The corona pandemic is giving Hamburg a hard time: In his experience, far fewer visitors come to the concerts today. Means: large financial losses. What’s next?
The Hamburg musician and author Rocko Schamoni (56, “Grosse Freiheit”) has warned of a “species extinction in culture” given the weaker attendance at concerts.
“Of the visitors who attended our performances until 2019, at most a quarter still come to the shows today,” he wrote in the music magazine “Rolling Stone”. This mainly affects smaller artists – the big ones tend not to. “For some reason, users prefer to accept the risk of infection at mass concerts.”
Accordingly, this means a quarter of the income. However, he cannot keep his small business running on a quarter of the usual fee. “And I know a lot of artists who feel the same way and who now have to look for other ways of earning money,” says the Studio Braun musician. The “suppliers” such as bookers, tour guides, graphic artists, roadies and stage hands also stumbled, an entire branch of culture had faltered.
Before you know it, “the little, the special, the weird, the different, the special, the dysfunctional, the incompetent, the bulky, the incorruptible, the skeptical, the unruly, the annoying, the stupid, are disappearing,” said Schamoni. “They disappear first because they are not resilient, have not created large reserves, are sensitive mimosas, dry out, wither, look for jobs at the post office or as Zalando messengers and are then out of the world forever.”
