The Pop Corporation

Miley Cyrus has spoken about her new LP to Vogue, and said something rather interesting about it. Basically, that she doesn’t want to tour.

She said that “singing for hundreds of thousands of people isn’t really the thing that I love.” She added: “It’s been a minute. After the last [headline arena] show I did, I kind of looked at it as more of a question. And I can’t. Not only ‘can’t’, because can’t is your capability, but my desire – do I want to live my life for anyone else’s pleasure or fulfilment other than my own?”

Cyrus added that performing on stage is “not natural. It’s so isolating because if you’re in front of 100,000 people then you are alone. -there’s no connection. There’s no safety.”

Of course, over the years, there’s been countless acts who just stick to the studio. Steely Dan didn’t tour for years, preferring to hide away in the studio and agonise over everything. Similarly neurotic were XTC and thanks to a nervous breakdown suffered by Andy Partridge, they decided to stick to working off-stage.

Naturally, the most famous to do it were The Beatles who had just had enough of the screaming and the limitations of being a common Beat Group. After leaving the rigours of the road, they basically reinvented what it was to be in a group, which is not bad going. Post Beatles, McCartney hit the road with Wings and solo, but the rest of the gang didn’t go back with any great enthusiasm, with Lennon basically retiring, George doing sporadic shows for charity, and only in recent years did Ringo take an extended victory lap with his All-Star band.

Adele is another example of a modern artist who doesn’t seem to share a great fondness for the hard slog of shows, along with Miley, which is notable thanks in part to live shows being the apparent antidote to a lack of physical sales. New bands are told, quite unequivocally that it’s in the live world that they’re most likely to recoup the money lost thanks to streaming.

The knock-on effect of that, of course, is commercial opportunities. Once upon a time, selling out to TV adverts was the uncoolest thing a band or artist could do, but in the streaming age, it seems like putting a prominent shot of a Beats Pills by Dr Dre is a fair trade for not paying for your individual tracks. Booze brands, technology, cars and more have been used to generate revenue for music acts, but with all these things currently, they seem to come when bands have already trodden the boards for years, or built up a following. This is not something afforded to young, more broke acts.

In fact, a new band may well see getting onto a video game like Tony Hawk’s or FIFA as a more likely avenue for getting paid and being able to quit the day job, because is touring that profitable in the first instance?

Looking at a mid-tier band, where is their money going to on tour? Well, managers and booking agents need paying. Then there’s merch rates and bills. Then, there’s literal eating to stay alive. What are merch rates? That’s the money taken by the venues from bands, for allowing them to sell merch. That’s why some bands have been having meet-ups in local pubs instead of selling merch on-site at shows. It’s risky, it’s novel, and it’s a farcical situation.

Bands also have to cover the travel between gigs, so that’s petrol in the tank that, as we all know, is a price that’s only going up. If a band is lucky enough to sleep in a hotel or a B&B, that’s more money again. This means ticket prices have to increase, which the band doesn’t want to have to do, and the fan certainly doesn’t want to do it either.

The cost of living crisis hurts everyone, right? And this is all eye-watering information, which makes you wonder how on earth anyone is supposed to scratch a living out of making art.

We saw Animal Collective nix a tour, saying: “From inflation, to currency devaluation, to bloated shipping and transportation costs … we simply could not make a budget for this tour that did not lose money even if everything went as well as it could.” Little Simz binned off a US tour because it just didn’t make financial sense to do so.

And the fans aren’t happy that they can’t see their fave mid-level band and, if you want a big event, you get rinsed by the likes of Ticketmaster, or at least a feeling that someone, somewhere, was taking advantage of devoted music fans.

It’s pretty grim reading all ’round and clearly, the infrastructure of playing and seeing shows is broken. Beyond repair? You’d hope not. There’s always regional shows, which is fine, but what about sharing your music with the widest possible audience as possible? Spotify seem to be actively discouraging that by employing something that looks an awful lot like payola, according to many artists.

We have no answers here, but it’s looking pretty sorry for itself currently.