Last month, Ozzy and Sharon Ozbourne announced a new strategy for their annual summer Ozzfest concert tour. Their response to rising production costs, rising ticket prices, and declining attendance is this: stop charging customers to come, and stop paying bands to play.
Essentially, through their new ”free admission” policy, Ozzfest is refocusing what it sells and to whom it sells it. The traditional model (familiar to promoters and arts folks alike) suggests you pay the performers and their production costs, then charge a ticket price that will cover that cost plus earn a profit (or get donors to pay the difference). The “free fest” version of Ozzfest has decided, instead, to sell the audience to major sponsors, and sell the positive exposure of performing to emerging metal bands who will waive their fees or even pay to play. They’re also hoping some big-name bands will want a piece of the hype, and will perform a few tour dates for free.
Of course, a high volume of attendees, even if they don’t buy tickets, will pay for t-shirts, parking, beverages, and other merchandise while they’re there.
It’s an interesting and risky response to a faltering business model. And there’s no telling the unexpected effects it may bring to the festival (reduced perceived value, for example, or no-name bands). But the inversion isn’t a new one in the entertainment world.
Television has always been in the business of selling its audience to advertisers — the shows produced and presented are the bait, not the product. And the nonprofit arts, judging by many of their income statements, are often in the business of convincing major donors and foundations to give them cash. An associate of mine admits his primary focus is selling six tickets a year — the gifts of his six largest donors — since those are the transactions that really keep him in business.
If a group of thoughtful strangers looked at your income statement, without knowing what you do, what would they think you sell?
They would think I sell nothing because I sell nothing. How can someone have zero income. Trust me. It can be done. First, you learn to live like a mouse. Then, you move to Paris, live in a derelict hotel, and start wriiting poetry. EVERYTHING I own fits into one bag. I don’t even own a change of clothes. I wash them every night by hand naked. You would say: yes, but you are able to put your poetry to video (producing it is NOT cheap and either is Paris). I would say: What do you think Sugar is for. I think they used to be called Art Patrons. Actually, they’re really Johns which gives them the authority to tell the whore (moi) what they like and what they don’t and what they think is good Art and what they swear is Bad Art or not Art at all. This is an ongoing struggle between Sugar and the Whore. Or, in my case, Sugars and the whore. I’m a bad poet and a rotten whore. And as a consumer, forget it. Some of us were just born to fail everything. I shrug. Not too many people involved in the tension between the whore and Sugar have the bad taste to write about it. Yet this tension exists whether you are a symphony orchestra or a Museum. There are whores and there are Sugars. One has money. One doesn’t. People are usually shocked at what I do not own. But they really have no idea, not a clue, as to the freedom it lends me. Picking up and going is reduced to simply going. If I was rich I might get a new bag but that would be about it. The rest, I would give away. I don’t think I shall ever have to worry about that. The heaviest item in the bag is this tiny computer (a gift from Sugar) that I use to drive art bloggers crazy.
Freefest’s business plan concerns me. I’ve been encountering more and more people lately who claim to love music, yet buy into the notion that we should spend money on overpriced water, t-shirts, parking, and beer, but not on music itself.
Paying for art, whether it’s heavy metal or Hayden, is a meaningful act. It is a tangible way to assert our belief in the value of that experience. I agree that concert pricing has climbed too high, but bringing the price of tickets down, seems like a much more responsible move than making them free. Those of us in the nonprofit sector know that it takes ticket sales, AND sponsorships, AND merchandise sales to make our work happen. Stripping away revenue from that model is fiscally irresponsible and, in this instance, takes power away from music fans and puts it in the hands of big business.
And what about those poor emerging artists who have to pay to play? The arrangement strikes me as a perverse new twist on social Darwinism, in which the bands that manage to captivate throngs of metal fans one summer afternoon break even, and those that flop are in the hole. Not only are Ozzy and Sharon putting artists in the position of being whores — as Tim Barrus believes –but cheap whores. Free whores! Does the heavy metal music industry really think that little of itself?