Here’s a bigger problem — Earn it Yourself is not so much a “music business education” program as it is a street team for Warped Tour. Go back through the Tumblr for Earn It Yourself before the post I’m quoting from now and look at posts over the last couple months:
http://earnityourself.tumblr.com
…and you’ll see what I mean. EARN IT YOURSELF IS A STREET TEAM. It is run as a public relations project for Warped Tour. There is commentary there on music business, but most of the people engaged by EIY are doing street team work for Warped Tour.
I read this on a blog about “Earn it Yourself”:
If every member of your band is buying a ticket for every single day that you are there at the show, handing out flyers and promoting your music, then you are not just TAKING AWAY something from the bands, fans, and founders of the tour — you are GIVING BACK something as well. You are showing your respect and earning the right to be there along with everyone else. If you are contributing something of value in exchange for what you are taking, even though what you are taking is more valuable than what you would be giving, it would still show that you have thought about what you’re doing and realize your place.
Here Sarah is suggesting that the ethics of flyering (at least) for a band not on Warped Tour hinges on buying a ticket for Warped Tour, and if you do that then you are giving something back to the bands and — this is key — without saying its ok to pass out flyers for bands not on the tour, she’s saying “at least you are doing something to help the tour” in so many words.
Yeah, try telling that to some security guy who tells you to stop passing out flyers! Explain to him how “You are showing your respect and earning the right to be there along with everyone else.” Post a comment and share how well that works.
I agree that some people are being hassled by random vendors and street team members of bands that aren’t on the tour, but PEOPLE ARE BEING FREAKING HASSLED BY MANY MORE STREET TEAM KIDS FROM BANDS AND LABELS WHO **ARE** ON THE TOUR!
This is something that has grown exponentially in the last five years with social networking and online blogs, and businesses trying to influence public opinion by organizing kids to promote their wares — and Warped Tour is trying to ride the wave of it with “Earn it Yourself” by giving bits and pieces of music advice to kids who help promote Warped Tour and get a few of their friends to buy tickets.
Look, people at Warped Tour promoting bands not on Warped Tour are not “stealing”, they are engaging in activity that you can describe — at worst — as disruptive or illegal by other terms like “trespassing” or “loitering” but not STEALING.
And if you think they’re STEALING, what if say Alternative Press, a long-time sponsor of Warped Tour, distributes at the show a sample issue mentioning favorably some recent release of a band or two somewhere in their pages who isn’t currently on Warped Tour. Perhaps they’d try to avoid it, maybe they have to sign a noncompetition contract to promise they won’t do it, but let’s say some mention of a band not currently on the tour slipped in. Would AP be said to be stealing from the bands on Warped Tour by that mention?
Random kids hawking CDs and trying to flyer for local acts, local shows, after-Warped Tour-shows, etc, are engaging in the same activity as street teams engage in who are working for numerous other bands. They are not “authorized” to do so but please, there are far more kids in Warped Tour who are inside Warped Tour who aren’t “authorized” to work for the band they’re promoting but the kid is doing so anyway as a way to try to fit into the scene.
If someone in the parking lot of Warped Tour is selling bootleg — meaning illegally copied or unlicensed — CDs or t-shirts of “Blood on the Dance Floor” they are arguably stealing from Dahvie Vanity, but if some act not on the tour is selling their homegrown CD product, inside or outside or on top of the venue, are they stealing from Dahvie Vanity? Maybe Dahvie’s label thinks they are stealing, but do you really think Dahvie thinks so?
I doubt that any band member or band or business entity on Warped Tour — besides Warped Tour execs and people paid by Warped Tour — is seriously concerned that some kid in the parking lot selling CDs of his little band’s product is stealing anything from them. Those kids in the parking lot are at worst — at the very worst — competing for the patron’s attention with DOZENS of other bands with far more PR power who are on the tour. And from the perspective of the bands actually on the tour, if they are concerned about competition, it’s from other bands on the tour and not from the bands of the kids in the parking lot.
The activity is Sarah describes bands engaging in outside of Warped Tour venues is probably seen by most fans attending the concert as a CONTINUUM of the same experience I get after passing through the venue gates and going inside — and if the kid hawking products from some band not on the tour manages to get inside and they approach me inside with the same pitch and product, I’ll see them as no different than some kid from the street team of a band that is “officially” on the tour! From the fan’s perspective — and most bands perspective, if a band member encounters some street team member from another band hawking their wares — it’s pretty much the SAME FREAKING THING whether it’s from a band that is not on the tour than it is from a band that is on the tour. That’s probably what might worry someone with Warped Tour most, that a kid will see a product from a local band not on the tour as just as worthy of their attention as a product from a band which is on the tour. That must make more of a difference to Warped Tour than it does to the bands, who if they are concerned about competition are more concerned about how far more popular national acts are competing for fans’ dollars, and much less concerned about competition from the kids in the parking lot.
There are a lot of things that one can criticize the music industry for, and it’s not fair to say it’s all the fault of Warped Tour or that other tours would miraculously work out better, but EIY seems to be trying too hard to to put a positive spin on a huge concert tour which annually engages hundreds of businesses making a massive amount of money off of hundreds of thousands of CHILDREN, tweens and younger teens, getting them to spend $100 - $150 over the day for a bag of “swag” to take home with them, including hideously overpriced drinks and food that vendors — AND WARPED TOUR — profits from. Given that much money, it’s no surprise that there is a team of people being engaged to make you feel good about spending money there.
Warped Tour has changed some of those policies in recent years. But drink and food prices were outrageous for a decade with no change I’ve been able to learn of until the last few years with very bad press related to numerous kids getting sick and a few people dying due to medical issues related to dehydration. I don’t think that’s global warming, people, I think it’s press coverage and the fear that Warped Tour has of bad press driving more kids away from a circus that fewer of them can afford to pay to pretend to run away with.
This year they have a policy to have vendors sell water for no more than $3 a bottle, and while they are allowing free refills through an outside vendor, most kids who go to Warped Tour need more than water and paying out-of-pocket they don’t have any other option than to pay the usual outrageous prices for food and drink during the day. LOOK AT THE VENDORS, PEOPLE, DON’T LOOK AT THE CUTE GUYS ON STAGE FOR A MOMENT. That’s where the real money is.
This post by Sarah is meant to draw interest in a project that promotes Warped Tour, and tries to engage more local bands as a way to somehow return to their punk “roots”. She tries to make it sound like bands and street teams for bands who aren’t on the tour flyering or selling CDs are engaging in THEFT, with the same moral tone one might use to describe the sale of bootlegged CDs or t-shirts. It’s a bit too far of a stretch, but as a way to get bloggers arguing giving more attention to EIY, it’s a success.
After a couple years of existence and funding by Warped Tour, EIY has engaged a dozen or two talented local acts to play a set at their local Warped Tour in a dozen or so cities. These are in general talented local acts who probably would have done well on their own terms (or maybe gone other successful paths in life) without being touched by EIY. They have benefited from EIY and it’s expected that they’d speak up for it. But by doing so Warped Tour is booking talent which they likely pay much less for than national acts, maybe recouping their expenses to produce EIY right there. Besides that — for the VAST MAJORITY of young people who get involved in their street teams, they’re just providing free promotion for Warped Tour.
EIY can get credit for how some local bands have gotten a spot on their local stage, but it gets that talent for Warped Tour at a discount, and with their fans then engaged as a street team supporting Warped Tour, it surely helps the tour more than it has helped even the local bands who get a spot on their local stage. That help comes at the personal expense of thousands of kids who a year or two from now will likely turn off of this scene, and quietly disappear.
Unless, of course, they find some way to make money off the younger kids who come onto the scene as their older brothers and sisters depart.
As my mom says, this may help keep Warped Tour “fresh” and “young” but it ain’t what Bob Dylan (and a lot of cover artists since) meant when he sang “Forever Young.”
http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/5728/
And it’s naive to say that’s not by design, but given an economy with fuel prices leaving relatively fewer kids with money to spend on tickets and “swag” bought at Warped Tour, this is probably the best thing that Warped Tour can do to enhance it’s image and “take” at the box offfice and otherwise.
And as the saying goes, that the “bottom line.”
EARN IT YOURSELF: On Bands Following the Warped Tour
by Sarah Saturday
I have had many debates in recent years about whether or not bands following the Warped Tour to promote themselves in the parking lot is “right” or “fair.” From my first summer on…
