Drowned in Sound
Music is upstream from politics. Drowned in Sound investigates how the music industry shapes society and how fans, artists, and workers can organise for systemic change. Hosted by Sean Adams, we decode streaming economics, sustainable touring, climate and tech, workers’ rights, and collective solutions with musicians, researchers, and changemakers.
Episodes
In the first episode of How Music Can Save the World, a new podcast from Drowned in Sound, Shain Shapiro meets Maggie Baird, the mother of Billie Eilish and Finneas and founder of Support + Feed.
They start with her musical childhood, from falling asleep to Guys and Dolls to Quadrophenia at Christmas, and how music, as an instrument for change, amplifies ideas.
Shain finds out how Support + Feed began during COVID as a way to feed ...
Drowned in Sound is thrilled to introduce a new series which will be appearing in this feed. How Music Can Save the World is hosted by Shain Shapiro and produced by DiS founder Sean Adams, who pops up at the end of each episode.
Before Shain found himself speaking at the UN, developing music policy for mayors like Sadiq Khan, and organising his own conference, he was a contributor to Drowned in Sound, so it feels like a wonderful f...
In part two of our conversation with journalists Effie Webb and Harriet Williamson, we move beyond who created Danny Bones and ask what his existence means for music itself.
We discuss the irony of a far-right AI rapper borrowing from Black music, the response from musicians, and what happens when technology can imitate creative work at scale with little to no consequence.
What does it take to rack up five million YouTube views in ten months? In this case: a rapper who doesn’t exist, a political party paying thousands for AI-generated videos, and algorithms remarkably good at turning anger into attention. This week, Sean is joined by Effie Webb of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Harriet Williamson of Novara Media, who have spent months investigating Danny B...
In this week's episode Sean sits down with Steven Ansell, the singing drummer of Blood Red Shoes.
They have known each other for around twenty five years now, since Sean first saw Steven's old band Cat On Form playing to a room of skinny, topless Fugazi obsessives in Brighton.
Blood Red Shoes formed in Brighton in 2004, Steven on drums and vocals, Laura-Mary Carter on guitar and vocals, and released one of their first singles on th...
What's the best place to stand in the Electric Ballroom if you're under five foot five and don't fancy a six foot stranger appearing in front of you two minutes before stage time? Helena Wadia has worked this out for pretty much every venue in London, and this week's episode exists mostly so Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams could catch up with his co-host to to yap about gigs.
Did Sean ask a member of the House of Lords whether the House of Lords should even exist? No. Did he get into proportional representation? Also no...
Helena Wadia returns to co-host, and rather than a straight interview this is proper yap of an episode, with Sean thinking out loud about everything that didn't make it into last week's conversation with Lord Kevin Brennan on the fan-led review of live music, and why, when you've got ...
Four thousand, one hundred and forty four music fans responded to a single Parliamentary survey, more than any committee inquiry has recorded before. What they said, over and over, is that going to a gig isn't a transaction like any other, it's closer to a communal, sometimes quasi-religious experience, and that's the starting point for this week's conversation.
In this week's episode, Sean talks to Lord Kevin Brennan about the fan...
There's a marketing agency that will build your band a small army of fan accounts for about a dollar per thousand views. They post the clips, they seed the captions, sometimes they write the comments underneath too. Until a Substack essay by the musician Eliza McLamb and a run of stories in Wired, New York Magazine and The Verge this May, most of us assumed - unlike MAGA and Reform supporters - the people posting about our favourit...
Spotify paid Joe Rogan over $200 million for his podcast. Then, in 2024, they did it again. Tom Gray has spent the last five years thinking about what that kind of money could do for songwriters instead and his answer at the end of this episode is fascinating.
In this week's episode, DiS founder Sean Adams is back with Tom Gray for the second part of a two-part conversation. Part 1 was about the music and the person. This one is ab...
How do you go from winning the Mercury Prize to writing music for a CBeebies series about a pig named Hector and a very glamorous chicken named Pru? The answer takes in a Tim Buckley obsession that lasted five years, years of touring America with bands like Frightened Rabbit, and a Brighton theatre company you've almost certainly never heard of.
In this week's episode, Sean finally sits down with Tom Gray, songwriter, founding memb...
What do you do when everyone tells you that you can't make a film without the right connections, the right funding, the right people saying yes? If you're Geoff Barrow, you spend everything Invada Records has on proving them wrong. And the result is a fantastic watch.
In this week's episode, Sean Adams sat in the sun outside Geoff's home near Portishead to talk about GAME, the debut feature from Invada Films, a gripping rural thril...
George Michael had the highest hit rate in the history of the US Hot 100. Nineteen entries, eight number ones. 'Last Christmas' has been covered more than four hundred times.
Ten years after his death, there's been no big tribute concert, no statue, and almost no serious book about his cultural legacy. Until now...
Sean Adams and Helena Wadia spoke to Sathnam Sanghera, historian, journalist, and lifelong George Michael fan, about h...
What happens when you can no longer subsidize creativity with a second job? Part 2 of our conversation with Gareth David digs into the real cost of being a musician in 2026: visa fees, tour buses, the collapse of sync deals, and the brutal math that's turning bedroom producers into solo acts instead of bands.
In Part 2, Gareth explains how the economics of live music are excluding new artists entirely, why class matters more than t...
What do bands actually make from ten million Spotify streams? About £32k...
In Part 1 of this conversation, Gareth David from Los Campesinos! walks Helena Wadia and Sean Adams through the numbers and how he felt about Spotify's response.
This radical financial transparency about streaming also goes into the platform's payout structure that puts artists in direct competition with each other, and explains why "just support artists on...
Helena Wadia and Sean Adams caught up with intellectual property expert Dr Hayleigh Bosher to discuss AI, Addison Rae, ICE, Taylor Swift, deep fakes, trademarks, consent, copyright, Samsung, and Dua Lipa.
The episode begins with our reaction to this clip of Lambrini Girls on Channel 4, in which Phoebe says "AI is going to be the thing that kills art entirely."
Don't worry, this isn't just doom-spiralling about our descent into tech...
"Disappointing" is the word of the week in the UK music biz, after the UK government seem to have kicked the can down the road on tackling ticket touts aka "secondary ticketing".
Why? The King's Speech happened yesterday. The Keir Starmer's Labour government promised to end ticket touting. And yet...
What we got was a draft bill. Buried on page 64 of a supplementary document. Not in the speech itself. Not legislation. Not a law. A ...
Over 4,000 music fans responded to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s Fan-Led Review into Live Music and Electronic Music and in this week's episode DiS founder Sean Adams and co-host Helena Wadia reacted to this important report that could revolutionise live music in the UK.
Alongside the in-depth analysis of the state of live music and what music fans want, there's also The Fans' Charter.
Much shorter than the 100-pag...
Before the UK's general election, Labour's 2024 manifesto promised to "put fans back at the heart of events" by ending ticket touting.
Then, when in power, the Labour government made confirmed the plan in November 2025. And yet here we are in April 2026, with no legislatio...
Drowned in Sound is thrilled to reveal the first series in our new podcast network, with more shows to be announced soon.
Hosted by music and social change expert, start-up founder, and campaign organiser Ariana Alexander-Sefre, Sounds Like Change brings together artists, thinkers, and changemakers to explore the profound role music plays in shaping our mental health, identities, and collective futures.
The podcast manages to merge...
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