Live Music Matters Simon Frith Tovey Professor of Music, University of Edinburgh Scottish Music Review Abstract Economists and sociologists of music have long argued that the live music sector must lose out in the competition for leisure expenditure with the ever increasing variety of mediated musical goods and experiences. In the last decade, though, there is evidence that live music in the UK is one of the most buoyant parts of the music economy. In examining why this should be so this paper is divided into two parts. In the first I describe why and how live music remains an essential part of the music industry’s money making strategies. In the second I speculate about the social functions of performance by examining three examples of performance as entertainment: karaoke, tribute bands and the Pop Idol phenomenon. These are, I suggest, examples of secondary performance, which illuminate the social role of the musical performer in contemporary society. 1. The Economics of Performance Introduction It has long been an academic commonplace that the rise of mediated music (on record, radio and the film soundtrack) meant the decline of live music (in concert hall, music hall and the domestic parlour). For much of the last 50 years the UK’s live music sector, for example, has been analysed as a sector in decline. Two kinds of reason are adduced for this. On the one hand, economists, following the lead of Baumol and Bowen (1966), have assumed that live music can achieve neither the economies of scale nor the reduction of labour costs to compete with mass entertainment media. To cite a familiar example, ‘in 1780 four quartet players required forty minutes to play a Mozart composition; today forty minutes of labour are still required.’ (Cowen, 1996, 208) And, at the same time, the size of paying audience a live quartet can reach is still restricted by acoustics: its sound can only fill a limited space. It is inevitable, then, that as a matter of economic survival concert promoters have to raise ticket prices faster than overall inflation. Meanwhile, the mass media, taking full advantage of both economies of scale (a single master recording can supply a global market with the same Mozart CD) and technological means of reducing production costs (live performers replaced by recorded performances) can keep the rising prices of its goods well below inflation. In these circumstances, performance of classical and contemporary art music has become entirely Scottish Music Review Volume 1 No. 1 2007: Indeterminacy and Technology Live Music Matters page 2 reliant on state subsidy. To price tickets according to concerts’ true costs would be to restrict entry to a small super-rich elite (like the market for original art works). Hence the recurring predictions of orchestral demise and the fact that the level of state support of the UK’s orches- tras and opera houses remains an ongoing and well publicised political issue for both the Arts Council England and the Scottish Arts Council. On the other hand, popular music sociologists and historians have documented the impact of recording technology on public and private uses of music, and shown how job opportu- nities for live musicians have declined while musical activity has been increasingly domesti- cated (see, for example, Frith, 1987; Sanjek and Sanjek, 1991). Cinema organists were made redundant by talking pictures; pit orchestras were replaced by pre-recorded tapes, pub singers by juke boxes, dance halls with dance bands by discos with DJs. As people spent more time listening to music at home (on record, radio and television) so they spent less time going to hear live performers in bar rooms and public halls. At the same time, the domestic use of music has been personalised: family entertainment moved from the piano to the phonogram, from the living room radiogram to the bedroom transistor, from the hi-fi system as household furniture to the walkman and the iPod as personal music accessories. For socio-cultural as well as economic reasons, then, the live music sector seemed doomed to extinction, surviving only as the result of state-subsidised conservation. Of course the story has never been this simple and in the last decade, in particular, there has been increasing evidence that the ‘decline of live music’ describes a more complicated situation. Recent surveys of the UK music industry suggest that live music is one of its more buoyant sectors. Williamson et al (2003) found that live music was the only Scottish music activity attracting inward investment. The latest UK-wide music industry survey (by Creative and Cultural Skills, a government agency set up to support training in music and other creative industries) found that the live business was the biggest employer in the music sector (Music Week August 19 2006, pp. 4-5). In March 2006 Music Week had anticipated the annual meeting of the International Live Music Convention by reporting that ‘the live industry is in rude health’ and predicting continued growth on the back of two years of record-breaking ticket sales. The growing importance of the live music business is reflected in both corporate and state activity. UK venues and promotions are increasingly controlled by a small number of interna- tional operators: Live Nation (the live music business of the US-based Clear Channel); Dennis Desmond’s Irish-based MCD; the US company AEG (owner of the Millennium Dome, which is being reopened as a live venue in 2007); Simon Moran’s SJM group. Live Nation thus controls the Cardiff International Arena and, with MCD, Wembley Arena, the Astoria and the Mean Fiddler business (including the Glastonbury Festival). MCD and SJM own DF Concerts (Scotland’s biggest promoter) and thus T in the Park. In 2007, after a complicated set of nego- tiations (and investigations by both the Office for Fair Trading and the Competition Commis- sion), Live Nation and Dennis Desmond took over the Academy Music Group chain (selling the Hammersmith Apollo and Kentish Town Forum to the Mama Group, owner of the Barfly chain, following a Competition Commission requirement). Further evidence that, in Music Scottish Music Review Volume 1 No. 1 2007: Indeterminacy and Technology Live Music Matters page 3 Week’s words, ‘what was once a sector renowned for its glorious amateurism is being taken over by multi-billion-dollar corporations’ came in 2007 with the opening of a new London head- quarters for the William Morris Agency following a similar move by their US rivals, Creative Artists Agency in 2006. (Larkin, 2007) Meanwhile, in 2004, the Government set up the Live Music Forum (chaired by ex-Under- tone, Feargal Sharkey) to promote live music in public places and to monitor the effects of the 2003 Licensing Act, which tightened up its regulation.1 Such state interest in live music as a creative industry marks a clear move away from the Labour Government’s initial equation of the music industry with the recording industry. By September 2006 it was seriously considering a plan to create ‘a dedicated academy to educate and train the promoters of the future.’ In the words of Feargal Sharkey, ‘the UK’s live music scene is in great shape but promoters and festival organisers all suffer a lack of trained technicians.’ (quoted in Ashton, 2006) The live industry may be flourishing but there are no courses covering such issues as health and safety, and so a consortium of interests, including Live Nation, the Academy Music Group, the Royal Opera House and the Arts Council are supporting a bid by Creative and Cultural Skills to create a Live Performing Arts Academy to be opened (if the bid is approved by the Education Secretary) in 2009. Faced with such evidence, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the decline of live music, inevitable according to economists and sociologists, has been reversed. The UK live sector is, in Feargal Sharkey’s words, experiencing a ‘boom’ (Ashton, 2006). How can we explain this? In addressing this question this paper is divided into two parts. In the Part 1 I describe why and how live music remains an essential part of the music industry’s money making strategies. In part 2 I speculate about the social functions of performance by examining three examples of performance as entertainment: karaoke, tribute bands and the Pop Idol phenomenon. Performance and economic value To begin with the economics. It is important to stress that the basic premises of Baumol and Bowen’s original argument remain valid. There are still limits on the size of the audience one can physically reach in a live show and the costs of live music do continue to rise faster than general inflation. In the USA, for example, the average ticket price for rock concerts rose 82% between 1996 and 2003 while the Consumer Price Index rose by only 17%. (Krueger, 2005) While com- parative data for the UK isn’t available, it is safe to assume that similar price rises lie behind the economic health of the sector reported by Music Week. Such data suggest that the live sector does indeed suffer from Baumol and Bowen’s disease. But the disease hasn’t been fatal. The immediate reason for this is that live music doesn’t, in fact, compete with mediated music for leisure spending but, rather, has been absorbed together with recorded music into a 1 www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/Creative_industries/music/live_music_forum.htm Scottish Music Review Volume 1 No. 1 2007: Indeterminacy and Technology Live Music Matters page 4 single, more complicated music market. And the underlying point here is not that economists got things wrong but that sociologists did.