It is festival season, and young (depending on who you ask), aspiring, hopeful artists are chomping at the bit to get into the heavy hitters in March—specifically, SXSW in Austin, TX, and Treefort in Boise, ID.
The lineups for both of these have been finalized, and I’m happy to say I know a few folks who get into both of these festivals! Deservedly so, I might add.
Naturally, I was curious about what the process was like once they got the long-coveted “yes” email. (Curious, not jealous. I promise. I’m not jealous, you are!) I was honestly disgusted to learn that the “yes” email is pretty much the last thing you hear from them.
Both SXSW and Treefort (possibly other open-application festivals) are apparently notorious for giving the bottom-tier bands zero information about where and when they’re playing. No details. Nothing. I guess unless you’re one of the headliners, you’re supposed to just show up to the city at the start of the festival date and just…wait? Till someone tells you where to go?
Honestly, I shouldn’t be surprised. Since more people want to produce music than consume it, there’s quite an economic imbalance. We are worth less than pennies (when they were still making them). And the people holding the purse strings know it. Since we have no union protection and everyone is competing for scraps, there is absolutely no incentive to treat musicians with any sense of decency. The carrot that the labels, venues, etc., are dangling in front of us is that if we believe in ourselves, we could be the next Bad Bunny or Lady Gaga.
Personally, I don’t think a vast majority of these aspiring young musicians want to be megastars; they just want to make a living. I also think a vast majority of music consumers would prefer a more varied spread of offerings, rather than the same three artists on the radio, that they have to spend $500 to get nosebleed seats for.
But that’s neither here nor there. I shan’t waste this nudie mag space with my communist manifesto solution to seize the means of music production by the capitalist pigs in charge of the whole criminal enterprise, and redistribute them to make sure all musicians are awarded the fruits of their labor.
Instead, I shall look forward 50 years into the future, with bleak premonitions about the industry based on trends I’m observing now. I’ve also been reading a lot of books on artists who were starting off around the birth of punk in the mid-'70s. Without sounding like an old head, there was indeed more… “value” placed on music then, and the whole concept of DIY that so many obnoxious purists brag about definitely did not exist in London or New York when the bands that defined this genre started. The people with money invested in music and the people who made it. They took chances. Risk. Now the risk is entirely on the musician. You’re supposed to be little entrepreneurs. Again, the lie told to keep you spending your own money and struggling to make rent is that you’ll own your music if you make it big. But the thing is, no one is going to make it big. The people with money are just looking for excuses not to give it to you.
So, unless we kick off the revolution, here’s where I see the local scene headed in the year 2076.
No More Drink Tickets
Alcohol is expensive, and the bar needs to make money. You asking for a free drink is like the audience asking for a free song (which you will provide, because to beat the competition, you had to make this a free show due to an oversupply of local bands and zero demand). Also, after the Second Temperance Movement in the 2030s, alcohol has become somewhat looked down upon by society. The venue doesn’t want to appear to be enabling harmful substance abuse. You should be getting drunk off the feeling of playing for free, you ungrateful addict!
Bring Your Own Sound Guy and Door Guy
This has been happening as early as the ‘20s and ‘10s, but now it’s law. The venue simply cannot cover the hourly wage of two people for four hours, so you’ll have to provide your own staff to run the door and soundboard. In the 2070s, it’s considered rude to ask the venue, a humble small business, to fork over the cash to facilitate the staff needed to host your event. And speaking of things the venues should not have to pay for.
Bring Your Own Sound System
Speakers, monitors, mixing boards; these are all expensive pieces of equipment. Why is it the venue's responsibility to provide and maintain them? If you want your five friends to listen to you do public therapy, that has nothing to do with the bar’s bottom line. You want to put on a show? Put on a show. I mean...do you also expect your local bar to have amps and a drum kit all set up for you on stage? Fucking snowflake. Learn some bootstrapping!
Pay to Play (for Real)
You see, the term “pay to play” has been around since the late 20th century, but back then, it meant something wholly different—practically charity by today’s standards. When you hear about old heads trying to make it in Old Los Angeles (before the earthquake), and they complain about pay-to-play...basically, the venue gave them tickets to sell on their own. It was sort of a deposit. If the band sold all the tickets, they gave the venue a cut and kept the rest. Any tickets they didn’t sell, they’d have to buy themselves. Can you believe it? These old blowhards had it so easy. Now, it costs money to even send an email to the venue. You see, you gotta pay an email fee to actually contact the venue. Once they say yes, you have to pay a booking fee. Then, when you arrive, you pay the space rental fee. Venues gotta make money. Don’t let these old Busters (that’s the term we use now for the Millennial Bust generation—the population contraction due to Millennials not being able to afford to have fucking kids) get away with complaining about their silver ride in the early oughts. We got real Pay-to-Play now.
