A week on from the Glastonbury ticket sale, and I suspect SS readers now fall into two camps. The smug, and the rest of us.

You know the drill. A WhatsApp group run like a D-Day briefing, spare registrations from your co-worker's brother-in-law, sweaty palms, and a queue page that decides your entire summer with a progress bar. Less than 45 minutes later, it was all over.

I was unsuccessful. So, like a Sunday league captain 4-0 down at half time, I gave the team talk: nobody leaves, we hold the line for the resale. But the commitment is already wobbling. One of them has "just had a quick look" at flights to Nice.

Why does it sting so much? Because the people booking Glastonbury's dance stages are allowed to take risks, putting smaller artists on at proper times, which is something you simply don't see at events with an energy drink's name above the gate.

It isn't the only place doing it, though. A handful of independents have been at it for years without needing 200,000 people and a helicopter. So, for those of you nursing a grudge, here are a few worth your attention, most with their next ticket drops still to come:

Love Saves The Day
Two days in Bristol, the city that made half the records in your crates. Late May, and the early birds have already gone.

Gottwood
A forest on a Welsh island in June, with stages hidden in the trees. Small enough that you'll actually find your mates.

Outlook Origins
Swap Nice for the Croatian coast. Joker, Peverelist and Djrum b2b Neffa-T on the Adriatic in July.

Houghton
Craig Richards' festival at a Norfolk stately home in August. DJs given the time to actually go somewhere with a set.

Record of the Week: Subcor - Loose Goose

Heads down. Gun fingers out. Loose Goose is a grungy, industrial warehouse banger, like a forklift that's learned to skank, bolted onto a rolling bassline. Subcor is a bit of a mystery, but Yoto Swords, a former Record of the Week holder, follows him and remixes Dropped Pocket on this EP. Big things are coming for him.

Plenty more to get your ears around.

Tom (japanese.knotweed)

The good: a bassline producer from Sheffield is Mixmag's cover star
Silva Bumpa, 25, lands the cover after "On 2nite" climbed to No. 9 in the UK singles chart in August and went Silver. Speed garage and bassline getting front-page treatment, not a footnote. Niche Nightclub would be proud.
Read it on Mixmag

The bad: David Guetta is the "world's No. 1 DJ" for a record sixth time
DJ Mag's Top 100 is a fan vote, so it rewards reach and fanbase, not what anyone actually does behind the decks. Guetta's own measure of what counts: "the one thing you cannot fake is selling tickets." Which is true, in the same way the best restaurant in Britain is apparently Greggs.
Read it on DJ Mag

The ugly: Suno's small print makes you "irrevocably waive" your moral rights
Italy's competition authority has opened an investigation into the AI music app's terms, which hand Suno a "perpetual, irrevocable" licence over your content and let it close your account "for any reason in Suno's sole discretion". Read that back slowly. Fines run up to €10 million, though no finding has been made yet.
Read it on Music Business Worldwide

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mad miran (ft. Skee Mask) @ Solstice Festival: "I want to be born again, but this time from Skee's womb." That's currently the top comment, and having watched the set, I understand completely. Experimental, bass, techno and breaks, stitched together by two people who clearly don't believe in genre borders, and it's hard not to want to suckle at the nipple of the whole thing. Then there's the venue: the top of a ski slope in northern Finland, where in June the sun barely bothers setting. Most of us get a sticky floor under a railway arch.

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