good morning ~

(click the link / sunset stroll to listen)

My Big Breaksomewhere a buck is being made

today’s track is an exciting one for me - feels like the combination of acoustic guitar and electronics is extremely potent

feels weird to not have really much of anything to plug at the moment - moment of repose - although I will be playing a backyard in Hudson, NY in a couple of weeks, just don’t have a flyer yet, stay tuned for info

You ever listen to the first couple Underworld records? I had not until recently - thought they would be more clubby / dubby like the later stuff - but this song rips in a new wave kinda way

I also saw the movie Sorcerer for the first time recently and wow the synth soundtrack is so chunky

A buddy of mine (a great musician)
recently posted something along the lines of
"are bands with booking agents / pr the only ones who get invited to festivals?"
And the answer is (essentially) yes (with rare exception) if you weren't aware
Which raises a really salient point about how music is valued, promoted, distributed, heard of, booked, cherished, etc.
There's a whole ecosystem of interrelated venue deals, promoters, guarantees, backend percentages
Royalties, placements, syncs, door deals, merch cuts, handshakes, etc.
That keep the cultural production of the music world humming along

Festivals want access to recognizable artists for as little of a fee as possible
In order to insure that they maintain access to the most premium artists
They tend to work with the same booking agencies repeatedly, building a relationship around the exchange of capital
(cultural, financial, interpersonal)
Booking artists that rep themselves or put out their own music
Pretty directly undermines these fragile arrangements

First of all, people without agents don't have to pay a percentage of their fee to someone else
In that way they undercut higher level operators
But also, crucially
A festival would have a hard time building a reputation over the years by taking bets on unknown entities
If they spend $15,000 on a band's performance
(a completely normal amount of money to pay in the market right now)
they need to feel relatively certain that the inclusion of that band will sell at least $15,000 worth of tickets
(unless they have access to government, private, corporate, or other types of funding, or they can afford to take a loss)
They want to see a proven track record of reach, fanbase activation, tickets sold

And truthfully most music fans simply don't want to plop down a decent amount of money
Gambling on acts they've never heard of
(Is that cynical? I just think its true, particularly in our current economic moment)
They want their concert ticket experience to be meaningful, enviable, conspicuously consumed
By and large they want to get their money's worth
And a band that can command a large fee
And afford to support a team
Are far more likely to be "worth" the cost of entry

One view
The only way to assemble a "team"
in other words to have meaningful label, agent, or PR representation
is for other people to believe that they can take a meaningful cut of the revenue a musician generates
A record label (of substantial impact) must consider whether or not an artist recoups
A booking agent must be convinced that their work of booking the musician is worth a percentage of the guarantees
Someone doing PR has to believe that you can afford their monthly fee
Therefore if you generate enough financial value
In order to have representation in these ways
You are kind of automatically seen as more valuable in this ecosystem of gigs, records, booking, etc.
Inversely, if you do not generate enough financial interest to have a team
Or for whatever reason you don't have other people in your corner
(Maybe you live in a city besides LA or NYC for instance - joke)
Then perhaps you are not going to be capable of generating financial return

Another view, perhaps more charitable
Is that having agents / labels / PR in your corner
Means that you have motivated people working toward you getting the best possible bookings
Your booking agent's whole thing is landing you enough good gigs for them to pull part of their salary from
And festivals - particularly cool ones - are a great proof-of-concept for other gigs
And a great reason to book a whole ass tour
You land a festival in California, a wonderful excuse to book a tour there and back
That's, like, 30 potential shows, 30 potential payments
(and your booking agent would get, you know, 10% of all of those or whatever)
So if your work as an artist can inspire advocates
(or at least motivate them to make more money)
Then yeah, you're far more likely to land a primo festival booking

I almost want to stop here
this is where I start to feel like I can see the matrix code
But so much of the cultural world works this way
(And what is the world if not the world lensed through culture?)
It really all comes down to access, capitalization, and compelling the consumer
Purchasable and mechanically reproducible media gets coverage
because it is attempting to control the zeitgeist
And therefore generate as much capital as possible
99 out of 100 times
A book gets reviewed in the New York Times because the publisher advocated
And it only got published in the first place because the publisher thought they could make a buck
(plus they're hoping to license it to Netflix eventually)
Hell, even the book landing at the local library is the result of PR efforts
A musician gets to go on Fresh Air because they have a tour to sell tickets to
And they have a tour to sell tickets to because they have a booking agent
A movie gets written up in the New Yorker because the studio sent a screener
And the editor / publisher included the reviewer's piece because they reasonably thought
That these thoughts on that movie would intrigue people into clicking a link online
Or even subscribing to the IRL mag

Why does something show up in your algorithmic feed?
Because it is already something that would do well on social media
And often someone's paying Meta to show it to you
Taste is a sticky web of these ad spends, campaigns
Efforts toward making a splash, sticking in people's minds
In all likelihood, why do you experience almost anything?
Somewhere a buck is being made

Which is why I cherish - and arguably make - work that is comfortably outside of these systems
I yearn for a world in which my interest in things is guided by my actual, "organic" curiosity
And not led along the cattle chute by these market forces
Big name festivals - like so much else - are (merely?) conglomerations of capital

But what about you? How do you refuse the spoon? What are your strategies for exiting the machinations of capital? What have you noticed lately that makes you feel kinda loco when you think about it too much?