Drowned in Sound

Hosted by Sean Adams, founder of Drowned in Sound, this weekly podcast explores how culture, politics, and the climate crisis are reshaping music. From AI and activism to festival futures and the collapse of local scenes, we treat music as an ecosystem, not just entertainment. Guests include artists, changemakers, and organisers reimagining what music can be. Subscribe and join the conversation.

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Episodes

DiS008: Live Music And Mental Health

Everyone from Radiohead to Sugababes to industry insiders are raving about a new book by therapist and live music expert Tamsin Embleton. It's an extraordinary body of work entitled Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual , which includes contributions from a series of mental health experts providing insights and advice covering everything from breath-work to nutrition, and resilience to rest. The book contains interviews with people who live and work on the road, alongside musician...

Apr 20, 2023•46 min•Season 1Ep. 8

DiS007: AI, AI, AI! UK Government's War on Copyrighted Music?! Beatles AI song! - Dr Hayleigh Bosher explains it all

Our series of conversations about Artificial Intelligence and music continues with a look at the ethics and legal implications of these new forms of technology that inhales creativity and spits out creativity using everything that has been fed into it. And not everything has gone in with permission, let alone consent. At the spring 2023 budget, the UK government announced that they would be allowing AI firms to more easily access copyrighted material.... this seemed somewhat alarming to us as pe...

Mar 21, 2023•59 min•Season 1Ep. 7

DiS006: Women's Equality in Music & Glastonbury's pipeline with Vick Bain from The F List / ISM

In case it wasn't obvious, this a music podcast that hasn't had enough of experts and to mark International Women's Day 2023 we spoke to Vick Bain the founder of The F-List and President of ISM (the independent society of musicians) , to her PhD research into inequality in the music industry. This episodes covers everything from her research into the Ivors songwriting awards having a pitiful amount of women winners to setting up the F List database of female+ musicians. In recent days, Vick Bain...

Mar 08, 2023•51 min•Season 1Ep. 6

DiS005: How music can embrace the power of AI with ChatGPT expert David Boyle

“If you start out and it doesn't do something that you're very impressed by, your assumption should be that your prompt wasn't very good,” this summarises the advice from music industry veteran David Boyle, who specialises in understanding audiences, and over the last few months has become an expert in using ChatGPT ( if you've not already, give it a go here ). So much so he's co-written a book called PROMPT about, you guessed it, writing prompts to get artificial intelligence to give you better...

Feb 22, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 5

DiS004: Tune in, AI Out - the co-founders of Endel on music's potential futures

The robots are coming, and people are fearful and excited about the potential for AI and music to collide. It's hard to escape the discourse surrounding artificial intelligence, with various projects launches or low-level things reaching critical max in 2023. As someone who is pretty cynical and emo about everything, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams is oddly optimistic about some of AI music's potential futures, especially surrounding the collision of science, technology and more 'functional'...

Feb 21, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 4

DiS003: TikTok, "Authenticity" and Music with Eleanor from Crystal Fighters

TikTok is so important, but what on earth are you meant to be doing on it? Here at Drowned in Sound we have not had a enough of experts, so we found one who can help us and you get our heads around TikTok. Our guest this week is musician and producer (and soon to be stand up comedian) Eleanor Fletcher, who's also a member of festival favourites Crystal Fighters , to find out how she's garnered 900k like on the platform and found a new audience in just a few months. Give her feed a scroll and fol...

Feb 16, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 3

DiS002: Discover... The Faux Faux (Faith Vern from PINS)

Faith Vern has collaborated with the likes Iggy Pop and Maxine Peake, and played huge sets on main stages of festivals such as Reading with her band PINS . In this episode, Faith tells us all about the debut single of her new solo project The Faux Faux, which is the first release on the rebooted Drowned in Sound Singles Club ( drownedinsound.org ). Drowned in Sound founder and podcast host Sean Adams ( @seaninsound ) introduces the podcast with a little history of the Drowned in Sound label and ...

Feb 09, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 2

DiS001: The trade unionist campaigning for fairer streaming - Naomi Pohl from Musicians' Union

How do we "fix" music streaming? It's a question that has plagued the music industry and musicians for a decade and a half, whilst debating the pounds, pennies and slithers of a pence per stream... so this discussion about music streaming seemed like a great place to restart our podcast, which is will focus on music, through the prism of creativity, sustainability, pioneers and big ideas. There are now a range of campaigns around the world and several organisations unifying in the UK to try to c...

Feb 02, 2023•37 min

DiS000: Prologue

If this is an "audio publication" then this episode is the editor's (voice) note, as Sean Adams introduces some of the topics, ideas and thinking this new phase of the Drowned in Sound podcast. To begin, help yourself to a David Bowie and Janelle Monáe sandwich. drownedinsound.org | @ seaninsound

Jan 17, 2023•9 min

From the Archive: Mercury Prize judges help us ponder: What makes a truly great album?

Mercury Music Prize 2015 judges John Kennedy from Radio X and Kate Mossman from New Statesman/BBC Four, join DiS editor Sean Adams and podcast co-host Danielle Perry from Absolute Radio to discuss this year's Mercury nominees and what this year's 12 albums say about the current state of music plus we ponder what makes a truly great album? The winner of this year's Mercury Prize will be revealed live on the BBC on Friday 20th Nov The 2015 Mercury Prize ‘Albums of the Year’ in association with BBC...

Nov 11, 2015•52 min•Season 1Ep. 2

From the Archive: Blogs that became labels with Toby L from Rockfeedback / Transgressive (2015)

Toby L who founded music website, concert promoter and TV show Rockfeedback, as well as the Transgressive label (home to releases by Foals, The Antlers, Regina Spektor, Alvvays, Songhoy Blues and many more) chats about the past decade and a half with our hosts Absolute radio's Danielle Perry and Drowned in Sound (which also turned 15 this week) founder Sean Adams.

Oct 09, 2015•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 1

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