While touring Austria i have visited the Spielboden venue on 3 occasions to try and organize a show. I was told that possibly this September i might get a show at the venue. The Speilboden is theater style venue with many places possible within for artists to perform/show their art. The venue is set up to provide entertainment to the community and is funded through the community through some kind of cultural fund.
Most of the content that is performed comes via commercial and non-commercial publishers. A self published artist from the other side of the world that visits the venue 3 times with cd’s and posters over a period of 2 years is still at the back of the queue. 20 phone calls and 10 emails and the first email I get is that 6 months away we can possibly fit you on a bill to play in the bar. is it worth it?
Its not so much the people that run or work in venues/theater’s fault, the job of the venue is to provide entertainment to the community, that is entertainment of the community or entertainment for the community.
If the venue puts on an act that is self published, who is going to know about that art? Yet was that the reason for the non-commercial venue in the first place, to provide entertainment that is not a commodity. Or do these non-comercail venues compete with the commercial venues now. Can a commercial venue compete with the non-commercial venue?
A big problem seems to be that the label/published and culturally published acts take up probably 95 percent of the program. The culturally backed venue deals almost always exclusively with professional promoters, bookers. Its considered a fluke for a self published artist to get a show in this venue. For me it seems slightly unfair that the self published artist has to compete with often published international touring acts in a culturally funded space. Some kind of positive discrimination is needed to make sure that these venues don’t always go for commercial or culturally published music. yet how to do this.
Although look at it from a distance. Its anti the established culture to provide spaces for real culture to evolve.
Does it all come back to the one price for use of content via the rights organizations. This in turn creates a need for culturally funded publishers/venues/spaces. Yet when that funding starts to feed the commercial publishers, is this a corruption. Is it a corruption that the music business in Europe is sustained through cultural funding. The people pay tax’s to fund venues to provide culture that the commercial streams should have brought them anyway? I spose all bricks in a wall are dependent on each other. Yet i’m sure that other ways exist for these venues to function. What can yo do when the people want rock stars?
