Music Streaming: Findings From The Other Side

The DCMS’s inquiry into the impact of streaming on the music economy is out

If you follow this radio show (currently on hiatus as it is) or even hang around this blog, you might know that we’ve been talking about the economics of music streaming for quite a while. It’s now been known for a while that music streaming, initially introduced under the pretext of saving music from the jaws of piracy, has done little other than replacing piracy and making it a legal source of income—for everyone except those who create the music itself.

Pop quiz: which of these pays the worst? (Answer: top right corner)

In the UK, the Broken Record campaign amplified concerned voices of musicians successful enough to be known but curiously unable to pay their rents supporting themselves solely on the money made from playing live shows. As touring ground to a halt with the pandemic gripping the world last year, musicians made it known that the other, traditional source of revenue for musicians, the recordings of their music itself, was paying them pittance, largely owing to the minuscule payouts from streaming, which is the dominant mode of music listening across the whole world nearly. The campaign made enough noise that the British government’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (DCMS) decided to closely examine the economic mechanics of the streaming industry in music.

Six months of hearing evidence and questioning labels and streaming services heads later, the DCMS has released findings from its inquiry into the impact that streaming has had on musicians, and it is scathing. It agrees with most of the points that artists have been raising (particularly in the last year or so). Here is a short recap of it by the BBC,

MPs call for complete reset of music streaming to ensure fair pay for artists The music industry is weighted against artists, who see “pitiful returns” from streaming, MPs say. BBC News

Labour MP Kevin Brennan also posted his recap of the report on his Twitter. He has been pushing a private member’s bill to amend the UK digital copyright laws to treat streams the same way music used in TV and radio is, where the royalties are split 50-50 with labels and artists (equitable remuneration), and was also involved with the committee that heard evidence from musicians earlier and that cross-examined streaming and record labels’ UK bosses, in the lead up to this conclusion.

Today the @CommonsDCMS Committee publishes its report into the economics of music streaming. Here's a thread of the report's findings and recommendations. (1/25) #BrokenRecord #FixStreaming pic.twitter.com/rdfhyMGdg2

— Kevin Brennan MP (@KevinBrennanMP) July 15, 2021

Some of the committee’s other recommendations were:

• Musicians and songwriters should be allowed to reclaim the rights to their work from labels after a set period of time.
• Artists should be given the right to adjust their contract if their work is successful beyond the remuneration they received.
• The government should explore ways to ensure songwriters, who receive minimal streaming royalties, can have sustainable careers.
• Curators who make playlists on services like Spotify and Apple Music should adhere to a “code of conduct” to avoid bribes and favouritism.
• The government should require publishers and royalty societies to inform artists about how much money is flowing through the system.
• Warner and Universal Music should follow Sony’s example, and cancel their artists’ historical debts

(Sony recently announced it was dropping unrecouped remuneration for its legacy artists. It kind of goes without saying, but it just goes to show again that the record labels really… don’t need 70 years worth of 80% of your income. They don’t. It’s not a “risky investment into undecided talent”, it’s exploitation. Don’t listen to the BPI, they’re talking through their arses about this (again). I bring up the BPI because the BBC have quoted their “cautious” response to the inquiry and they’re too polite to point out this isn’t the first time the BPI have spouted this clownery under the guise of defending “risky investment” into talent; if you don’t say the same of traditional investments then it shouldn’t hold water here either.)

Some of the standout stats which were shocking to me were that:

• 80% of music consumption in the UK came from streaming. There is no alternative. For a streaming company to shirk responsibility and say people can just “opt out” is a barefaced lie, and streaming is not a level playing field.
• I know YouTube pays out the lowest rates for music (less than 0.05p—not pounds, pence), but YouTube makes up 51% of music streaming, while it paid only 7% out to musicians.

MusicAlly, whose ill-fated interview with Spotify’s CEO last June also gave a lot of push to the strive for equitable remuneration, covered the inquiry as well.

Tom Gray, the musician behind the Broken Record campaign that played a big part in an investigation like this ever being conducted, also found that the inquiry confirmed what musicians had been saying all along about the paltry payouts from streaming.

The @CommonsDCMS report is DAMNING.

It brilliantly takes each issue in turn and arrives at a conclusion on the balance of evidence.

In every single instance it reflects an industry that is pocketing a fortune while failing UK performers and songwriters.#BrokenRecord

— Tom Gray #BrokenRecord (@MrTomGray) July 15, 2021

In general, Tom Gray is someone you should follow if you want to keep up with the ongoing issue of fair payments and royalties in music, and his Broken Record campaign.

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It remains to be seen what the larger impact of the committee’s recommendations will be, Spotify has always felt to me like a company enjoying the 7-day free-trial version of exploitation benefits. It’s well known to anyone familiar with the history of music technology, or even tech in general, that laws are always about 10 years behind existing technology. We saw this happen with sampling as well, for example, where record labels were suing left, right and centre but the courts didn’t have a unanimous definition for what legally constituted a sample.

Spotify felt to me like a company whose 5-year plan was to make a profit off the fact that we don’t yet have a legal definition for a stream, and it’s starting to feel like the law is somewhat catching up. Of course, any changes will only be applied to payment in the UK, but such decisions are known to ripple around the world (see for example, Australia’s legal suit against Google and Facebook over payment of royalties to news publishers whose articles both companies used for little compensation, as Google news results and the Facebook news feed, has been followed by the EU suing Google €500 billion for failing to negotiate a fair deal with news publishers there in the 2 months it was allotted to do so)

Musicians have also been exploring alternatives to traditional streaming in the meanwhile, such as using Spotify as a sort of window shopping facilitator by putting up a few singles on Spotify, while making the rest of the album available to purchase on sites such as Bandcamp (and if you hang around our radio show, you’re probably tired of hearing us talk about how much we love Bandcamp).
Some artists forayed into the recent NFT boom (*terms and conditions, including heavy solicitor fees adding in many cases an extra $80 to your album purchase, plus a hefty environmental fee because blockchains are energy guzzlers, apply), others have turned to a few new streaming services trying out the user-centric model, where your subscription fees get divided amongst only the artists you listen to (Sonstream is one), or alternative models like the stream-to-own (Resonate). Some are even turning to Kickstarters and Patreons. The founder and CEO of streaming company Pandora suggested to me that going forward, artists could look to basically digitalise and monetise live and alternative recordings to work around the dictations of record labels.

Still, even as many different examples pop up demonstrating the callousness and lack of regard for the health of the music industry by those who profit off it the most (see: co-founder of Spotify’s recent claim that Spotify wasn’t made with the intention of paying artists, only distributing music, aka rebranded piracy), it’s nice to see some accountability finally come into the wild west that streaming has been for better part of a decade.

If you’re interested, you really should read the entire report, which is available as a PDF on the parliament website here: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/6739/documents/71977/default/

I’m hopeful about this!

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As lockdown grinds the live music industry to a halt, many artists face uncertainty as their major source of livelihood, tours, virtually disappeared overnight. Consider supporting artists by directly purchasing their music instead of streaming them through third-party apps that do not pay musicians (Follow the #BrokenRecord hashtag and Mr. Tom Gray on Twitter to know more). Support the independent music scene if you can!

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Catch What The Punk?! on your radio every Monday night from 9 to 10 PM! We bring you the quirky, the happy, the weird, and the rebellious sides of punk music, all in the space of an hour of short, intense, yet sometimes long and spacey, punk and punk-adjacent music. Tune in on 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or online at cfrc.ca!

(Did you know? Our FM signal covers the greater Kingston, Ontario area, reaching from Belleville to Brockville and Westport to Watertown, NY!)

Missed a show? Catch up on the archives at cfrc.ca! Shows are available in the archives for three months from broadcast date.

Have feedback? Let us know! Email wtp@cfrc.ca, or give us a call on our station, and we’ll be happy to chat to you! (We’re not there, don’t phone in, unless you hate loose change)

A Tribute to Dave Datblygu

I want to write about David R Edwards today. He was a singer and Welsh language revolutionary, and passed away last week from health complications, and I wanted to highlight his impact on Welsh music.

Dave performing on stage. Image via welshnot

David was a Welsh pioneer, singer in experimental post-punk band Datblygu (pronounced Dat-bluh-gee), sometimes (kind of reductively) called ‘the Welsh Fall’. While Dave was a big fan of Mark E Smith and the Fall, Datblygu didn’t sound like them very much. What they sounded like often depended on what Patricia Morgan, other half of Datblygu, was listening to.

What Dave did so well was encapsulate his experiences of life in Welsh-speaking Wales with such minute detail, yet so succinctly, leading to many calling him a poet rather than just singer and lyricist.

Dave sang in Welsh, simply because it was his mother tongue and because he was bored of everything else being done in Welsh prior to that (prior to the Anhrefn revolutionisation of Welsh pop (as in popular) music, which Datblygu were a part of. There’s currently an excellent radio documentary about it narrated by BBC radio’s Huw Stephens and Sian Eleri called The Story of Miwsig which I recommend)

Dave is cited as a direct influence on so many bands that went on to break through in the 1990s and bring Welsh language music to the forefront of British pop culture: Super Furry Animals, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, Catatonia, and many of the bands that emerged during the 00s and even today regard him as a Welsh hero.

I remember a Welsh music podcast talking to Elis James, Welsh broadcaster and comedian, who was a musician before he switched routes to comedy. He talked about being a bilingual teen in Carmarthen starting a band and wondering which language his band should perform in. English was the obvious commercially accessible route, but Welsh felt more familiar, yet it seemed a bit unusual because no one was really doing that at the time. He described then hearing Datblygu for the first time, and how it changed things forever for him, how Dave’s words expressed thoughts that he had had, but had not heard expressed in his language. Lines written about his lived experiences, and his opinions on life in Welsh-speaking Wales.

Because Dave, prominent speaker of the Welsh language, was not afraid to criticise the small community that was listening and able to understand him. He brought the Welsh language down from this mythical, untouchable pedestal, and in a way, made it a breathing, living, human language: touchable, open to criticism, robust; as any other language would be. As he said in his own words, he was ready to drag ‘Sgymraeg’ kicking and screaming into the new century, but always with ready humour and razor-sharp wit.

Dave more recently. On the left is bandmate and friend Pat Morgan

I talked about him a little and paid my tribute by opening my radio show (different one, this one’s currently on hiatus, which I should probably update in a separate post, but we’ll be back soon!) this week with a song by Datblygu, although to have to choose just one is painful! If you’d like, you can listen to highlights of the show in podcast form. We’ve been doing queer music history all month and this week’s was about the 1990s, I might write a whole blogpost about that separately. The 90s are my favourite period of music, and incidentally, Datblygu’s first three albums, considered essential listening, were released in the 90s (album 1, Wyau, was in 1988, which is close). Anyway, all music played on the radio should be available as links in the podcast description!

There were obviously many Datblygu songs I could have played. Rife with astute observations and character sketches breathed life into, many Datblygu songs are mini-experiences. I chose to go with Y Teimlad though literally meaning “the feeling”, a slightly mellower song, a hopeful and optimistic song about love. It’s a fairly simple song, but don’t let a glimpse of the lyrics/translated lyrics deceive you: it’s profound, it’s touching. Many will point out a melancholic touch to it, but so versatile was the writing partnership of David and Patricia.

Of course, there will be others out there who know much more, and know it more intimately, through the experience of growing up Welsh, knowing exactly what Dave was referring to, hearing him describe someone and knowing exactly what he’s talking about. Some will know just through knowing David himself. I can’t lay claim to either. I got into Datblygu only a year ago, and am not Welsh. I don’t know if a write-up by me can do him justice. Elis James wrote a wonderful and touching tribute in the Guardian, if you are looking for something better. But hopefully we can agree on the genius and nuance of David’s writing and impact on Welsh music, language, and even culture.

If you’re interested, there are the lyrics to Y Teimlad, followed by a translation.

Y teimlad sy’n hala pobol i anghofio amser
Y teimlad sy’n haloch chi i feddwl nad yw’r dyfodol mor fler
Y teimlad sydd yn dod a cyn sbarduno gobaith
Ti’n gweld y tywod llwch ond ti’n gweld fod yno flodau

Y teimlad, beth yw’r teimlad?
Y teimlad sydd heb esboniad
Y teimlad, beth yw’r teimlad?
Y teimlad sy’n cael ei alw’n gariad
Cariad, cariad, y teimlad

Mae hapusrwydd yn codi ac yn troi yn wir rhywbryd
Ac mae’n dangos fod yno rhywbeth mewn hyd yn oed dim byd
A pan mae’r teimlad yno mae bywyd yn werth parhau
Ond yn ei absenoldeb mae’r diweddglo yn agosau

Y teimlad, beth yw y teimlad?
Y teimlad, sydd heb esboniad?
Y teimlad, beth yw y teimlad?
Y teimlad, sy’n cael ei alw’n gariad

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The feeling that makes people forget time
The feeling that makes you think the future isn’t so bad
The feeling that comes before sparking off hope
You see the sand dust but you see that there’s flowers

The feeling, what is the feeling?
The feeling that’s inexplicable
The feeling, what is the feeling?
The feeling that is called love
Love, love, the feeling

Happiness rises and turns true sometimes
And it shows that there’s something even in nothing
And when the feeling is there, life is worth continuing
But in its absence the end approaches

The feeling, what is the feeling?
The feeling, which is inexplicable?
The feeling, what is the feeling?
The feeling that is called love

That’s an old performance of the song by the band. Super Furry Animals included a cover of this song, done in their own inimitable style (Dave approved) on their 2000 Welsh-language album Mwng (pronounced Moong), which is still the best-selling Welsh language album of all time.

Datblygu’s first albums, should you want to check them out further (and that’s a recommended position to take!), are called Wyau (Eggs), Pyst (Post) and Libertino. John Peel loved them and played them endlessly. Easy to see why. They’d just put out a new album last year, August’s Cwm Gwagle, meaning Void Valley. You might remember we played some music from the album on What The Punk as well (A i Z, a cracking piece of work again). Take a listen to that as well and you will see, Dave never lost form.

Nos da, Dave. Cwsg mewn hedd. RIP, you will be missed.

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Catch What The Punk?! on your radio every Monday night from 9 to 10 PM! We bring you the quirky, the happy, the weird, and the rebellious sides of punk music, all in the space of an hour of short, intense, yet sometimes long and spacey, punk and punk-adjacent music. Tune in on 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or online at cfrc.ca!

(Did you know? Our FM signal covers the greater Kingston, Ontario area, reaching from Belleville to Brockville and Westport to Watertown, NY!)

Missed a show? Catch up on the archives at cfrc.ca! Shows are available in the archives for three months from broadcast date.

Have feedback? Let us know! Email wtp@cfrc.ca, or give us a call on our station, and we’ll be happy to chat to you! (We’re not there, don’t phone in, unless you hate loose change)

Across The Punk Spectrum

15 February, 2021:

Great music for the ages on What The Punk?! again this week, as we brought you the twangliest punk, Paul-Weller-in-indie-drag punk, sculpturists (?) making punk, honky tonk punk, and more!

We heard music from Canadian punks Wet Cigarette, who sound like Nirvana got high, in the best possible way. You’ll want to listen out for some classic lyrics (not only on this song, but throughout their album Uncut)! We listened to their song Being Gay Is Good For The Environment. We also had fellow British Columbians Pedagogues and Crack Cloud, who make really interesting synth punk. There’s some honky tonk piano to look out for on this one, with a very rock and roll glide!

We also had Toronto punks Shrts, whose name leaves us in modern predicament: as fond as we are of dropping vowels (remnants of a time when vowels were expensive, re: text messages? It goes back further than you’d think: in the 1500s, the Welsh language dropped the letter K entirely from its language because k wasn’t as commonly used in English, which it shares the Latin script with, which made it expensive to use a mould of the letter K in printing their annual print of the Bible. They announced it with nonchalance and got torched by the locals, but ultimately, C won out), this one leaves us in two minds. I thought it was pronounced Shirts. Andrea thought it was Shorts. The album’s called Shrt Chngd. I guess we’ll nvr knw.

Wet Cigarette – Being Gay Is Good For The Environment
Shrts – Floating Away
Crack Cloud – Ouster Stew

N0V3L are an interesting collective. I say “collective” because the Vancouver residents define themselves as more than a “band”. They’re a community. They say,

“It feels crass to call N0V3L a band—the word feels cumbersome and bloated with traditionalist connotations. N0V3L is a self-sustaining creative collective operating out of a house in Victoria, where they produce their own music, videos, and clothing. These elements converge and convulse to create music that challenges the gluttony and ruin wrought by power, while humming along with kaleidoscopic spontaneity into a tightly-wound audible world that is at once jarring and violently danceable.”

—N0V3L, on their origins and sound

Newly signed to Sub Pop records, Kiwi Jr. have a new music video out for their song Waiting In Line, from their just-released Cooler Returns. It’s difficult to release a great second album when your incredible debut album (Football Money) released in January 2020, second in poor luck only to February 2020, but Kiwi Jr. manage it admirably. Johnny Marr-inflected lemonade-flavoured fizzy jangle pop indie crossed the Atlantic and finally made its way to Toronto on Kiwi Jr.’s debut album, and from there they’ve made it their work to go about moulding a sound for themselves. See it for yourself!

Throws back to the 80s, this sound!

If you didn’t know, Kingston Canadian Film Festival is running from 26 February to 7 March this year! One of the films airing at the festival this year is a forty-year-old Dennis Hopper film shot in Vancouver, that happens to include a scene shot at a Pointed Sticks gig way back when. We listened to their song You Must Be Crazy. That’s what anyone else would have told you if you’d tried to tell them two years ago that this was the best way to enjoy a film festival, anyway!

N0V3L – Division
Kiwi Jr. – Waiting In Line
Pointed Sticks – You Must Be Crazy

Country is making a surprising revival in the punk circuit, and it’s not shaping up in the old tired white male Americana mould. Vibrant and refreshing, country punks of the current scene consist of women of colour, queer and punky, taking the genre to places outside of the United States and giving it a facelift (see: British queer country punk Delilah Black). We heard Brooklyn’s Girls on Grass, twangy punk and all included, with Who’s Gonna Cry.

Brontez Purnell has the ultimate concept for an album. He just wants to make mod music. Why so? He puts it best.

Purnell says, “Well basically I had always wanted to make a fake mod 80s white boy record, ya’ know? I’m talking like, sweater vest and penny loafers and shit, ya dig? Like I wanted to be someone else inside myself. Basically, like an anti-alter ego? Like how Janis Joplin claimed “Pearl” to be here “alter-ego” when in fact it was just Janis pretending to be Bessie Smith- but I wanted to whore that concept out even further. So I was like “well if Janis Joplin can be Bessie Smith, can I be Paul Weller? Or rather Paul Weller once removed? Like Brontez Purnell as Paul Weller as Brontez Purnell? It’s silly to even ask cause of course I can do whatever the fuck I want- CAUSE I’M PAUL FUCKING WELLER”

In complete dedication to the concept, this EP is called White Boy Music. Live your life, Weller.
We also heard from Brighton alt punk queer band Gender Roles, who have a new single out.

Brontez Purnell – Forgive Me, Philip
Gender Roles – Dead or Alive

Swedish punks Ghlow met on the underground synth scene on a fateful trip to buy sculpturing supplies. Their fuzzy, distorted punk proves the oft-spoken line, “Who needed sculptures anyway?” We also checked in on the British indie scene, listening to The Liquidators and Goat Girl, whose new album On All Fours has been teased at us slowly through the last year and is a hazy, synthy-yet-choppy delight to listen to. We heard Badibaba, which is about climate change. Or a goat, I couldn’t say.

We heard from Portland’s LITHICS, whose song Mice In The Night reminds me of Mush’s brilliant Blunt Instruments, with its winding stairwell of walking guitar lines. Mush, another brilliant new band, from Leeds, to get into! Fellow Portlanders Arctic Flowers also featured on this week’s show.

The Pack a.d., a west coast Canadian institution, are getting us through lockdown with their live releases. We heard some music off their latest, The Pack a.d. Vol. 3, which should give you enough incentive to trawl back through 1 and 2. It’ll get you that 10 PM gig-time adrenaline for sure! (Given our radio show airs at 9 PM, 10 PM is mostly post-show highs/disastrous swearing-at-faulty-computer-no-one-foresaw lows, but it’s the same thing.)

We also heard Spanish female punk band Melenas, whose choppy, garage-y sound threw back to the early 2000s guitar revival (a very good scene, and I am prepared to defend that. Not only did it throw up this generation’s guitar heroes, the likes of the Strokes, the White Stripes, Muse, Franz Ferdinand, and a little later the Arctic Monkeys, but that metallic scratchy sound becoming hip again also brought on a wave of revived interest in the original pioneers of that sound, Gang of Four and their bullet of a guitarist Andy Gill, which did everyone good. I miss Andy Gill.)

In happy news, there’s a new music video out for a Kim Gordon song, Hungry Baby! If you still want more Sonics’ themed music, Thurston Moore also has a new instrumental album, Screen Time, dropped out of the blue on his Bandcamp. Basically, music is great. Which is why I’ve spent 1300 words banging on about it. You better be convinced.

Ghlow – Not Fit For This
The Liquidators – Waving Goodbye
Goat Girl – Badibaba
Lithics  Mice In The Night
The Pack a.d – Haunt You
Melenas – Primer Tiempo
Arctic Flowers – Hallow water

Find this week’s playlist here, although do try and support artists directly if you can. It’ll make your day being safe in the knowledge that the record you hold in your hand/on your phone is truly yours, and you’re not supporting uh, Big Streaming in any way, the ultimate flick of the Vs in the face of the establishment.

(I’m glad no one can hear my thoughts as I write because my accent got thicker and thicker as that sentence went on. I’ll leave you to guess which one. Oh, and offer me voiceover work. Please.)

As lockdown grinds the live music industry to a halt, many artists face uncertainty as their major source of livelihood, tours, virtually disappeared overnight. Consider supporting artists by directly purchasing their music instead of streaming them through third-party apps that do not pay musicians (Follow the #BrokenRecord hashtag and Mr. Tom Gray on Twitter to know more). Support the independent music scene if you can!

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Catch What The Punk?! on your radio every Monday night from 9 to 10 PM! We bring you the quirky, the happy, the weird, and the rebellious sides of punk music, all in the space of an hour of short, intense, yet sometimes long and spacey, punk and punk-adjacent music. Tune in on 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or online at cfrc.ca!

(Did you know? Our FM signal covers the greater Kingston, Ontario area, reaching from Belleville to Brockville and Westport to Watertown, NY!)

Missed a show? Catch up on the archives at cfrc.ca! Shows are available in the archives for three months from broadcast date.

Have feedback? Let us know! Email wtp@cfrc.ca, or give us a call on our station, and we’ll be happy to chat to you! (We’re not there, don’t phone in, unless you hate loose change)

As lockdown grinds the live music industry to a halt, many artists face uncertainty as their major source of livelihood, tours, virtually disappeared overnight. Consider supporting artists by directly purchasing their music instead of streaming them through third-party apps that do not pay musicians (Follow the #BrokenRecord hashtag and Mr. Tom Gray on Twitter to know more). Support the independent music scene if you can!

What The Punk, 8 February 2021

This week on What The Punk?!, we surfed the choppy waters of punk to bring you some of the newest releases from the scene.

Montreal based feminist punk online zine Les Insoumises is dedicated to highlighting the uncompromising, badass women and non-binary punks on the local scene around Montreal (according to their FB page, their name means “girls who won’t conform”). Together with the Canadian website Punkanormal Activity, they compiled a list of new female hardcore punks from the last decade raging out in pits around town, and we decided to play an artists showcased by them, Up Yours. As a show that truly brings you music from coast to coast, we also listened to Vancouver indie punks Supermoon’s song Night Division, from their 2016 album Playland.

Supermoon – Night Division

Turning to the land of song and poetry for our next set, we played some female punk music out of Wales. Adwaith today are not just one of Wales’ most vibrant punks, male or female, but one of the UK’s most exciting artists right now. Music Blog Wales describes them, “Adwaith are here to kick down your front door like a gang of punks masquerading innocently in Morrissey masks, armed with their views on modern social injustices’ cleverly disguised behind well-written indie pop tunes.”

Combining catchy pop songwriting with grungey punk sensibilities and their own brand of political punk sung in their native Welsh language, the Carmarthen, South Wales trio has gone from strength to strength since they first appeared on the scene in 2017. We listened to their 2019 single Lan Y Môr, meaning by the seaside.

We also listened to Cardiff-based CHROMA, who make an explosive brand of unapologetic feminist punk. Their vocalist Katie Hall has shown her range not only as a punk frontwoman, but also as a versatile singer, collaborating with Northwalian hip hop inspired brass collective Band Pres LLareggub on their 2019 song Anifail (Animal). We heard their abrasive song Girls Talk.

CHROMA – Girls Talk
(What I also love is that their record label is called Popty Ping records. They say “clearly we don’t sell microwaves, but we like the name”. So do we!)

We heard music from Belgium-based Frankie Traandruppel, whose new song No Longer There blends interesting post punk sounds; it’s got the jangly guitars, signature post-punk amps but also a harmonica solo, which is cool.

We also had music from our favourite jazz punk band from Yorkshire, now based in London, DEADLETTER. Their new song Fall of The Big Screen is out now. London, Ontario hardcore punks Single Mothers also have a new album called Bubble, off which we heard the title track.

Single Mothers – Bubble

We listened this week to music from Bristolian punks Spectre’s 2019 album It’s Never Going To Happen And This Is Why. The track On Nepotism, done in collaboration with Elvin Brandhi & French Margot, is on track for Spectres’ firebrand punk style.

Funnily enough, Spectres once became UK-famous with a very different sound, for nearly sharing name with Britain’s fourth favourite pastime, the Bond film called Spectre. As a joke, the band decided to release an elaborate Bond-style single as their mock contender for the theme to the film (spoiler: they safely lost out to Sam Smith. Their song still slaps though!)

Of the song Spectre, which was a duet between members Joe Hatt and Ela Orleans, and Hatt says,

“What began as a flippant bit of cheek–tonguing has ended up being probably the most elaborate thing we have ever done. When the title of the next Bond film was announced last year, we joked online that we had been chosen to write the theme song for it. A few people believed this, so we decided we may as well go through with it. Fast forward many months and trying to work out what a chorus is, ‘hiring’ suits from Asos, praying to Q that Radiohead weren’t doing it, and a horse, among other things – and we have Spectre.

“Musically, this is like nothing we have ever done before or will do again (so it’s a shame a lot of people have said it’s the best thing we will ever do) but the spirit within the whole thing is all 100% Spectres. We perhaps shouldn’t have spent half a year on a project when we should be writing a second album, but when we start something we find it hard not to put all our energy into it and this has been nothing different. We hope people take Spectre for what it is: a band who no one would ever expect-re pop song from, trying to write a song that can compete with what will be the biggest pop song of the year. Of course, we have failed miserably, but we’re proud of what we’ve achieved. We hope one day we appear in the autobiography of the real singer of the anthem, which I predict will be called Sam’s Myth.

“Waking up this morning and listening to Sam’s song felt comforting because nothing in the world had changed. The cat yawned, the wallpaper was still there and Sam Smith really must regret telling everyone he wrote it in 20 minutes; it shows.”

Joe Hatt, the Guardian, 2015

Spectres – On Nepotism

We also listened to the Lawnmowers from Bristol, whose punk cuts with an industrial edge reminiscent of Nine Inch Nail or Killing Joke. We also had music this set that neatly brought together our various musical interests by a band called the Chisel. Comprising of Charlie Manning Walker of Chubby and the Gang on guitars and an EP produced by Fucked Up drummer and producer Jonah Falco, the album brings the raw energies of these artists’ punk sensibilities on their song Not The Only One.

Jonah Falco’s verdict on the band is so funny:

Chisel this, Chisel that” — it’s on my phone, it’s on my hard drives, it’s on my turntable, it’s on my t-shirt, it’s on my Instagram, it’s on my blogspot, it’s tattooed on my forehead, my own parents renewed their wedding vows to “Rat Running Scared.” I pressed stop. I unplugged my headphones, turned down the volume, and snapped that god forsaken single in HALF. Enough was enough! But see me, yeah. Once the music stopped only one thought rang through my head: What Have I Done? Where once there was explosive energy there was now a void. Lucky for me, the 5 loveable lads from Blackpool, Croydon, Acton, Chingford, and Guildford KEPT IT MOVIN, and just when I thought all was lost they brought me back in. Three more blasts of full fat extra saturated deep fried limb swinging confrontational uplifting chisel chiselling punk for that special space in your life. Enough said? No. Cos they’ve done it again. 

The Chisel – Not The Only One

We listened to some new hardcore punk from London female punk band Nekra, labelmates to Chisel on La La Vida Es Un Mus Discos records, a track by Carrboro, North Carolina band Speed Stick, along with Kelley Deal, and a new pressing of Chicago no-wave band Scissor Girls‘ 90s tape Omens.

Nekra – Groomer
Speed Stick – Knots (with Kelley Deal)

Lastly this week, we had a 20-minute punk opera fresh off the presses, courtesy of Toronto hardcore legends Fucked Up. I can put it no better than a Fucked Up fan did on Bandcamp: “Hell yeah, I love art”.

Find this week’s playlist here (support artists directly on Bandcamp, etc. if you can!)

As lockdown grinds the live music industry to a halt, many artists face uncertainty as their major source of livelihood, tours, virtually disappeared overnight. Consider supporting artists by directly purchasing their music instead of streaming them through third-party apps that do not pay musicians (Follow the #BrokenRecord hashtag and Mr. Tom Gray on Twitter to know more). Support the independent music scene if you can!

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Catch What The Punk?! on your radio every Monday night from 9 to 10 PM! We bring you the quirky, the happy, the weird, and the rebellious sides of punk music, all in the space of an hour of short, intense, yet sometimes long and spacey, punk and punk-adjacent music. Tune in on 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or online at cfrc.ca!

(Did you know? Our FM signal covers the greater Kingston, Ontario area, reaching from Belleville to Brockville and Westport to Watertown, NY!)

Missed a show? Catch up on the archives at cfrc.ca! Shows are available in the archives for three months from broadcast date.

Have feedback? Let us know! Email wtp@cfrc.ca, or give us a call on our station, and we’ll be happy to chat to you! (We’re not there, don’t phone in, unless you hate loose change)

As lockdown grinds the live music industry to a halt, many artists face uncertainty as their major source of livelihood, tours, virtually disappeared overnight. Consider supporting artists by directly purchasing their music instead of streaming them through third-party apps that do not pay musicians (Follow the #BrokenRecord hashtag and Mr. Tom Gray on Twitter to know more). Support the independent music scene if you can!

Punk’s Not Dead (It’s Deadpan Today)

18 January, 2021:

Welcome to a new year of What The Punk?! It may be twenty days too late, but it still is our first post of the new year, and that’s something to celebrate. Grab your guitars and stomp your fuzzboxes.

Like these gals!

I kid you not, follow their example. They went as far as to name their band We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It, and use it they did.

But this week, we had the opposite of ’80s excess, instead our show focussed on minimalistic deadpan delivery punk. It has its own charm, and it certainly didn’t die out in the ’70s.

However, we did have a few tributes for artists who are no longer with us. We lost the legendary guitarist Sylvain Sylvain of the New York Dolls, as well as singer with ’90s British punk revivalists Senseless Things, Mark Keds, aged only 50.

The band reunited for a one-off sold out gig at the Shepherds’ Bush Empire in 2017 for an incredible show 20 years on, and their debut album The First Of Too Many (ironically, it was the first of too few… the band only released 3 albums in their time as a unit) was one of the first albums I played on the radio off a CD. It’s a completely different experience, running to find a CD live on air in between songs, especially as twenty years on, the purpose of the compact disc as a medium of recorded music is still being debated, if it hasn’t been completely forgotten.

It was somewhere in here, amongst the vast troves of music in the CFRC archive. It’d take me four more images to cover only the CD section, by the way.

We also had some music from Californian punk band Pure Muscle. They made some lovely, rhythmic punk music and reminded Andrea of the New York Dolls. Unfortunately, the band split up in 2018, four years after their inception, but the music is still ace. This song is from their last release, Demonstration. We also had music from fellow Californian LA-based feminist punk quartet French Vanilla.

We also had some music by feminist punk heroes The Slits, albeit from a John Peel session they recorded, because just so we’re making ourselves clear, we love live music. And we really, really miss it. (I spent this week feeling so awful about the loss of live music in its pre-2020 form that the wonderful Wrexham-based FOCUS Wales festival had to follow me on twit to comfort me. I am only half-joking.)

French Vanilla – Sensitive (Not Too Sensitive)
The Slits – So Tough (John Peel session, 1978)

We had some punchy punk music on the next set, led by Osaka, Japan’s The Smog. Off their third release, this single (double A-side? Is that a thing anymore? We just stick with single?) contains two cracking tracks, with screechy guitars and noodling basslines, it was so good we heard them both. Reminiscent of ’70s/early ’80s British post punk, they pack a punch.
We also had some music from Deseos Primitivos, labelmates to The Smog on Going Underground Records, and a Spanish-language band from California. While being undeniably punk, their music is also just the right amount of rock and roll that you’ll find you know how to do the twist, regardless of what you imagined your capabilities were before this.

Deseos Primitivos – Triste Canćion

This week, we showcased the best of apathy, the deadest delivery, the most intimidating stares out in modern punk. We had music from the fantastic London-via-York band DEADLETTER, a favourite of BBC Introducing last year and one of the finest examples of jazz-punk I’ve seen this year. Their lyrics, typically topical social commentary, is scathing and misses no marks.

We also had music from South-London based Dry Cleaning, whose latest single Scratchcard Lanyard is a classic lockdown-era music video.

DEADLETTER – Fit For Work/Good Old Days
Dry Cleaning – Scratchcard Lanyard / Spoils

Keeping with the weird jazzy punk vibes, we heard again from Squid, with their superb 2019 release Houseplants. We also had newer music in from Leeds, by Yard Act.

Squid – Houseplants
Yard Act – Peanuts/Fixer Upper

In a more rap-oriented vein, we played from music from the brilliant Kae Tempest and off of the blistering, splenetic British electronic-punk duo Sleaford Mods, whose latest album Spare Ribs was released this month on the 15th of January. We played their collaboration with Amy Taylor of Australian indie punk band Amyl and the Sniffers.

Sleaford Mods – Nudge It
Kae Tempest – The Heist

Find this week’s playlist below (and if you like a band, give them a listen on their Bandcamp pages linked above! If you like our show or are curious to try, gi’s a listen anytime in the archives!)

As lockdown grinds the live music industry to a halt, many artists face uncertainty as their major source of livelihood, tours, virtually disappeared overnight. Consider supporting artists by directly purchasing their music instead of streaming them through third-party apps that do not pay musicians (Follow the #BrokenRecord hashtag and Mr. Tom Gray on Twitter to know more). Support the independent music scene if you can!

---

Catch What The Punk?! on your radio every Monday night from 9 to 10 PM! We bring you the quirky, the happy, the weird, and the rebellious sides of punk music, all in the space of an hour of short, intense, yet sometimes long and spacey, punk and punk-adjacent music. Tune in on 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or online at cfrc.ca!

(Did you know? Our FM signal covers the greater Kingston, Ontario area, reaching from Belleville to Brockville and Westport to Watertown, NY!)

Missed a show? Catch up on the archives at cfrc.ca! Shows are available in the archives for three months from broadcast date.

Have feedback? Let us know! Email wtp@cfrc.ca, or give us a call on our station, and we’ll be happy to chat to you! (We’re not there, don’t phone in, unless you hate loose change)

What The Punk?! 21 December

We here at What The Punk?! try and dig up the best, weirdest, snottiest, sneakiest and most spaced out punk you will find, and this chilly month, we bring you this collection of punktastic snuggles to fill your thoughts and keep you warm.

(I’m sorry, sometimes the music we have is pretty diverse and impossible to capture in a single opening sentence. I try, but sometimes even I don’t know what I’ve just written. Read on. There’s great music to follow.)

Also, as a note, the WordPress is crashing because of the inhuman amount of embeds I attempt to squeeze into a single document. WordPress itself is ridiculously loaded as it is. I’ll be including links to the musicians we played on their Bandcamp pages where you can listen to their music, browse through their discographies and merchandise and purchase music or merch from them directly. I’ll only be embedding artists whose music is not on the Spotify playlist we’ve included, but do give them a full listen on their sites if you like them!

21 December, 2020:

We played Mitcham, UK-based queer shoegazy grunge quartet Screaming Toenail, who describe themselves as “sassy, decolonial, queer, punk”. Their album Growth is a must-listen! (“Dedicated to anyone resisting colonial heterosexual bullshit.”, as their Bandcamp page says.)
Screaming Toenail – Divide and Conquer

Also on this set was Die! Die! Die!, the post-punk, post-hardcore trio hailing from Auckland, New Zealand, whose release from October this year we listened to, called I Seek Misery. Back in 2008, Die! Die! Die! had released a two-track album called Sideways, Here We Come (a play on The Smiths’ final studio release, Strangeways Here We Come, as directly referenced in the band’s promotional images), whose music video was very stylistically remnant of British artist Peter Fowler’s distinct lo-fi scrapbook style art, and particularly reminds me of the music video he made for the Super Furry Animals’ song Presidential Suite off their 2001 DVD-album release, Rings Around The World.
(As the Super Furry Animals, having moved from Alan McGee’s indie label Creation Records (known for championing bands like My Bloody Valentine, Oasis, SFA themselves, Primal Scream, Teenage Fanclub, the Jesus and Mary Chain and Bob Mould) to the major label Epic Records, had access to a greater budget for the first time, they opted to make the entire album a DVD-first release, which meant music videos for each of the 13 songs: a tall order on any budget, just ask Gorillaz this year!)

See for yourself, here’s Die! Die! Die!

Sideways, Here We Come

And here’s the music video for Presidential Suite.

The acclaimed song that also features the Velvet Underground’s John Cale.

Die! Die? Die! – I Seek Misery

We dipped into the Atlanta, GA punk scene from the mid 2000s, listening to one of Peach State’s leading punk groups, Carbonas. Their brand of snotty, snarky punk throws back to the 1970s, but also features delightfully catchy vocals and a knack for writing good melody. We listened to their 2007 song Phone Booth, from their self-titled album Carbonas.
We also had music from Montpellier, France’s high-energy garage punk quartet Les Lullies, and a Calgary, Alberta based fuzzy punk band who are fast becoming a favourite of this show, Self-Cut Bangs. We heard their rather more alternative song Perfect Posture, off their self-titled debut album.
Carbonas – Phone Booth
Les Lullies – Mourir d’Ennui
Self-Cut Bangs – Perfect Posture

Continuing in the alternative vein, we had some indie music from South Korean band Billy Carter. Taken from their second album (I was about to say “sophomore release” but I’ve learned of late that thanks in no small part to radio presenters overusing the phrase, it’s actually becoming quite annoying to hear in the music world. Thanks Shaun Keaveny… (great guy, just you know. One of the first 6Music presenters to spring to mind!) How do we stop repeating ourselves when we talk of nothing but music day in and day out!?)

Taken from their second album Don’t Push Me, the band straight away tackles heavier themes than their bright debut double EPs The Red and The Yellow which were critically acclaimed and nominated for multiple music awards in South Korea. “The album begins with ‘Invisible Monster’, which contains a strong will to overcome the traumas caused by abuses”, they say, and that’s the song we listened to.
Billy Carter – Invisible Monster

We dug into some more psychedelic punk as well, listening to psychedelic synth punk band NOTS from Memphis, Tennessee. If echoed spoken word vocals over assured basslines are your thing (basically, new wave), you’ll love this band. We also had an anthology release pop up on our radar, as industrial art-punks Dow Jones and the Industrials put together their releases from 1979 to 1981, and in similar vein, we played industrial synth punk pioneers Chrome.
Dow Jones and the Industrials – Can’t Stand the Midwest
NOTS – Half-Painted House
Chrome – Heartbeat

We had new psychedelic punk from Australian band Eggy and some very specifically accusatory indie punk from Melbourne female quartet Parsnip (the song’s called Crossword Cheater), and shooter further across the Tasman, In My Mouth by Auckland, New Zealand post punks Wax Chattels.
Eggy – Johnny Whoop
Parsnip – Crossword Cheater
Wax Chattels – In my Mouth

We at this radio station are big fans of Bandcamp (if you couldn’t guess from the ten or so Bandcamp links throughout this article), not only for championing music in an ethical way that doesn’t shortchange artists (once again, I’ll point you to this article), but as a platform that is also constantly striving to discover and promote the best music that musicians on the platform are making. From their Best Punk of 2020 feature article, we picked some of our favourites, albeit in step with all the limitations that come with having only an hour on radio…

New York band Straw Man Army won us with their noisy lo-fi punk and the lyric “That aching in your mouth is just the presence of a hook” on their song about genocide, Option Despair. We also heard Arrival.

We also had British punks Shopping with their indie brand of catchy, synthy punk and the delightfully sneery and irreverent Sniffany and the Nits, with their blinder of a song Horse Girl.
Shopping – Trust In Us

Dressed fully in nurse garb, Sniffany and the Nits bring absolute manic energy to their music—both on record and live.

We also heard from Aussie punks Cold Meat, Missouri’s Fried E/M and Columbian punk from Muro.
Cold Meat – Industry Sleaze
Fried E/M – Peace and Love
Muro – Fantasia del Progreso

Find the playlist for the show below.

As lockdown grinds the live music industry to a halt, many artists face uncertainty as their major source of livelihood, tours, virtually disappeared overnight. Consider supporting artists by directly purchasing their music instead of streaming them through third-party apps that do not pay musicians (Follow the #BrokenRecord hashtag and Mr. Tom Gray on Twitter to know more). Support the independent music scene if you can!

---

Catch What The Punk?! on your radio every Monday night from 9 to 10 PM! We bring you the quirky, the happy, the weird, and the rebellious sides of punk music, all in the space of an hour of short, intense, yet sometimes long and spacey, punk and punk-adjacent music. Tune in on 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or online at cfrc.ca!

(Did you know? Our FM signal covers the greater Kingston, Ontario area, reaching from Belleville to Brockville and Westport to Watertown, NY!)

Missed a show? Catch up on the archives at cfrc.ca! Shows are available in the archives for three months from broadcast date.

Have feedback? Let us know! Email wtp@cfrc.ca, or give us a call on our station, and we’ll be happy to chat to you! (We’re not there, don’t phone in, unless you hate loose change)

Punk and Rage

14 December, 2020:

As a radio show, What The Punk!? is quite self-explanatory: it gives you the “what” in all of punk music, condensed into an hour and handpicked in an organic and sustainable fashion from mosh pits all over the world.

Here’s what was in store for you this week.

We had a real fun and global show with this one: music from Canada, US, France, Japan, Europe, India; music old and new, and really good too.

Lots of feminist music on the show, we played New Delhi-via-Assam’s explosive grunge-punk feminist quartet, The Vinyl Records and London based feminist band Petrol Girls, whose song Big Mouth, which samples X-Ray Spex’ iconic Oh Bondage! Up Yours!, we mentioned on the show last week. Then turning to feminists in the US, we played Floridian feminist punk band Gouge Away, and finally from Hawaii, Rotten Blossom!

Would you believe shoegaze punk is a thing? Don’t take it from me, ask Swedish band Rotten Minds! Of the Upsala, Sweden-based ounk quartet, NME said in 2015that the band’s debut single ” [is] built on a riff that’s pure Buzzcocks and vocals that feel like they’d slot in perfectly alongside the discordant grottiness of Eagulls or Bad Breeding.”

They channel new wave energy, alt-punk through grittier tones on Burn for You from their latest release, Rat City Boy Dog. We also had music from Toulouse, France’s Radical Kitten.

We listened to Cry Out’s rallying cry Your Shame, Not Mine, a posthumous release by Nova Scotia based artist Rosie Davis on her album More Echoes Of A Question Never Answered​.​.​. Why?, which was mastered by producer and drummer in Toronto hardcore band Fucked Up, Jonah Falco. We had another track featuring Rosie Davis, a 2011 collaboration she did with the fellow Halifaxers Vixens, who are a feminist DIY hardcore punk band.

We had music from New Yorkers Privacy Issues, Shellshag, chilled out indie from Oakland band RAYS, Chicago based “floral glam” band CB Radio Gorgeous, Louiseville, KY based noise punkers Archaeas.

We also had music from the delightfully named, Buzzcocks styled band from Sudbury, Ontario: Tommy and the Commies, Japanese indie punks Drinking Boys and Girls Choir, Swiss krautrockers Massicot and New Zealand’s five-piece lo-fi punk band, Dick Move.

As lockdown grinds the live music industry to a halt, many artists face uncertainty as their major source of livelihood, tours, virtually disappeared overnight. Consider supporting artists by directly purchasing their music instead of streaming them through third-party apps that do not pay musicians (Follow the #BrokenRecord hashtag and Mr. Tom Gray on Twitter to know more). Support the independent music scene if you can!

---

Catch What The Punk?! on your radio every Monday night from 9 to 10 PM! We bring you the quirky, the happy, the weird, and the rebellious sides of punk music, all in the space of an hour of short, intense, yet sometimes long and spacey, punk and punk-adjacent music. Tune in on 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or online at cfrc.ca!

(Did you know? Our FM signal covers the greater Kingston, Ontario area, reaching from Belleville to Brockville and Westport to Watertown, NY!)

Missed a show? Catch up on the archives at cfrc.ca! Shows are available in the archives for three months from broadcast date.

Have feedback? Let us know! Email wtp@cfrc.ca, or give us a call on our station, and we’ll be happy to chat to you! (We’re not there, don’t phone in, unless you hate loose change)

Get Raw

7 December, 2020:

This week on What The Punk?!, we touched base with some primal nerves and just let go a collective scream. It’s been a long year.

Yes, like the band. Here’s Bob Gillespie, screaming with Primal Scream. We’re all Bob Gillespie.

We listened to sneery, snarly punk from the UK, from the Sleaford Mods’ to Welsh electropunks Future of the Left, Skinny Girl Diet to Rascalton and beyond!

Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson makes his points clear with cutting clarity on the duo’s hit Jobseeker. (“So Mr. Williamson, what have you done in order to find gainful employment since your last signing on date? ‘Fuck all. I sat around the house wanking.’”) The Guardian described the band way back in 2015 as “unlikely electronic offspring of the Ramones”. A fierce face for the punk scene at nearly 50, the Sleaford Mods are now bringing newer artists into the scene taking them under their wing (which is how I discovered purposeful alt rocker Billy Nomates).

Cardiff-based electronic punks Future of the Left began as post-Britpop noise rock band Mclusky in the early 2000s British indie scene, eventually joining forces with fellow Welsh band Jacrew’s members, and settling upon their current lineup in 2010. We listened to their 2012 album the plot against common sense, with the song sorry dad, i was late to the riots, and fellow Cardif alt-punks Estrons. (While Estrons are no more, member Steffan Pringle has a new, explosive band called Death Cult Electric, who are worth checking out.)

We listened to Petrol Girls, a feminist punk quartet, with their single I Believe Them, which is raising money for Solidarity Not Silence, “a legal defence fund for women who are being sued for defamation by a man in the music industry because of comments that [they] each made separately regarding his behaviour towards women.” From their Bandcamp, their fundraiser can be found here: http://www.crowdjustice.com/case/solidaritynotsilence.

We also had music from UK punks Deja Vega, whom I was introduced to by the vast trove of music Tim Burgess of the Charlatans listens to. (He’s a huge supporter of the independent music scene… and someone who will swear by Bandcamp, another champion of independent music and a hand in the industry thriving. Not sure what I’m talking about? Brush up.) We also had music from Yak and Lady Bird, a grime punk band from Royal Tunbridge Wells (why has no one thought to called the hip hop-punk genre hop punk? We have pop punk, it can’t possibly be a worse name than that, right?)

We had melodic punk from Rascalton and Italian punks Bee Bee Sea, as well as more music from London favourites Chubby and the Gang.

The impressive British feminist punk band Skinny Girl Diet got their start by playing their very first gig in an opening slot for punk legend Viv Albertine, formerly of the Slits. Since then, the band have built upon their image as feminist icons, and we heard their song La Sirena. We also listened to Hastings based Maid of Ace, and Spanish punk band Les Buch.

We had new music from various corners of Bandcamp, including Gen Pop, Seth Bogart’s gender bending Boys Who Don’t Wanna Be Boys, and Melbourne based Nightclub, who try and succeed at giving off Lou Reed vibes on their song Doomsday Man.

Find the playlist for this week’s show here (or follow the links above to hear more from all the artists we played!)

As lockdown grinds the live music industry to a halt, many artists face uncertainty as their major source of livelihood, tours, virtually disappeared overnight. Consider supporting artists by directly purchasing their music instead of streaming them through third-party apps that do not pay musicians (Follow the #BrokenRecord hashtag and Mr. Tom Gray on Twitter to know more). Support the independent music scene if you can!

---

Catch What The Punk?! on your radio every Monday night from 9 to 10 PM! We bring you the quirky, the happy, the weird, and the rebellious sides of punk music, all in the space of an hour of short, intense, yet sometimes long and spacey, punk and punk-adjacent music. Tune in on 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or online at cfrc.ca!

(Did you know? Our FM signal covers the greater Kingston, Ontario area, reaching from Belleville to Brockville and Westport to Watertown, NY!)

Missed a show? Catch up on the archives at cfrc.ca! Shows are available in the archives for three months from broadcast date.

Have feedback? Let us know! Email wtp@cfrc.ca, or give us a call on our station, and we’ll be happy to chat to you! (We’re not there, don’t phone in, unless you hate loose change)

Punkin’ Around The World

30 November, 2020:

This week on What The Punk?!, it was excitement as usual, as we played you the best music from Canada and around the world!

We began by exploring the London hardcore punk scene, playing bands with one thread in common: having worked with Canadian hardcore band Fucked Up’s drummer, Jonah Falco.

We heard music from one of London hardcore’s most pivotal new entrants: punk quintet Chubby and the Gang.

Lead by Charles Walker Manning, a London based former-electrician-turned punk hurricane born of punk parents, aka Chubby, the band released their debut album Speed Kills, produced by Falco, shortly after having played their first gig. The album blew up underground, showcasing the band’s fast, furious punk with a penchant for topicality, from the anti-police song Blue Ain’t My Colour, to Union Dues and Grenfell Forever, a tribute to the victims of the Grenfell fire in London, in ballad form. We listened to their song All Along Uxbridge Road, and fellow hardcore punks in the scene, Leeds band Big Cheese.

We also heard music from Jade Hairpins, the punk-pop duo consisting of Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk.

We had music from the world over: Swedish alt punk band Rotten Mind, Polish prog band Ropes Notes, Berlin “gurrlcore” duo Gurr, Denmark punk quartet Iceage, Toulouse, France-based feminist queerpunks Radical Kitten, Welsh electro-punks Future of the Left, Australian surf punks and Sunshine Coast local heroes The Unknowns, and American DIY punks B Boys, Staring Problems and Sweeping Promises. Catch your breath!

Find Iceage’s lockdown anthem, Lockdown Blues here.

We also had new music from Canadian bands Phone Jerks from Moncton, NB, and Toronto-based bands La Luna and Maldita!

La Luna have a particularly grungey drowned-in-sound vibe, but most effective is their punk vocal duet between their male and female vocalists. Maldita are a Toronto based punk band who sing in Spanish.

Follow the nicely compiled playlist for the show:

As lockdown grinds the live music industry to a halt, many artists face uncertainty as their major source of livelihood, tours, virtually disappeared overnight. Consider supporting artists by directly purchasing their music instead of streaming them through third-party apps that do not pay musicians (Follow the #BrokenRecord hashtag and Mr. Tom Gray on Twitter to know more). Support the independent music scene if you can!

---

Catch What The Punk?! on your radio every Monday night from 9 to 10 PM! We bring you the quirky, the happy, the weird, and the rebellious sides of punk music, all in the space of an hour of short, intense, yet sometimes long and spacey, punk and punk-adjacent music. Tune in on 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or online at cfrc.ca!

(Did you know? Our FM signal covers the greater Kingston, Ontario area, reaching from Belleville to Brockville and Westport to Watertown, NY!)

Missed a show? Catch up on the archives at cfrc.ca! Shows are available in the archives for three months from broadcast date.

Have feedback? Let us know! Email wtp@cfrc.ca, or give us a call on our station, and we’ll be happy to chat to you! (We’re not there, don’t phone in, unless you hate loose change)

How Music Streaming (Doesn’t) Work

Earlier today, I was talking to someone about music (as I am wont to do, seeing as how my inability to shut up about it has landed me a not-temporary spot on a music radio show), and the conversation invariably turned to Spotify. How convenient streaming services have made listening to music for us, no need to queue up in long lines outside record stores, no reason to go out and buy singles, or indeed listen to an entire album… or even music by a single artist! Spotify, a music streaming service perhaps best known for its sleep playlist, has been garnering a somewhat more sinister reputation over the last decade… and yes, it’s not all rosy with those million-subscriber playlists either. Let’s dive in.

Not here, not yet! Hear this first.
Photo by Matthias Groeneveld on Pexels.com

It’s been whispered in questioning tones in hushed corners for a long time, but many people, particularly casual listeners are only beginning to become aware that Spotify has some pretty unethical practices, especially when it comes to their music services. While more vocal voices have been criticising Spotify in the last five years, some perhaps forever, by pulling their music from their platforms; the unfair ways in which Spotify and other music streaming services really shortchange artists has become a much better covered phenomenon this year, when the arrival of a global, contagious virus meant that live events, with their crowds, their shouts, and almost all of a professional musician’s income, disappeared.

Miss this yet?
Photo by Harrison Haines on Pexels.com

Maybe you’ve been hearing about the campaigns in the UK (Broken Record) and elsewhere (Justice At Spotify by the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers) regarding how little Spotify pays artists per stream– well under 0.1 cents (0.004 cents = 0.00004 dollars). If you’re a premium subscriber, also know that your subscription fee does not go to the artists you’re listening to. It goes into a big pot that then distributes it to whoever has the most streams overall for that month (called the pro-rata model) which means you’re not paying for the music that you’re listening to. You’re paying for multi-millionaire chart toppers only, regardless of whether or not you listen to them.

Spotify has repeatedly ignored musician campaigns for fair pay through a system that has almost entirely replaced physical music copies’ sales (CDs, vinyls, digital albums)—previously their largest source of income.  To show you what a large proportion of their earnings used to come from album sales, here’s some maths that people have done: on the strength of album sales alone, the Beatles were able to retire completely from touring. With today’s streaming models, they’d be touring till the end of their lives. Ever wonder why your parents/grandparents could go see great bands for $8? Even with inflation, that’s because album sales were covering artists! Note that this applies to all streaming platforms, your Apple, Deezer, Tidal, YouTube etc. but here’s why I’m calling Spotify out specifically.

Spotify were asked if they had a response to the various campaigns earlier this year in an interview their CEO Daniel Ek did with MusicAlly, and he basically put the responsibility on musicians, telling them to “engage more regularly” and release music monthly like machines and called their art “content” in the process, which pissed off a LOT of people, but Spotify didn’t care too much. (Ek’s own net worth is about $4 billion).

They’ve been accused of actually shady practices like creating fake musician profiles and putting their AI-generated songs (copyrights owned entirely by Spotify) on their most popular playlists in a complete cash generation move. They’re now allowing a podcasting platform they own called Anchor to use any music that is on Spotify completely royalty-free in their podcasts, and I don’t know how that’s legal. For reference, no recorded medium can include recorded music/music that someone else holds the rights to, without the permission of the owners (artists and/or labels) and must pay a royalty fee to use them. Radio stations navigated lengthy laws before winning the right to be issued blanket licenses to play any music (ours are annually renewable). It’s not all that simple. But because streaming is so new, legally speaking, there aren’t enough laws regulating them, allowing streaming giants to act outside of all established norms for music publishing. (Want to read a legal headache? Read about the legal history of music sampling. Find out how much the Beastie Boys are still paying, 40 years later, for the samples used on their album Paul’s Boutique). This period is akin to the 7-day free trial stage of any product, except it’s been 12 years and big middlemen companies that have nothing to do with the production of music are reaping big rewards at the expense of artists—and the health of the future of music.

The “health” of music, you ask? Apart from ensuring that music can be a viable career and that people from all backgrounds (economic, social, etc.) are able to take a stab at a music career, and not just well-off hobbyists, one fear with the playlist-obsessed, mood-categorising Spotify, is that musical diversity could well suffer. At the moment, the most popular Spotify playlists, and consequently the artists most benefitting from Spotify are those that fit a certain downbeat, indie vibe, that fit into the sleep playlists and the mood n’ chill playlists. In a model already so heavily pitted against them, a service used by millions if not billions that prefers a certain kind of music could weed out all other genres of very good musicians (speaking as a punk show, we definitely don’t fit the conventional sleep-time vibe! Although, I have known people to sleep like babies through thrash metal… hmmmm).

I could go on, and I wouldn’t be the only one. Many artists have spoken out against them, some pretty major artists too, like Radiohead, Taylor Swift, to name a few, have pulled their music from Spotify in the past. Here’s Beck talking about how unimaginably little Spotify pays. The founder of the Broken Record campaign I mentioned earlier is guitarist from English post-Britpop band Gomez, Mr. Tom Gray.

All these movements haven’t had no effect. Awareness of these practices is spreading, and in the UK, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has launched an inquiry into the effects that streaming has had on musicians’ lives. They’re collecting evidence right now, so if you are in the UK, musician or not, you can give your evidence to them now!

Now you ask, is my very listening to music illegal now? Can I still use Spotify?

Well, you certainly can, and I wouldn’t judge you for it. My recommendation is to use Spotify the way you’d use radio: to discover music you’ll love. Then go out and support music that you like, if you can! If buying albums doesn’t work for you, the music industry has adapted well: buy their merch! Oh, and if you’d like to listen on platforms that not only let you listen but also fairly support artists? Try Bandcamp, or a few newer streaming sites (using a User-Centric model, which pays your fee only to musicians you’re listening to) like Sonstream or Resonate.

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As lockdown grinds the live music industry to a halt, many artists face uncertainty as their major source of livelihood, tours, virtually disappeared overnight. Consider supporting artists by directly purchasing their music instead of streaming them through third-party apps that do not pay musicians (Follow the #BrokenRecord hashtag and Mr. Tom Gray on Twitter to know more). Support the independent music scene if you can!

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Catch What The Punk?! on your radio every Monday night from 9 to 10 PM! We bring you the quirky, the happy, the weird, and the rebellious sides of punk music, all in the space of an hour of short, intense, yet sometimes long and spacey, punk and punk-adjacent music. Tune in on 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or online at cfrc.ca!

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