Lawyer and music industry analyst Cliff Fluet laid out where power in the music industry is moving and who's positioned to hold it.

ADE 2026 Tom Doms

Nineteen years ago this month, Radiohead released its seventh studio album, In Rainbows , and invited fans to pay whatever they wanted for it. Given that this announcement came amid rampant music piracy and the general collapse of the recorded music business, some took the move as proof that recorded music had lost its value, that the old model was broken and that artists would have to give their work away to survive.

But “the question was never really about price or value,” said Cliff Fluet , co-head of media and entertainment at U.K. law firm Lewis Silkin LLP, during a talk at last week’s Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE). “It was about who owns the relationship with the fan.”

Related

Fluet used that moment in music history to center his wide-ranging talk at ADE 2026, the annual dance music industry gathering in Amsterdam that concluded this past weekend.…