Stephen Budd, a council member of the Music Manager’s Forum and founder of Stephen Budd Management, the producer management agency which looks after one of We Are Listening’s esteemed panelists, producer KK (Bjork, Dido, Nelly Furtado), commented on the devaluation of professional music producers at a summit of music producer managers in London this week.

Budd, and his peers, are calling for change in producer agreements due to unreasonable expectations and progressive devaluation of producers’ work, often subject to “on spec” agreements where the financial risk rests on the producers’ shoulders and their agents, no less.

The summit represented a concerted industry effort to brainstorm new business models to ensure the futures of professional producers through a restructuring of royalty shares in a number of areas where producers are professionally and creatively involved.