Musical precariousness in the era of TikTok, streaming and macro festivals (Part II)

In the first part of this article I have spoken in depth about the festival bubble in Spain. But many things have remained in my inkwell to comment and I will do it here.

Amid the excess of macro-festivals, the closure of small venues due to the pandemic and the difficulty that small self-managed events have to survive, various news items have generated a debate on social networks about the current situation of the music industry.

Numerous media have published the caches that many artists have for performing at popular festivals. To mention any of that information The awarding of the contracts for the concerts that national and international artists will offer in the Plaza Mayor of Valladolid during the festivities that will take place the first week of September have been made public.

The caches range from 23,000 euros that Edurne’s performance costs and the 333,960 euros from the American Jason Derulo. Among them we have Ska-P + La Regadera charging 152,460 euros, the rock group The Hives who will pocket 96,800 euros for their performance on September 10.

The cache of flamenco singer Miguel Poveda is 71,415 euros, Amaia Romero + Cariño’s 72,600 euros, Marta Sánchez’s 42,350 euros, Don Patricio’s 36,300 euros and Carlos Sadness’s 33,800 euros.

I am not criticizing the cache of these artists or that the municipalities spend money because they act at their parties. I think it’s great that these kinds of events take place and popular festivals are a fantastic way for people to see culture for free in their cities and towns without having to go to Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Seville or Valencia.

It was as a result of the caches of different artists beginning to spread like wildfire on Twitter that Victor Cabezuelo, singer of Rufus T, Firefly and music producer, wanted to give his opinion on the subject. In a superb Twitter thread that has surprised many, @viticli has wanted to shed some light on the issue of caches, on the miseries of the music industry and the precariousness that many artists and small bands face.

His group charged only 1,000 euros to play at festivals, which, discounting the expenses, meant that they barely took 40 euros per musician home.

“And if you tell people in what conditions a band travels with that cache, nobody directly believes it,” said the Veintiuno group.

“I was quite surprised about the 1,000 bucks… I never thought that a group like you would win that shit compared to the work you have behind you and what you show live. I honestly thought that for less than 6,000 you wouldn’t move from home (and I’m talking about the magnolia period),” wrote @GorilaFlo, a pop rock band from Madrid.

About all this we have continued chatting with Jero Romeromanager of several bands and music blogger and on the other Beatrice Whiteconsultant and project manager in the music industry.

This is what Beatriz Blanco has to say about how musicians survive today in our country: “Currently it is very difficult to live from music, it is something that we have been living for a long time. Since the sale of records ceased to be a reality, the groups had to see new ways to earn money, From then on they managed to earn money through concerts, tours and festivals, but this became a milestone that occurred during a certain range of time, leaving the rest of the months living on what they had been able to save from those months of work. “.

Unfortunately there are few who manage to live from music full time as Beatriz points out, assuring that “most of the groups with which I have worked, have a daily job which is the one with which they manage to sustain themselves, few groups are currently capable of making a living from music, they can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and most of them have cost a lot of work, and years of career to be able to afford it.

For his part, Jero Romero also mentions the low sales of records and points directly to streaming: “The change of model with the dependence on streaming is making it difficult for many groups to be able to make a profit after paying a producer, promotion and some advertisements in social networks (not counting the part of the physical copies)”.

He also recalls the importance for the music industry and culture in general that there is a good circuit of venues and small concerts. “However, it doesn’t help to find that after the pandemic many venues have changed conditions and others have closed, so the circuit for small or medium-sized bands is smaller and it is more complex to enter,” he says.

But this musical precariousness is not something that only affects musicians and Beatriz also points to all the rest of the people who work in the industry. “Not only do groups find it hard to make a living from music, technicians, waiters, security personnel, etc., also find it difficult to live from music today. Even managers, press and communication personnel, who are subject to releases and concerts in order to earn money,” he says.

In the end we will be left with a scenario in which we will only have macrofestivals and popular festivals, a panorama in which only a few will be able to live from music, an art that unfortunately many have to combine with other jobs to eat. A panorama with 10 euros of management fees, with increasingly shorter queues at the doors of concert halls and increasingly longer virtual queues to get tickets for artists such as Coldplay either Harry Styles.

I don’t know what the solution to all these problems is, but it seems clear that our music industry and our culture is going to get worse if we continue down this same path without doing anything. If we continue to take into account likes more than songs, reproductions than lyrics, if small venues continue to close, if independent festivals cannot survive, if concerts disappear from many cities in Spain other than Madrid or Barcelona, ​​yes many groups continue to charge a pittance for burning at 18:00 in the afternoon at the macrofestival on duty, our music industry will gradually die.

We would love to say thanks to the author of this short article for this amazing material

Musical precariousness in the era of TikTok, streaming and macro festivals (Part II)