Drowned in Sound

Introduction to S2: The Editor’s Letter / Voice Note

Where is music journalism headed? Sean Adams (@seaninsound) introduces season* two of the Drowned in Sound podcast in the style of an editor's letter meets a meandering, unscripted voice memo.
TL;DR? To mark 23 years of Drowned in Sound, I decided to embark on a series of interviews with TikTokkers, rock writers, tech reporters and more to try to figure out whether things could be headed.
* = series?!

DiS008: Live Music And Mental Health

Everyone from Radiohead to Sugababes to industry insiders are raving about a new book by therapist and live music expert Tamsin Embleton. It's an extraordinary body of work entitled Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual, which includes contributions from a series of mental health experts providing insights and advice covering everything from breath-work to nutrition, and resilience to rest.
The book contains interviews with people who live and work on the road, alongside musicians including Pixies, Pharoahe Monch, Nile Rodgers, Radiohead, Four Tet, Lauren from Chvrches, Will Young, Justin Hawkins from The Darkness, and many more.
In this conversation with the author you'll learn more about the realities of the road, how touring with Nick Cave & Anna Calvi fed into the initial stages of this book, and why Live Nation has bought 3000 copies of it to put in dressing rooms. We discussed some of the topics in the book such as dressing room environments, dealing with the media and some simple changes the industry can make.
This is what Nile Rodgers had to say about the book: “The life of a musical artist can be a magnificent thing when you’re on stage experiencing the enthusiasm and appreciation for your work and seeing first-hand the incredible impact it can have…. There are however another 22 and a half hours in the day when you are not performing. Being away from home and the watchful eye of your loved ones can be incredibly hard work mentally as you go around the world at a pace dictated by the tour. Having what is effectively a mental health wellness manual to keep yourself in check is a wonderful initiative.”
Learn much more about the book over here touringmanual.com and you'll find @TamsinEmbleton on Twitter here.
Host: Sean Adams (@seaninsound)

DiS007: AI, AI, AI! UK Government’s War on Copyrighted Music?! Beatles AI song! - Dr Hayleigh Bosher explains it all

Our series of conversations about Artificial Intelligence and music continues with a look at the ethics and legal implications of these new forms of technology that inhales creativity and spits out creativity using everything that has been fed into it. And not everything has gone in with permission, let alone consent.
At the spring 2023 budget, the UK government announced that they would be allowing AI firms to more easily access copyrighted material.... this seemed somewhat alarming to us as people who run a record label, manage musicians and care about the creative industries. Should be be worried?! We asked Dr Hayleigh Bosher, a leading expert on intellectual property to help us understand the law and the bigger philosophical issues with Artificial Intelligence technology using existing music to create new music.
Dr Hayleigh Bosher (@BosherHayleigh) is the author of Copyright in the Music Industry, is a senior lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at Brunel University, and hosts the brilliant Who's Song Is It Anyway? podcast.
Related Links
Here's the 'Daddy's Car' Beatles AI track
Listen to Who's Song Is it Anyway wherever you get your podcasts
Hear more from Jeremy Hunt about the AI Sandbox
Check out previous AI episodes with Endel and ChatGPT Prompt Generator David Boyle

DiS006: Women’s Equality in Music & Glastonbury’s pipeline with Vick Bain from The F List / ISM

In case it wasn't obvious, this a music podcast that hasn't had enough of experts and to mark International Women's Day 2023 we spoke to Vick Bain the founder of The F-List and President of ISM (the independent society of musicians), to her PhD research into inequality in the music industry.
This episodes covers everything from her research into the Ivors songwriting awards having a pitiful amount of women winners to setting up the F List database of female+ musicians.
In recent days, Vick Bain has appeared on the BBC's flagship programmes Woman's Hour and Newsnight, as well as spoken to The Guardian about what Glastonbury's Emily Eavis called a "pipeline problem" in trying to secure festival headliners that aren't male.
This is the first in a series of conversations about inequality and the future of the music industry.
If you've been impacted by harassment within the music industry, visit WeAreMusic for a selection of links.
For more about Drowned in Sound, join our Substack newsletter and follow our founder and podcast host @seaninsound.

DiS005: How music can embrace the power of AI with ChatGPT expert David Boyle

“If you start out and it doesn't do something that you're very impressed by, your assumption should be that your prompt wasn't very good,” this summarises the advice from music industry veteran David Boyle, who specialises in understanding audiences, and over the last few months has become an expert in using ChatGPT (if you've not already, give it a go here). So much so he's co-written a book called PROMPT about, you guessed it, writing prompts to get artificial intelligence to give you better answers.
This conversation is aimed at musicians and people who work in the music industry, but the takeaways should be fairly obvious whatever you're trying to achieve. Our host, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams, shares some of the ways he's been using ChatGPT to get movie recommendations based on the songs that are on the soundtrack and using it to better understand the complex legalese in a contract.
This conversation has also inspired David and his team to write a new edit of PROMPT for musicians, taking in some of the elements and workflows we discussed. Drowned in Sound listeners can grab it at a special rate using this link.
We hope you will find the practical examples and advice in this episode useful, and we would love to see screenshots or hear about how you've used it. Tweet @seaninsound and @beglen if you get chance. Actually, a sneaky tip, there's also a Twitter bot that you can send Qs to here.
Related Links
the Hannah Peel tweet that inspired this episode.
the Nick Cave blog post about ChatGPT.
here's MidJourney, the AI image generator that's mentioned in this episode.
this is where you can sign up to the Drowned in Sound newsletter on Substack.
Water & Music have just released an interesting deep dive into AI and music - summed up in this Twitter thread

DiS004: Tune in, AI Out - the co-founders of Endel on music’s potential futures

The robots are coming, and people are fearful and excited about the potential for AI and music to collide. It's hard to escape the discourse surrounding artificial intelligence, with various projects launches or low-level things reaching critical max in 2023.
As someone who is pretty cynical and emo about everything, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams is oddly optimistic about some of AI music's potential futures, especially surrounding the collision of science, technology and more 'functional' strands of music. As a lover of Sigur Ros, side two of Bowie's Low and contemporary composers like Poppy Ackroyd and Grouper, he's been a heavy user of the Endel app, which composes/generates music in real time, using sounds, textures, samples and frequencies, to create a soundscapes to listen to whilst you focus, relax, walk, sleep and more.
In this episode, two of the co-founders Oleg Stavitsky and Dmitry Evgrafov (listen to some of his non-AI music on bandcamp here) discuss everything from circadian rhythms to their love of Brian Eno. They also explore the science and tech behind the launch of an 8-hour Sleep Science playlist (listen here) with Amazon Music, which opens with an Amazon Original track featuring electronic duo Kx5 (Kaskade and deadmau5) that was produced using the hit EDM track “Escape”. The source material, including synths and chill vocals, was processed by Endel Pacific to create a high-quality, relaxing soundscape activating the parasympathetic nervous system and getting the listener ready for sleep.
Using this link, you can get a free month trial of Endel to better understand what we're talking about: https://code.endel.io/?code=drownedinsound (worth getting it just to hear the James Blake soundscape)
Also mentioned in the intro to this episode was Bronze Format, Max Richter's groundbreaking SLEEP album, and toward the end Oleg encourages you to join Endel's Discord community, which is here.
As always, if you have any thoughts or ideas, contact our host @seaninsound on your social platform of choice and subscribe to our mailing list here.

DiS003: TikTok, ”Authenticity” and Music with Eleanor from Crystal Fighters

TikTok is so important, but what on earth are you meant to be doing on it? Here at Drowned in Sound we have not had a enough of experts, so we found one who can help us and you get our heads around TikTok. Our guest this week is musician and producer (and soon to be stand up comedian) Eleanor Fletcher, who's also a member of festival favourites Crystal Fighters, to find out how she's garnered 900k like on the platform and found a new audience in just a few months. Give her feed a scroll and follow her here tiktok.com/@eleanorkishere
This is part of a sub-series of podcasts, looking at the foundations of where the music industry is at. It's sort of a mini masterclass for musicians but the advice applies for anyone who wants to have a better understanding on creating "content" for the platform.
There's some really simple tips about how to introduce a video (the first few seconds are known as the 'hook' to 'hook people in', rather than the melody of a pop song...) and Eleanor mentions the key things of being "interesting and intriguing", keeping a list of ideas in your notes app, and makes the whole thing feel a lot less daunting.
Would love to know what you took away from this episode and anything you feel I missed to cover in future episodes.
Links to bits mentioned in the show
The clip by TikTokker ToLiveWithIntent
Recommended musician to follow: KiraLise
Hemingway App
For more, join Drowned in Sound's new Substack newsletter.

DiS002: Discover... The Faux Faux (Faith Vern from PINS)

Faith Vern has collaborated with the likes Iggy Pop and Maxine Peake, and played huge sets on main stages of festivals such as Reading with her band PINS.
In this episode, Faith tells us all about the debut single of her new solo project The Faux Faux, which is the first release on the rebooted Drowned in Sound Singles Club (drownedinsound.org).
Drowned in Sound founder and podcast host Sean Adams (@seaninsound) introduces the podcast with a little history of the Drowned in Sound label and asks questions about how this solo material is different to the fun party punk that PINS were known for, what it's like writing music for big HBO, Netflix and Apple TV shows, how a mixture of Plath and moving out of Manchester inspired the track, and in a world where liner notes are rare, there's credits and more background to the track.
Watch the music video shot in the North of England using 500ft of film and find out more here https://www.thefauxfaux.co.uk/music
Go deeper and hear tracks by acts involved in this track on this Spotify playlist.

DiS001: The trade unionist campaigning for fairer streaming - Naomi Pohl from Musicians’ Union

How do we "fix" music streaming? It's a question that has plagued the music industry and musicians for a decade and a half, whilst debating the pounds, pennies and slithers of a pence per stream... so this discussion about music streaming seemed like a great place to restart our podcast, which is will focus on music, through the prism of creativity, sustainability, pioneers and big ideas.
There are now a range of campaigns around the world and several organisations unifying in the UK to try to change the law, to ensure musicians and those who invest in them receive fairer pay from Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, Apple, Amazon, etc, etc, etc...
In the UK, there's been a UK government DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) enquiry exploring the issue of music streaming royalties and the challenges faced by musicians in receiving fair compensation for their work.
In this relaunch episode of our podcast, DiS founder Sean Adams (@seaninsound | drownedinsound.org) spoke to Naomi Pohl, the General Secretary of the Musicians' Union, a trade union representing 33,000 musicians about music streaming. We also discussed various campaigns she's the driving force behind to improve things for musicians. The General Secretary highlights the efforts of the Musicians' Union to advocate for and support musicians, including their fight for fair pay and improved working conditions. You'll also learn about the importance of joining a union and how both musicians and music fans can support their campaigns, which you can find here musiciansunion.org.uk (including how new members can join for as little as £1).
The wide-ranging enquiry into music streaming, entitled Copyright (Rights and Renumeration, etc) Bill, also known as The Brennan Bill (named because it's been led by musician and Labour MP Kevin Brennan) is looking into the current music streaming landscape, including the payment structures and methods used by music streaming platforms, as well as the challenges faced by musicians in receiving appropriate compensation from the platforms and their labels. The aim of the enquiry, which has been going on for a couple of years now, is to make recommendations to the UK government on ways to ensure that musicians receive fair compensation for their work, and to ensure that the music industry continues to thrive and support musicians. You can read more about where the enquiry is currently at on MusicAlly here.
In this conversation, Naomi Pohl explains her role and the process of changing the law and discusses her wider challenges over the coming months and years.
Want to help? "A positive step you can take to find out who your local MP is and try and build a bit of a relationship, especially if you find that there's somebody there who's passionate about music" - you can find your MP using theyworkforyou.com
How many musicians are there in the UK? There's a census happening which you can take part in here musicianscensus.co.uk

DiS000: Prologue

If this is an "audio publication" then this episode is the editor's (voice) note, as Sean Adams introduces some of the topics, ideas and thinking this new phase of the Drowned in Sound podcast.
To begin, help yourself to a David Bowie and Janelle Monáe sandwich.
drownedinsound.org | @seaninsound