Business News Live Business Top Stories

Are headline artists asking for too much cash from festivals?

By | Published on Monday 21 June 2010

Talking of the challenges faced by the grass roots end of the live sector, Ben Turner of the Association Of Independent Festivals has asked headline-level artists, along with their managers and agents, to be more aware of the impact their ever increasing fee demands could have on the independent festival sector.

It’s no secret that some big name artists demand very big fees for performing live, touring often being their best earner, especially if their recording and publishing revenues are still paying off label and publisher investments. It’s also no secret that major league artists charging ever higher performance fees has played its part in the significant rises that have occurred in average concert ticket prices in recent years.

These ever increasing fee demands are very challenging for the independent festival sector, Turner argues, where profit margins are often tight at the best of times. And more so than ever because, he adds, performance fees have continued to rise during the recession, even though promoters have had to limit ticket price rises to ensure their events remain affordable to festival-goers.

Turner told 6music last week: “Prices for talent increases and increases and increases every single year. I think it’s something that agents, managers and artists need to be more aware of, that these [independent and grass roots] festivals that they supposedly love, they need to show some support for that. There comes a point where a promoter has to go, ‘Do you know what? I’m not going to pay that far'”.

Some indie promoters would probably argue that their bigger rivals add to this problem by complying with their headliners’ increasingly unreasonable fee demands. Though some of those bigger promoters would argue that a festival is only as good as its list of headliners (and often the bigger the festival the more true that is), and that therefore those top level acts are justified in demanding top dollar.

Live Nation’s Andy Copping told Radio 1’s Newsbeat: “Big bands have to get paid and get paid big money because they’re the ones that are pulling in the people. It’s always been there and it’s always going to be there. The younger bands, smaller bands, only pull a certain amount of people. The bigger bands pull a big amount of people and they need to be remunerated for that”.



READ MORE ABOUT: