As Dwell Nation leverages its energy throughout the live performance ecosystem to extend its earnings, concertgoers see larger costs, and artists expertise difficult touring dynamics. Artists’ touring prices have turn out to be particularly onerous, creating tough economics for small and midlevel artists. Santigold canceled a current tour due to exorbitant prices, as did Animal Collective. Dwell Nation, although, is reporting report revenues.
All that is occurring at a time when musicians are reliant on touring. Streaming platforms pay round one-third to one-half of 1 cent per stream, which makes it tough for small and midlevel artists to make a dwelling. Musicians now use streaming providers to get observed and construct an viewers, however in the end most of their revenue is from touring. Even now that our band is having fun with extra success on streaming websites, our touring revenue was greater than triple our streaming revenue this 12 months.
So what may be carried out about this? Whereas the Justice Division is alleged to be investigating Dwell Nation and its practices, artists, followers and business actors ought to work collectively to press for modifications that may enhance the reside music expertise for everybody.
We must always strain Dwell Nation to decrease its minimize on merchandise gross sales, particularly for growing bands. If Dwell Nation argues that it deserves a minimize of our merch gross sales as a result of it offers the retail area in its venue, then we should always get a minimize of Dwell Nation’s ancillary revenue streams in venues it owns and operates. In any case, it’s offering the retail area, however we’re offering the individuals. Dwell Nation’s getting round 20 p.c of gross merch gross sales whereas we get nothing on ticket charges, bar tabs, coat checks and parking passes doesn’t make loads of sense to me.
We will increase off-platform ticketing. At the moment, many venues’ ticketing contracts enable roughly 10 p.c of tickets to be offered to “fan golf equipment,” by way of which artists management ticketing charges and preserve a direct relationship with followers. Many artists I spoke to didn’t even know this feature was obtainable to them. Different fair-minded ticket corporations are popping up, however with out increasing the share of tickets that Dwell Nation permits to be offered on different platforms, these modern corporations can’t turn out to be a related a part of the touring ecosystem.
And artists needs to be vigilant about prices. Settlement sheets ought to replicate a clearer, extra complete set of revenues in order that the numbers on the backside, displaying how a lot the artist and Dwell Nation made, are extra correct. Value breakdowns must also be extra clear about what line gadgets like “home nuts” and “facility charges” cowl, and may embrace extra of the touring prices of artists, not simply of Dwell Nation.
Musicians, don’t belief Dwell Nation together with your livelihood. My understanding of deal nuances comes from my poring over the numbers line by line after many exhibits, usually in the identical sweaty outfit I wore onstage simply minutes earlier. My bandmate Jordan Cohen and I repeatedly discover discrepancies or clerical errors that may result in over an hour of recalculating, digging up outdated emails and even tense debate, all going down after midnight. I’m not suggesting that a majority of these points are intentional or nefarious, however all instructed, correcting them can go away us with as much as hundreds extra {dollars} per evening than we might have in any other case made had we not caught them. (Dwell Nation instructed The New York Occasions that artists seldom debate settlements after exhibits.)
