The Price of Music

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works.  And it’s a bumper episode as Steve and Stu take a look ahead into 2026: what will the big stories be in the coming year? Here are their predictions: It’s a year of change for the UK record industry, and where the UK stands in terms of influence in a global context – including acts like Sleep Token who have broken through in the USA. And the...

Here it is! The long awaited, much feared Great Price of Music Christmas Quiz 2025 – which sees Steve pitted against Stu in a battle for the ages, as both vie to be crowned QUIZ CHAMP 2025. Our daring duo face questions about the show, band names, and each other – as well as especially tricky questions submitted by our Patreon Superfans, plus one question from a Very Special Indie Guest Star. Spoi...

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s episode of The Price of Music, Steve and Stu get stuck into a late-year flurry of big news: "This could be the death knell for small venues" – enormous increases in business rates are coming for UK venues – Steve has a lot to say about how a seemingly-innocuous business rates policy point in the recent UK budget may...

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s episode of The Price of Music, Steve and Stu pull on their Santa hats and get stuck in to: Spotify Wrapped 2025 has just launched (and has now taken over your social feeds) But why is it such a big deal this year? Steve answers a great listener question: "why don’t more bands and venues do afternoon gigs for people who ca...

Get more TPOM in the post-show "lock-in" – try it for FREE!: ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/thepriceofmusic/membership⁠ ==== Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s episode of The Price of Music, Steve and Stu unwrap the week's music biz goings-on: An exploding toilet caused a gig cancellation – but what now for the band, fans and the venue? Stu’s Big Num...

One more round? The post-show "lock-in" is just for our ⁠⁠Patreon Superfans⁠⁠ - try it for FREE!: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/thepriceofmusic/membership ==== Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s episode of The Price of Music, Steve and Stu pour a couple of foaming pints of: Stu’s Big Number is 10 million – but how does it relate to the premature jingling...

Have you heard the now-legendary post-show "lock-in" section, just for our ⁠ Patreon Superfans ⁠ ? Try it for FREE!: https://www.patreon.com/c/thepriceofmusic/membership ======= Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s episode of The Price of Music, our dynamic duo Steve and Stu grapple with the following: Stu’s Big Number is 713 million – and you are quite...

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. And in this week’s episode of The Price of Music, Steve and Stu grapple with: Stu's Big Number is 11.5 million – but what does it have to do with Billie Eilish and a room full of billionaires? One AI-music company is working on a new service with the world’s biggest major label... so will be be able to create our own sound-a-like tracks?...

Bonus episode! Steve is joined by Lord Kevin Brennan, the ex-MP – and now member of the UK's House of Lords – who is also a musician, and has been described as “a writer of songs and a righter of wrongs.” He talks to Steve about his leadership of the UK parliament’s new fan-led review of live and electronic music, with the aim of improving the sustainability of grassroots live and electronic m...

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s episode of The Price of Music, Steve and Stu dip into the postbag and answer some very astute listeners’ questions which get to the heart of music streaming and live music! Matt asks why ticket prices can vary so much at the same venue? And he has a good real-world example: Maximo Park and Suede are playing Cambridge Corn Exch...

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s episode of The Price of Music, Steve and Stu crunch the numbers and figure out... Exactly how much does a Mercury prizewinner’s streams really go up after a win? Spotify is going to make a licensed AI music something – but what is it going to be? And will artists get paid? Is TPOM now a Baby Shark fan-podcast? Steve politely r...

A special episode for you this week - where TPOM wonders : just how hard is it to run a festival in 2025, anyway? Spoiler: it's tricky, but rewarding! To find out more, we spoke to John Rostron, who started in the festival world when he co-founded the award-winning multi-venue festival Sŵn in Cardiff in 2007. He's now CEO of the Association of Independent Festivals which represents over 15...

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. And in this week’s episode of The Price of Music, Steve and Stu wrap their minds around... How much would it cost to buy Coldplay’s very first single today?; Steve reveals the “best new band he’s seen in months”; A proper AI vs human band dust up!; Are the major labels about to sign deals with music-generating AI platforms? A splendidly indi...

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. And goodness me, there's a lot in this week’s episode of The Price of Music for our dynamic duo to get stuck into... Listener Richard sent us a great question about music journalism – and Steve has a lot to say when answering: what’s changed about music journalism, whether music journalism is still important, where the music print media...

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s multi-faceted episode of The Price of Music our intrepid duo get to grips with... Stu’s Big Number is One Hundred Billion Dollars … but who has paid it to whom and should that number actually be bigger? Ticketmaster is being sued by the US government for ‘illegal ticket resale tactics’ and deceiving artists and fans - but what...

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s action-packed episode of The Price of Music: a bunch of extremely interesting music biz questions are answered by our intrepid duo... Stu’s Big Number is 30,000 and relates to the number of AI-generated songs… but why so many songs and where are they going? Why are Radiohead’s fans getting angry about tickets (“that don’t exis...

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s The Price of Music: an urgent-ish delve into the news that Morrissey has announced he wants to sell his ownership of The Smiths’ songs… including a suggestion from Steve and Stu about how Johnny Marr might buy the songs off Morrissey via a gmail address that Morrissey put online. And then Steve and Stu take a deep dive into a...

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. In this week’s The Price of Music: Steve takes over Big Number duties to reveal how many weeks ‘ABBA Gold’ has been in the UK’s album chart The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Light’ hits 5bn Spotify streams – but what is he raising $1bn for? Why has Spotify reintroduced messaging inside its app, and would Steve or Stuart use it? Apple Music’s radio stat...

If you want an easy guide to the music biz and how it all works – here we are! In this week's The Price of Music: Stuart’s Big Number involves Coldplay, a lot of sold-out Wembley stadium gigs, and the band raising money for grass roots venues Has Steve actually “gone deaf for a living?” Chinese streaming platforms have a “Super VIP” subscription that costs 5x as much (and 15m people are paying...

Steve and Stu have questions – so many questions. Fortunately they also have answers! In this episode: Stuart's Big Number is 217.5 million... and what does it have to do with a B-side by US indie rock icons Pavement? Steve wants to know which albums have the songs sequenced in the "wrong" order? (And which Blur album does he have a controversial tracklisting opinion about?) Spotify&...

This week, Steve and Stuart find out that they both went to see Oasis last week , but try not to spend the whole show talking about it; and instead get stuck into all this: Beyoncé’s tour is the most successful country tour of all time;  Steve and Stu both go to watch Oasis - but what did they think?; Stu’s Big Number: Spotify wants One. Billion. Subscribers;  Tomorrowland festival gets 74 million...

Steve and Stuart rummage through the TPOM inbox and pull out some brand new listeners' questions to answer (send yours into us here: thepriceofmusicpodcast@gmail.com ) –  Does the money from a stream get split evenly? Do artists get paid if a festival is cancelled? How do music-making AIs get trained? What is Spotify's Discovery Mode? PLUS : they go over the UK government's reforms for...

In this week's show, Steve and Stuart get to grips with government legislation and bands turning down big bucks: Stu’s Big Number: after some gentle ribbing from Steve on last week's (small) Big Number, Stu returns with a whopper: 2.5 trillion - but what is it? Will Drake face Kendrick Lamar in the witness box? Steve takes a 13-point "personality test" to see if he's a music Superfan Breaking news...

In this week's show, Steve and Stuart cover a lot of ground, including: Stu’s Big Number: it seems small (1000), but that’s how many days Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” has topped the Apple Music chart How do songwriters actually earn their money – a new report reveals the truth (part of which is that a lot of them are struggling) Which well-known bands are also performing as cover bands to make cash...

Steve and Stuart are back in the new and - oh yes - improved The Price of Music! In this episode: The Velvet Sundown are a fully-AI-generated band that have over a million listeners on Spotify – is this a tipping point – and should human artists worry? Oasis are back – so how much money did each show make (and how much of it is VAT? The band Deerhoof have pulled their music from Spotify in protest...