‘A video or a flat fee?’ on the performances of concert fees

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhile the literature on musical employment is growing, little research has been conducted on how concert fees are calculated, discussed, or contested. This article aims to explore these questions by drawing on the in-depth study of one new actor within the live music business: Sofar Sounds. Since 2009, Sofar Sounds has been organizing ‘secret concerts’ in ‘unconventional spaces.’ Between 2017 and 2019, the company has been publicly criticized on several occasions for its fee policy. I analyze these controversies over musicians’ remuneration as a critical site to understand the kind of economization performed within music industries. I argue that taking fees seriously allows for considering calculation of musical remuneration as a world-making operation. I identify three different and competing ways to calculate musicians’ fee: ‘appointment-fee,’ ‘co-production-fee,’ and ‘compensation-fee.’ I show that these calculations are performative achievements that contribute to the defining of what a musical performance is and of the actors who take part in it. In conclusion, I argue that the controversies about Sofar Sounds’ musicians’ fee policy cannot be understood only from a market and commodity point of view. The company uses ‘exposure’ to attach musicians and to strengthen its own (financial) value.