➕TommyD

Ben Mortimer is out at Polydor. His building has the longest running No.1 in UK history. It took 35 weeks to reach the top. Most of the business would have binned it in week six. Cut the people. Cut the time. Cut the bets. New piece 👇 tommyd.substack.com/p/sounds…

Played a cabbie two mixes of the same track. One with drums. One without. Identical vocal. He picked the second. “The singer sings it better.” Same voice. Different room around him. That’s production. That’s curation too. tommyd.substack.com/p/the-di…

1905: a critic calls Matisse a “wild beast” for painting skies the wrong colour. 2026: we queue round the block. Turn a corner at H’ART Museum and there’s Rothko, showing you where the wild beasts went. Somebody planned that moment. That’s curation. tommyd.substack.com/p/the-di…

Recently I watched two masterclasses in curation. The first was Gilles Peterson at the Haarlem Vinyl Festival, throwing records on the floor mid-talk while a room full of collectors flinched as one. The second was Chez Matisse at H’ART Museum in Amsterdam, where somebody I’ll never meet had hung Matisse beside the artists he argued with and the ones he inspired. My new Substack is about what those two moments share: the human craft of putting things next to each other until they mean more. A DJ set. A gallery wall. A mixtape for somebody you fancy. Algorithms are brilliant at serving more of what you already like. Their brief is to keep you listening. A human curator gets to choose a braver brief. The word curator comes from the Latin curare. To care for. Full piece: tommyd.substack.com/p/the-di… #Curation #MusicIndustry #Art #CreativeIndustries

It was an absolute pleasure to once again attend the @HaarlemVinylFestival, my fourth year in a row, produced by the formidable Richard Zijlma. Ive known Richard now for many years, from back when he was running Amsterdam Dance Event and got him involved in the early days of The 8O8 Drinks Company to help me push my whisky into the club scene. He was also the first person I thought of when I started talking about how frontier tech like blockchain and AI could impact the music industry back in 2020 and together we formulated the early days of @token_traxx . This years vinyl festival was the best ever. It was absolutely packed with eager vinyl aficionados and recording music lovers. The huge record market in the town square was packed full of people buying. It really fills my heart with joy to see so many people excitedly crate digging. Of course, I had to refrain because you cant just buy one record. This year, it was made even more magical by the presence of the master Gilles Peterson. I was honoured to share the stage and moderate his talk, where he told his incredible story: the early days as a kid running the pirate station on Epsom Downs, so he could get a signal, through to all the different labels, Acid jazz, Talking Loud and now the excellent Brownswood. It's incredible to hear that he has been involved in over 100 compilations for different labels, many of them his own. His compilations still stand to me as a benchmark of what a great compilation should sound like. Gilles is the master curator. Hes known as the jazz man but really, it doesnt matter what music he endorses. You know it's going to be good. I like nothing better than going on a bike ride on a Saturday afternoon, listening to his BBC6 Music show, shazaming like mad, trying to work out what it is that hes playing. To be able to share a stage and talk to Gilles, someone I have known and admired for over 40 years, was a real honour. Thank you to everyone who attended and the lovely words of appreciation that Ive got since. We're all big fans of Gilles at the end of the day! So put it in the diary for 2027, beginning of October. Come to the beautiful city of Haarlem, just outside of Amsterdam, and get vinyl crazy

Three companies and a wall of private equity now own almost every route to market that isn't a major label. Wrote about what's left, and why it still matters. tommyd.substack.com/p/do-you…

An A&R once told me he'd only pay me if the track got used. I suggested he ask his boss for the same deal. He didn't find that funny. Wrote about why that's now standard practice, not the exception. tommyd.substack.com/p/do-you…

US music revenue: $6bn in six months, up 6.9%. Universal's advances to creators in the same six months: down almost a quarter. Record profits. Shrinking faith. New piece: tommyd.substack.com/p/do-you…

I asked a mate with number ones, Grammys and Brits a simple question. Do you get paid? He didn't understand the question. New piece on why the music industry's favourite deal is "work now, maybe get paid later." tommyd.substack.com/p/do-you…

Never forget.

I don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore

Sad to not be at @NFT_NYC this year as I have prior stuff. Have a great one to my NFTNYC fam @CameronBale @WingDude @MetaRidesInc @auradeluxe @violettazironi @EmilyLazar_SM @trevorjonesart @ViolettaPJones @jadynviolet @mrdariusone @RillaNessyTh @therealgodcloud @Shiba_King1991 @maxpretends @SpottieWiFi @EricSpivak @bryanbrinkman @studiopaiman @MikeMongo

Maybe they should rename it Lake Epstein?

There's a real argument buried under the AI-badge conversation, and it deserves taking seriously. AI can produce infinite content at zero cost. Some kind of triage is inevitable. I don't think that's wrong. What I don't buy is that the triage needs to be public. Every platform already sorts content by engagement, completion rate, skip rate, a hundred signals nobody sees. Nobody gets shown a badge explaining why a track got buried in the algorithm. It just happens. The AI label is the one exception. Stapled to the profile. In public. Before anyone's pressed play. That's not triage. That's a verdict. If the concern is genuinely volume, fix the plumbing. Don't hand the listener a warning label and call it neutral. More in the piece: tommyd.substack.com/p/good-o…

Sampling was theft. Synths and drum machines were killing musicianship. Comping was cheating. Autotune was cheating twice. All of it just became production. Funny how that keeps happening. tommyd.substack.com/p/good-o…

Every platform's decided the same thing lately. Human. And not. One of those needs a warning sticker. I've got a different two categories. Good. And bad. Same test I've used for thirty years. Nothing to do with who made it. Sampling. Drum machines. Comping. Autotune. All proof music was dying, once. None of them needed a badge in the end. New Substack piece: Good, or Bad? I'll Decide. tommyd.substack.com/p/good-o…

Great musicians don't need a grid to tell them where the music is. I was reminded of this while writing about recording “July” with Mundy. No click. Tempo wandering all over the place. Drummer and bass player having to actually listen and follow him. Good luck. But they did. And the record was better for it. We spend a lot of time trying to remove imperfection from creativity. I'm increasingly convinced we're removing some of the good stuff with it. New Substack: The Difficult Bit Is the Point. tommyd.substack.com/p/the-di…