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It's not just the Black Keys. Why are so many big tours selling poorly? Stereogum | June 11, 2024 | by Zach Schonfeld
long (and US focused) but still quite interesting article on the current state of concert touring, why tours are getting cancelled or downsized, and what's up with ticket pricing. (my selected excerpts/highlights under the cut)
[excerpt, all highlights mine]
[Eric Renner Brown, a senior editor at Billboard] adds, “I do think [The Black Keys] are an artist that can fill those rooms still. I think the demand is there in terms of people who want to see Black Keys. But perhaps at that price point, the demand was not there.”
Ostensibly, agents and promoters should have access to data that can give them a better sense of demand. But they often place outsized importance on raw streaming numbers.
“The data is very confusing,” says the anonymous booking agent. “There’s a lot of passive listeners for data. You can have millions upon millions of streams, but that doesn’t mean it’s gonna turn into tickets. The opposite is, there are some artists who don’t have many streams at all and they can sell like 2,000, 3,000 tickets.”
[..]
It’s worth noting that the Black Keys have released four albums since returning from hiatus in 2019, and toured arenas as recently as 2022. This may be a case of oversaturating the market.
The band’s 2019 and 2022 arena runs weren’t exactly sold out. In between, the band left their longtime manager in 2021, signing with Irving Azoff and Steve Moir at Full Stop Management. Some sources speculate that Azoff, a former CEO of Ticketmaster, may have encouraged ambitious touring plans. On Thursday, Billboard reported that the group has now parted ways with Azoff and Moir. (The management company did not respond to a request for comment.)
“Essentially, you have some very big managers that are out of touch with the granular finesse and nuance of ticketing,” says another anonymous booking agent. “And they have these large expectations and they tell their agents what they want. And the agents are probably texting each other on the side, going, ‘This man is out of his fucking mind.’ But they do it anyway because, in the case of Black Keys, they’re not gonna challenge Irving Azoff.”
[..]
One contributing factor to instability in the touring industry is the rising cost of… well, everything. It’s part of why ticket prices are so high; it’s also part of the reason some acts are backing out of touring commitments.
Bands at all levels have been sounding the alarm about this for years. In 2022, for instance, Animal Collective canceled European tour dates and explained, “We simply could not make a budget for this tour that did not lose money even if everything went as well as it could.”
Industry insiders say that’s not uncommon. “Everything is ridiculously expensive,” says a tour manager who works with major acts and asked not to be named. “There’s not enough gear for everyone to share, so the vendors are having to pay high amounts for equipment. A single bus for a six-week tour can cost $100,000. Multiple that by multiple buses, and then trucks, and then crews are at a minimum, so they’re getting top rate right now because there’s not enough crews.”
COVID, of course, exacerbated this crunch. “What happened after the pandemic is, everyone was ready to tour at once,” the tour manager says. “There’s not enough gear to cover all of that. A lot of bands have had to cancel tours because they don’t have gear or they couldn’t afford the gear,” the tour manager continued. “I was on a tour with somebody last year where we had to book a private jet because there were no buses available. For the first week of the tour, we had to charter planes.”
Acts are thus incentivized to book bigger venues to recoup the costs of touring. The catch-22 is that bigger venues necessitate more elaborate stage production, which makes for a more expensive tour.
“There’s the expectation to have that production,” says the tour manager. “If people went back to having just two trusses of lights and a P.A. and no frills, it was just about the music, they can afford to tour. But everyone wants to see those flashing lights. Everyone wants to see that video.”
“So much of the economics of these big tours is completely invisible to fans and consumers,” says Kevin Erickson, director of Future of Music Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group. “You can sell out a tour and come back in the red if there was a cost overrun or a miscalculation.”
For mid-level acts with sizable followings, these frustrations are compounded by a lack of suitable mid-sized venues.
“For a band that maybe has assessed its demand in the market to be in the 8K range or something for capacity, where are they going to go if that sort of venue doesn’t exist?” says Brown. “And if, say, the local theater that seats 3K or 4K can’t accommodate two or three nights, it can only put them for one night on the tour routing. That’s a real concern.”
[..]
At the end of the day, it all comes back to price. The average ticket price for one of the top 100 tours rose from $91.86 to $122.84 between 2019 and 2023. Concerts are too damn expensive, and there’s a growing sense of consumer frustration with shows that cost as much as airline tickets.
-> read the full article here on Stereogum.com
#recommended reading!#this should answer a lot of questions for everyone who were up in arms after the asian tour cancellation last year...#about the current touring climate and costs#streaming numbers ≠ ticket sales#..should not be that big a surprise for industry people and yet..#also that azoff anecdote.. who's surprised lol#touring#music industry#live music#article#stereogum#11.06.24#the black keys#music business#link#m
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Is this anything
#always an awkward conversation to have irl#“i love ai.” insert that one spongebob holding out his hands with a shadow above him meme#“FICTIONAL. FICTIONAL AI!!!”#clankerposting#Clay posts#fictional ai#shitpost#hal 9000#robots#p03#electric dreams#allied mastercomputer#ihnmaims#shockwave#transformers#fuck ai#this is an anti ai art blog btw#objectum#saying hello to everyone who reads the tags um... hi!! Really funny to read people recommending me entry level robot/AI media#like yes i have indeed heard of portal and ultrakill. i just didnt pit them in the meme </3#also some guy decided to write in the notes that they were going to crush me into red paste. hot? thank you? ???? weird.
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"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).
Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.
#original post#text post#500#1k#2k#btw i know my definition of death of the author is loosey goosey here#it wasn't the main point so i went informal with it! as ppl in the tags have pointed out it isn't exact#and i do recommend reading the wikipedia article or similar (possibly even the essay itself if you're narsty) if you want to learn more!#wasn't expecting this to take off so my apologies to my barthes-heads out there#love you mwah#5k#10k#15k#20k
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Years before the covid pandemic began, author Naomi Kritzer wrote the charming, emotionally genuine short story "So Much Cooking," which was a pandemic log through the eyes of a cooking blog. The premise is that the author is a home cooking blogger raising her kids, and then a pandemic hits--and bit by bit she's feeding not only her own, but her sister's kids, some neighbors' kids, and so on, in a situation of pandemic lockdown and food shortages.
It's very good, and was prescient for a lot of the early days of the covid pandemic. I found myself returning to it often in the first couple of years because of how steadfast it was in its hopefulness.
Last year she wrote a novelette, "The Year Without Sunshine," which attacks a similar problem in a similar way; instead of pandemic, this one is about the aftereffects of a distant nuke or a massive volcano explosion (it doesn't say), which has churned a great deal of dust into the air, causing massive damage to society and agriculture. The story covers one neighborhood, pulling together to keep each other alive--not through violence, but through lawn potatoes and message pinboards and bicycle-powered oxygen concentrators.
I recommend both stories. They're uplifting in a way that a lot of what I see lately isn't. They're a bit of a panacea for constant fearmongering about intracommunity violence and grinding hatefulness. We can be good to each other, if we try.
#writing recommendation#the Year Without a Summer was a real thing in 1816#and if you haven't read about it it's fascinating#but difficult
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I've seen pieces from this extra comic before, but never read the full thing until today. And holy shit does it hammer home just how much the story is about class.
Multiple times, when food comes up in this comic, it’s also in context of money:
I've seen this last panel on the right brought up before in context of like, dungeon meshi's relationship with fat and eating, but in the full context of the comic it really hits how much adventuring directly consumes bodies for money.
As much as this has been part of the story the whole time, showcased as early chapters 19 and 20...
It never fully hit me before how often adventuring comes down to having no other way to make money but to throw yourself into death repeatedly. To be used, whether it’s by individual selfish people (like the resurrection group that is happy to try and get Kabru's group to kill each other to get extra gold from them in chapter 32), or by the greater cog of the Dungeon Economy in general.
Which, to be clear, is all too often how things work in the real world, too. So many jobs burn through the health and lives of workers. Dungeon Meshi just makes it literal in a new way: by making the healing and resurrection, a core part to the adventuring loop, directly use fat, muscle, and energy from the body being healed.
Imagine Amazon, but if you got injured at work, they could literally burn up some of your body to get you back to working sooner. And that was seen as an advantage of the job.
And then you have Laios, thinking about eating monsters:
Not just because he likes monsters a lot. But because it would help. He says something similar in the actual manga too, during the chapter discussing his dream with the Winged Lion
Laios wants to be able to make a home for Falin. He wants to give her a place where she never has to eat alone. And when he gets a party, he wants to give them a way to eat well. And when he runs a country, well…
He wants to ensure that everyone has enough to eat.
Food is political. Food ties into class, and money. What is deemed "proper" to eat, what is a luxury, what is crass… so much of it comes down to money.
Being judged for eating what's available, when what is “proper” isn't affordable, is already a thing that happens. People forced into work that consumes their energy is already a thing that happens.
Dungeon Meshi has a lot of fantastical elements, but boy is its examination of food and class very real.
#dungeon meshi#delicious in dungeon#laios touden#dungeon meshi spoilers#the full thing is up on mangadex and I v much recommend giving it a read#dunmeshi analysis
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(slides u a jon) got time for a draw this in your style?
use #stageturnDTIYS to participate :D
HAVE FUN!!!!! (closeups under the cut :3)
and here's the actual doodle of s1 Jon
#stageturnDTIYS#monarchetype recommended this pose on my last post#everybody say thank u monarchetype#thank u for the kind and silly comments on my last post :) i read and save all of them!!!#hope u have fun and a wonderful day!!! until next i see you#i put a lot of stupid details in this /pos#if youre reading this the tag has morse code on it <3#tma#tma jon#the magnus archives fanart#the magnus archive fanart#the magnus institute#the magnus archives#tma fanart#jonathan sims fanart#jonathan sims#the archivist#dtiys#dtiyschallenge#draw this in your style#tma s4#my art
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please elaborate in tags :)
#personally i'm actually less likely to look out something if i'm told 'you should read it it's queer'#mostly because if the book was actually interesting they'd have led with that#and it's not a personal recommendation (you'll like this because...) it's just a cookie-cutter stamp#polls#tumblr polls
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i read legends and lattes recently and now i just think karlach should have a coffee shop
#bg3#baldur's gate 3#shadowlach#shadowheart#karlach#the first one is based on the cover art bc i love it. so much#cANNOT RECOMMEND IT ENOUGH#cosiest book of the year#it scratches such a specific itch in my brain that i didn't know i had#the whole time i was reading it i was like. this would be karlach
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if we could stay connected, just like this
#ok last orbit niigo post im emubrained again and also i miss leoneed#project sekai#pjsk#prsk#mizuki5 spoilers#proseka#mizuki akiyama#mizu5#nightcord at 25:00#hurray !#meltdown released an amazing translation of the event so i read it and had my final cathartic transgender cry about it#and now i have ~4 assignments due on friday so i have to stop drawing mizuki. sad.#i recommend everyone watch meltdown's translation#please. its very good and better than the mtls floating around#i Get why people wanted to see it translated asap like i Get it i didnt understand half of the wordplay or kanji but like . wah#its so crazy how this event breached containment n how many people are rooting for mizuki even tho they dont play the game so i just#think its a shame that the translation everyones reading isnt really accurate/lacks the nuances.. Ok sorrynits a good event.#ive just been thinking abiut that for a few days and i love talking in tags. Adios#real Orbit heads will know this is an Heartorbit reference (that tarot card sketch i did almost 2 years ago and said i would finish)#(i havent finished shit)
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Was looking for a book today when I saw these various animal books all on the same shelf and noticed their titles made a nice little impromptu poem about veterinary medicine
#for the record I haven’t read any of these so I can’t recommend them#but the titles are fun#poetry#books#vetblr
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kras mazov lookin ass
#unironically started understanding disco elysium when i started reading more leftist literature. would recommend#i still think the gameplay is kind of a hard sell for most people but ykw. joyce messier as a concept has been immeasurably valuable to me#everytime i talk to my boss and im confused by her politics i think wow....its just like joyce messier#i don't know how you can claim to have all these socialist values and still uphold the capitalist system for your own comfort...WAIT.....#it's just like joyce messier.........#disco elysium#my art
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It's crazy how Dungeon Meshi's manga can feel more cinematic and emotional than the anime to me, even when they're practically the same. Compared to the anime, this moment is such a heartbreaking gut-drop. The way Kui uses negative space and flat compositions to create a sense of horrific stillness is so key.
The way the text (Senshi's monologue) is sequestered to an empty corner of a panel or huddled away from the edge of its text box is not only a great way of showing Senshi's headspace (fearful, isolated, dissociating), but creates a visual representation of pause, as if you hold your breathe after each line. The first panel puts us directly in Senshi's perspective too (compared to in the anime, which puts us as an outside observer over Senshi's shoulder). The detail of the door and bricks so effectively implies that he stared at it for so long, waiting and hoping, that its image is burned in his memory. The wood grain, the brick arch, the number of rivets. The lack of dialogue in the second panel shows a moment of realization too –– "he's dead" (also a great example of the Kuleshov effect). And it's that pause that creates a beat and sets a great rhythm to his headspace, like a music rest: "He never came back." (oh god.) "I'm all alone." Finally, the third panel's negative space, cropping Senshi, shows how truly alone he feels. Without his family, the world ceases to exists. Under shock, he traps himself in a 1-foot radius, too scared to even perceive a world outside its boundaries; a world that can hurt him, kill him, make him disappear with it. There is only his body, the stone beneath his feet and against his back, his thoughts, and that awful bowl of soup.
Even though they're a series of flat images, there's an implicit reading of silence in Senshi's realization and horror. Kui influences your experience to slow down and take your time.
Compare this to the anime, which fills every shot with dialogue. The pacing is fast; we never get to sit in silence like we do with the manga. The horizontal frame allowed the boarders to add Senshi, turning the composition into an over-the-shoulder shot, which takes us out of Senshi's POV. They also added a zoom-out in shot one, which adds unnecessary energy to a very somber scene. The tightening on Senshi as a close-up reaction shot also dulls the moment. In the original panel, Senshi stares ahead at the empty space to his left as a shadow surrounds his mind. It not only shows how Senshi's senses are dulling and his world is shrinking (setting up panel three), but shows how terrified Senshi is of what's in front of him, how the air itself becomes pitch black and opaque, how Senshi is surrendering himself to fear. The pacing is understandable and necessary; this episode packed a lot of story content together. It's just a shame because it really (imo) deflated one of the most nauseating moments in Dungeon Meshi.
#dungeon meshi#senshi#analysis#personal#long post#not art#because comics are inherently more abstract and rule-breaky the format thrives off show don't tell#i think trigger is doing a great job overall but they missed the mark on this scene#for me cinematic storytelling will prioritize rhythm; tension; and silence over plot. that's why the manga feels more “cinematic”#if you've been enjoying the anime i cannot recommend also reading the manga enough. it's a completely different experience with much more#subtext and emotion to draw from
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been going a little bit insane about this sentence from Ace by Angela Chen for the past week
#replace this with any other type of significant relationship too#also! this book actually rules btw i really recommend it#i didnt read it when it first cane out bc i was like. well i am already pretty familiar with asexuality and not rly interested in 101 stuff#but it turns out it doesnt feel 101-y at all its a super awesome piece of queer theory and also chen has Good opinions#and not weird watered down ones that i am sometimes wary of in aspec communities (frankly especially ace ones)#i think maybe if more people approached asexuality the way chen does (including and maybe even especially ace people)#i would be more inclined to still ID as ace#but anyways!#aro#aromantic#<- tag selections that reflect how i personally engage with this quote#also#described in alt text#also also#j tag#:/#aro media
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reblog for bigger sample size
#i dont understand bookmarking everything to keep track of progress#like...#i just subscribe and read it IMMEDIATELY when i get an update email#i bookmark fics i'd personally recommend#i like looking at what my readers bookmarked#or what a fave writer bookmarked#gives me more stuff to read!#my thoughts#text#polls#my polls#ao3#ao3 writer#fanfic#fic#writing
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Text is from Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Eurypides
#my art#dragon age#it’s the same play as the famous ‘I fear to stain your clothes with blood’ ‘Stain them. I don’t care’#but I thought this part was mroe fitting#the entire conversation between Herakles and Theseus is just.. highly recommend reading it
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Often when trans women ask me when I'm performing next, and I tell them that it's a queer/trans event, they will tell me that they'd rather not go because they do not feel comfortable or safe in those spaces, that they have been dismissed or belittled at such events before. Even trans women who are dyke- or bisexual- identified often don't feel welcome or relevant in queer/trans spaces. And whenever a trans woman or ally points out aspects about the queer/ trans community that contribute to these feelings of irrelevancy and disrespect—such as the way our community coddles those who support trans-woman-exclusionist events or who make trans-misogynistic comments—we are described as being "divisive." This use of the word "divisive" is particularly telling, as it implies that "queer/trans" represents a uniform movement or community—a "oneness"—rather than an alliance where all voices are respected.
Julia Serano, Whipping Girl. Published 2007.
#reading#just finished it and this from the final chapter was my fav moment and one of the few times i was nodding along#the book is solid in certain places#even incisive at times#but it is so theoretically confused and downright wrong in some of its foundatioms#that i CANNOT recommend it as an introduction to transmisogyny and i can only SUGGEST it as a v critical read#may say more later#whipping girl#transmisogyny
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