Thanks for sharing the link to that very enlightening blog post. Of course, while it's really all about greed, I also wonder if there is some nuance at play. For instance, are the venues that an artist like Ms. Venson is playing for the first time trying to limit their financial risk by cutting into what should rightly be her portion of the show profits? And, along, those same lines, are those venues more willing to have a more equitable split of the profits once the artist has already played there one or more times and, thus, demonstrated that they can expect a large turnout for that artist's shows? For instance, I would imagine that a venue like Antone's would be conducive to an equitable financial arrangement with Ms. Venson given that her shows there have time and again generated large audiences every time she takes the stage. I'm not saying that the artist should suffer a financial hit any time he or she plays a new venue. Rather, I'm just wondering, as a member of the audience, how the financial power dynamics work. And again, this is no excuse for bad behavior, but I wonder if the situation might ease once the venues recover from their pandemic losses vs whether the trend, once established, will then just continue unabated (all the while, we should also remember that the artists themselves incurred tremendous income losses during the pandemic).
The record business obviously is not as lucrative for artists as it once was, and streaming, as we all know, has a business model that pays artists less than pennies on the dollar. With that in mind, I have tried, whenever I can, to buy physical and digital media (and, occasionally, merch) directly from the artists themselves via their official websites. In the big picture, as QQers know, less famous artists like Jackie Venson and Mary Fahl are their own "niche" as it were, as there are very few Beyonces or Taylor Swifts out there who are able to fill stadiums and, thus, generate huge profits.