Has the Livehouse touring market "crashed"?

Author | Fan Zhihui

This year's Livehouse is not easy to do, it is obvious to all. Only this time, the way and attitude of musicians are more radical.

The day before yesterday (June 5), the article "Whale Circus Will Stop LIVEHOUSE National Tour Indefinitely" has aroused a lot of attention and discussion in the industry.

The article mentioned, "The rent of Livehouse has increased by an average of 5,000-10,000 yuan compared with previous years, and each of us is actually facing the pressure of life, and everyone has paid a lot for the performance, and even the cost of restoration, but with the emergence of various factors, this gap is getting bigger and bigger, and we can't continue to maintain it." So, after deciding to complete the next 13 shows, Whale Circus will stop the Livehouse national tour indefinitely.

Li Xingyu, the main creator of the whale circus (that is, the band itself), forwarded in the circle of friends and mentioned, "Instead of being passively beaten in this environment, it is better to take the initiative to make a decision, we can't always use love to power to cater to this bad era, and we have to force ourselves to change after this round of tour." ”

Photographed: Kukunuor 0928 (Weibo ID), Xiaowen

In addition to the voice of the whale circus, the recent cancellation of the musician tour has become more intense. On June 2, the Wild Cooperative Band x Waina Chengdu Special Session was cancelled due to force majeure factors of the organizer; On June 4, the Taiwan troupe "Down with the Sandwich" canceled performances in four cities in the mainland due to box office conditions; On June 5, musician "Shi Lei 4ROCK" canceled the Chengdu station due to box office conditions.

The successive cancellations of performances also fulfilled the research judgment of Music Herald on the Livehouse performance market during May Day. In addition to the box office hot search of domestic music festivals and concerts, Livehouse may not only fall into a situation where there are no performances to perform, but also more difficult for musicians to tour.

Why is it harder to make money on touring?

In the reality of insufficient royalty revenue from online streaming, offline performances have always been regarded as the main means for musicians to make a living.

But for middle-tail musicians/bands in the growth stage, commercial performances are not easy to receive, and they may be prostituted in vain; If you contact the venue to host the show, you need to bear your own profit and loss, and if the box office appeal is insufficient or the market competition is fierce, it is difficult to avoid generating electricity for love.

Of course, with the exception of the mid-tail band, the head band may actually receive a disproportionate share of the money. Liu Kun, the lead singer of low absinthe, once shared that the income of the band on a tour was about 200,000 yuan, but after removing the cost of driving and horses, renting equipment and hiring team personnel, the final money earned was only 20,000.

Under the squeeze of this year's music festivals and concerts, many well-known bands have also suffered a box office crisis. For example, the joint special performance of Sound Toys x Day and Night "Sound Never Goes Out" Livehouse, which was originally scheduled to be held in Xi'an on May 13, was unfortunately canceled due to poor box office.

You know, even the sound toys with music quality online and "Lexia" have been affected by market changes, and the survival of other small bands can be imagined.

But as a partner of a music company interviewed said, "Touring, whether it is when the band industry has developed better in recent years, or when the band industry is not so hot in the early years, there will be bands that lose money on touring." In different market environments, there are different people 'beating', but in different ways, the people are different. ”

In the context of the so-called performance recovery, many problems are only hidden, but it does not mean that the problems do not exist. For example, now that many small performance venues have closed and disappeared, they all want to transform to a thousand-person Livehouse, but in fact, there are only a limited number of bands/musicians who can really support a large venue, not to mention the Livehouse profitability problem that has been groping.

For the difficult decisions of bands such as Whale Circus, Tomato, the manager of Vaz Miaozan, said that in terms of the operation of its labels, except for some relatively mature bands, "the overall is indeed more difficult, and the overall box office has fallen by about 30% in terms of touring." ”

Among the many performance formats, he believes that the most difficult is the platter performance, "because the music festival mushrooming, its ticket price is actually in the pre-sale range of 180-380, and the Livehouse platter is basically in the 100-180 range, in fact, there is not a big difference." Therefore, more existing music fans choose music festivals more. The stock market consumed by the epidemic for three years is basically weak, coupled with the difficulties of the national economy, resulting in a cliff-like decline in the market. ”

In addition, as the concerts of Mayday, Jay Chou, Zhang Jie, Xue Zhiqian and other head IPs have been billed and landed in various places, some Livehouse audiences who originally had "meal replacements" also returned to that market. Tomato also analyzed these passers-by check-in fans from the perspective of consumer psychology, "concert performances send friend circles, Xiaohongshu, Douyin are more prominent."

It is not difficult to see that Livehouse has never been a monetization path with rain and dew, but this year's market changes have spread the "cold air" from the tail musicians to the waist and even some head musicians. It is not an exaggeration to say that under the siphon effect of the head artists, more and more artists who open concerts behind are also expected to encounter the crisis of box office collapse. 

Do musicians want to continue touring?

Since the performance market is not optimistic and the tour is losing money, should the musician/band still do the Livehouse tour?

Before answering this question, we first have to clarify what the essence of the tour is.

Generally speaking, after releasing a new album, musicians need to increase the exposure of their works in various ways from online and offline to reach their target audience. From an offline point of view, in the early years, singers would go to the radio to play songs and do book signing parties all over the country; For independent musicians, the main thing is to tour everywhere. There is no difference in essence.

Common FM music radio anchor Jian Cui mentioned in the circle of friends that the essence of the independent musician (new work) tour is a road show, a publicity behavior, and a publicity investment behavior that does a good job of 0 recovery. Platters, music festivals and other performances by independent musicians are commercial activities, labor work with guaranteed income.

He also emphasized, "Let's not talk about the public's misuse of the words tour and performance, just say that if the tour is only for income and not publicity, it is borrowing the name of (new work) tour to do the income section." You are not a big band that has been debuting for 20 years, and the beautiful tour should be a promotional investment to promote yourself without looking at the return. ”

Chen Qi, deputy general manager of Maitian Music of Taihe Music, also holds a similar view, saying that the tour is a matter of publicity, not for the purpose of making money. With new productions, it is possible to promote it in the form of a tour, but this is not the only way to publicize, definitely not the only one.

As for whether musicians want to do tours, she believes that "you can patrol if you accept losses, don't patrol if you don't accept it, and find other tracks." If you overestimate the effect and can't sell the tickets back, but the hard cost must be spent, you will be like many bands now, and you will owe a debt. And most of the money-losing tours do not achieve the purpose of the tour publicity. If you can't sell the ticket, it is equivalent to no one watching it and not publicizing it. ”

In other words, when musicians are considering the tour, no matter what time, style, and fan base, the tour needs to be planned in advance. The music company partner mentioned above said, "I don't think it's difficult to evaluate the budget according to your own situation." Based on the estimated number of tickets sold, travel costs, venue costs, etc., you can calculate an approximate idea, and then further choose whether to tour or not. ”

Of course, she also added that touring and "money-making performances" are inseparable, even if the band does not bear the cost itself, then there is always a burdenholder, possibly the organizer, so where does the organizer's income come from? Still to sell tickets. Therefore, the organizer's choice of band will also take into account the box office situation of the band's tour, which is all intertwined. "Especially this year's performance blowout, there are many music festivals, the quality and reputation of the performance is more important."

In the face of this year's market changes, Tomato believes that product manager thinking is what the current band needs to think about and learn. "The act of selling tickets and performances originally needs to bear risks, and you can't enjoy dividends when you can't sell moving tickets, and blame the market if you can't sell tickets." The market itself is changing, and the core problem is to do a good job of updating and iterating content, so that you can continue to learn and improve and produce good content. ”

From the industry level, these performances with insufficient box office, in addition to reflecting the lack of market digestion caused by excess performance content, also reflect some potential problems under the independent operation of musicians.

In Jian Cui's view, "these collapsed performances are all made by artist companies themselves, not purchased by mature performers." The performance that the market does not want to watch is hosted by the artists themselves if they want to perform, but the market, the track, and the way are not right." The problem, he also argues, is that "in principle, no one tells these independent musicians what path they should take to complete the market cycle."

In this regard, Jian Cui believes that in order to avoid these phenomena of adverse market selection, the separation of powers in the music performance industry (artist management companies, performers, venues) needs to be taken seriously, that is, artists/agencies must learn to give profits to performers, "risks and profits coexist in performers, because brokerage companies cannot guarantee that their artists will always be oldout, and performers will also purchase some artists who cannot be sold out in the future in order to express their style and taste."

Regarding the phenomenon of a micro-collapse in Livehouse's primary market, he believes, "I can make any profit, in my opinion, it is unprofessional, and if the performance company dies, the artist will definitely not have tomorrow." ”

epilogue

As one of the most touring bands in China's cities, Gao Hu, the band's lead singer, recalled its first national tour in 2006: "At that time, most of the performance venues were bars, and the stage was only a 30-centimeter plateau, and when you stepped on it, you could only see the audience in front of three or four rows. The equipment is also very inferior, and the tour can make a move. ”

In his opinion, "Livehouse is our base and touring is our way of life. This rock map can only survive if all the bands walk on the road. ”

Of course, in an era of 120,000 new songs a day and about to have millions of musicians, in addition to counting on touring to make a living, part-time music may be a smart choice for most mid-tail musicians.

The harsh reality is that the music industry may not really be able to feed so many full-time musicians, especially now that everyone can call themselves independent musicians. 

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