The Pop Corporation

Nadine Shah has confirmed that she’s NOT playing at Glastonbury this year, which isn’t particularly interesting news in of itself. However, their reasons for doing so, is. She’s said that it’s too expensive to play at as an artist.

She tweeted: “The rumours are untrue. I am NOT playing @glastonbury I would have liked to but I wasn’t offered a televised stage so I declined. It’s too expensive a hit for me to take otherwise.”

“It’s just a reality that playing live is super expensive and if you can justify the costs (like being on telly and having a wider reach) then sometimes you take the hit. Otherwise no, we’ve all bills to pay.”

Now, the festival – like a lot of festivals – are well known in musician circles for not paying acts. The trade, it seems, is that the exposure you’ll get is roughly equal to the amount they’d pay you. You can argue amongst yourselves whether that’s dreadful capitalist behaviour or not, but it’s the truth about these shows. If you’re going to appear on the BBC’s iPlayer coverage, then the exposure you get could be massive. If not, that exposure is significantly reduced.

Shah has spoken about the troubles of artists getting paid in the past and she’s not being a mercenary about this – she’s pointing out just how frequently musicians are asked to work for little to no money. It’s more a point of knowing what value musicians bring and to festivals, especially with increasingly high ticketing costs, it feels off that not everyone is getting paid.

She wrote in the Guardian: “The pandemic obliterated festivals and gigs, meaning we were forced to survive on streaming income alone. As a cocky northern lass, I thought I’d be OK: ‘C’mon Nadine, you’ll be all right, you’ve been nominated for a bloody Mercury prize, you’ve over 100,000 monthly Spotify listeners. You’ll make the rent.’”

“I was foolish. The situation was such that I temporarily had to move back in with my parents over the summer. Not the worst thing to happen, but still not a great look for a thirtysomething pop star. Like most of my musician friends who rely on gigs, I found myself in dire straits. (If only I actually were in Dire Straits.)”

As ticket prices go up, and as facilities are meant to reflect that – which costs the organisers themselves – and increased capacity and line-ups, where’s the happy medium?