KT Tunstall said streaming giants make it “next to impossible” for new musicians to make a living before accepting the Ivor Novello award for outstanding song collection.
The Scottish singer-songwriter, 48, was recognised at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on Thursday evening.
She was honoured along with Bruce Springsteen, who made history at the awards as the first international songwriter to be awarded an Ivors Academy fellowship.
Speaking on the red carpet, Tunstall said the prize was “extremely special” and she was lucky she did not have to “practise my happy loser face”.
Tunstall added: “I think it’s the most meaningful award I’ve ever had and it just feels like a massive hug, which spending 20 years really doing my best work, I’ve been able to do, so it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing to happen, pretty unexpected as well.”
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She added that she was “gobsmacked” when she was told by Tom Gray, who the Scottish singer had been working with on the Broken Record campaign to “try and make streaming a reasonable income for a writer”.
Asked why there has not been stronger action on improving revenues for artists from streamed music, Tunstall said: “It was very much a case of the industry just not keeping its eye on the ball, including us musicians.
“And once people get something for next to nothing, it’s extremely difficult to go backwards on that.
“I don’t know what the future looks like, but I’m certainly willing and able to be part of galvanising musicians together to try and change because, I feel so bad for new musicians, it’s next to impossible for them to make a living.”
“And at least I sort of had my hand on the till of people buying albums.
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“But I really hope that legislation and Tom being at the forefront of that really helps because music, without good songs, you’ve got to have the good materials and the writers have got to be part of the renumeration of wealth around music.
“And I think we’ve learnt over the last few crazy years that mixing music is just magic, brings all of us together. So yeah, I love the Ivors for that. And they’re celebrating the writers.”
Raye, the performer from south London, got the songwriter of the year award, and was nominated for best album for My 21st Century Blues, along with the Irish singer CMAT’s Crazymad, for Me. The best album award went to the south London jazz drummer Yussef Dayes’s Black Classical Music.
The Spanish-American Victoria Canal’s Black Swan was named best song musically and lyrically.
