In recent months, it’s become clear that – now more than ever – Australian musicians are in need of the financial support of their devoted fans.
When COVID-19 restrictions first took effect in March, there was likely a large amount of music-lovers who thought it would all blow over sooner rather than later. Maybe we’d be back watching our favourite bands at The Corner Hotel or The Enmore Theatre by mid-April? Maybe things will be back to normal quicker than expected?
As we’ve now seen, this hasn’t been the case. In fact, more than three months on, stages around the country remain empty, the income lost by those in the entertainment sector (not just artists, but publicists, bookers, stage crew, venue and bar staff) continues to rise, and those in the music industry continue to look for a way to raise money in order to survive.
For most musicians though, this isn’t a new situation, Time and time again it’s been said just how raw of a deal artists receive from not just labels, but streaming services as well. It’s easy for the average punter to assume that anyone who picks up a guitar and hits the stage will be heading backstage afterwards, wiping their brow with one of their many hundreds of banknotes their career has lavished upon them.
However, nothing could be further from the truth. The image of the successful, rich musician is rarer than one might think, with artists only able to continue creating their work thanks to the support of their loyal fans.
With Ernest Ellis on track to release his latest album, Be The Pariah, on August 7th, the critically-acclaimed artist has weighed in with the reality of the situation, and his own thoughts on the need for supporting musicians in order to not only continue enjoying their craft, but to ensure the survival of Australia’s status as a world-leader of the music scene.
“Musicians need your financial support, they’re just too shy to say it” by Roland Ernest Ellis
Seems to me there is a bit of a disconnect between public perception and the musician’s (Taylor Swift etc. notwithstanding) reality. That’s no one’s fault necessarily. It just is.
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I can’t tell you the amount of conversations I’ve had with friends who are interested in, and misled about, how musicians make any money. They think the Spotify or YouTube plays must add up to some kind of return, or that we’re receiving support from record companies, or we’re getting that good sync money from commercial, TV show or cinematic broadcasts, or we’re making something from live shows.
Usually – and I’m no exception here – we don’t stand to correct them, because talking about money is awkward at the best of times, and it’s especially awkward to talk about when you’re basically not making any from (one of) your ostensible jobs. So we let it slide.
But here’s some real shit people need to know about: Record companies don’t support us. The government doesn’t support us – in case you haven’t already heard, Arts funding in Australia has now been basically gutted and inexplicably folded into funding for the transportation sector.
Streaming services don’t support us (not really; not at the level of an Australian indie-musician they don’t, considering how miserly the pay rates are). Now, in the age of COVID-19, our one source of somewhat viable income has been negated too – the income from live shows.
How long that will last, it’s hard to say. For those who land a sync deal and get a song placed in a show, movie or commercial, more power to you – such deals can be quite lucrative. Yet such deals are pretty scarce and difficult to land.
The truth is it’s you, the readers of this, the fans of music, the people, the consumers. YOU support us musicians. No one else. You do so not by streaming the music, but by BUYING the music. Maybe you also used to do so by coming to live shows, back when it was possible to play them. But in this new normal – AKA even more fucked up world we all now live in where playing shows is a precarious prospect at best – we need you to buy our music more than ever.
That’s really all I’m trying to get out there – you love an artist, listen to their music all the time, then go and buy their album (preferably on vinyl). Don’t expect a record company or the government or some other nebulous source of funding to float in on the back of the artist’s mystical spirit animal to pull them out of poverty. Buy the records. Support us, and we’ll do our best to keep putting out great material.
I heard Cate Blanchett lament on a podcast recently that (and I’m at best paraphrasing here; it was Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, so go look it up if you want to cross check) she suspects the Australian government is anticipating that artists (musicians obviously included) will go on making art for free, and that they therefore don’t need funding.
I think she’s right. That is what the government seems to expect. Or at best they see the Arts as being low on the priority list, and at worst expendable. But think of where many bars, restaurants and kebab shops would be without neighbouring theatres and music venues. In many instances, these are co-dependent species we’re talking about. Not to mention the impoverished state our culture would be left in without having great live performances to go out and see.
Check out Ernest Ellis’ ‘A Depressed Card Dealer’:
Maybe I’m being a touch hyperbolic in forecasting some kind of death of the live scene. But make no mistake, many artists I know struggle to go on making their art because of a lack of support coming from anywhere. The margins in terms of selling one’s wares as a musician have been so whittled down since, basically, Napster.
Add to that our current inability to go out and perform live (which more and more record companies are demanding a slice of the royalties from on signing new artists now too, by the way) and you are left with a pretty bleak picture.
In that light, we seemingly are then headed toward some kind of back breaking scenario for what you could call grass-roots musicians. They need to survive, and right now they’re not doing it, not from music anyway. How can a sector that inarguably contributes in large part to giving our culture its culture end up being so thinly compensated? How can giving so much amount to artists getting so little in return?
The economics don’t work as it stands. It’s a situation that’ll have to crash and break down at some point. What will we be left with then? Imagine the silence in a country without music from the likes Kirin J. Callinan, Jack Ladder, Summer Flake, Courtney Barnett, Gareth Liddiard, Donny Benét – this list could obviously go on and on and on. Just to start, imagine Kirin J. Callinan having to go out and get any kind of other job… Stranger than fiction.
To those who, like the government, would incline to say that, yeah, artists can go on doing this for free; we can just go on milking their worth and enriching our lives through their music, without paying for it. I would say, simply, no. Without romanticising or sentimentalising the process of making music as I understand it, I would just say this shit is super hard. It takes time, a ton of energy, drive, passion, and to divert from platitudes to get to the main point: lots of money from our own pockets.
But don’t the record companies pay for you to record, you might ask. Well, sure, if you have one. But in speaking from experience, it still amounts to you paying in the end, because all that money they fork out is held as recoupable. That’s no slight on the labels right there, it’s just how it is. It’s a loan, sans interest though it might be. So artists end up paying for it one way or another.
That being said, I don’t think they’re actually are many music lovers in Australia who really do think that way – that it’s OK to go on exploiting music and musicians. Again we arrive back at this idea of a disconnect between public perception and the musician’s reality: I think it’s often just that people don’t understand the ins and outs because musicians have been historically bad – whether it’s down to shame or something else – at explaining how things really are; how the economics of their lives really work.
I think Australians love music and want to go on championing and supporting the artists they love, they often just don’t know it’s needed. Well, I’m telling you that it is, and that if there’s an Australian artist you’re loving right now, then go and buy their record. Start with mine.
Ernest Ellis’ Be The Pariah is released independently on August 7th, with pre-orders available now.
Check out ‘Be The Pariah’ by Ernest Ellis:
