Lloyd Cole joins the commotion to Spotify new listeners

ONE of Britain’s best singer-songwriters, Lloyd Cole, is here to discuss the modern music buyer.

Singer songwriter musician Lloyd Cole at the Flying Saucer Club in Melbourne.

IT IS 30 years since British singer-songwriter Lloyd Cole, with the Commotions, ­released the album Rattlesnakes — the first of four top 20 albums in Britain for the group.

However, the brooding writer of pop classics Perfect Skin, Brand New Friend and Lost Weekend says that ­in the age of Spotify ­albums are more of a vanity ­project,with CD and online sales “barely enough to merit making the ­record at all’’.

“The industry and artists want to blame the consumer for not wanting to buy music,’’ he says.

“People are still going to gigs. The money they pay for concerts can be worth three albums. It’s not that the money isn’t going into the industry, it’s just not going into buying CDs.”

Cole is touring Australia with his Standards album, part-funded by fans through pre-sales and ­independent German label Tapete Records.

Along with ­Morrissey from The Smiths, Cole is widely hailed as one of Britain’s best songwriters.

He will appear in Adelaide and Hobart this week as the University of South Australia’s visiting fellow of the Hawke Research Institute to discuss these challenges for modern musicians.

Institute director Anthony ­Elliott said his colleagues had been crunching the numbers on how musicians could financially survive from royalties on Spotify, the online and almost limitless music library that charges customers $10 a month.

The current payment was 0.007c per stream, translating to 7c per 1000 plays, Professor Elliott said. “So I asked Lloyd Cole to come over to work with us on these ­challenges, which are crucial to the future of the Australian music industry and also globally,” he said.

Professor Elliot is also keen to explore with Cole the changes the behaviour of music consumers.

“It’s not just listening to singles rather than whole albums. There’s now new knowledge showing that people are only ­listening to bits of songs or ­samples at a time,’’ Professor ­Elliott said.

Cole will be in conversation with Professor Elliott in Adelaide tomorrow and at Hobart’s ­Museum of Old and New Art on Friday.