Every
couple of months, I see another post in my Facebook feed about a band
that was cut off by an 18-wheeler or skidded on a patch of black ice and
rolled their van into a ditch. Some members are injured, and they’re
launching a Kickstarter campaign to pay for medical bills and to get
back on their feet.
My
heart (and often, money) goes out to them. But if you need to crowdfund
your hospital costs, you were never on your feet to begin with. After
many years as a touring artist myself, I’m honestly surprised that the
person in that ditch has never been me.
Touring
is, of course, the most ancient business model available to artists —
and in many ways, it remains a vital part of their livelihood, even
while the surrounding industry undergoes major upheaval to accommodate
the new paradigm of streaming music. In response to the shift in revenue
sources, standard recording contracts now intrude into the numerous
nonrecording aspects of an artist’s career. But the advice given to the
creative generators of this multibillion dollar industry is still one
that would be recognizable to a medieval troubadour: Go on tour.
And yet from a business standpoint, it’s hard to find a model more
unsustainable than one that relies on a single human body. This is why
we have vice presidents, relief pitchers and sixth men. When applied to
music’s seemingly limitless streaming future, the only scarce resource
left is the artists themselves. You would think the industry would
protect such an important piece of its business model, but in fact, the
opposite is true.
The contribution of live touring to the music industry’s bottom line is
enormous, and the number is only growing. Consider Taylor Swift:
According to Billboard,
her live show grossed $30 million in 2013, with another $10 million in
merchandise sold. And depending on whom you believe, she made anywhere
from $500,000 to $6 million from her catalog on Spotify that year. While she is certainly making money in retail sales and digital downloads, both of those metrics are spiraling downward as people migrate away from the concept of owning music at all. Nielsen recently released numbers indicating substantial drops in both CD and digital-track sales,
which are down almost $100 million year over year from 2014; streaming
music continues to grow, but the revenue it generates isn’t close to
making up the difference, yet.
This means that the bulk of Swift’s income rides on her ability to get to venues safely and perform. It also makes her much-examined decision
to pull her 2014 release “1989” from Spotify the financial equivalent
of her taking a few months off. Regardless how you look at it, the
health of her singing voice is far and away the single most important
aspect of her business.
Record labels have followed the money and addressed these changes in the
contracts they offer to recording artists. In the predigital era,
labels profited only from the physical recordings they funded, but as
that income began dwindling, a new logic was applied to the artist-label
relationship. Labels argued that by promoting the recordings they
owned, they were also promoting the artist’s career as a whole, and were
entitled to profit from the full spectrum of artist’s revenue streams —
the “360 deal,” named for the totality of its coverage.
But labels do not take on the additional risks associated with their
additional profits. Instead of protecting the health of their
revenue-generating engine, they simply point to an artist’s
independent-contractor status, which releases them from any liability
they would be on the hook for if artists were labeled employees.
Rather than sparking a labor dispute, these 360 deals quickly became
the new normal. As a result, administrators, support staff and office
spaces are insured against the risks of doing business, while the
company’s income generators — the creators of their master recordings —
are on their own.
Artists today are not only touring more to make up for their own lost
recording-sales revenue; they’re also being compelled to by the labels
that also stand to profit. This makes it a great time to be a fan of
live music: From the rise of electronic dance music to the regular
resurrections of the Grateful Dead, a major musical event is never far
away. But the physical price that artists pay for this easy access is
steep. Last summer, Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl was forced to cancel shows
when he fell from a stage in Sweden and broke his leg. Other artists with 2015 tour-date cancellations on account of injuries, surgeries and other health issues included Sam Smith, Miranda Lambert, Steve Aoki, Little Big Town, Meghan Trainor, Nickelback, the Black Keys and Kelly Clarkson.
That’s a lot of injuries — and millions of dollars lost. The European
shows canceled by Foo Fighters alone, including a headlining slot at the
Glastonbury Music Festival, cost the band nearly $10 million in fees and travel expenses.)
And of all the instruments on a given tour, the vocal cords are the
most vulnerable to the harsh environment the road virtually guarantees;
basically anything that inconveniences the ordinary traveler becomes a
business risk for the singer. Regardless of the circumstances, the
singer has to call on this small, unprotected instrument to deliver on a
daily itinerary that can extend from a morning drive-time radio show to
the meet-and-greet after the performance.
From royalty rates to basic safeguards against the standard hazards of
doing business, recording artists begin the negotiating process with a
deck that is stacked against them. This lopsided balance of power allows
labels to treat all artists as replaceable until proven otherwise, and
both sides know that there is always a long line of hopefuls outside
auditions for “The Voice” or “America’s Got Talent” to undercut a young
artist’s bargaining power.
The question of why recording artists have been unable to organize and
collectively bargain the way other artists have — actors and
screenwriters, for example — is one that has dogged them since the dawn
of the record deal. Musicians do have a union, the American Federation
of Musicians, but it’s not a particularly strong one; it primarily
represents members of symphonies, and it hasn’t been on a national
strike in 70 years. Recording artists are not really considered core
members, because their tenures within the union tend to be shorter than
those of lifelong pit musicians and orchestra members. Music is also a
traditionally decentralized, live art form with an ingrained renegade
spirit. Hollywood, by contrast, has a single dominant hub.
Perhaps musicians’ renegade spirit is what ultimately will save the next
generation of recording artists, who are increasingly forgoing record
deals altogether and going it alone. As true independents, they work the
margin between the technology that makes recordings cheaper to create
and a public that is steadily buying fewer of them. Without a label
taking a bite out of multiple revenue sources, the numbers can actually
work. Others are coming together in groups centered on advocacy and
pressing for changes to the laws that dictate royalty payments in the
new streaming economy — something that could mean all the difference
when injury, accident or age brings a touring musician’s career to a
halt. But in the meantime, the vans and buses roll on.
Follow me::Pete Carma
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