Hey everyone, music-wise I've been a little busy this week because our city just put on an absolutely brilliant music festival that knocked it out of the park for my expectations on what music I could go see live without travelling (and just showcased how fucking good our city's music scene is—I'm done proud! And my head's reeling a little because I got chatting with so many cool people that walk in and around the local music scene in different capacities and they were all so kind and lovely to me and told me tons of things that I think the comedown will last a week at least), but other cool things have also been happening in music that I haven't really had the time to post on here because I just haven't been home very much, but you should know and take note of!
UMAW, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers were down in New York City and have been protesting outside the offices of the owners of SXSW festival, Penske Media, the showcase festival for new and rising talent in music that famously does not pay the musicians that play at the festival (even while the festival itself makes them lots of money, and also hosts really profitable tech panels...).
They came under heat last year when bands playing the festival revealed what the costs of playing the festival were. Personally I know bands from the UK that were invited to play that took on crowdfunders to make the trip across the water, but a big one was the American indie rock band Wednesday who posted a detailed breakdown of their expenses and earnings from their 5-day stay in Austin for the festival (yeah, that's right: a five-day stay. SXSW made bands play FIVE shows for next to nothing. Disgraceful.)
They said that the entire trip left them a few hundred dollars in the red, and they were amongst the more successful of the bands playing the festival, so imagine what it was like for smaller bands who decide to make the trip down to Austin because the whole point of a showcase festival is that it less for the fans and audiences, and more of an industry event for musicians. The point is to introduce artists to new audiences, and these festivals are specifically packed with press and labels, along with other industry insiders with whom showcases are an opportunity to build bridges. Magazines send their teams to scout of new names to write about and labels send A&R there to sign new talent. It's an industry event. Don't be cynical, that is the point. These are the pathways for musicians to do anything in the industry, you can't play your local pub forever. In Europe (or at least, across the EU, which has a shared fund for European showcases;—INES), artists are encouraged to play showcases in other countries and usually do not play them in their own country. The point is to branch out and meet a new audience, new press, new labels.
Anyway, you can see that the point of showcase festivals is not big-name, already-successful and earning acts. It's for new musicians. Unsigned acts. Newcomers to the industry. To host such an event—an event that makes the city of Austin a lot of money too—and force musicians to end up paying some thousand dollars in out-of-pocket expenses is pay to play. It's cruel. It's payola-never-went-away. It's fucking awful.
Musicians have been demanding change. SXSW currently offers either a lumpsum of $250 for the whole event (or rather, $100 for solo acts, $250 for groups) to American artists, or a wristband that allows them access to conferences at the festival (yay for being able to attend a tech conference and realising that everyone except workers in the music industry are getting paid!!!). International artists don't even get paid—they're paid a wristband only.
It's not even close to enough to play five days, it's insulting. (A Canadian musician and friend I interviewed last year who played SXSW said they're never doing it again—they won a government grant to even hire a van to get down from Ontario to Austin, and they'd never be able to afford to do such a trip again. So there. Opening doors indeed.)
As UMAW's page itself says, “SXSW regularly boasts about bringing hundreds of millions of dollars into the Austin economy. The festival is now owned by Penske Media, who also own Rolling Stone, Billboard, Variety, and the Hollywood trade publications. The corporation’s CEO Jay Penske is the son of billionaire Roger Penske, and is himself worth roughly a quarter of a billion dollars. The festival brings high profile politicians and business people from all over the world for high level speeches, panels, and networking. Yet SXSW continues to severely mistreat the artists who are the backbone of the enterprise. We demand fair pay for musicians at SXSW.”
(Owners are also right wingers, dad's a Trumpie... how lovely. Urgh. Why is it always somehow a tory behind squeezing the arts dry?)
Anyway, it's the start of change. UMAW have been doing a fantastic job highlighting all the challenges musicians face in an industry that's horrendously stacked against them: predatory record contracts, merch cuts, pay-to-play shows, musician visas, streaming payouts (something I talk about regularly because it's so bad), much more. Joining a union is always good but I'd especially recommend joining UMAW if you're a musician or anyone who works in other capacities in the music industry—musicians and allied workers, so whether you work in live music, sound, stage, lighting, road crews, in production, as an engineer in a studio or on the legal side of music or whatever, UMAW are great. -> https://weareumaw.org/
A few music publishing outlets like Pitchfork even covered the rally this time, which is an encouraging change—these are no longer industry-insider chats! (Hell, I'm not an ‘industry insider’.) People are becoming more aware of the inner workings of the music industry, and literally as expected, they don't agree with how absurdly artists are being exploited.
So anyway, read about it, rejoice about it, reblog this (or let me know if I've made a mistake somewhere?) and tell more people about it! And ask me all about it or if you want me to point you to any other resources that I can manage.