The SAY Award and the importance of the album

Grosvenor House Hotel, London, 2006

As my three-year stint as a judge on the Mercury Prize ended, it seemed like the last days of Rome for the album and the recording industry. That year’s winners, Arctic Monkeys, would be the last to enjoy multi-million sales and had anyone suggested we would still be discussing albums in the same way 13 years later, I would have been mildly incredulous.

In quick succession and combination, Napster, iTunes and high-speed broadband had changed not only how music was consumed but had disrupted the industry’s business model. Since the 1960s the album was where its real profits were generated, even the artists didn't always reap a fair share. Sales had been in sharp decline since the turn of the century.

Yet there was little to suggest impending doom at the Mercury show. In a five-star hotel, this was the industry doing what it did best – celebrating itself – but also showing that, at least for those in the room, the album and the prize were still a very big deal.

Mono, Glasgow, 2012

Six years later, and everything and nothing has changed. I have spent six years managing Belle and Sebastian as their record sales shrunk in inverse proportion to the size of fees that they could command from playing live. Unconvinced by the future prospects, I gave up on management to take up a job in academia. Out of the frying pan etc, etc.

Around the same time, I had a chance encounter with Stewart Henderson of Chemikal Underground and The Delgados, who was chair of the Scottish Music Industry Association (SMIA). He told me of the association’s plans to launch a Scottish Album of the Year award and asked if I would consider chairing the judging panel for its first year.

I was not instantly sold on the idea of either the award itself, or my ability to manage the inevitably absurd arguments as to whether an album by Paolo Nutini was better than one by the Dunedin Consort or Boards of Canada. Stewart is, however, nothing other than persuasive and he made the case for such an award on economic and geographic grounds.

Thanks to the funding the SMIA had secured from Creative Scotland, there was a prize fund of £20,000 for the winner and £1,000 for each of the nine shortlisted runners up. As he pointed out, which record labels in 2012 were offering that type of money and investing in Scottish acts? If nothing else, such a prize would certainly change the fortunes of any winning artists substantially for the better.

I was sufficiently sold to give the venture a try, but I still thought that this was partly an exercise in postponing inevitable obsolescence – fears that were not entirely allayed when, a few weeks later, a student seeing a pile of CDs by the nominated albums on my desk asked accusingly, 'Do you still buy these things?'

I gave the award at most five years, or until the funding ran out, whichever came first.

Paisley Town Hall, 2018

Twelve years after I thought I had witnessed the Arctic Monkeys presiding over the death of the album, and six since I first chaired the SAY Award, it became apparent that I was wrong on both occasions and that the album is a more resilient beast than I gave it credit for. It still matters very much, even if which album matters most is always going to be a source of rancour and debate. And if it's significant for the judges, then it's even more important for the nominated artists.

For most of the winners, £20,000 is only life-changing up to a point. It may clear the debts that making the winning record has incurred. It may also allow the possibility of making another album, but it's not a guaranteed pathway to secure artistic employment, more of a respite from some of the pressures of precarious creative labour.

Yet there is something more important than money that the winners of (and to a lesser extent, those shortlisted for) the SAY Award have benefited from over the last seven years: peer recognition and being part of a wider and usually supportive community.

This is equally true for both those at the start of their careers and those who have been around for some time, but perhaps the best stories to emerge from the seven SAY Awards are those of RM Hubbert and Kathryn Joseph, where years of prior endeavour were finally more widely acknowledged.

Unlike the early years of the Mercury Prize, the award does not usually result in a substantial uplift in sales or streams. Instead it results in a higher profile, more collaborations (with labels and other artists), more recordings and, most importantly, more and better gigs. In the absence of an album, the things that may generate some income or expand an audience are simply not possible.

It is, however, worth adding a geographic caveat, less this reads as an uncritical insider celebration of either the album as a form, or the part prizes like the SAY Award play. Scotland is not exceptional and the challenges facing musicians making albums here are far from unique. Nor should we fall into the easy trap of parochialism; for the prize to have any real value it has to have meaning beyond its own borders. And though the SAY Award highlights a lot of music that sometimes struggles to gain attention outside its country of origin, there are encouraging signs.

Among the previous winners, Young Fathers have gone on to win the Mercury Prize, Anna Meredith has produced her own Prom, Kathryn Joseph has moved effortlessly onto festival bills and, in the last few weeks, Sacred Paws embarked on their first American tour. Would any of this have happened without the SAY Award? Quite possibly. Would it have happened without an album as a starting point? Most definitely not.

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John Williamson is a lecturer in music at the University of Glasgow and has been chair of the SAY Award judging panel since 2012
The 2019 SAY Award winner will be announced in a ceremony at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, 6 Sep

sayaward.com