Artists on the challenges of 2023 and hopes for 2024: “I just want to see us getting paid for selling records”

nme.com:

NME recently supported the Featured Artist Coalition’s 2023 End of Year Party and AGM at Walthamstow’s Signature Brew in London.

Following on from 2021 and 2022, NME returned to support the event as well as chairing an artist-led ‘Year in Music’ panel discussion featuring Murray Matravers of the band formerly known as Easy Life, Sam Duckworth of Get Cape.

Wear Cape. Fly, along with rising and acclaimed singer-songwriters LVRA and Cherise.As well as tackling subjects such as streaming royalties reform, the application of AI in music, the 100 Per Cent Venues campaign to end punitive commissions on merchandise sales, and the #LetTheMusicMove campaign to encourage friction-free international touring, the event also saw artists explain how issues of race, education, politics, fair payment and venue closures needed tackling.The panel was introduced by a speech from FAC CEO David Martin and the group’s Artist in Residence, Blur drummer Dave Rowntree.Martin pointed out the success of their campaign for venues to take a smaller cut of musicians’ merch revenue, while arguing that that “being an artist has never represented the easy path, but today’s musical landscape is especially complex”.

This, he explained, was due to matters relating to “making touring financially viable, achieving cut-through on streaming services, or simply finding the space and environment to create.”“It was already a battle for attention, and now we have the prospect of AI increasing the rate of content creation,” he added. “In the words of the late, great Andrew Weatherall, ‘While technology has left us at the apex of a punk rock dream where anyone can make art, in practice that’s becoming a double-edged sword – it’s becoming hard to see the trees for the.