Spiers and Boden, music streaming economics, Calvin Kasulke, Danny Rhodes

There's some excitement in the world of English traditional music: Spiers and Boden have reunited, recorded a new album and are embarking on a month long tour. Squeezebox player John Spiers met fiddle player Jon Boden in a pub session twenty years ago and quickly established themselves as a duo playing English music, winning a devoted following and several awards. They formed the hugely successful 11-piece folk big band Bellowhead, but separated in 2014 and didn't play together again until this year. Spiers and Boden talk about their new album, Fallow Ground, explain how they find old tunes, and write new ones. And they play two tunes inspired by ancient English places.

A DCMS Report has called for a “complete reset” of the music industry following an investigation into the economics of music streaming services. Reporter Melanie Abbott describes the impact that streaming and new forms of music distribution have had on the earnings of artists and why the Government have accepted the recommendation to refer major music groups to the Competition and Markets Authority.

Although written before the pandemic and the rise of working from home culture, Calvin Kasulke’s novel, Several People are Typing is set entirely on the Slack chat of staff working at a small advertising agency. He joins us to discuss how our online versions of ourselves can interact with our physical lives, as well as the complexities of writing as an online bot.

We talk to another of the authors shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2021. Danny Rhodes’s story ‘Toadstone’ tells the story of a man returning to the village of his childhood, and looking to his own future. Danny Rhodes is a novelist and a lecturer in creative writing.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Sarah Johnson