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Some thoughts on the live music industry...
The momentum of the live industry is currently fuelled by a somewhat unscientific optimism as to when / if it will come back to the full capacity gathering format we are accustomed to.
The momentum of the live industry is currently fuelled by a somewhat unscientific optimism as to when / if it will come back to the full capacity gathering format we are accustomed to.
As much as optimism is essential in any crisis, pragmatism & contingency are equally important.
At the moment promoters must continue to plan & work with agents & artists & accept the circumstances in which we have to reschedule and continually invest in an uncertain future. It’s a draining experience for all concerned.
Live-streaming is here to stay. It’s a different dynamic but it has its benefits not just as stop-gap solution but as facility whereby we can document these events, make films, promo videos or sell more tickets for sold out physical concerts & generate more revenue.
However if there is an opportunity to establish socially distant concerts in the foreseeable future significant financial structural changes must be implemented.
The question of insurance must be considered. Several major insurers have left the live industry due to its precarious nature - factors due to cancellation, the very real risk of venues or promoters going out of business or potential virus/disease related issues.
We shouldn’t view COVID as an isolated case but one with wider implications relating to future
pandemics.
pandemics.
There is an onus on governments to address this now. One potential method might be to establish a regulated government funded insurance pool from which promoters can access.
The issue of VAT is also key. In Ireland the VAT rate on concert tickets for shows in venues where there is a hospitality factor (ie availability of food/alcohol) is 13.5%. It has fluctuated between 9% and 13.5% for some time now as dictated by annual financial budgets.
With the imminent budget in Ireland it would be wise to consider suspending or at least reducing VAT rates for potential socially distant events.
To clarify, the VAT is inside the ticket price which means ultimately it is the ticket buyer who pays and the promoter who must deliver to revenue so it has to be accounted for by them. VAT rates obviously greatly affect the face value cost of tickets.
Online events are currently marked in ireland as a standard VAT rate which is 21% (as of September 1st 2020). This seems prohibitive and poorly considered at a time when artists and promoters are being pushed into the arena of online / streamed events for practical reasons.
Selling tickets for online events is a completely different dynamic to that of physically attended concerts. We are not selling tickets per person, we are selling tickets to households/ groups of people. There is no way to regulate this.
This means if, for example, 2000 people buy a ticket each the actual viewing audience is potentially a large multiple of this. This needs to be considered.
The other question regarding online events is how do we protect live-streaming from going down the road of being monopolised in the manner in which streaming of recorded music has been, a somewhat dire situation where artists and labels are cornered into poor royalty rates.
It is essential that live-streaming of concerts is a profitable source of revenue for artists. Outside of merch, syncs and other limited peripheral sources of revenue, live-streaming is essentially all artists have for the foreseeable future.
That’s all I have for now. Feel free to debate. Sorry for boring thread lol.
