Imagine there are concerts again and nobody goes. Our columnist Rocko Schamoni warns of the great extinction of species
I would like to use the current column to draw attention to a grievance that most of you are aware of, but which does not seem to have arrived in your consciousness. By “you” I mean the over 35-year-olds in this case, i.e. the old, the scene retirees, the silver onions, those to be sorted out, the genetic waste. It’s about attending cultural performances of all kinds.
I’ll start at the beginning: When Shawn Fanning and his company Napster claimed in 1999 that they were going to break up the music industry, he declared it a revolutionary act. He claimed that he would give the users – all the poor little penniless end users on the cables at home – help them get the music they craved for free and finally shut down the record companies that kept pocketing outrageous profits. He didn’t succeed, Napster was bought (by Bertelsmann, among others!), the music industry was shocked by this deep-seated liver hook for a few years, but then recovered with the invention of streaming and the emergence of streaming platforms like Spotify, and now the profits are supposedly higher than before the days of digitized music. Those who were deliberately overlooked in all this were the artists, especially the smaller, independent ones, because they first lost their paying customers through Napster and later through Spotify an appropriate payment for the use of their music. So while I used to be able to earn a few thousand euros for the production and sale of an LP, I now have to wait for the monthly statements from the streaming services, the labels and publishers deduct further percentages from these profits, and what’s left is pretty much Nothing. Ultimately, since digitization, the records produced are nothing more than advertising tools for most artists to lure audiences to their performances. But at least the live business remained, and many people working in this area were able to make a good living from it. Until Corona came.
After the two-year dry spell and all the canceled shows, we all hoped very much that – if everyone got vaccinated and the epidemic was finally over – the fans would come back to the shows. What we hadn’t calculated was the human factor: a lot of people in this country don’t want to be vaccinated, which keeps the disease circulating and, in turn, keeps many of the older audience members who are now cocooned from Spotify and Netflix cocooned on the sofa, at home forever.
FOREVER AT HOME!
Of the visitors who attended our performances up to 2019, at most a QUARTER still come to the shows today, as I said, here too I am talking about the smaller artists*, this effect does not affect the big ones, for some reason the users take the risk of infection prefer to buy for mass concerts.
That means a quarter of the income. I, who as an artist lived almost exclusively from tour income for many years, cannot keep my small business running on a quarter of the usual fees. And I know a lot of artists who feel the same way and who now have to look for other ways to earn money. The “supply companies” that bookers, tour guides, graphic artists, roadies, stage hands etc. stumble, an entire branch of culture has faltered.
I know this is all whining on a high level, after all we live in times of war and see much worse forms of misery in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Quite apart from climate change, which is rushing towards us as a gigantic wall of drama.
Nevertheless, I would like to warn against the extinction of species in culture, because before you know it, the small, the special, strange, different, special, dysfunctional, incompetent, bulky, incorruptible, skeptical, rebellious, annoying, stupid disappear. They disappear first because they are not resilient, have not built up large reserves, are sensitive mimosas, dry out, wither, look for jobs at the post office or as Zalando messengers and are then out of the world forever.
Therefore, you who are at home: do not let the strange ones disappear:
COME OFF THE SOFAS!
COME FROM THE COMFORT ZONES!
COME BACK TO THE PERFORMANCES!
Author photo by Kerstin Behrendt