The Live Nation Memo Highlights and Why You Should be Angry

Hey, what's up people? It's Sweet Deat and I'm back again with another topic that you need to know about. We're talking about Live Nation.

So today we're gonna talk about Live Nation, just so there's not a lot of fluff in this episode, if you don't know what Live Nation is, just Google it, you've probably been to a concert that they put on at some point in your life, some would say they even have close to a monopoly on the entire live music performance industry, their stranglehold on the club and the festival community is unparalleled by any other in the industry today.

Recently there was a memo leaked from their office outlining their plan to reimplement concerts.

All across the world, and the stipulations that they're hoping that the artists will go for, as we know, this global pandemic has totally flatlined the entire music industry, and it's really, really bad for musicians right now, the reason why I'm making this video is simply this, these terms are completely unfair. If we don't unite as a musical community right now, we're likely to lose any sort of a hold on our own individual rights as it pertains to putting on concerts through a mega company such as Live Nation. This Memo is a classic example of passing the buck on to musicians who have already had a pretty rough go of it being that physical copies of CD’s and music in general is now completely flat line to near zero.

I wanna highlight on a few things that are completely insane.

Again, it's really important right now that we all know what's going on. This moment in history could be one that defines decades for years to come, also, this type of behavior will start at the festival and the large club circuit and eventually work its way down all the way to smaller venues and smaller clubs, making it near impossible for an independent artist to get started.

Point number one today is artists are going to take... according to Live Nation, a 20% pay cut.

Did you just hear what I said? A 20% pay cut. Are you insane? If you think about the structure of bands and what money they make on the road, and think about maybe the 1% as say like The Foo Fighters or somebody like that, that makes a lot... A lot of money that draw a lot of people... This is kind of insane for an artist, that's 1% artist, as I'm calling it, them taking a pay cut is one thing, and I'm sure that would even drive their profits down so low that it would become questionable as to whether it's even worth touring or not. But for the medium to small level band, it's maybe playing Stage Three at Bonnaroo or something, are you kidding me? Oftentimes, when you go to a major festival, those bands that are playing those small stages aren't really getting paid a ton of money, so asking them to take a 20% pay cut... It's completely ludicrous.

Okay, this next point really had me upset... Minimum marketing requirements.

Yes, that's right, it's their festival in which that they're hiring you to show up and perform your art yet, now you have to promote their festival too. I think what started as an overall good gesture and also to let fans know where they're playing and what they're doing now has become standardized and in required practice, so now they're saying in plain or terms, you have to post X amount of times about our festival or our event on your social media page. And that's just a part of the contract. Now, while I'm all for one and one for all here, as far as the ecosystem all working together for the good and the glory of music, and maybe that's a utopian idea that I need to let go of, I think this is a little too much and for the next topic, merchandise sales, this memo says that artists will retain 70% of all merchandise sales sold, and I realize you gotta pay somebody to stand there and sell your merchandise at a festival while you're there, but it seems like in the beginning, what used to be like a 5% or a 10% fee now has somehow escalated to 30%, like really, is this little extra percentage really gonna help you dig out of the hole that you're in right now, which by the way, isn't anyone's fault, so why should musicians have to help pull you out of this. I just personally think this is a little excessive and may be slightly more than a little bit. Now, this next topic will really ruffle some feathers…

Insurance, this new clause and states that all artists have to carry their own insurance.

I don't know if you've ever looked into having insurance as a band or anything of that nature, but it's kind of expensive for some mid to small level bands, if this had a trickledown effect into the small club community, bands would not even start... Quite frankly, it's on the promoter to carry insurance, not on the band, you're the one that's assuming all the risk by taking on all of these bands to come in and play your festival, and the reward of you doing that is you're gonna make more money than all of us like combined. So to penalize one more time for making us carry our own insurance is completely ridiculous for bands that can barely make enough money to get from gig to gig off of the love of their art and the dream, this... It would be a total game changer and it would totally ruin people cancellation clauses like due to poor sales.

How about the fact that if they don't do a very good job promoting your show or they pick a really bad day with conflicting events going on in their city and not a lot of people show up if a show is cancelled because of poor ticket sales, and let's say that reason is because there's another event going on in town and they picked a bad day or maybe it's a holiday and the promoter struck out on his promotion, they have the right to cancel this event and only pay you 25% of your fee that you're charging to show up and perform. How insane is this?

I have a feeling that the musician community is going to rally here and they're really gonna make people walk back on some of these claims, but as for now, this is absolutely insane, and I'm so glad that it leaked because now we have a real fighting chance to sort of get ahead of the curve on this one and really show them how unreasonable this is.

And I know I'm normally in a really, really great mood and all these kinds of things, but this is not cool.

So until next time, I'll see you later!