I’m missing live music. I really am.
I saw Sam Fender had a gig in Newcastle the other day. Socially distant.
I’m sure those who attended enjoyed it. But I have to say it looked awful.
I was at a great Irish festival last weekend. It was just brilliant.
Who played?
Well, David Keenan, Liam Geddes, Inhaler, Aoife Nessa Frances, Niall Connolly , Walking on Cars, Mick Flannery, Kodaline, Bell XI, Pugwash, Divine Comedy, Julie Feeney, Mick Pyro, The Stunning, U2, Villagers, The Coronas, Two Door Cinema Club, The Lost Brothers, The Pogues, PowPig, The Academic, Little Green Cars, The Riptide Movement, Hudson Taylor, Delorentos , Wyvern Lingo, All Tvvins, Aslan, Picturehouse, Dermot Kennedy, Lyra, Lemoncello.
And that was just the first day.
Sadly, I woke up before it moved on to day two.
I find it quite upsetting to think that none of the above haven’t been able to perform live for months and face an uncertain future. And it’s the same for all those who work to bring us the gigs, sound people, managers, venue owners, barmen, security…
How they’re going to survive and make a living doing what they do and what we want them to do, I don’t know.
But do you know what I’d love to see?
I’d love to see Spotify banned.
Yes, it’s great isn’t it, to have access to so much music.
Well, I don’t use Spotify. I buy music.
Some tracks can cost as much as €1.99. €1.99 imagine.
And while I know that musicians don’t get every cent of that, Steve Wall of the Stunning told me recently, that when one of their songs is streamed on Spotify, they get 0.0044 US cents, when it comes to YouTube it’s even less – 0.00069 US cents.
It means that little old me pays about 600 times more than Spotify and a few thousand times more than YouTube.
It’s immoral.
It’s right up there with the people who ask bands and singers to perform at a gig for nothing telling them “it will be great exposure for you.”
I’m well aware that Spotify and YouTube won’t close down because I won’t listen to music on them.
(I also know that Jeff Bezos is unlikely to call an emergency board meeting because I now buy all my books in Hanna in Rathmines and have given up ordering books on Amazon.)
And yes of course I do use some social media.
But right now when thousands of musicians, writers, actors, sound crews, roadies and venue and theatre owners are suffering, I have no intention of listening to music in a way which results in the artists getting virtually nothing.
Paddy's World 