We asked 2025’s Horizon Future Leaders a simple question: what’s the most pressing issue in your corner of the industry? The answers varied, but clustered around a handful of themes, including: the financial strain running through the industry, the growing power of algorithms, the infrastructure that’s crumbling and the question of who gets access in the first place.
Part 1: The economics aren’t working
The music industry relies on many individuals - including managers, agents, promoters and people running grassroots venues and independent labels - who are willing to work on thin margins and uncertain returns. That’s becoming harder to sustain.
Trina Smith, whose work spans AFEM, In Place of War and Electric Pineapple Music, is blunt about the challenges facing artist managers, many of whom still work on a 20% commission model.
“Independent managers are propping up an industry where everyone else demands day rates, including songwriters who fought hard for theirs but won’t offer the same respect in return. 20% of nothing is still nothing, yet we’re expected to swallow this so-called industry standard with a smile”.
Maria Torres, also an artist manager, points to challenges around the economics of touring. “The costs to tour are definitely one of the biggest challenges we face, everything has become so much more expensive after the pandemic. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to at least break even on a tour, for both developing and bigger artists”.
Venues face a similar squeeze of course. Hadie Abido, co-founder of The Jam Jar in Bristol, describes the financial pressures for grassroots music venues as “insane right now”. “Even small changes can disrupt the already tight margins of a small 200-cap venue”, he says. “A societal shift from alcohol sales, cost of living pressures and recent business rates announcements have many against the ropes”.
The knock-on effect is predictable. Josh Gunston, founder of Southpoint, says, “Fewer people can afford to be artists, DJs or label owners without second jobs, and it’s only getting worse. At the same time, the pressure to be constantly visible across TikTok, Instagram and everywhere else means creativity is being replaced by reactivity”.
Rachel June, Music Editor at ASBO Magazine, hears the same from the artists she talks to. “Many people I speak to daily do everything DIY - which is great as it shows passion; however, it means careers are more difficult to secure. The money instead goes to the larger industries, making the rich richer and neglecting those on the ground”.
None of this will be news to people working in the sector, especially those working at the grassroots and with new talent. But when the same concern comes back unprompted from managers, venue operators, label founders and journalists, it’s probably worth taking seriously.
Part 2: At the mercy of the algorithm
Alongside the economic issues, many of our Horizon Future Leaders also highlighted another key challenge, especially for grassroots and newer talent: visibility. Even when artists and their teams can afford to keep things going, it can still be a major challenge to reach audiences and get heard in a world increasingly shaped by algorithmic recommendations rather than human curation.
A decade ago, getting playlisted on a major digital service provider - or DSP - generally meant a human editor had listened to your track and decided it deserved attention. That model is fading.
Grace Theokritoff, Label Manager at IDOL, explains the shift. “Mainstream DSPs are moving away from an editorial, tastemaker and discovery based model and towards a more algorithmic model of consumption. This has been mirrored on social media, which now leans heavily on advertising and algorithmic recommendations. The dominance of these platforms means the music ecosystem has really changed; we’ve had to switch up our marketing strategies and lean into new platforms”.
The practical result is that success increasingly depends on understanding how to trigger algorithmic promotion rather than how to reach the right ears. Maarten Puddy, artist manager and founder of VOWTA Management, puts it simply. “We are all at the mercy of algorithms dictating who the biggest music acts are, rather than the quality of music, producers and musicians - has real artistic critiquing been killed off by big tech and been replaced by an algorithm?”
This shapes artist behaviour in ways that aren’t always healthy. Amy Lewis, co-founder of Roadie Media, sees it daily. “In the era of instant gratification, a lot of artists tend to prioritise inflating stats or focusing on vanity metrics, rather than continuous, strategised growth. At Roadie Media, we encourage artists to look at a considerably longer campaign lifecycle to build a loyal core fanbase rather than ‘quick wins’”.
Helena Coma, Membership & Communications Coordinator at the Featured Artists Coalition, traces the problem to something deeper. “I think a huge issue is that the value of music, and art in general, is not being recognised. The industry works in a strange way where the art itself can be accessed for free so easily, meaning the real money now comes from the artist’s brand rather than the music. The human has become the product”.
When the metric becomes the goal, the work starts to bend around it. That’s not a new problem in any creative industry - but the speed and opacity of algorithmic systems makes it harder to see what’s happening until it’s already happened.
Part 3: The structures are crumbling
Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Artists need places to play, people to write about and champion them and their music, opportunities to generate income beyond streams and tickets, and teams that can help grow their businesses. Several of those support structures are crumbling.
Sean Knibb, Production Manager at Liverpool Sound City, has seen this first-hand. “A problem I see us facing currently is the continued loss of grassroots music venues. We are a new music festival and, this year alone, we have lost two venues within the boundaries of Sound City. This limits the venues we use and makes it harder to grow the number of venues we incorporate”.
The journalism that covers music is facing its own crisis. Philippa Arrowsmith, music publicist at Morena Comms, describes what she’s seeing. “As a music publicist, one issue that has been coming up is the erosion of traditional music journalism due to a lack of funding. Outlets can no longer pay their writers properly, which has created a growing reliance on advertorials and pay-to-play coverage”.
Basically, when outlets can’t pay writers, editorial decisions start following money rather than merit. For publicists working with independent artists - who rarely have budget for paid placements - that creates an uneven playing field. And for readers, it affects what gets covered and whose stories get told.
Meanwhile, AI is beginning to displace human work in areas that previously provided reliable income for some music creators. Martha Cleary, founder of Glow Artists, flags sync as a pressure point. “The battle against AI in the sync world is hard to overlook. Sync is where so many artists make considerable amounts of money from their catalogue and knowing how many of these opportunities are now being taken by AI as a way of saving time/money is very worrying”.
And roles performed by the people who support artists day-to-day are shifting, with many people in the industry getting ever longer to-do lists.
Tabeah Berler, artist manager and founder of Pon’t Danic Music, notes that “the biggest issue in artist management right now, in my opinion, is that the role keeps expanding while the structures around it stay the same. Managers are taking on more every year, partly because the industry, the artist and even we ourselves keep blurring the lines of what a manager should cover”.
Ollie Rankine, Senior Account Manager at Name PR, describes similar pressure in his field. "The toughest challenge in B2B music PR today is the pressure to be ‘always on’. Sustaining quality in a never-ending news cycle while budgets continue to tighten can quietly wear down even the most passionate teams”.
Some of these challenges get lots of attention, others less so, but all need to be tackled to ensure music creators can continue to achieve long-term sustainable careers.
Part 4: Who gets access?
The pressures described so far - financial strain, algorithmic gatekeeping, crumbling infrastructure - don’t fall evenly. When the industry contracts, it's typically those already on the margins - working-class, marginalised or outside major cities - who lose access first.
Saskhia Menendez, founder of The Trans Charter, identifies a gap between what the industry says and what it does when it comes to developing a more inclusive sector.
“The biggest challenge is the widening gap between inclusion rhetoric and real action. The industry needs accountable, sector-wide standards, like the Trans Charter I’m developing, to ensure safety, equity and genuine access for trans and marginalised artists, so the next generation doesn’t face the same barriers”.
Geography matters too. When it comes to government support, in the UK the support available depends on where you’re based. Benjamin Magee, director of New Champion Management, highlights the specific challenges in Northern Ireland.
“The biggest issue comes from local legislation. Recent decisions by our elected officials to reject sweeping reform that would bring the cultural sector of NI into the modern age can only be seen as a massive failure on the part of the legislative body and critical misunderstanding of their constituents and roles - as they continue to favour faceless big business and private equity firms”.
The financial squeeze described earlier has specific consequences for access. Josh Gunston, founder of Southpoint, connects the dots. “It might not be obvious yet, but over time it’ll hit the whole industry from the bottom up, especially for people from working-class backgrounds who don’t have the luxury of time or safety nets to take risks."
And when journalism becomes pay-to-play, coverage tilts toward those who can afford it. Philippa Arrowsmith, music publicist at Morena Comms, notes that “editorial decisions are increasingly driven by who can afford to pay for placement rather than who has a meaningful story to tell”.
Oscar Tremain, VP Of Product & Client Relations at rightsHUB, offers a different angle - that some barriers are self-imposed. “Not embracing new technology and partnerships. There are an ever growing number of companies offering their expertise and specialised services to labels, artists and all rightsholders alike. Be curious! Make those enquiries, take that demo and see what these people dedicated to their craft can do for you and your music!”
Access isn’t just about money, though money shapes most of it. But it’s also about whose concerns get taken seriously, whose regions get investment, and whose presence is treated as normal rather than exceptional.
This series is based on responses from the 2025 Horizon Future Leaders cohort.