◆ Trending: KT Tunstall says she feels bad for new singers on accepting Ivor honour
KT Tunstall said she feels “bad” for new musicians as she accepted the Ivor Novello award for outstanding song collection.
The Scottish singersongwriter, 48, was recognised at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on Thursday.
She was honoured along with Bruce Springsteen, who made history as the first international songwriter to be awarded an Ivors Academy fellowship.
Tunstall said the prize was “extremely special” and she was lucky she did not have to “practice my happy loser face”.
She 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.”
She has been working with Tom Gray on the broken record campaign to “try to make streaming a reasonable income for a writer”.
Asked why there has not been stronger action on getting revenues from streaming music, Tunstall said: “It was very much a case of the industry just not keeping his 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,” she added.
“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.”