Although I have little knowledge on the topic but looking at the likes of Glastonbury, Peter Kay and Taylor Swift etc I would say the reverse is actually true.
As I said I don’t know know much about the topic but maybe they just aren’t very good if they are struggling to sell tickets.
I’d imagine it’s a high barrier to meet.
Combination of greed (mainly corporate) and artists who think they are more popular than they are
I mean yeah for UK artists in Europe, Brexit has hurt. And within the UK, ticket prices are a joke. Appreciate a smaller labour force, inflation and fuel, but the public are suffering from two of those too. Seems live music events for big acts are now on average £90+ and then add the extortionate food and drink prices.
“there will simply be no upcoming artists in the UK achieving a high level of status. We’ll be left with a diet of legacy and heritage acts playing big arenas.”
This is the most damaging outcome. Even aside from the love of great British music. The government seems to consistently undervalue the huge promotion the UK gets as a ‘brand’ from our cultural exports.
Beyond just the direct revenue that comes into the UK, it’s our cultural heritage (from The Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Harry Potter) that keeps us on the world map. To lose this will cause irreparable damage to our economy.
For me, I feel UK mainstream music is too much celeb / corporate greed, as someone else rightly pointed out down below – and that overall bad habit has unfortunately invited in the likes of good old Ticketmaster. Then a problem happens that financially impacts normal everyday people, then the celebs and ticketmaster go “oopsies, lets forget about it and do something another day”.
Everything on Radio 1 is literal conveyer belt. Anything on Radio 2 simply isn’t engaging.
When listeners of all ages are streaming “Running up that Hill” by Kate Bush, a song from 1984, knocking out all competition for weeks on Spotify – for me that was the moment alarm bells should’ve been ringing out in the UK, and the rest of the World.
The celebrity campaigns, be it new or for decades, is simply a tired out money making formula. We get it, you’ve made it and you’re rich, and everyone loves you, including all of your fake business transaction relationships with even more famous people- but what about your music, is it still any good?
Get fresh blooded talent in, blindfold the executives into choosing actual quality music. Bob’s your Uncle.
I knew a promoter who did club nights in a big university town. His club was small-ish and could hold 150 people at fire capacity, but it was a very cool and hip venue and the cocktails were banging.
This was in 2014. He barely made any profit after paying DJs, bar staff, security and drinks distributors (venue refused to cover extra cost of getting in drinks for the club nights) and insurance etc. And every club night, it was full, and the door sales were high (people leaving and new people coming in)
To all intents and purposes, it was a very successful night, with very popular local DJ’s and a great vibe, safe, and had the right crowd with zero drugs (well as far as I could see) and a very tolerant and agreeable venue owner.
In 2014. And it barely made any money.
I was in a local band between 2018-2021
We toured the entire UK and parts of Europe between 2018 and 2019. I could survive on the money I made even as a small band doing this, although there was only the 3 of us and we were doing a lot of gigs. For those who dont know shows and the merch you sell at those shows is 99% of your income.
When we started to practise again during 2021 when things were opening up. We played a few shows locally and then went on a small tour of the UK. Now that we had a bit of money saved up we discussed an EU tour in around march of 2022. We planned it out heavily and contacted our sources for shows and merch etc, and compared to the previous tour we would lose out on this one.
Now covid had made us all fairly wobbly in trying this as a career, so we had planned this EU tour as a final tour and if someone wants to sign us we’ll stay on a bit longer. Hell we even expected to just break even on this EU tour, but even with playing at a few more venues and doing a few double gigs to shore up our total gig count we would have lost a good amount of money on this tour if we did it. Some of the causes down to brexit related changes, some of it due to fuel costs and some of it due to economic factors. One big thing was that many venues we had frequented recently or organisations that set up gigs at non venue locations no longer existed or had reduced capacity, and most of them paid less. Also the cost of making merch had somewhat increased, so we would get less back from that.
To be fair however, being a musician has never been good money. I went to college to do music for my A levels, and many of my music teachers were in fairly successful bands throughout the 80s and 90s, and none of them made enough to live properly. In order to get things like savings or a pension they had to get a job to supplement the touring. The thing is there really is no middle ground in income from music, it seems you either make loads and be really successful or you kind of just scrape by.
7 comments
I don’t recognise that landscape.
Although I have little knowledge on the topic but looking at the likes of Glastonbury, Peter Kay and Taylor Swift etc I would say the reverse is actually true.
As I said I don’t know know much about the topic but maybe they just aren’t very good if they are struggling to sell tickets.
I’d imagine it’s a high barrier to meet.
Combination of greed (mainly corporate) and artists who think they are more popular than they are
I mean yeah for UK artists in Europe, Brexit has hurt. And within the UK, ticket prices are a joke. Appreciate a smaller labour force, inflation and fuel, but the public are suffering from two of those too. Seems live music events for big acts are now on average £90+ and then add the extortionate food and drink prices.
“there will simply be no upcoming artists in the UK achieving a high level of status. We’ll be left with a diet of legacy and heritage acts playing big arenas.”
This is the most damaging outcome. Even aside from the love of great British music. The government seems to consistently undervalue the huge promotion the UK gets as a ‘brand’ from our cultural exports.
Beyond just the direct revenue that comes into the UK, it’s our cultural heritage (from The Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Harry Potter) that keeps us on the world map. To lose this will cause irreparable damage to our economy.
For me, I feel UK mainstream music is too much celeb / corporate greed, as someone else rightly pointed out down below – and that overall bad habit has unfortunately invited in the likes of good old Ticketmaster. Then a problem happens that financially impacts normal everyday people, then the celebs and ticketmaster go “oopsies, lets forget about it and do something another day”.
Everything on Radio 1 is literal conveyer belt. Anything on Radio 2 simply isn’t engaging.
When listeners of all ages are streaming “Running up that Hill” by Kate Bush, a song from 1984, knocking out all competition for weeks on Spotify – for me that was the moment alarm bells should’ve been ringing out in the UK, and the rest of the World.
The celebrity campaigns, be it new or for decades, is simply a tired out money making formula. We get it, you’ve made it and you’re rich, and everyone loves you, including all of your fake business transaction relationships with even more famous people- but what about your music, is it still any good?
Get fresh blooded talent in, blindfold the executives into choosing actual quality music. Bob’s your Uncle.
I knew a promoter who did club nights in a big university town. His club was small-ish and could hold 150 people at fire capacity, but it was a very cool and hip venue and the cocktails were banging.
This was in 2014. He barely made any profit after paying DJs, bar staff, security and drinks distributors (venue refused to cover extra cost of getting in drinks for the club nights) and insurance etc. And every club night, it was full, and the door sales were high (people leaving and new people coming in)
To all intents and purposes, it was a very successful night, with very popular local DJ’s and a great vibe, safe, and had the right crowd with zero drugs (well as far as I could see) and a very tolerant and agreeable venue owner.
In 2014. And it barely made any money.
I was in a local band between 2018-2021
We toured the entire UK and parts of Europe between 2018 and 2019. I could survive on the money I made even as a small band doing this, although there was only the 3 of us and we were doing a lot of gigs. For those who dont know shows and the merch you sell at those shows is 99% of your income.
When we started to practise again during 2021 when things were opening up. We played a few shows locally and then went on a small tour of the UK. Now that we had a bit of money saved up we discussed an EU tour in around march of 2022. We planned it out heavily and contacted our sources for shows and merch etc, and compared to the previous tour we would lose out on this one.
Now covid had made us all fairly wobbly in trying this as a career, so we had planned this EU tour as a final tour and if someone wants to sign us we’ll stay on a bit longer. Hell we even expected to just break even on this EU tour, but even with playing at a few more venues and doing a few double gigs to shore up our total gig count we would have lost a good amount of money on this tour if we did it. Some of the causes down to brexit related changes, some of it due to fuel costs and some of it due to economic factors. One big thing was that many venues we had frequented recently or organisations that set up gigs at non venue locations no longer existed or had reduced capacity, and most of them paid less. Also the cost of making merch had somewhat increased, so we would get less back from that.
To be fair however, being a musician has never been good money. I went to college to do music for my A levels, and many of my music teachers were in fairly successful bands throughout the 80s and 90s, and none of them made enough to live properly. In order to get things like savings or a pension they had to get a job to supplement the touring. The thing is there really is no middle ground in income from music, it seems you either make loads and be really successful or you kind of just scrape by.