The Stories of 2025 - Part 1: Megagigs, Grassroots, and AI slop

Dec 15, 2025

Emma Wilkes, a music journalist known for her insights on industry trends, joins Sean Adams to explore the biggest stories reshaping music in 2025. They discuss the stark contrast between record-breaking mega-gigs and the struggles of grassroots venues, questioning who truly benefits from this growth while artists face rising pressures. The conversation shifts to AI's real impact in music, from AI-generated acts to the ethical dilemmas surrounding copyright and the importance of human creativity. It's an eye-opening dive into the future of music and its underlying challenges.

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INSIGHT

Mega Gigs Mask Industry Fragility

Mega gigs concentrate wealth and visibility at the top while masking strain across the wider music ecosystem.
Sean Adams and Emma Wilkes argue headline growth figures hide grassroots precarity and widening inequality.

ANECDOTE

Artists Cancelling Tours Due To Costs

Emma Wilkes and Sean Adams list artists cancelling tours because costs made some routes unaffordable.
They cite Little Simz, FKA Twigs and Garbage as examples of touring becoming financially untenable.

INSIGHT

Top-Heavy Growth Benefits Few

Mega gigs boost local and national GDP but mainly enrich a small number of superstars and corporate backers.
The hosts compare this to tech monopolies where headline growth doesn't reflect broad wellbeing.

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What were the biggest stories in music this year? No, not the releases or the hype cycles but the forces reshaping how music is made, played, toured, and valued.

In Part 1 of Drowned in Sound’s Stories of the Year, Sean Adams and Emma Wilkes count down stories #5 and #4, starting with a contradiction that defined 2025: record-breaking mega-gigs and billion-pound industry headlines on one side, and a grassroots ecosystem under existential pressure on the other.

They talk through the “mega gig” (stadium shows, park festivals, corporate-backed cultural events) and also ask what their success is hiding. Taylor Swift-level touring power continues to drive economic growth but artists at every other level are cancelling tours. What is the purpose of growth if the foundations are cracking?

From there, the conversation turns to AI. A now present-day force that is reshaping music. This is the year artificial intelligence stopped being theoretical and started demanding political, legal, and cultural responses.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the countdown.

The Drowned in Sound podcast is presented in partnership with Qobuz, the pioneering high-quality music streaming and download platform for music enthusiasts and audiophiles. Each week we curate playlists on Qobuz, featuring our favourite records, artists, and the themes we explore on the show.

Visit https://drownedinsound.org/playlists/ to discover new music in rich Hi-Res lossless quality and start your 30-day free trial of Qobuz at https://qobuz.com/dis.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

01:15 - Story #5 begins: mega gigs vs grassroots

02:10 - What defines a “mega gig” now?

04:11 - £8bn industry headlines vs lived reality

06:26 - Taylor Swift, scale, and monopoly economics

07:18 - Employment figures and the invisible labour of music

08:43 - Grassroots venues as cultural homes

09:32 - Inequality, wealth concentration, and responsibility

13:22 - How the industry decides who gets tipped

16:01 - Why discovery systems feel broken

19:30 - Story #4 begins: artificial intelligence enters music

23:19 - Consent, transparency, and “human-made” music

28:30 - Power, control, and social isolation

35:30 - Outro

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