Music industry torn in two by Israel as radicals take centre stage

Telegraph

05-07-2025

Bob Vylan's incendiary performance at Glastonbury may have caught the BBC off-guard, but for those working in the music industry it was less of a shock.
It was just one glimpse of the simmering tensions between artists and the industry caused by escalating activism about Israel and the conflict in Gaza.
Music and politics have always been intertwined but what is different today is the hard edge to the views. Bob Vylan led chants of 'death, death to the IDF', eclipsing contentious Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap as the focal point for scandal.
As artists use headline slots to spout hate speech, political pressure is mounting behind the scenes to curb the radicalism on stage. Music bosses are scrambling to cool friction within their own ranks but tensions are boiling over.
This weekend Massive Attack, who have used their tours to campaign against the 'horror of Gaza', told The Telegraph they had stopped working with their agent of three decades after he called for Kneecap to be dropped from Glastonbury.
While the pro-Palestinian views espoused by artists may be popular with young, Left-wing audiences, it does not go down well with the executives and investors who back both record labels and festivals.
'These investments are made because [live events] became a very stable, predictable place ... but it is now on the verge of becoming unstable and unpredictable,' says one senior industry executive.
'The reality is that the arts and culture have relied on external funding for a long, long time and that's the same with us. We need sponsors, we need investors. Scare them away and there's no industry left.'
Bob Vylan are not the first group to mount a vocal campaign against Israel's actions in Gaza.
Massive Attack, the Bristol-based trip-hop group, have put the conflict at the heart of their act in recent months. Their show at the Co-op Live arena in Manchester last month only went ahead after the group demanded the removal of all branding from sponsor Barclays, which they described as a 'profoundly unethical corporate identity' because of its dealings with arms companies and fossil-fuel businesses.
Shortly after, their performance at London's Lido festival screened an anti-war video that featured footage of the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Massive Attack have also taken aim at private equity firms and the broader corporate finance underpinning the music industry, though observers wryly point out that this anti-capitalist sentiment did not extend to the group's lucrative sale of its back catalogue to music rights firm Round Hill.
Behind the scenes, campaigners have been targeting music festivals and their organisers over perceived links to Israel's war in Gaza.
The pro-Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement has been mounting a campaign against Superstruct, the entertainment giant behind events including Field Day, Mighty Hoopla, Kendal Calling and Boiler Room.
In a statement, Massive Attack said it was 'misleading' to suggest BDS was targeting music festivals, adding: 'Artists have made political expressions in support of the Palestinian cause from festival stages for decades, this isn't new.
'What is new is the fact that various private equity or banking giants that hold major investments that profit from the occupation, apartheid and genocide identified by dozens of international agencies as occurring in Gaza and the West Bank have targeted music festivals for sponsorship or even part ownership. It is this targeting that has made music festivals contested spaces.'
The backlash began after Superstruct's acquisition last year by KKR, the New York-based private equity firm that BDS accuses of being 'complicit in Israel's genocide and apartheid'.
The campaign group has led calls for boycotts of Superstruct events, which led to a number of artists including DJ Midland pulling out of Field Day in Brockwell Park, south London, in May.
All this is likely to cause a headache for Alex Mahon, the outgoing Channel 4 boss who will take up the top job at Superstruct in the autumn.
Meanwhile Live Nation, the world's largest live events company, was last year forced to drop Barclays as sponsor for a number of festivals, including Download, Latitude and Isle of Wight, following a backlash from artists and fans.
Yielding to this pressure raises awkward questions for Live Nation itself. The company is controlled by Liberty Media, a US conglomerate that operates a dedicated venture fund investing in Israeli companies.
There are other examples: SXSW, the film and media festival that held its inaugural London event earlier this year, has also been targeted by boycotts due to its military and defence links to Israel.
From Rage Against the Machine burning an American flag onstage at Woodstock '99 to Jeremy Corbyn's Pyramid Stage speech at Glastonbury in 2017, music and politics have often gone hand in hand.
But many critics fear recent anti-Israeli actions have gone beyond mere activism. Police have launched a criminal investigation into the Glastonbury performances by Bob Vylan and Kneecap, one member of whom is already facing terror charges after allegedly displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah at a London gig.
More broadly, the BDS movement has been accused of bullying and intimidating anyone who fails to publicly – and vocally – endorse its own radical viewpoint.
As well as threatening a boycott against anyone who does not adhere to its set of 'guidelines', industry sources say the group has also coordinated social media pile-ons and even put up posters outside the offices of companies it deems to be non-compliant.
As a result, organisers have begun crisis planning. 'We haven't been directly called out or anything like that, but we have given serious thought to that eventuality,' says one festival industry source.
Insiders say the campaigns have also had a devastating effect on both artists and staff within the music business. The sensitivity around the topic is so acute that very few are willing to speak at all, let alone on the record.
'Rock and roll has always had a political angle and if you want to stand on a stage as an artist and take a position, that's fine, that's voluntary,' says one industry executive. 'Forcing people to do this, hounding people, outing people, cancelling people ... that's what's happening today.'
The political hijacking of music events follows similar moves in other parts of the creative industries.
A number of institutions including the Tate, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Portrait Gallery have been forced to cut ties with fossil-fuel sponsors, while the the Hay literary festival was last year embroiled in a row over sponsor Baillie Gifford's links to Israel and climate change.
Arts and culture is often viewed as an easy target, particularly given the sectors are frequently staffed by liberal, Left-leaning people. But critics say even those who support the principles of the BDS movement are feeling intimidated, and divisions are starting to show across the industry.
Nick Cave and Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke are among the artists to face a backlash over their perceived silence on the issue, as well as their decision to perform in Israel.
Meanwhile, as Massive Attack launched its public salvos against Israel, the band's agent, David Levy, was reportedly one of the signatories of a letter from music industry executives to Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis calling for Kneecap's appearance to be scrapped.
The band said in a statement: 'On learning of the actions of our agent, we now feel more secure representing ourselves and our political and ethical positions than we do being represented by others, whose views and methods we fundamentally disagree with. So, after 30 years of live touring across five continents, we decided to part company with our live agent.'
Pro-Israel lobby groups are now understood to be putting pressure on festival organisers to cut ties with Kneecap and Bob Vylan ahead of future events. The rap duo has already been dropped from upcoming festival appearances in Manchester and France.
Massive Attack said musicians who spoke out in support of Palestine faced 'industrial or commercial censorship, or increasingly, highly organised, vexatious legal approaches, designed to intimidate artists into silence via the threat of litigation'.
They added: 'We are talking to other artists now about a collective response to these campaigns of intimidation and censorship.'
Record label sources say they faced criticism from both sides for their response to Hamas's Oct 7 2023 attacks on Israel, with a particular divide in how the issue was viewed in the US and Europe.
Divisions are being fuelled by online conspiracy theorists who claim that the upper echelons of the music industry are stacked with secret supporters of Israel, claims often pervaded by anti-Semitism.
In the miasma of outrage, only one thing is clear – there is no consensus on how to respond to such controversy.
'We all see what happened at Glastonbury over the weekend but behind the scenes there's also a lot of tension and disagreement,' says the music industry executive. 'Generally people are very afraid to make the wrong step.'
For many in the industry, the actions of activists such as BDS go against the artistic and cultural principles of freedom that should underpin music. For those in the driving seat, however, there is a more pressing issue: money.
Figures released this week showed the UK welcomed a record 23.5m music tourists to concerts and festivals in 2024, driving £10bn in spending. Music rights, meanwhile, has become a booming market in recent years, with investors splashing at least $20bn (£14.6bn) on back catalogues since 2019.
Yet this boom has been reliant on significant investment, and as festivals are increasingly taken over by political activism, some fear this gold rush could now be at risk.
'The threat to business is that, in theory, if they [activists] are successful they become the most powerful voice in entertainment,' says the executive.