johndoe@gmail.com
Helen Elizabeth Davies, Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, UK
As well as recorded music in various formats and across multiple platforms, live music is central to the musical experiences of many people. For audiences, the live music experience can be linked to fan commitment, feelings of communality, identity construction and cultural exploration. For musicians, performing live, alongside potential economic benefits, provides opportunities to engage with audiences and build a fanbase, demonstrate and develop musicality, and foster perceptions of authenticity. Since the hiatus imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the live music industry has in some ways resurged, with the record-breaking revenue from Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour epitomising the appeal of the superstar arena concert. On the other hand, at a grassroots level, the live music industry is struggling, with small venue closures and cancellations of festivals, at least in the UK. Connecting with audiences and creating a sense of intimacy in live music performances, especially at large scale and online events, is a challenge, but the issues arising from the live music industry extend well beyond this. From the fragile ecosystem of the industry to sexual misconduct at live music events, as well as its environmental impact, the live music industry faces many challenges and is a fascinating and important area of research and activism.
As a mass-produced commodity, it is perhaps surprising that popular music elicits feelings of intimacy with and among audiences. Musical Intimacy explores how intimacy is constructed and perceived in both recorded and live music. Live music is, of course, experienced in a range of contexts. Small spaces can create a feeling of intimacy simply through proximity of audience to artist, while large-scale events rely more on the relationship of the audience with the persona of the performer to create intimacy. Bruce Springsteen, for example, connects with tens of thousands of people in stadium concerts through his legendary ‘everyman’ persona. When the Covid-19 pandemic brought in-person live music to a temporary halt, live music performance flourished on online streaming platforms, with intimacy created through various means, including domestic-seeming spaces and situations, comment and live chat features, and ‘stitched performance’, such as the 2020 fund-raising effort One World: Together at Home, that technologically brought together remote performers, including members of the Rolling Stones, into a unified broadcast. Overall, although constructed, the intimacy that arises in live performance is ideally perceived as authentic. Springsteen in particular is a performer who audiences find to be authentic, in his music and in his physical presence. The argument put forth by Stiegler and Campbell is that audiences seek authenticity both in their experiences of live performance and in their experiences of intimacy.
Explore further by reading Zack Stiegler and Todd Campbell’s chapter ‘Intimacy and live performance’ in Musical Intimacy: Construction, Connection, and Engagement.
While the spectacle of the arena concert provides ‘favourite gig’ memories for many music fans, for others the small venue setting is vital to the intensity of the experience. Well-known small venues such as the Cavern, the Marquee and CBGB were key in many of the music careers and scenes that dominate popular music historical narratives. As ‘the testing grounds, the hangouts, the place to be’ small venues play a continuing role as performance spaces and networking sites for aspiring musicians, as well as contributing to the cultural economy by employing a wide range of workers frontstage and backstage and in promotion and merchandising. Often run as for-profit small businesses and ‘passion projects’, they walk a line between commerce and culture, existing in a state of financial precarity and, as brick and mortar spaces, are part of and influenced by the built environment and related policies, which are often detrimental. Although they sometimes tend towards niche participation and so can be problematic as social hubs (for example in relation to gender as discussed below), they play an essential role in the infrastructure and ecosystem of local music scenes and the live music industry more widely. In this chapter, Sam Whiting lays out the issues and tensions that are explored in greater depth in the book.
Explore further by reading Sam Whiting’s Introduction to Small Venues: Precarity, Vibrancy and Live Music.
The issue of sexual violence at live music events represents a flipside of the positives of intimacy in live music performance and the value of small music venues. In the context of gender inequality in the music industry and wider society, the live music environment is understood to enable sexual violence in a number of ways. Gender inequality and the gendered norms of certain music scenes lead to male dominance and the marginalization and sexualization of women. In small venues especially, where audiences are standing and often packed closely together, physical boundary norms are overturned, and standard behaviour that is part of some alternative music genres, such as participation in mosh pits, blurs the line between dancing and violence. With factors such as darkness, high volume levels, anonymity, and a lack of supervision thrown into the mix, as well as the normalization of high levels of alcohol and/or drug consumption, the risks are exacerbated further. Bianca Fileborn, Phillip Wadds and Ash Barnes argue that women’s experiences of live music concerts in many music scenes, including those that purport to be progressive, are commonly marred by sexual violence that is facilitated by social, cultural and environmental factors. The devaluation and dismissal of women’s experiences of sexual violence maintain the culture in which it persists, but activist groups such as UK-based Safe Gigs for Women are working to bring about change.
Explore further by reading Bianca Fileborn, Phillip Wadds and Ash Barnes’ chapter ‘Setting the Stage for Sexual Assault: The Dynamics of Gender, Culture, Space and Sexual Violence at Live Music Events’ in Towards Gender Equality in the Music Industry: Education, Practice and Strategies for Change.
Music festivals ‘used 7 million tons of fuel, generated 25,800 tons of waste and created a carbon footprint of 24,261 tons in the UK alone in 2018’. This stark fact highlights the tension between the growth of the live music industry, a cause for celebration from an economic and cultural perspective, and its environmental impact. The live music industry, especially large-scale festivals on green field sites, is beset with issues relating to energy, water, travel and waste. In relation to UK and EU legislation, the live music industry often leads the way in implementing strategies for positive change, such as initiatives to eliminate single use plastics and reduce food waste, and so-called ‘green riders’ (such as recycling, energy efficiency and carbon offsetting rather than a ban on brown M&Ms). However, while live music industry organisations such as Live Nation are aiming for zero carbon emissions by 2050, infrastructure is lacking to support this, for example in relation to plastic waste recycling. Although the economic effects of Covid-19 on the live music industry were devastating, the shutdown was purely positive for the environment, with waste, emissions and ecological damage dropping to zero. As Teresa Moore argues, ‘No one wants to see an end to live music’, but alignment between legislation and the music festival industry needs to be stronger to bring about change. This chapter highlights what is arguably the most pressing and timely of all the challenges faced by the industry.
Explore further by reading Teresa Moore’s chapter ‘Greening the live music industry’ in The Present and Future of Music Law.
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