in The Anchoress album campaign and Helena's been living her best gig life. Helena co-hosts the Media Storm podcast, and normally you'll find her asking sharper questions than she gets asked here. She also, by her own admission, keeps a proper mental log of every National setlist, twenty two shows and counting, which is why she was drafted onto Gig Pigs, the podcast where comedians take a comedian to a gig, for their National episode with Stuart Laws. Worth a listen for the fuller history: S2 Ep7: The National with Stuart Laws and Helena Wadia. The conversation also gets into Los Campesinos! twenty year celebration at the Electric Ballroom,  Robyn selling out the O2 without being an obvious household name, My Chemical Romance's Black Parade in full at Wembley Stadium and the tears that came with it, and Matt Berninger's solo show with RonBoy in tow. Along the way the pair discuss obstructed view seats that turn out to be the best seats in the house, the ethics of a no-view audio-only ticket, seeing Prince, and why nobody's worked out how to tell you your friends are stood four rows in front of you. 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. Produced and edited by Sean Adams. 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 the DiS newsletter: http://drownedinsound.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

"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