Inspired The 30 Second Song Movie

Statement by Director - Mark Christopher Lee
I wanted to make this film to tell our amazing story of our campaign for fairer royalties from music streaming which started in 2015. It’s called “Inspired” as literally I had a moment of inspiration which led to me to start writing and recording just 30 second songs. The idea behind this was that Spotify paid out a paltry royalty after 30 seconds so why write longer songs?
I also want to “Inspire” others that if they get these mad ideas that they need to act on it and follow their passion. Most people just get these thoughts and think nah that’s stupid why would anyone do it? I nearly did the same but decided to follow it through.
This led to me recording the world’s first album of 100 songs (each one 30 seconds long) and led to a massive response worldwide from the media and also from music fans. This film tells that story and how it progressed over the years to gaining Guinness World Records, interviews with Channel 4, Rolling Stone and BBC news to meetings with the head of Spotify and making real change to a broken system.
I wanted to tell this story - mostly just me talking - but with other musicians having their say as well as the band playing the 30 second songs live. I wanted the film to be quirky and “jombaltastic” (a pocket gods’ term meaning a bit all over the place - as this fits in with our lo-fi DIY ethos which has kept us going since 1998! My all time favourite film maker is B Movie supremo Ed Wood - I’ve even written a song about him. I just loved the combination of big ideas, low budgets and a general madness to just get it out there - which is why we’ve recorded 76 albums and are now the recognised by Guinness World Records as the most prolific band of the digital age.
We even enlisted our long term collaborator the broadcaster Howard Hughes (TalkTV & The Unexplained) for some narration. I also wanted to give the film 2 endings - one with the pocket gods playing a complete set of 30 second songs at the end of the film (unedited ala Get Back by Peter Jackson), but also another ending with us effectively ending the 30 second song campaign with the release of our ‘final” album of which there is just one copy on vinyl for sale at our local record shop for £1 million!
The proceeds of which we will fund our own ethical streaming service!
I guess our core audience are musicians and artists (of which there are millions all trying to make it) there are 50,000 songs released every day on Spotify - quite a youthful market but also it is potentially a global audience as was seen with all the publicity we’ve garnered over the last 7 years!
Thank you! Mark C Lee