After the pandemic, the live music market recorded two -digit growth and turnover never seen before. Artists who made middle rooms passed to the buildings, who made the buildings made the stadiums. Summer events are no longer counted. The SIAE report relating to 2023 speaks of an increase of 70% on 2019, the last year before the closures. The attraction exercised by large events leads the public to buy tickets at very high prices.
In the face of this growth, however, there were the downsizing of some tours, the cancellation of concerts, the diffusion of discounted or free tickets, a practice, however, has been spread for years. Someone began to talk about the outbreak of the concert bubble, someone else has pleased themselves with the “fall” of small and large digital stars of Italian pop. The accounts will be done at the end of the year, but it is evident that this matter is not only a question of sblily, but also of the media presence of the artists, of numbers as a guiding criterion of success, of vanity.
In a post published on Facebook Federico Zampaglione explains in particular a mechanism that is connected to the distribution of discounted and free tickets: the costs of the fake sold outs, writes Zampaglione, are paid by the artists, who end up indebted with the organizers in order not to admit the bankruptcy. The musician of the Tirmancino explains that the speech is not referring to anyone in particular, but to a mechanism that “for years has been destroying the mechanism of concerts and many careers”.
“We continue to read everywhere the inexpensive story of the fake sold outs, but the explanations I see on how the mechanism works are often unclear,” writes Zampaglione. «I will try to explain it to it in my own way, with a script page, after seeing this story to happen for about 30 years; With a frightening surge in recent times, especially obviously to the detriment of still young and inexperienced artists ».
In essence, the Tiromancino musician writes, on the wave of one or more “viral” successes, tours and concerts in large places are organized, typically the buildings and stadiums, even if the artist does not always have a following as to afford it. It is done, writes Zampaglione writing the part of the organizer in a sort of script, to “make the big leap”, or “give a strong signal, get out of the pile, make it clear that you (The artist, editor's note) You are above your colleagues … it takes a tour in the buildings, indeed in the stadiums and must be sold out! So we trigger the press office and make you holy immediately ».
The concerts are announced, for the artist it is the crowning of a dream and a career. “You (you (Always the artist, editor's note) You are already two meters from the ground, you throw yourself on social networks and every day shouts your joy and satisfaction for the great tour coming. You do it in every way and manner, while everyone congratulates you because “you deserve it”, “It was now” “You are #1”, “I was from the beginning” “.
However, if a few tickets are sold, if in short, the place remains half empty, the organizer puts the artist in front of a choice: either cancel everything, with an image backlash, or place the invented tickets by making tributes and discounts: «There are free tickets, for one euro, ten euros, we invite all the employees of banks, insurance, companies close to us, we put tickets as a gift in supermarkets, Influencer, raised in the clubs with tickets … In short, let me do my job, “says the organizer.
The problem, explains Zampaglione, is that the organizer unloads the lack of revenues on the artist who prefers to welcome them rather than cancel everything. “I see that you understand how it works, today the image in music is everything,” says the organizer. “And if you bind your image to the word” flop “jumps the dish to 360%: contracts, sponsors, brands, conventions, media exposure, perception, advertising, credibility, etc.”.
The conclusion: «From this moment on you go and do (for years) only what I tell you and all I earn for a good 85% is mine, because I have to return and mind the costs I have in my hand … not you. If I ever wanted to stop the contract, first of course you pay everything, or stay here to me and calmly discounts. Sad moral of the fairy tale? The ego of someone tickles (better if naive or megalomaniac) and then … eat it above life! ».
