Tom Dunne: As Billy Nomates can testify, festivals aren't always fun for artists
Billy Nomates received a pile of abuse online after her set at Glastonbury.
With artist’s fees being pretty much the flavour of the month at the moment – how much was paid by whom to who and who knew – it’s nice to reflect on how things are in the music industry. Here it is a very different story. Here, just getting paid at all can be a minor miracle.
Very often we would be happy to see any amount of money go into any account through any intermediary; transparent, opaque, hidden, or otherwise as long as, at some point, it could be used to buy food.
Album sales, we now must accept, were a necessary sacrifice to enable steaming services to prosper. Yes, they were our life blood but who are we to stand in the way of progress? We “took one” for the team as it were. It wasn’t our team, but still.
We had, after all, still got our “live income” to protect us and keep us fed. But on that subject, a quick word: It’s not what you might expect. In fact, once you slip down the poster a little, to where the font sizes reach normal, its isn’t very healthy at all.
Many, many artists play festivals just to get exposure. Most festivals, especially here, are wonderful, but sometimes, what some will try to get away with is jaw-dropping. Ladies and gentlemen please meet: Exhibit A: Billy Nomates.
Billy was invited to play at Glastonbury, the festival of festivals. Coming out of a tough few covid years this must have seemed like a dream come true: BBC 6 coverage, a new album, it was all systems go. Except for the fee.
Nomates, is a really interesting artist, a rare female voice in a world populated by bands like Sleaford Mods or Idles. Theirs is a type of anti-culture that has nothing to do with the LA music scene and everything to do with normal life for humans in the 21st century.
It's music for the people who weren’t lucky enough to attend a Tory Party Christmas Party at number 10. She sings about not being willing to shave to please a partner or run in order to get skinny. To which we say “Amen”.
But she isn’t Elton John. The offer, when it came, did not extend to paying for a band. If she was to play, and how could she not, she’d have to do so with just an acoustic, or with a backing track. She opted for the track.
But crowds expect a band. They expect live music at a live music festival. If they see an act performing to a backing track, they think it’s Milli Vanilli all over again. They’d booed Ian Brown of the Stone Roses on his UK tour for similar reasons.
The live reaction was okay, but online, the haters got busy. Here, reaction to her performance was so venomous the BBC were forced to remove the footage, and Billy has announced she is calling it a day after she completes her current engagements.
It was vile, misogynistic, hate filed bile. The sort of abuse no one should ever be exposed to. That is, in itself, a separate issue and I hope with time Billy reverses her position and plays again. We need voices like hers, especially against that backdrop of mindless haters.
But it does shine a light on the reality of life when you are a little down the bill. The promoters have to pay the big acts, the ones that will sell the most tickets and they have to pay bands like Suede and James, who will be expected to play “full band”, but after that it gets murky.
The “Carrot of Kudos” gets dangled. People will play festivals for all sorts of reasons: exposure, ego, reflected glory, to keep your name in people’s minds and just to say that you’ve played. It looks good on the CV. Some promoters play with that.
It’s not “play for crisps” but it’s getting there. I know a man who got an offer to have his band added to an Irish festival late in the day. He was just costing the logistics when he foolishly enquired about the fee. “I can offer you VIP car parking,” came the straight-faced reply.
VIP car parking won’t butter parsnips, as an old friend of mine used to say, frequently.
Most festivals are not like this, but you’d be surprised by the ones that are. Certainly, makes you appreciate why people have agents.
