Nina Kummer about the music scene’s “fix”.
When I’m currently on social media, I keep seeing photos of well-filled concert halls and festivals where huge mosh pits open up in the audience. It’s going great for the culture industry again, you might think when looking at these pictures. But this impression is deceptive. The grim reality is that more and more small and medium-sized festivals have to be cancelled; many bands cancel concerts or tours. The reason for this is almost always the lack of ticket sales.
Of course, artists and organizers are reluctant to communicate if they have to cancel due to poor advance booking numbers. The fear of damage to one’s image is too great – after all, that can mean being booked less frequently or not at all in the future: Who invites a band that doesn’t attract an audience? For the artists affected, this circumstance is a slap in the face: it calls into question the quality of their art and makes them doubt themselves.
They can’t do anything about this situation: the low ticket sales are not an individual failure, but another symptom of the Corona crisis that affects the entire industry. People often still feel too unsafe to go to concerts, they are afraid of possible infection.
In addition, there is an oversupply of events because all musicians are currently catching up on their postponed tours. For some people who have had their tickets since 2019, the new dates no longer fit. Others changed their leisure time behavior during the Corona period and no longer go out or have financial worries. Nobody is to blame here, the reasons are understandable. In addition, hosting concerts has become more expensive not only because of the pandemic, but also because of inflation and war: hoping for spontaneous crowds at the box office is too risky.
Back then, during the many lockdowns, as a musician you always hoped for the time after, when everything will be the same as it used to be and people will flock to the clubs in droves in their entertainment frenzy. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and that hurts. kuni