Against the tide

I can't say that I ever saw a member of Gomez as someone to deliver a rousing battlecry, or that I'd find myself nodding along at the suggestion that "noise" and "distortion" are bad things. And yet Tom Gray's speech at last month's Ivor Novello Awards was impassioned, stirring, well expressed and worthy of all of the applause it received.

Gray was talking in his capacity as Chair of the Ivors Academy, but he is also the founder of the #BrokenRecord campaign, so the content and tone of his speech should have come as little surprise.

Gray's argument began by acknowledging that the music industry, like so many other spheres, is currently experiencing enshittification - largely thanks to the rapid emergence and malign impact of generative AI. He spoke of a "steady degradation", "a staggering dilution of everything meaningful", and used words like "buried" and "flood" - entirely apt, at a time when Spotify appear to be actively inviting an avalanche of AI slop to obliterate their platform. In the circumstances, he acknowledged, the challenge to be heard has never been greater, and it has never been tougher to resist the rational response: defeatism and nihilism.

And yet, Gray contended, hope lies in the simple, invigorating, invaluable magic of artistic creativity - "the specific, unrepeatable, deeply personal act of someone taking their understanding of being alive and turning it into something another person can feel". We need to cling to the fact that music made by human hands, heads, hearts and voices can be a vital source of connection and belonging, and has the capacity to bring people and whole communities together. In the face of AI's facelessness, he argued, it's more important than ever that we attribute works of art to their artists - and celebrate the latter for their creativity.

Given that the event was sponsored by Amazon Music, you have to hope that Gray's speech - as well as that of Thom Yorke, who collected an Academy Fellowship award and took the opportunity to blast streaming services' measly remuneration policies and the risk-averse industry's refusal to recognise the need to support new talent - will have left a few suits feeling uncomfortable and ashamed. Perhaps even sufficiently uncomfortable and ashamed to actually start implementing positive changes that might help to turn the tide.