Live music perhaps goes away

A couple of weeks ago, the informational morass stressing the country made the news go unnoticed that, last year, the Community of Madrid unseated Catalonia as the leader in live music revenue, becoming the first area in Spain to host festivals and other saraos. The figures must be written to see that the alarm is not unjustified, because at kilometer zero, revenue grew by 96% to reach 185 million euros, while Catalonia lost 9% of momentum, staying at 128.5 million euros. The tragedy is not that our promoters have lost 20 million euros in revenue (any sector can have a bad year), but that Barcelona may be about to cede its central role in the live music industry, a deserved primacy thanks to programmers who went from spinning records in alternative bars to setting up the best festivals on the planet.

That Catalonia (and more specifically Barcelona) is no longer at the top of the podium is not just a matter of territorial skirmishes between different areas of the state. Securing the top spot in revenue has meant that, for many years, most agents and promoters were attentive to the United States (and our city!) when organizing their tours. I would say that, for now, we don't lead many world rankings, so it would have been worth clinging to that first place in the state as if it were a lamppost in a storm. In turn, over the last few decades, cultural consumption habits have amply demonstrated that live performance is the fundamental engine of the music industry (this happens in pop-rock, urban music... but also in strongholds like the misnamed classical music), because digital consumption or purchasing is not very beneficial for musicians; vinyls are only a menu for three nostalgics.

Far from being a source of nuisance or a form of mass entertainment like any other, live music festivals are a manifestation of the fundamental right to culture, both in terms of musicians' ability to access the public and vice versa (yes, the audience counts too!). In this sense, it is worth remembering that Article 44 of the venerable Spanish Constitution insists that administrations must ensure, promote, and not obstruct free access to culture for citizens. Well, contrary to this fundamental guiding mission, it seems that the Catalan administrations ---all of them, there is no single culprit here--- have dedicated themselves to putting more obstacles than solutions in the way of Catalan promoters; meanwhile, in Isabel Díaz Ayuso's Community, they applauded with their ears every time a festival thought about moving. It all started with Primavera Sound and could fatally replicate...

A mass attendance music festival is not a mass and, therefore, presents certain acoustic and mobility inconveniences. Fortunately, Barcelona has areas like the Fórum or Montjuïc that ---in line with other cities in the world--- can be conditioned to receive many people and have a much smaller impact than a concert in an intra-urban stadium. You cannot create a cultural buzz of these dimensions (which feeds not only our musicians, but also technicians, health workers, and restoration agents) without it being noticed. In this sense, the authorities of Barcelona and the country should think about whether they are committed to a model of cities and towns where culturally relevant things happen or, simply, to an urban system where the natives only work, sleep, and walk down the street trying to bump into as few guiris as possible. They will have to think fast; we are losing and the future looks very chungo.

The scarce echo this news has had in our media makes me think that citizens (and the country's cultural agents) do not quite understand that, in moving to the second row of live music, we are risking a good part of the bread and salt of our city's economy. For something that was going well, my children, we go and let it be lost. Authorities, react! And quickly, because while we nap, others advance.