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Summer 2023: The committee for «200 Franken sind genug!» (200 Swiss Francs are enough!) submitted the necessary signatures for a new referendum in Switzerland.

The so-called «Halving Referendum» aims to slash the yearly fee for the country's public broadcasting service—from 335 Swiss Francs per household to 200 Swiss Francs.

If successful, it would have a significant negative impact on the Swiss music industry.

The fees fund the national public radio and broadcast «SRG» as well as several private media institutions. Around 1,3 billion Swiss Francs are collected yearly and distributed—with SRG receiving approximately 1,2 billion.

The new referendum is the second attack on the broadcasting fee after the «No-Billag» referendum that intended to eliminate the fee entirely. The referendum was rejected in March 2018 with 71,6%.

High Chance of Success

While «No-Billag» had no chance at the voting booth with its radical approach, times have changed since then. The «Halving Referendum» has significantly more potential for success for two reasons:

• Trust in journalism is at an all-time low.
• The referendum wants to reduce the fee, which is attractive to many.

In fact, a survey in October 2023 showed that 61% of participants favoured the referendum. Already in February 2022, voters rejected a package for media subsidies, which entailed the additional support of various types of outlets like digital publications.

Another Far-Right Push Against Independent Journalism

It is barely surprising that most of the leading figures behind the «Halving Referendum» are part of the far-right Swiss People's Party (SVP). 

As part of the committee's co-presidency, there is Hans-Ulrich Bigler, who was already leading the «No-Billag» referendum, alongside Thomas Matter, a private banking multimillionaire and second-richest member of parliament. The latter had already demonstrated his clear intentions: He used a video by the public broadcaster for his YouTube channel and cut it in a completely misleading way to promote the new referendum.

Even masqueraded behind moderate and surface-level reasonable arguments, the idea behind the referendum is a further destabilisation of independent journalism. It is only one side of a long-term project by Switzerland's conservatives and far-right. 

On the other side, they started to buy into the market themselves with the shady purchase of the weekly magazine «Weltwoche» in 2001, the purchase of 25 free weeklies by billionaire and SVP overlord Christoph Blocher, and the takeover of the satirical magazine «Nebelspalter» in 2020.

More Than 900 Jobs On The Line

In November, the Federal Council, Switzerland's highest executive body, presented their counterproposal to the referendum. Albert Rösti, the responsible minister and former SVP party president, suggested cutting the broadcast fee step-by-step to 300 Swiss Francs until 2029. The referendum's committee is against the proposal.

The bizarre sidenote here is that Albert Rösti is still part of the referendum's committee, although they removed him from their website. He is not allowed to leave because his name was on the signature ballots for the referendum.

Later, the SRG published a press release stating:

«With the decline in advertising revenue and the cancellation of the cost-of-living adjustment, SRG would lose up to 240 million Swiss Francs from 2027. Around 900 jobs would have to be gradually cut across all regions.»

When speaking anonymously to SRG employees, they see the 900 jobs on the line with the counterproposal as too low. «For every job lost at SRG, one is lost in the private market,» explained one journalist. Many editors, camera operators, and filmmakers are individual contractors who would also lose their engagements with the radical cuts.

The job losses would obviously be even more severe if the referendum succeeds.

Devastating Impact on Swiss Music Journalism

There is undoubtedly necessary criticism one can direct towards the SRG and its offering. Switzerland needs an informed, transparent, and sober discussion about the value of independent journalism, public service broadcasting, and the responsibility of the SRG in today's digitised media landscape.

However, the last bastion of music journalism will likely receive a big blow. Public radio already had to cut back on its high-quality music specials. Generally a niche interest, music reporting is an endangered candidate for budget cuts.

Public broadcasting and independent, often volunteer-run radio stations are the only remaining publications covering music in depth. Commercial private radios, so-called format radio stations, mostly play the most popular songs and contribute very little to the diversity of Swiss music.

Switzerland's written music journalism is dominated by non-professionals and blogs like Negative White. Prominent newspapers have chopped down their cultural reporting long ago—because, again, it remained a niche interest and seemed non-essential to the business of selling ads.

Consequences For Artists Down The Line

While written music journalism is past its peak, radio still plays a significant role for musicians as airplay generates attention and real money through royalties, generating significantly more revenue than streaming. In 2022, the Swiss royalty institution SUISA paid a record-breaking 180,5 million Swiss Francs to publishers, songwriters, and composers.

On the national level, budget cuts will potentially impact the number of available radio stations. Fewer stations—for example, abolishing the music-only station «Radio Swiss Pop»—means fewer airplay opportunities for artists and, therefore, less revenue.

According to Albert Rösti, the SRG should «focus more strongly on the areas of information, education and culture.» However, this statement is rather vague. 

The SRG counters that the counterproposal will impact «co-productions of Swiss films and music recordings as well as major popular events.» Therefore, music recordings like extensive festival reporting or maybe even formats with a significant live music portion like «SRF 3 Best Talent» or the «Bounce CYPHER» could be on the line.

And if the distribution of the broadcast fee money changes, non-commercial local radios might face a life-and-death situation. Smaller indie stations like Kanal K, Radio Lora, or Radio 3FACH are essential institutions on the regional level. They are part of a fragile independent music ecosystem that provides a platform to newcomer artists and an opportunity for discovery for their listeners.

Less radio exposure also impacts an artist's concert opportunities. Airplay is already a significant factor in booking an artist for a show, with higher chances for those with airplay getting chosen.

A reduced media landscape with fewer radio stations providing this valuable asset will lead to even higher competition—and ultimately damage the Swiss indie music landscape.

Consumer Ends Up With Less

While Switzerland will not vote on the referendum before 2026, saving a couple of bucks yearly might seem attractive to a regular consumer, especially when everything gets more expensive.

However, we can see what happens with the privatisation of sports broadcasts: If you want to watch every game of the Super League, Switzerland's highest soccer tier, the yearly subscription costs 418 Swiss Francs.

While sports provide a big enough target audience for such an offer, it is unimaginable to have a similar service for, let's say, festival streams. They would rather not exist anymore—narrowing the available content overall.

With its shotgun approach, the «Halving Referendum», while targeting independent journalism, will kill a significant portion of music reporting. And take away many opportunities for Swiss musicians—especially newcomers.

Last week, Threads launched in Europe, Meta's Twitter competition. Signing up with Negative White, the algorithm immediately recommended a lot of content from people in the music industry—artists, labels, promoters, managers. «Great,» I thought and read through profoundly intriguing conversations.

But then, there are so many bad takes—written mainly by men that fall somewhere between LinkedIn influencer type, crypto bro, and self-proclaimed business coach, just with a music business twist.

A trendy subject for those guys is Spotify's new policy to only pay artists for songs with more than 1000 streams. And yes, I know: By writing about it, I totally catch the engagement bait for the recognition they so desperately seek.

On the surface, these guys' claim that artists who can't reach 1000 streams for a song don't deserve money seems logical. Their argument that 1000 streams only equals 3 euros and doesn't do much anyway seems also solid. (Leaving aside that Spotify pays artists just horrendously bad, but let's not open this topic here.)

What these music business bros don't seem to grasp, proudly displayed in their conversations, is that the critique doesn't aim at the lost opportunity to earn these life-changing 3 euros but the crossing of a red line by one of the industry's most prominent players.

What's next? Artists only get paid if a song has 10,000 or 100,000 streams? Or if they have 10,000 monthly listeners? Or if they release a new track each month? Crossing that red line is a potential floodgate opener to all sorts of dystopian ideas not to pay the people who deliver the platform's content. That's what we should be worried about—not the number of 1000 streams itself.

And if you're still unable to understand the issue here, let me illustrate it in a different context: Imagine a concert organiser only pays artists for a gig if they sell out the venue. One ticket short? Sorry, but you don't get anything.

Again, it's not about the money: It's about a company that pays artists already horribly exerting a powerplay because its business model isn't sustainable and continues to bleed money.

By now, it should hardly surprise anyone that streaming services are not a viable business model for most artists, especially if they're walking outside the big mainstream path.

While streaming platforms like Spotify or Apple Music have made it easier for consumers to access new music, the revenue model doesn't work for the majority of musicians.

Suppose you're paying a premium subscription for any of the services. In that case, the money goes into a pool—and you're financing the big labels and streaming giants like Ed Sheeran or Talyor Swift, whether you're actually listening to them or not.

While it is completely understandable not to want to ditch the convenience of streaming, every music fan should know that simply paying for a premium service does not support their favourite artists.

However, there are five easy ways alongside streaming you can use to actually (financially) support your beloved musicians and enable them to keep doing what they do best.

Buy Their Music

Okay, this should be obvious: Buying is better than streaming. When you buy an album or single physically or digitally, the artists get a fixed amount of money.

There are even two main advantages for you as the buyer: If you purchase a physical product like a vinyl record, you have a piece of art to decorate your home (provided the cover art is outstanding).

And if you buy a digital download, the music is protected, and you actually own a copy of the file. Streaming services often remove songs from their platforms, or the artists themselves delete them for various reasons.

Buy Tickets Early

Concerts are great to support your favourite musicians. They not only earn money from ticket sales but shows provide an easy opportunity for them to sell merchandise (see next point).

However, since the pandemic, pre-sales have been struggling, sometimes even leading to cancelled shows because the financial risk was too high.

So if you really want to see your favourite artist live, buy a ticket early. And keep this also in mind: You're simultaneously supporting your local concert venue. What a great feeling!

Buy Their Merchandise

As mentioned above, merchandise aside from physical music has become an essential revenue stream for artists. While certain genres like metal have engrained it into their culture with band shirts and patches, it isn't as common in other scenes.

So purchasing merchandise like shirts, stickers, or other bits and pieces is an effective way to help artists make ends meet—especially because compared to the music itself, there are fewer stakeholders like labels, publishers, or distributors involved.

Support Them On Creator Platforms

Some musicians take advantage of newer opportunities to gain the support of their fans. They might be present on creator platforms like Patreon or Fanklub, where you pay a small monthly subscription. These platforms provide them with a steady income, often trading the money for exclusive content for their paying supporters.

Other artists seek funding for their next album on a crowdfunding platform. Also, there, you can directly support the musicians in their creative endeavours.

Spread The Word

Well aware that all of these support approaches require a certain disposable income in a time when life, in general, gets more expensive, it's also worth considering that the same is true for musicians.

It is important to remember that music, despite all the contrary signs, is not just a commodity but art created with passion and inspiration. It brings us relief, channels emotions, and sparks joy.

However, there's one thing that helps and is completely free: Spread the word! Recommend artists to your friends and multiply their reach through social media.

It was the song Missing Me that introduced me to Angie McMahon in 2019. The single's raw and reduced composition felt like a long-awaited return to rock music's essence.

With Salt, the Melbourne-born artist delivered a highly praised debut album, even shooting up to 5th place in Australia's charts. Eddy Lim, reviewer at the Beat Magazine, wrote: «While Salt is primarily driven by deft guitar work and a tight rhythm section, it's McMahon's stunning vocal performance that unequivocally captures the spotlight.»

Four years passed, and finally, Angie McMahon released her sophomore work: Light, Dark, Light Again. And it sounds significantly different from Salt—already anticipated with the first single release, Saturn Returning—yet arguably even better.

I have been listening to Light, Dark, Light Again for weeks at this point, yet I still struggle to fully grasp the album and put my thoughts into sentences that pay justice.

There are obvious observations like the piano replacing the guitar as the main character in most compositions—a development that originated in the 2020 compilation of Salt songs in piano versions. 

Or that, suppose Salt was a raw blueprint of blues-infused rock music, the new album seems like a natural evolution: Its compositions are more complex and refined, sophisticated gems of singer-songwriter brilliance, encompassing all from rock, folk, blues, and country music.

Or the connection to nature as a facilitator of healing with references in the lyrics and soundbites introduced in songs like the opener, Saturn Returning.

However, none of these facts scratches the depth of the brilliance Angie McMahon displays in the 13 songs of Light, Dark, Light Again. There is more to unpack here, maybe too much for a single review.

With his debut album, Norway's indie soul hope Beharie presents twelve songs with a kaleidoscopic range of tones, sounds, and colours—tied together with his raw singer-songwriter lyrics, swinging between self-confidence and vulnerability.

In 2021, Beharie won the Spellemann prize for his second EP, Beharie // Beharie, and was nominated again a year later for the subsequent EP, Beharie, the Third. Both moments demonstrate the artist's rising profile in his home country and beyond.

In Are You There, Boy?, Beharie delves into the aspects of his identity as a queer person. Artistically abstracted into different characters, each song is a fragment of Beharie's self, meeting in their common urge for belonging. Or, as Beharie puts it:

Dennis Kiss has published his debut album since he became a solo artist. Norddeich Mole was released on October 6, and it's an opus for the thoughtful, the dreamers, and the sad. Raised in Switzerland, now living in Hamburg, Dennis Kiss sings in his native language for the first time.

Melodic Heartache

With «Norddeich Mole», Dennis Kiss presents his debut album. It’s a deep introspection of a young, longing, and seeking man.

Negative WhiteJanosch Troehler

Songs like Bordeaux, previously featured in Weekly5, or his latest release, Gewitterwolken, are bittersweet indie-pop songs that perfectly complement Germany's rise in something called «Neue Neue Deutsche Welle», a resurgence in post-punk-esque, melancholic sound spearheaded by artists like Edwin Rosen, Betterov, or Temmis.

At least in Kiss' case, the musical inspiration for his sound, labelled by himself as «Neue Deutsche Einsamkeit» [New German Loneliness], is, in fact, driven by the more saddened works of other artists.

We asked Dennis Kiss to share five songs and artists that heavily influenced his own musical creativity. For Negative White, he opens his treasure chest of influence and tells, in his words, how these songs and artists inspire him.

Editors – Open Your Arms

I love the first Editors album, The Back Room, for its simplicity and bluntness. There are very few other albums that encapsulate tristesse and melancholia like this one does. It always appealed to me how Tom Smith somehow manages to gather so much bitterness and sorrow in so few words.

It’s a fine art to write a song in this typically post-punk-esque manner of monotonously repeating the same line and theme over and over again and then, at some point, just slightly changing it in the most painful way. That’s what always fascinated me about this album: the that lives in monotony.

The Cure – Pictures of You

It was my mother who first showed me The Cure. Generally, if it wasn’t for my parents, I don’t know where I would have gotten my musical education. From early on, they confronted me with bands like U2, the Chili Peppers, Nirvana, and so on.

I remember trying to dislike The Cure as an act of rebellion as a teenager. Obviously, this act didn’t last long, and I soon had to give in and admit that this band probably inspired me more than I would even imagine today. Pictures of You is the second song on Disintegration, my mother‘s favourite album by The Cure, and it’s a downright masterpiece.

My 20-something self would have devoured Norddeich Mole, the debut album of Dennis Kiss. It's a brilliant collection of sad indie songs, a descendant of Hamburger Schule tuned to churn out maximal melancholy.

But can you really enjoy this tribute to longing for love and coming of age beyond a certain threshold?

Born and raised in Switzerland, Dennis Kiss first made an impression together with his band The Sleepers. In 2021, they released the album Poco Bono. The beginning and the end were wrapped up in one as they split up right after. However, in parallel, Kiss already started to work—maybe unknowingly—at his next step.

Flaschenpfand marked a new phase for the musician: He wrote a song with German lyrics for the first time. During a pandemic, shaking up everybody's life, Kiss shook up his songwriting.

Now, around three years later, Dennis Kiss lives in Hamburg and releases Norddeich Mole. It's not only an hommage to his home, Northern Germany, but a deep introspection into the heart of a young, sensitive man—and beyond, a generation that feels lost yet yearns for connection and love.

Negative White presents Dennis Kiss on Album Tour

Dennis Kiss will release his debut album on the 6th of October. Negative White presents the subsequent tour of the Swiss-German artist. Here are the dates.

Negative WhiteStaff

The power of metal to captivate and enthral its listeners is truly unique. The intense sound created by heavy riffs, thundering drums, and hellish vocals evokes deep feelings in those who appreciate the genre.

Especially when experienced live on stage, the music's raw energy and emotional expression bring people together, creating a sense of unity that is hard to find in other forms of music—something I witnessed once again when I attended this year's Summer Breeze Festival in Dinkelsbühl, Germany.

Although only a small portion of my personal heavy rotation accounts for metal, the sound these bands produce is undeniably fascinating. Today, I share five metal acts I recently discovered—some of them rather late, others on their way up.

Blackbraid

Sgah’gahsowáh, the artist behind the one-man band Blackbraid, combines Black Metal's heavy sounds with a focus on nature. Stumbling over a New York Times feature anticipating the second album, Blackbraid II, the combination of themes rooted in his Native American heritage and the raw sound of Norwegian's Black Metal origins instantly intrigued me.

Initially, I expected a more progressive approach to the Black Metal sound, as seen with Zeal & Ardor. However, Blackbraid's sound remains traditionalist, offering pure, aggressive, but excellent compositions.