Is this thing on? Hello?
Get a calculator out
Apparently there's a problem bringing through new acts with strong and loyal audiences who can sustain careers. No one is sure what the reasons might be, what contributing factors might have created such a situation. One record label has sent people out to ask venue owners if they know what might be causing this.
HELLOO!!!!!?????!!!! IS THIS ON?????!!!!! CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME?????!!!!!!!?????
Here is some complicated mathematics for my friends in the recording side of the music industry. Acts used to play two or three or four or even (in the case of Snow Patrol) about nine 30 date tours of small grassroots music venues before moving up to 800 plus capacities, then concert halls and, if they were lucky, arenas and stadiums and festival headlines. Oasis played two tours of small venues on their first tour, 25 dates in all. The tour started on 23 March 1994 at The Bedford Angel and finally finished on 14 May 1994 at The Sheffield Leadmill.
The same act at the same stage of their career now play 8 shows at this level, or perhaps 12 if the label/management is particularly daring.
2 tours times 30 dates of 300 people is a fan base of 18,000 people
12 dates at this level is 3,600 people
That's 14,400 super fans you lost at the beginning of the pipeline
What's more, and I'm throwing in some geography here for free, Liverpool is not Manchester, Cardiff is not Swansea, Bristol is not Bath, and Brighton is not Tunbridge Wells. If you think you built a fan base in Birmingham, Coventry, Derby and Leicester because you played to 300 people in Nottingham, buy a map and a train timetable.
And just when you thought this rant was over, here's another thing:
BMW don't do their research into new cars by letting a bloke in a shed tinker about with any bits of wood and plastic he can find until he accidentally, against all the odds, makes a new sports car, at which point BMW step in and take it away from him and make sure he never sees it again.
Developing new talent should be an incredibly respected and supported part of what you are doing. Any time you're stood at the water tower and hear yourself say "yeah, the band were alright, but f***ing hell what a dive that place was!" It's not funny - it's a f***ing disgrace that venue owners aren't getting the rewards and support they deserve.
Here's an incredibly simple 2 point plan:
1. Get money into the venues. Give acts somewhere brilliant to play and audiences somewhere fantastic to see them.
2. Put out proper tours and connect with real audiences.
This is not rocket science. 18,000 people who stood within 30 feet of the band, met them, bought their merch, shared a drink with them, discovered them, that is the bedrock of a sustainable career, No matter how much you study it and tinker about with the statistics, it isn't going to be replaced by 1 million people who watched 45 seconds of your YouTube sponsored video and then moved on to that woman in the Chewbacca mask.
Now…. the big reveal.
I wrote all of the above in 2016, only 2 years after we founded Music Venue Trust to provide data and evidence about the collapse in grassroots music venues and the huge loss of opportunities that represents. Seven full years later, it’s absolutely ridiculous that I can literally post every single word of it without correction as though it just happened yesterday.
The live music industry actually has a lot to recommend it. It’s full of genuinely fantastic people who are really good at their jobs and care deeply about music. Even at the biggest, most hated upon companies, you’ll find individuals doing amazing work making music happen, building artists careers, trying to break down barriers and develop a 21st Century experience of music.
You would think those people, giving the importance of the economics of touring, would be incredibly good at maths. But so far, seven years after I wrote the above piece, we apparently still haven’t managed to work out why artists aren’t building audiences and why the talent pipeline is sputtering to little more than a drip.
Emily Eavis recently stated that Glastonbury was having trouble programming female headliners because the talent pipeline wasn’t producing the stage conquering acts the festival needs.
Maybe if she keeps saying it for the next seven years I won’t have to post this article again in 2030.
Great post as usual. The Emily Eavis thing is interesting - I am loath to call her/Glastonbury part of the problem, but they have certainly shown that they aren't really interested in being part of the solution - to this issue at least.
Over the last 15 years, Glastonbury have (correctly) identified, prioritised, focussed on and solved 3 HUGE issues affecting their corner of the industry. All of them were deply ingrained, very tough issues, which people said they wouldn't be able to tackle - and were wasting their time trying. But they thought the issues were important - so they tried, used their power and their voice, and succeeded.
Those 3 issues were ticket touting, 50/50 gender splits across the lineup, and the elimination of single-use plastic. People said that it wasn't possible to fix these - Glastonbury made it a priority, and have fixed (of sorts, but FAR better than anybody else has managed) all three.
So we all know that they can if they want to - and that they have the UK music industry's largest and loudest megaphone. They just seem not to be interested in helping the grassroots circuit - which seems like a shame.
We can't all be interested and motivated by everything I guess - whether they think this is something that's somehow separate from them and their sphere of influence, or they have other fish to fry, or just aren't very interested full stop. Either way, this feels like a missed opportunity - I wonder if it is even possible to get them more interested, or whether it's just a waste of time and energy trying at this point.