Robert Evans (188:23)
Reasons they started the Purple Leash Project. Through the Purple Leash Project, Purina is helping break down one of the many barriers abuse survivors face. The lack of pet friendly domestic violence shelters Purina has helped increase the amount of pet friendly shelters across the country from 3% to nearly 20% through the purple Leash Project. With more pet friendly domestic violence shelters, survivors and their pets can escape and heal together. Visit purina.compurple to get involved if Robert can do his atonal streaks, then I can sing off key Yo, I'm back, homie. All up in your feed. Watch these rap. Just get all up in your feed. That's a Wu Tang reference again to the black delegation. Shout out y'all showing up on the. In the subreddit, you feel me? Black folks showing up and showing out. I appreciate y'all. I was wrong. It's more than five of us. I shout out to, man, I love y'all. Thanks for showing up. And shout out all the Latinos who tapped into Anda Le Puerto. Hey, listen, we gotta really invite our Latino brothers and sisters, our Theos and Diaz, and also our Asian black people, the Pinoys and Pinais, our Ates and Cuias. You're all a part of our delegation here. All of our USO's, we love y'all. The whole diaspora of people who season a chicken and wash their legs, I love y'all. And to this whole delegation, once we add it all together, it's about 20 of us. To you, I say, y'all want something from the gas station? I got you. So today, I don't want to ruin your breakfast. I don't want to ruin your coffee. I'm just going to ruin your music. This is about the death of the music festival. It already happened here. All right, now, y'all know I. I'll be playing. I'm playing about all this. Like. Like, I'm only talking to the melanated folks. Y'all know I'm playing, right? I mean, this is. While I. While I slowly wink at Brown Folk. I'm just playing, y'all. I'm sorry, I'm messing around. It's a cold opening, you know, you guys got a great sense of humor here. All right, let's get to it. Festivals, like, am I right? You know, if you're anywhere within a 5 to 10 mile radius of my age, I mean, festivals is like. Like, these are like a rite of passage, you know? I am not only a festival goer, but a festival performer. And as an artist, it was like festivals were kind of, in a lot of ways, how I mark the years. There were people that I really only saw, like, once a year when I was at that festival. Whether it was other acts, other bands, or even a lot of times the volunteers or the people that, like, put the event together. Like, believe it or not, you kind of make friends, you know, and these, again, these are people. You're like, dang, I can't believe I was a whole year year, you know? And it was a good way to make sure as an artist that you were making new music and had something new to perform. Oh, and make sure you had some new merch. Because, you know, if you played your cards right, if you've listened to my show, I've talked a lot about like, you know, the science of festivals. And as, as a performer of like, this could either be a complete waste of time and money if you're on at like the main stage at like 12 noon when it's like a trillion degrees outside, you know, but if you can get that right as the sunset, like if you're not the headliner, if you could get that right at Sunse sunset, right where the sun just breaks the horizon line coming down that, that golden hour set. The crowd isn't shitfaced yet. You know, the. They're at the top of their molly. You feel you riding the high. It is just settled in. Whatever drugs that these people are on, they've kind of just settled in right there. They're relaxed, they're willing to sing along. Nobody's getting trampled yet. It's not like the frenzy that kind of happens at the headliner situation where like somebody might die. Shout out Astroworld. I say that not as a joke. I'm saying things can go wrong. But oh, the experience, man. Like, I don't know how old you are and obviously you can't answer me. Do you remember the last like big festival you went to? You know, back when your knees were good and it was okay for you to stand for 12 hours and there's somebody you know having sexual intercourse in the porta potty. You know, you're stepping over bar barf, right? And you just paid $30 for a bottle of water, you know, that you could stuff into your clear backpack because you weren't allowed to bring anything else in there. But man, that's probably a euphoria. Especially if it's a group or a band that you really like that you saved up all year to go see. You know, some people were like festival operas, like that's their thing. They spend their summer going to music festivals. Since 2012 up to 2014, like the music fest has been guys, we've kind of been on borrowed time. We lived through a music festival renaissance. According to NPR, since 2013, everything sold out. The four mega giants, right? So Coachello, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza in Chicago, Austin City Limits Music Festival in Texas. It was like this never ending flow of amazing, amazing events. And you know what? They were kind of affordable. In the next five years you had things taken forth Like Pitchfork in Chicago. Hangout music festival on the beach in the Gulf shores, Outside lands Bali Music Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Festival, Forecastle Festival, right? And I'm even going to add in this. Before this, for hip hop stuff, dude, we had Rock the Bells. Like, we lived in a time where you could see all of your favorite artists. This in the most epic locations. You'd see people who, if you were to try to buy their tour ticket, it would cost the same amount if they were headlining the thing. But you could see all your favorite acts. Part of this was because we listened to radio, you were exposed to more things. And it was probably the fun part about a lot of times about music festivals, because you probably saw that act, your favorite band, your favorite rapper, rapper. You saw them at a hole in the wall five years ago, which was like 10 bucks to get in. And you might have snuck in or got on the list because you knew somebody that knew the dj. And now you're like, I followed this crew from when they were like, playing a hole in a wall with 10 people where there was more staff at the bar than on this. And now you're like, dude, you feel like you were a part of their evolution. Like, you saw a chance at the Subterranean. It. Now he's headlining Bonnaroo. What a feeling. You're part of the story. Well, that's probably a relic of the past. And let's talk about it. So festivals for most of the last decade have been everywhere. Like, whatever type of music you like, whatever sub genre, whatever part of the world you want to go to, there's a music festival that you can show up at now in 2024, more than half of them across the world were canceled. Canceled. I lost count on this page I'm about to read to y'all from musicfestivalwizard.com Festivals canceled so far in 2024. Okay, you ready for this shindig? 2024 Melt 2024 Sideways Festival Nasdaq Field Maneuvers Tower Z, the Quintet, Big Slapped, Electric Zoo Peach 2024 all the Music Festival Life is Beautiful Festival Country Thunder Florida Suwanee Roots Festival, EDC China Lucidity Festival in Santa Barbara. Desert Days in Lake Paris. Pine Fest in the uk Good Vibes Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Sierra Nevada World Music Festival in Boonville El Dorado Music Festival in the uk Sudden Little Thrills in Pittsburgh. Big Ridge Rock Fest in Virginia. Lollapalooza Paris Music Midtown Atlanta Lovers and Friends Fest in Las Vegas, which I was really sad about. Riverside Festival, Glasgow IN Where Glasgow Soul Bloom, Sacramento TW Classic 2024 in Belgium Kalamijas in Calamijas, Spain Caldora Music Festival in Queensland Made in America Festival Philadelphia oblivion Access Austin, Texas Meadows in the Mountains 2024 in Bulgaria Imagine Festival in Rome, Georgia Splendor on the Grass in Byron Boy, Australia Body and Soul Festival in Ireland Moonrose Festival I'm tired of. I'm There's. I'm not even done yet. I'm not even halfway through this thing festivals died in 2024 digital news reports that 60 festivals in the UK alone canceled. Ashley King wrote this article on August 23, 2024 for digital music News and in that she says the United Kingdom has lost 192 music festivals since 2019 according to the association of Independent Festivals, the AIF, which is a not for profit trade festival association that represents the interests of over 200 independent UK music festivals that range from 500 to 80,000 people. The AIF estimates that the UK lost 96 events during the COVID pandemic 36 festivals and in 2023 more than 60 to date in 2024. That brings the total number of festivals closures either due to cancellation or Postponement up to 192 since 2019. 192 festivals. Some may argue that, well damn, you shouldn't have had that many festivals. Coachella, Lalapalooza and of course the infamous Burning man with the most on brand people that go that call themselves Burners. Now I don't want to sit here and make fun of you Burners, because I'm pretty sure a lot of y'all listen to this show number one and number two, I don't know if there's anybody more free, anybody more comfortable in their own skin. Listen, this might sound like a joke, okay? I'm dead serious. It's like the white guy with dreadlocks. I mean white people with dreads are just most of the time ok, like this may sound like a joke. I'm deadly serious. They be so okay with themselves themselves and will do whatever they got to do to continue to stay present and be cool with themselves. No notes. It's the guy doing hypostatic breath work freestyling for way too long in the didgeridoo section. You know what I'm saying? Like. Like he's super okay with himself. Anyway, Burning man for the first time since 2011 did not sell out for the first time and the tickets are usually released in tier years and some go on sale in the beginning of the year and Then this part I'm getting from the Guardian. But the main starting in April, right, which typically gets snapped up in minutes. Like Burning man sells out in minutes. 73,000 people are able to attend Burning man, but this is the first time since 2011 they did not sell out. Coachella same. They saw a 15% decline in tickets. It's the biggest festival in North America. Coachella is 15% ticket decline. Festivals were a way for you to discover new music, to meet new friends. It's like camp for like your 20s, you know, you get to wear your dumb ass outfits, right? You get to stand out in the sun, you get to drink, you get to day drink. And you get to just lose your mind for a little bit. This might be the end. The endling. You may have attended your last music festival as we know it. So the question is, why? Who killed the music festival? Why is the festival not festiving? Why is it not festive? Why can't y'all sell no tickets? Do we not like music anymore? Do you like music still? I thought I still like. Do you like music still? What the hell happening, y'all? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. We're back, back, back. To understand the future as to what the hell happened, we have to ask ourselves how we even got here. Such a nerd. I am. I don't think I need to tell you what a music festival is because, I mean, I think you know what it is. It's an incredibly overpriced concert that features maybe four groups that you like. Where you are going to stand outdoors somewhere, brave the weather day, drink, and then get to lose your mind for the last like three hours and just really enjoy, you know, a moment that you'll really never forget. Depending on how nasty and ratchet you are, how outside you are, you might look up. You know what I'm saying? I don't. Look, it's none of my business. I suggest you don't. That's just me being a ohead. But either way, man, they're a great time. But please understand that festivals, music festivals go like back to get this, 582 BC. At least according to white people's history. Because, you know, silly you, nothing happened anywhere else except for Europe. There was no music festivals in Africa, Central, South America, Asia. No, no where else. You know, history started in Greece. We were too busy building pyramids, right? Anyway, I'm gonna lead out. Oh, but I'd be cracking me up. They'd be like the first music festival on record in ancient Greece during the Python Games, which is fine, it's. It's fine, it's fine. But understand, ain't no way in the world this the only one that ever happened anyway, so 582 BC, right? And like the Olympic Games, the, the Python games took place every four years and included poetry reading, a speech, right? And other musical game like competitions. People gathered to enjoy like hymns and instruments. Instrumental performances. At the Apollo. At the Apollo. I'm so blessed. Black dedicated to Apollo, which was the God of arts and music. Now fast forward to like the 17th century where you have like classical music festivals and like the type of like exclusivity, right? Where like when in the 17th century when like classical music just basically ate Europe and music festivals originally were like supposed to be a gathering where people could, like, what you think, gather and celebrate music. However, here's where it starts coming into focus. The wealth gap was widening across Europe. So festivals gradually became kind of like how they are, where they're a little bit exclusive, catering primarily to more higher educated upper class. And the shift became apparent as events became more exclusive and had increasingly restricted access. This is from ndlbeast.com they have a whole section on like the history of music festivals. One could argue like, like this, like the prototype of like the VIP section, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know where you can get the pit tickets or you could stand outside with the pores and just listen from the outside. So this trend kind of continued for centuries where like elite class, I think almost like was the beginning of the breaking of music in, in general, they would control the access to culture. I have a friend that wrote a book called Don't Be Precious. Now me and this friend differ in a lot of ways, but he's just a punk rock dude and his approach to making art is like, you can't have this like restricting access, right? Because it becomes this just like upper class art is this creation of the leisure class because one, they have the patron to pay for them to be able to sit down and contemplate the stars. Like you got all precious about it, you feel me? So some of that has to do with again the wealth gap. So when you restrict access to hearing music, it draws deeper into the divides between like the educated upper class and then the traveling folk musicians who performed for the commoners. And that's like the stuff you see on, you know, corny little movies. Then the world wars come, right? And there's like a music revival, right? So when the first World War broke out, obviously change of lifestyle Meaning everything went to like, you know, war effort. So this is a really interesting quote. It says on the same MDL beast. As society focused on wartime efforts and staying safe, the exclusivity of music festivals to the upper class disappeared in a turn of events. The working class population was now turning to music more than ever. Jazz and folk emerged as popular genres. Right. To avoid the scrutiny of the elite, groups of musicians with similar tastes would gather in dive bars and underground clubs. By the time the war had ended, jazz cemented itself as the genre of the era. So now we're talking Harlem Renaissance juke joints and the emergence of like, again, this where black people come in a lot of times, the role that jazz, just the allout anti black racism, has unintentionally because of it, created some of the most dopest things, some of the most dopest American experiences. Well, I just read up on how with HBCUs, which are historic black colleges that now white people trying to attend to, they like your school look fun. Well, because we wasn't allowed in yours anyway, so let me continue. So World War II played a pivotal role in creating the Newport Folk Festival organized by Lewis and Elaine Lorryland. A couple met during World War II and came together to revolutionize Rhode Island's music artistic community by promoting jazz. With the foundation in jazz and blues and country and pop music, they expanded to attract over 11,000 people in 1954. Then the 60s, the birth of the modern music festival. Right. Obviously Woodstock, which was the invention. Monterey International Pop Music Festival. This is the rock festival as we know it. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the who. It was the place to be a cultural experience as we know it. Again is that then you got like the Berlin Wall and the music revolution. This is where festivals become political and cultural. They become a statement. And a big one was in the 90s when they did the Berlin Wall tearing down music festival, which was an amazing thing, right? Where underground stations, power plants, World War II bunkers and abandoned buildings all started to serve as makeshift concert halls. This is why Europe became such a place place for music festivals. It became a sign of freedom and solidarity. And then the music festival took a shit. They just died in the 90s after this all can be explained in when they tried to redo Woodstock. Just a shit show with like Limp Bizkit and all this. You a shit show. There's a documentary on Netflix about the absolute disaster that that new Woodstock was, y'all. I'm talking like y'all thought Astroworld was bad. Where Them kids was raging so much and people died. You talking about understaffed? Y'all think Fyre Fest was a disaster? My. Well, nah, I don't think anything was worse than Fyre Fest so far. Good thing it didn't happen. Like, y'all remember Fire Fest? Oh, Lord. Honestly, I can't believe I made it almost 20 minutes into this and then mentioned Fyre Fest. Because it is the perfect example of what went wrong in the music festival world. Because like I said, this disaster in the 90s to 2000s, if you were able to survive, like I said earlier, like the Bonnaroos, Coachellas, Austin City Limits, if you were able to survive Lollapalooza, then you came out the other end and became the go to places, right? Telluride for folk music. You became the go to places that if you were gonna try to have a career as an artist, you have to play one of these festivals. No matter how much money you don't make at these things, you have to do it. Because this is where not only do you get the necessary co sign, you also get discovered. Like, as far as fans, like, you make new fans, you sell merch. People walk away with a T shirt. You're on this T shirt that says Bonnaroo 2021 and your name is on. So, like, even if you're way down on the bottom, grab your little screenshots, take your little Instagram photos, because now you're in the game. And the game it was, was. Which leads us to what went wrong. Because this was not only a money making endeavor, this was a money making endeavor in 2014. Are y'all ready for this? I don't think you ready for this. In the boom years, According to an analysis done by finance buzz, in 2014, general admission prices for major music festivals increased by 55%. That outpaced just inflation, period. Y'all jacked up the price. So. So listen. So if you're Ja Rule, head ass, of course I'm going to build a festival. You're looking at Burning man, you're looking at Bonnaroo, you're looking at all these things. You're like, bro, let's just get an island and make a festival. There's so much money to be made. But you know what? Capitalism, being a capital capitalism, it's gonna keep capitalizing. Let's talk about what killed the festival. Oh, you see, I just did my own fade out and fade in music. Y'all see that? No, don't ask me what note that was. So what killed the Festival? Well, a number of things. First of all, yo ass for not going. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We're not blaming the victims here. Some of these answers are pretty obvious. Like, again, you know, Astroworld, like. But astroworld is just a good picture of everything that went wrong in the concept of a music festival. So the first problem is, yeah, capitalism. Sometimes you are led to believe that what is will always be right. That's what a stable economy lulls you into believing. But anybody that knows how money works, it's booms and busts, the bubble will pop. And how a bubble pops is almost always our own fault in this sense. The housing bubble, you know, of 2008, when your mom and them lost their house. Because the reality was they shouldn't have never got that loan in the first place. These people knew good and well that you was not able to keep up with that mortgage. But we were selling too many houses. It was going too good. So the thing was, for almost a, you know, almost a decade, you couldn't make enough festivals. The industry couldn't keep up with the demand. And, yo, this the blog era. This the two Dough Boys. Yeah, Pitchfork, like, this the blog era. You know what I'm saying? When Fader was like, a thing that you would want to go suit. So, like, it all kind of worked together around this time, before all these spots got bought out. Hip Hop dx, like, all these pages got bought out. Like I said before, it was like this boom in 2014 of a trillion festivals that started happening. Now. What happened was ticket prices. That's the first one. We're making so much money, you realize, dang, if I charge a hundred, I bet you I could charge 200. If I charge 200, I bet you I could charge 400. Because if you charge 400, then I could argue I'm getting bigger acts. So in the boom years, according to this analysis by Finance Buzz, ticket prices since 2014 for most music festivals increased by 55%. Like, that's super outpacing even inflation in the same time period. This isn't like, cost of living type shit type beat, no. Oh, I'm raping, y'all. Do you know that Burning man costs $575 to go to? If you was going, you was probably gonna make some sort of, like, art installation to destroy you doing that on your own. Which meant what? Same thing happened in the 17th century. It just becomes a place for the elite because can't nobody else afford to go. You know what else happened to a Lot of festivals is corporations bought them. You know who bought Complex buzzfeed. And you know who bought it from buzzfeed? Nit Work ntwrk, it's an investment firm. You know who owns the Pitchfork festival people? Conde Nast, a media company. They bought the blog and folded it into gq. It's just a corporation. Capitalism. Capitalism broke the festivals under the banner of capitalism. Not so much the cost of the ticket and the soaring cost of living. It also cost too much to make the festival. According to John Rostam. He's the CEO of that aif, the Independent association of Festivals. He says the toilet hire. I just need to buy porta potties. In 2021 was $28,000 for the exact same amount of toilets in 2024 is $54,000. That's just the toilets. You know what happened at Astroworld? He ain't have enough security. It costs so much. You honestly cannot afford to put together a festival that will be alluring enough to consumers to justify spending that much money. So what do you get? A gang of corporate sponsors. And you know what a gang of corporate sponsors at a music festival is? Whack. It's a horrible ass experience because you're just watching a gang of commercials. Sometimes it just be labels who be putting on these artists that they trying to break. And then the artists be trash. They don't be trash because they trash. They be trash because they're not ready for this size stage. They ain't put in the work. They didn't do the, you know, Gurney, Illinois experience that I think I've told before. What is the most terrifying experience I've ever had on tour. You, you don't have them experiences. You ain't played shows when there's more people at the bar or there's more people that work there than come to see you. You're not ready for no festival stage. So this is not fun for the. So I'm not gonna buy it. You can't justify this price. If I'm gonna spend that much money, I need to really, really, really, really like this band. This need to be my favorite artist. I'm not gonna stand around 12 hours, pay this much money to really only see one act I like. That don't make no damn sense. And we'll talk about why they only like that one artist artist a little bit later. So remember this point I'm making. The second and most obvious one is Covid, which leads into the third and fourth. You had to cancel stuff. Nobody knew this was coming. Like The L's companies took, I took, I canceled a tour. Not only I canceled a tour, I released a poetry book that I couldn't tour. I mean, I personally lost tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars in touring revenue, in book sales, in merch sales, in all of it. Like, I lost so much because you just had to. And I'm still trying to get that money back. A lot of festivals just have never been able to make their money back from what they lost. So there's not enough money now. Obviously when the pandemic ended, there was a lot of pent up energy to be like, I need to go outside. But that's because me and you didn't spend two years of our high school experience, our two first years of college stuck at home. Remember, that's the time when you get the taste to go outside. When you start finding your drinking buddies, yo, yo, outside friends, your music friends. You have to remember those years, dude, did. Those years are when you're discovering all research says is like your taste in music happens in those years, right? If I were to ask you what's your favorite area of music? Most likely it's not always, but most likely it was like the music you listen to in 11th grade. It's probably your favorite era. Whatever you was listening to then is probably still your favorite era. Now obviously that's not true for everybody, but dang, if you were 17, you're discovering new music, you want to go to like the corner house of blues, right? You know this. Obviously I'm California centric. You wanted to hit the glass house, man, because you just heard about this new band, little things like that. The Dragonfly, Whiskey A Go Go, the Viper Room, all these like smaller spots that when for us out of la, these were like rites of passage. This is how you get to say, I saw them win. I knew who Will I Am was for the Black Eyed Peas. Because I saw him at the little temple which is now called the Virgil, when he did a beat battle, they were at the corner, you know what I'm saying? And it was fun. I knew Foster the people, they're in San Diego. You would just drive down like, just at the Gas Lamp, like Leon Bridges. Hell, he opened for us, you know what I'm saying? Like again, like we said in the earlier, these, these bands that you was passionate about, you was 17 with your little emo hair swooped over your eyes. This who you was crying over. You understand what I'm saying? Like hugging onto your little iPad, you know, doing that doing that MySpace picture, when you looking down, you know, it's the white people thing. Like this is when you went to go see them. If that era for you was a pandemic, you didn't acquire a taste for going out like that. You saw concerts inside of Fortnite. So what I'm saying is one of the biggest things about Gen Z is they don't go out. It's just. It's just the reality. Not only do they ain't got no money money, they ain't got no money because again, inflation and finances, the cost of living is insane. But look it, Gen Z don't drink like we used to drink. They do fewer drugs, they have less sex. Part of that is because one, they hella anxious. And I don't blame them. I'm looking at my daughter now and I'm like, I'm sorry, baby, you probably not going to buy no house ever. I don't even know when you gonna move out. I don't know what to tell you. I'm not mad. I ain't gonna push you out of this house. Cause where you gonna go? You gonna get seven roommates. I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry. They do fewer drugs, they drink less, they have sex and they don't go nowhere. Because one, they anxious as hell, they nervous around being around that many people. And if they are gonna go out, if you ask them, the number one thing they say is like, I ain't got nobody to go with. I mean, I could go, I ain't got nobody to go with. Cause you ain't got no friends. You don't go nowhere, right? I be looking at my own child like. Like, why you here, cuz? Like, don't you. You won't go nowhere. She's starting to now. But listen, you gotta really, really, really, really, really want to see this person that you going to see. She bought Billie Eilish tickets in February. The concert next month. She decided if I'm gonna spend this money, this, this what I'm gonna spend it on, right? Because it's worth her money. She loves the him, she loves her. She got the album, she went to the listening party. She's like, this is who I'mma go see. They don't look and see who's playing or just pull up at a dope music spot and just be like, oh, I wonder who's playing. I'm going to discover new music. No, that don't happen. You can't put on no festival if people ain't willing to come. Which leads me to one of the other problems they did, which is the music industry itself. They shot themselves in the foot because the big dog, just like I said happened in the 1700s, are doing fine. If Live Nation and Ticketmaster own every venue, they only gonna put the artists that they won't own there. It costs too much. So they're like, oh, I don't understand what's going on with y'all festivals. I know we doing all right, because if you are an industry artist with the machine behind you, number one, you don't need a festival. You booked a Greek theater yourself. Why would I allow myself as an artist for you to pay me? Guess who turned down Coachella next year. Rihanna and Kendrick. Why would either of them play that when they know they can be the only artist and sell just as many tickets? Kendrick played Staples. I'm calling it Staples because I'm from la. I know it's just a corporation. He played Staples four nights in a row where the Lakers played. But that was after doing four nights at the Honda center in Orange County. These are eight Southern California shows. Sold them all out. Why the hell would I give that money to Coachella when I could do it myself? Live Nation already taking a huge ass cut. Ticketmaster already taking a huge ass cut. Scalper's already taking a huge ass cut cut. There's no reason for me to give my time and my ticket draw to you when they could all go to myself. You did this to yourself. Music industry by locking out all the small venues. You know what else the music industry did to itself? Streaming the algorithm that also killed the festival. You know why? Because you're fed the same music. Algorithm says, you like this, you probably gonna like that. Which means, you know, we know old people be like, music all sound the same because it does. Because the goal is to play music that feeds the algorithm. You create music that gets your streaming numbers up. This the point I was making earlier, why you like, I don't know nobody else on this thing, and I'm only really concerned about the headliner. This is the point I was making earlier. Algorithm, you create music that works on TikTok. So music music has this formula. They did the same thing with coffee shops. You know why? Coffee shops look like brutalist mid century modern, all of them Instagram. We're all looking at the same aesthetic. So therefore all coffee shops look the same. The same thing happened with music, the algorithm. So you have these entire very specific niches. But can everyone in your weird niche Are there 30 artists in your very weird niche that can bring 10,000 people out to a field? No, because there's only 40 of y'all that like this music that's online streaming, there's no human editorial. There's no DJ that's saying, yo, dude, look, look at this. No, look at this. You're stuck to doing it yourself. And hopefully you can climb out your algorithm, right, G. McDonald says a genre unfocused festival poster lineup starts to just look like a playlist that has been made and personalized for somebody else. Okay, you want to do a genre specific one? Let's just say, okay, K pop, you finna fly autumn acts from Korea. How much you gonna sell these tickets for? How many K pop acts do you get? You don't book nobody local. Do you know how much money that would cost? Or you say, I'm gonna do a K pop day. All right, so you do a three day festival. One day's K pop, one day's edm, one day's hip hop pop. Nobody's buying a three day pass. So one day might be trash. And how do you build it? What does the flyer look like? I don't know half of these people, I ain't never even heard of that. No single act can sell a festival. And if you try to do a multi different act thing, it's just going to confuse the consumer. So if you put it on the festival, your only option is to just go big. This has to do with money, money. So you are going to overspend, right? Because it's like, how are you going to get people here? They get Taylor Swift. Do you know how much money you got to offer somebody like a Taylor Swift for her to give her performance to your festival rather than just to do her own show? And the consumer says, again, is this worth my money? I'm willing to throw this money at this big act because that's who the algo, that's who I know they're not going to risk no more because music discovery is now algorithmic. You're not just going to go pull up at a spot and be like, who's this opener? They're dope. The industry did it to itself. You killed your own performance market. And because Live Nation bought up all the small venues where artists really get their chops and really create fan bases and really you get to discover and make connections with it, there's no places for them to play. All that's left left are the big industry artists. And why again would they give their ticket sales To a festival. And lastly, climate change is hot as hell. The last two burning mans poured rain and flooded. Before that it was like 129 million degrees. It's hot. It's too hot to be out there like this. This climate, y'all ain't enough water. It's hot as hell. It's hot as hell or it's flooding. It's hot or it's flooding. Ain't no more nice days outside. I ain't gonna stand outside all day. You crazy? You gonna make me pay extra for shade? It's an extra hundred dollars so I can have an umbrella. I'm good. Just hold on. We're staying home. Stay at home. Okay? Now again, let's rebuild the world. What can we do better that's in our control? So festivals might be done, but it doesn't mean we don't still love music. If you're a music lover, here are some suggestions I can give you that would keep your favorite bands in the game. The first is the easiest one for you, which of course is buying or streaming their music. If you're gonna stream. Here's the thing, dude, I'm not an old guy to say that. Like your release radar or your new Music Friday, that algorithmic playlist that's like customized just for you, it's great. My request that I think would help is this. If a song pops on and you dig it, save it number one and then two, go to the album, go to that artist's page and give them a follow and listen to the album. You heard the song, the song was dope. And if it really resonated, I'm not begging you to do something that you don't like, listen to that album. You know, the whole like artist blowing up on TikTok, that's why Universal was just like, man tried to dead all that, you know. So if an artist blows up on TikTok, you, you should really like this. I'm like, yo, like, go to that artist page, go to their music. Like, you know, instead of just like shooting a video. Like that stuff's short lived. If your artist, like, obviously you, you hope that one day that happens, but that's not sustainable. You can't tour off that. That's what happened to a lot of artists. Why Ice Spice cancel half her tour dates is because there's not songs, there's TikTok audios, you feel me? That helps the artist know when they try to go get a show that they can prove that, like, hey, listen, these are listeners. When you go to my Spotify page. When you go to any Spotify page, the first number you see is monthly listeners. But that don't mean followers. I have this weird upside down thing. Most people have more monthly listeners than followers. I'm the opposite. I have three times more followers than monthly listeners, which means these people are going to be alerted when I drop music. Music. Why I have that is because I toured so hard. I played every possible dumb, ugly venue I possibly could. Like, got it out the mud, shook hands, stayed after, Stayed at the merch table, took pictures, got email addresses, got phone numbers, came back, you know, signed everything. I would stay after the show for an extra hour until everybody got their picture and everybody got their stuff signed. Hard fought. So that way. You're right. I'm not cranking out music that feeds the algorithm. You're right. But when I drop an album, they know. So my request as the consumer is follow that artist, like, club to the album. And secondly, the most obvious one is like, dude, buy merch. Oh, my God, y'all. I'm saying, like, merch has been the difference between car insurance and. Not for me, Merch has been the difference between can my daughter stay in her, you know, dance class, her after school, like, ballet class Merch. Like, merch is how we paid for our daughter's stuff during the pandemic. Hail Merch. It. It paid our rent because all he had that. Now, as an artist, you need to have dope merch. That's. I mean, if your merch sucks, I mean, it is what it is. I can't ask you to, you know, purchase something that's trash. Artists make dope merch. You know, I. I have vinyl. Vinyl costs a lot. But you can go to my website. There's vinyl, like, that stuff. Those make a difference. And then I'd also ask, like, if you really dig an artist, this is on the artist's job, too. Like, sign up for their newsletter, find out when they're touring and just. And go to their shows. And when you get there, like, another game. I think I told this on the Hood politics podcast, too, where it's like, most of the time, as the artist, I keep the door, like, meaning the ticket sales, and then the venue keeps the bar. So their thing is like, well, they're going to make a ton of money on the bar. But that's how I get to come back is if this venue says, oh, yeah, yeah, he brought, you know, 300 people here. They respected my staff, they bought drinks. And me as an artist, my team, I I be silly on stage, but we're very, very professional. We keep I, I take my reputation very serious. We make sure that like the talent buyer, the venue, is everybody taken care of. We're not yelling at the sound man. You know, we keep a clean green room. Like those are things you could do as an artist but as a consumer. Like, like, I know the algorithm's fighting against you, but like if you really like a group, go out of your way. Even if it's on the discovery things again, the big people is easy. Beyonce's tickets are going to come find you. You ain't got to go find them. But Johnny Swim but the hot shakes, right? That's what they called go find them. Because at the end of the day, it's your presence. If you're going to stay in music, you have to get butts and seats. Is this for us to save music festivals? I don't care. They did that to themselves. I'm just trying to save live music because truly, truly, there is nothing like it. O o o o o o o.
