As we head into 2024, CMU recently sat down with the bosses of many of the music industry’s trade organisations to talk about their work, the key challenges faced by their members, and what to expect in the year ahead. Today, David Martin, CEO of the UK’s Featured Artists Coalition.
Explore the full series of interviews
What are the big challenges for your members?
Simply being an artist is a challenge. Always has been, always will be. It's one thing to have the confidence and talent to share your artistic vision and to take the risk to create, but it's quite another to attempt to make it your livelihood and to sustain yourself from your artistic endeavours.
Operating in a global market, where 100,000 tracks are uploaded to streaming services everyday and where everyone has the entire history of music at their fingertips, is challenging. The streaming era might have fewer gatekeepers, but getting attention and building momentum is unbelievably tough - and particularly so in the present economic climate, which has made the cost of touring so expensive.
What have been some key campaigns for FAC over the last year?
During 2023 the FAC engaged in two significant campaigns, 100% Venues and #LetTheMusicMove
100% Venues has helped take the long-time concerns of artists about venue commissions on their merchandise and turn it into a much broader conversation. This is an issue which is now very much in the public arena and I think anyone with a sense of fairness would consider it wholly unjust that any venues would be claiming 25% - plus VAT! - on the sale of a t-shirt or poster.
This campaign was led from a constructive, practical standpoint, by building a useful database that shows venues that charge 0% commission on merchandise, and then encouraging those who persist in supporting outdated practices to come to the table.
Those conversations have mostly been very positive, and it’s been great to see momentum continue to build on this issue. The decision of Academy Music Group to reduce commissions to 15% at their largest venues, while not perfect, is a huge and welcome step in the right direction.
Their willingness to embrace positive change will result in significant sums of revenue rightfully remaining in our members pockets. It’s the artist who typically takes all the risk with merchandise - design, commissioning manufacturing, paying up front for it and then carting it around when they tour.
I hope that we’ll see even greater progress on this issue in 2024. I’d certainly like to see the adoption of specific policies that would excuse support acts from paying any commission. And I’d also like to see some of the larger arenas step up and have a conversation with us. The grassroots and independent sector have been almost universally supportive of the campaign, but we need action from the largest venues too.
As well as bearing many of the costs of live music, artists are also the biggest employers. The most successful artists can be directly responsible for a small army of workers - from their immediate crew and technicians, to their manager, agent and accountant, through to production, drivers and catering.
There's a really delicate balance here between success and failure, and while of course we all need venues and promoters to operate viable businesses, without the artist you don't have an audience. This is why the 100% Venues campaign is so important.
#LetTheMusicMove was initially a campaign set up by the FAC and the MMF to help tackle challenges around international touring following Brexit. However, after we became aware that the USA’s Department Of Homeland Security was planning to instigate huge increases to the cost of US touring visas we decided to broaden the focus of the campaign and encouraged artists, managers and other people in the UK industry to raise their concerns.
We did a lot of media campaigning on the potential impacts of these increases, and worked to galvanise international support to oppose the changes, particularly in the US. I’m pleased to say that it seems to have worked, and that the Department Of Homeland Security appears to have listened, and they have now paused their decision to increase touring visa costs.
What other projects kept the FAC team busy in 2023?
Beyond those important campaigns we’ve had a great second year of the FAC’s Step Up Fund, thanks to support from our friends at Amazon Music. 21 brilliant independent artists have now been able to benefit from the financial support - and wider support - the fund offers, providing a real boost to everyone who has participated.
To give just a few examples, since being awarded Step Up funding in 2022, Elkka has gone on to sign with Ninja Tune, while Joel Culpepper is doing some great things, and LVRA was nominated for Scottish Album Of The Year. Out of 2023’s cohort of artists supported by the Step Up Fund, Jalen Ngonda has picked up Grammy consideration for his debut album, Chalk recently won multiple accolades at the Northern Ireland Music Awards, Tara Lily has just signed to Tru Thoughts, and Amie Blue has signed with 0207 Def Jam.
In all of these cases the support and funding offered by the FAC’s Step Up Fund has really helped the artists to succeed.
We also co-hosted the Artist & Manager Awards again with the MMF. It’s an extraordinary amount of work to put the event together, but it goes from strength to strength each year and I was delighted that at 2023’s awards we could recognise some extraordinary talents, including Forever Living Originals, Jorja Smith, Duran Duran, Nia Archives, Tinie Tempah, the band formerly known as Easy Life, and hip hop pioneers The Cookie Crew.
In 2023 we also added two brilliant new staff to the FAC team, with Gary Reid coming onboard as our Head Of Partnerships & Programmes, and Billie Morton Riley joining as our Membership & Comms Manager. We've also just welcomed BISHI as an FAC Board Director, which is really exciting.
What do you see as main challenges in the year ahead?
Coming into 2024 the two most notable - and interesting - challenges are going to be the ongoing changes to the structures of the streaming market and the implementation of AI. On both of these issues the FAC stands shoulder-to-shoulder with our partners in the Council Of Music Makers, where we have set out a clear and pragmatic agenda for reform.
With streaming it feels like we’ve moved two steps forward and three steps back. After the UK Parliament’s Culture, Media And Sport Committee’s report on the economics of streaming made the recommendation for a “complete reset” of how the streaming market operates there was real pressure from the government for the industry to find solutions to issues around transparency, metadata and remuneration.
In May 2023 we appeared to have the first green shoot of progress, with the announcement of pan-industry agreement on metadata and the creation of a working group on remuneration.
However, since then it’s been nothing but the sound of crickets. The phrase “working group” feels especially ironic - we don’t even know who the members of the working group are yet! The working group quite literally is not working.
In parallel with these frustrations and inaction, there’s been a major upheaval in streaming. After years of telling artists and music-makers that the streaming market was working fine and we should all just focus on “growing the pie”, the major rightsholders - led by Universal Music - have announced that, actually, the market isn’t working fairly, and we should all line up to support what they term an ‘artist-centric’ model for streaming.
Except they haven’t involved anyone in discussions about this model - least of all artists. And that’s exactly the kind of old school and antiquated attitude that made the streaming market so inherently unfair in the first place!
It really feels like these two parallel processes need to be reconciled - and quickly. I suspect that actually there are many shared concerns on these issues between artists and our label partners, and a lot that we can agree on. But I don’t think that they can duck inconvenient conversations around issues like minimum digital royalty rates or contract revision mechanisms.
This also feeds into the discussions building up around artificial intelligence - there’s an obvious overlap between the discussions around streaming and the discussions around AI.
Again, I suspect that there is a lot of common ground between artists and labels - both artists and labels are quite excited about certain aspects of AI, but we’ve also got concerns about the rights that we own - whether that’s personal data, our image or creative works - being appropriated without permission.
The recent UK government roundtable on AI for the creative industries certainly sounded some alarm bells ringing, because the only music industry representatives came from the major labels.
That wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t good enough in 2023 and it won’t be good enough in 2024. We can’t let the future look like the past. These conversations need to involve all stakeholders in the music business - and certainly need to include those people who make, write, record and produce the music that keeps major label executives in their jobs.
