The music industry is a bloody mess. From the absurdly broken state of modern charts, to artists’ obscenely miniscule rate of pay for Spotify streams, the modern music industry has a list of glaring issues as long as your arm. But, as human beings are want to do, we can’t help but keep adding new things to the list to complain about. The latest such talking point in music circles being buzzy up-and-coming bands such as Wet Leg and The Last Dinner Party being accused of being ‘industry plants’. Though the discourse I’ve seen online has raised some noteworthy points, I think the reductive label these bands have been assigned with ultimately fails to stand up to scrutiny. Continue reading
For years I had the same routine every Saturday. I would head into town for a spot of lunch, look around HMV and the record stalls in the market, buy the latest copy of NME and chill for an hour or so in my favourite cafe. Over the course of a very large pot of loose leaf tea I would read every last article and feature. That seems like an age ago now. Pardon the nostalgia, but with the announcement that Britain’s most iconic music publication will cease printing by the end of the week after 66 years in circulation, I’d rather remember it as it used to be rather than what it became. 
Hear me out on this one! Granted, the orangutan in the Oval Office may be a lying fascist, racist and misogynist, his rise to power has been littered with controversy and he has set the world on a tense knife’s edge, but at least one good outcome seems certain to come from his reign of terror… albeit inadvertently. 
In today’s fast moving world the path that the future will take can be very difficult to predict. Fads come and go faster than ever before and music is not immune to the fickle nature of modern life. Someone can be on top of the world one day and then be all but forgotten the next. (Remember Gotye? Anyone heard from him lately?) Likewise acts can be plucked up from obscurity and thrust into the limelight seemingly out of the blue… I bet Rick Astley’s bank account is looking nice and full after all those millions of rick rolls! But even in the disorderly world of pop culture there are patterns to be found. Perhaps the best way to make predictions is to look at how the industry itself is set to change and think about what effect it will have on music. 
Belwood Music 