🦠 Closed music venues provide havens for protesters; Minecraft festival Electric Blockaloo's artist payments under the loop; Pollstar creates livestreaming charts; Primavera 2021 sees record sell-out
Daily update for the music business on the coronavirus (June 15)
Music Venues, Shut Down Over COVID-19, Are Now Havens for Protesters (Rolling Stone)
In the weeks since the protests began, a group called Open Your Lobby formed to ask venues to provide a safe space for those in the streets — all locations and relevant stats complied on a Google map. “This initiative started because we were on the ground during the initial weekend of protests, and we saw people struggling to find refuge in a largely boarded up city,” a rep told Rolling Stone in a statement. “Theater spaces came to mind because they are centrally located with bathrooms and resources which haven’t been used for weeks.”
A New Library Of Congress Project Commissions Music Of The Coronavirus Pandemic (NPR)
The instructions were simple: Write a work responding to the pandemic — just a couple minutes long — for a single performer to videotape at home. Chessa says the commission was more than welcome.
"After two months making fresh pasta and wearing the same shirt you probably kind of are ready for a change," he says.
With No Box Office to Report, Concert Industry Trade Pollstar Creates Livestream Chart to Monitor Digital Performances (Variety)
Published each Monday, the chart lists the top 50 livestreams from the past week across multiple platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Fans.com. After waiting two days to ensure the numbers are as accurate as possible, Rogers calculates a total view count. Now in its third week, artists and their teams have started approaching Gensler and Rogers to self-report numbers in hopes of being included.
Record sell-out for Primavera Sound 2021 (IQ)
The Barcelona event joins Denmark’s Roskilde Festival to report a quick sell-out for next year. Only 15% of the 80,000 festival tickets sold for Roskilde 2020 were returned for a cash refund, rather than retained for 2021, and were resold in a matter of hours. The remaining 5,000 Roskilde day tickets will go on sale in autumn 2020.
Neither Big Nor Small, Music Ensembles Struggle in a Pandemic (NYT)
Even in Europe, which has a reputation for generous governmental arts subsidies, midsize ensembles have found it difficult to support their musicians. In an email, Susanne Blumenthal, the conductor of the EOS Chamber Orchestra in Cologne, Germany, said that even when canceled concerts have been rescheduled, most payments have been delayed, too.
All together now: virtual choirs thrive amid lockdown (The Guardian)
“I don’t think people expected to enjoy online rehearsals, but it’s quite freeing to be able to just sing with nobody judging you. And it gives people a sense of accomplishment,” said Lucy Vere, the head of organisation development at Hull University teaching hospitals and a co-founder of the choir.
Thoughts
You may have noticed recent editions of MUSIC x CORONA are more brief than in previous months. This is due to the fact that much of the music press has shifted its attention to the protests in the US and the subject of race in music, and the music business. It is great to see these topics get the attention they deserve. As lockdowns relax around the world, there is still a lot to write about. There is more opportunity, as well as complexity.
A few weeks ago we included an article about Electric Blockaloo, a massive online EDM festival that will take place in the game Minecraft. What was unique about the festival is that they pledged to share their incomes with the artists, rather than pay booking fees. There was some speculation about how that would work and as the start of the festival nears, this has now become clear: artists get special “guest list” links that fans can follow to join the festival, but they still have to pay the cover charge. “Over half of your cover charge goes back to the artists who created the music and hooked you up.” So, basically: an affiliate scheme.
It reminds me a little of the type of band contests that would rely on artists to do the promotion for them, by selling tickets to friends, family, and fans. One problem I see, with regards to artists hoping to make some revenue, is that many of the artists in the line-up have very significant overlap in fan bases. While this is usually only an issue at festivals when 2 similar artists play at the same time, now it may directly impact the revenue of artists. However, given the fact that there are not many options and hey, at least it’s not another free livestream, I don’t expect many artists to be upset about this.
Earlier, one of the speculations of how the festival would split the money was that they’d track concert attendance and then distribute the funds like that. While this is not happening, it’s an interesting model I expect to see someone experiment with sooner or later. And we’ll make sure to write about it.
Written while listening to a Natural Born Killers soundtrack playlist on Spotify.
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MUSIC x CORONA goes out every weekday and is composed by Bas Grasmayer and Maarten Walraven.
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