The Dystopian Future of Touring
A grim reality is facing touring artists and there is little hope on the horizon.
Recently, the hip-hop duo known as Little Brother, the North Carolina-based group whose mid-aughts albums created a fervent and dedicated fanbase, recently announced a farewell tour. The tour, according to the group, is a send-off and a thank you to all the loyal fans who supported them throughout their career. Retirement and farewell tours, especially in hip-hop, aren’t new, and often end up being more of a gimmick (because what artist actually retires?) that reveals new music or the changing of a style or persona, but not in this case.
One of the members, Rapper Big Pooh, spoke candidly to Brian Zisook of audiomack about the reality of touring for artists:
“Touring [now] feels like a 360 deal. Venues want a piece of everything — door, merch, and anything else you touch—and they’re not helping you get people in the building. Touring used to be where you knew that’s where your money was coming from. Now, most of us are just hoping to break even. One spot quoted us $25,000 just to rent the venue. I’m like, you’re not making that just opening your doors on a regular night — so why are we being charged that?
Every show is a math problem: What’s the venue capacity? What can we charge for tickets? What’s our travel cost? And what does that leave for us? If you want to make $30K from a show, but the venue only holds 250 people — do you know how much you'd have to charge fans for that to work?
It’s unrealistic. Little Brother tours with seven people who make the shows happen — Pooh, Phonte, their DJ, a soundman, a merch manager, a backup vocalist, and a road manager. If a show loses money, it’s not a label covering it. It’s coming out of mine and Phonte’s pocket. That’s a personal loss. We have to make sure everyone else is taken care of before we are. And if there’s nothing left, that’s just what it is.
We’re not leaving our homes, at 45 years old, to sit in a 15-passenger van for 12 hours just to come home broke. Some venues passed. Some didn’t respond. And some deals just didn’t make sense. If we’re not in your city, it’s not because we didn’t try. Sometimes fans get upset with the artist, but it’s really the venue you need to talk to. If [venues] understood who the people wanted to see, maybe they’d move differently.”
In 2022, rising star Little Simz cited many of the same reasons for her tour being cancelled. The institution where I work as a curator and program manager, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, was to be one of the stops on that tour. In the current climate, unless you are a global superstar like Beyonce or Taylor Swift, the new normal is that the bread and butter of an artist's career — live show performances and tours — are barely a crust and a cup of water. Even before the pandemic, the situation around touring for artists in all genres was becoming tenuous.
As labels found new ways to monopolize the terms of their deals with artists, making it virtually impossible for them to turn a profit on any of their creative endeavors or outputs, the monopolies of Roc Nation around venues was impacting the bottom line for them as well — and not just major label artists, but independents also.
While not the great equalizer to the age of the social media and what now could be considered the third venue (after recorded music and live performance) where artists can create fans and revenue for themselves, touring was the backbone for artists to maintain and sustain careers in between and well past the age of projects. From festivals to indie circuits consisting of dive bars and midsize theaters across the world, playing live shows to new audiences or die-hard hardcore fans was the means for artists to keep the heart pumping on their career, if they even have one at all.
The road is also where artists develop their skills, improving routines and drawing inspiration for new work. The pandemic with its global shutdown wasn’t the start of the crisis, but it might have dealt the death blow to countless artists who came back to fewer venues, new international restrictions and more people willing to find their entertainment live on the internet rather than in a concert hall.
The question remains— what does music entertainment look like moving forward? What does this mean for artists, both new and upcoming and seasoned veterans? What are the ways to generate income and connect with fans that will keep art ticking over? While some will immediately point to pivoting to some type of social media platform to produce shows, that might not be the most viable for everyone. Also, there is still something lost when experiencing music two-dimensionally via a screen, as opposed to inside the venue pumping with energy from the sound system and the people around you enjoying the music you all mutually share.
The question I have is, are all of the entities seemingly supporting the artist realizing the self-sabotage in bleeding their major source of income? While stadiums and well-established concert halls are doing OK at the moment, everything below that is struggling if not starting to disappear altogether. We are beginning to see a wealth gap between the biggest artists and the tiers below, and long term that can become a problem.
Without shows to develop artists professionally but also grow fanbases, what is the future of music in, say, the next 10 to 15 years if artists can no longer afford to book shows and tours? How does the next Kendrick or Doechii arrive without a place to play? The likelihood that there will be any music scene that is remotely familiar is slim at best. While some might chalk that up to progress, what is more likely is less art, less connection and, overall, a reduced and unsatisfying experience for everyone.
