It's awards season for the music industry, and no amount of complaining, ignoring or pointedly watching BBC Four in protest is going to stop the BRIT Awards from ordering in a few thousand servings of homemade tomato chutney and crostini to be laid out for the insider guests gathered at the O2 Arena. It's their once-a-year big chance to let their stars try and demonstrate their USPs in their winner's speeches, for starters. However in 2012, it seems that there's all too little that's unique about many of them - in particular their "love" for their fans. 

Five minutes before stage time at the Lexington, the latest retro-soul diva from the mighty Universal conglomerate hovered outside the ladies’ toilet downstairs, holding a crutch and looking decidedly nervous. Ren Harvieu was one of the nominees in the BBC’s Sound of 2012, and has been groomed for the past two years in the same Kid Gloves stable, which churned out Duffy and Amy Winehouse. Thus the nation will doubtless soon become readily conversant with her exotic French-Canadian surname, and know that the first one is short for Lauren. 

Well, who could have predicted that? For once the Grammys proved that the US recording industry establishment is up for the challenge of reflecting the sense of a world in social and cultural flux by throwing surprise after surprise, bombshell after bombshell, at its shocked audience. It was a night of victory for the underdogs and the radicals, a sense of musical revolution in the air, with all bets off. OK, no, of course it wasn't. But we can dream, right?

Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington, put her down a mine. Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics for weekly earnings to 2011 paint a stark earnings picture for those working in the arts and entertainment industry. The weekly average earnings for last year in this most life-enhancing of sectors is just £320 - while the average weekly in the “Mining and Quarrying” industry is a whopping £1,082, including substantial monthly bonuses.

I almost feel duty bound to make a declaration of interest here. I have done several pieces of paid writing for the Red Bull Music Academy, including a piece of course material for this year's Academy, and a few days ago I went to Madrid to see the Academy for the first time on their tab.

Spinal Tap’s hapless manager had a great phrase for it. “Their appeal,” he said, “is becoming more selective.” There are other words which cover more or less the same waterfront: “stripped back”, “scaled down”, “raw”, “intimate”. All tend to be euphemisms for the plain fact that an act is no longer shifting the kind of units they used to. In the accelerated career arc (swift rise, even swifter descent) which has become typical in the current industry climate, how to shrink with dignity and ingenuity is a question more and more musicians have to face.

Maxim (b. 1967) who is known for, amongst other things, his mesmerising, somewhat unnerving stage presence (he has a penchant for cats-eye contact lenses and is not adverse to wearing a skirt) is a founder member of the electronic dance group The Prodigy, which emerged on the underground rave scene in early 1990s. The band’s first album, Experience, was released in 1992 and since then they have sold over 25 million records worldwide.

Next in theartsdesk’s series of recommended summer reads is musician Gary Kemp, guitarist with Spandau Ballet, five working-class boys from north London who emerged from a surfeit of floppy fringes and pantaloons to become one of the most successful pop acts of the swaggering, vainglorious Eighties. Kemp wrote 23 singles for the band including massive hits such as "Gold", "True" and "Only When You Leave", which still crop up repeatedly on TV and film tracks.

This hugely entertaining first instalment of a three-part investigation into what makes pop songs tick took as its theme "The Ballad", perhaps the most bomb-proof of pop's traditional forms. Mind you, the programme's definition of a ballad was pretty loose. For instance, I would say Sting's "Every Breath You Take" is merely medium-paced rather than a ballad. I'd just file Culture Club's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" under "Pop Song".

Once upon a time, "easy listening" was a term of abuse and contempt, intended to evoke everything uncool, unhip and musically middle-aged. It meant pipe, cardigan, golf and Bing Crosby, and it was the last thing you'd hear before you were felled by your thickened arteries and under-exercised heart.