A Massive Attack on the Climate — why a new live music model is vital for the planet
* In my last post - https://nathan-bazley.medium.com/abba-2022-1cc293d9857d - I went through some of the ways the upcoming ‘virtual ABBA’ model of performance could be adapted to help replace traditional live music touring. One element I didn’t touch on directly was the carbon footprint of traditional touring and its impact on the environment. Thankfully, Massive Attack and Manchester University have now given us some incredible data to help inform the conversation.
Going to a big concert doesn’t seem like a particularly reckless thing to do, environmentally speaking anyway. You walk in, often after a ride on public transport, you sit down and watch some people have some fun. Then you go home.
Sure, the sound system probably sucks a fair bit of power. And there is often mess left around afterwards, but it’s all recyclable, right? Where’s the harm in thousands of people dancing around for a few hours?
Well not surprisingly, it’s the bits of the show that you don’t see that are the problem.
In what can only be described as an incredible gift to the world and an inconvenient gift to their industry, Massive Attack have partnered with scientists from Manchester University to analyse their touring footprint in agonising detail and report back on the findings.
They also asked the MU-based Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to go one step further, by drafting music industry recommendations — targets the broader music touring machine could aim to adopt and follow.
The report they released is well worth a read — https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=56701
Originally, the plan was to look at how the touring model could slowly be shifted towards something more sustainable. However after COVID shut down the industry overnight, the research then refocused on determining how to encourage the music industry to ‘reassemble’ in a way that limited its worst environmental impacts; inherently recognising the inflection point the industry had arrived at.
“We’re grateful to Tyndall Centre analysts for providing our industry with a comprehensive, independent, scientifically produced formula to facilitate industry compatibility with the Paris/1.5 degrees climate targets — but what matters now is implementation. The major promoters simply must do more — it can’t be left to artists to continually make these public appeals.” — Robert del Naja (3D), Massive Attack.
Travel and transportation were two of the biggest direct factors raised in the resulting report. Meetings, artist travel and equipment transport all raised concerns.
“The targets and actions suggested here relate to the day to day business travel for meetings etc. by organisations in the sector as well as artist and crew travel for touring and equipment transportation. The current model in the sector is based on transporting lots of equipment, and making frequent and long distance trips by plane and diesel vehicles.”
“Private jets are currently considered central to facilitating some intensive touring schedules. Whilst they are viewed as offering benefits in terms of convenience and security to artists and other industry professionals, their emissions are significantly higher than commercial air travel. If there is a genuine commitment to climate action, new approaches to planning tours should seek to eliminate their use.”
“As with road and air freight, shipping equipment worldwide makes a contribution to global warming and the live music sector needs to address this. Reducing the tonnage shipped annually is the most direct way to address this (provided air freight isn’t used as an alternative).”
The report went on to set a proposed limit of 80% of 2019 incurred air miles, with a review at 2030.
Similarly, the biggest indirect factor of environmental impact (and biggest overall) was audience travel.
“Audience travel makes up the largest proportion of live music related emissions when all sources associated with events are aggregated. While this provides a holistic view of live music emissions, audience travel is something that the sector might be considered as having influence over but not necessarily full control.”
“Often the context of live music events in the UK promotes travel by car, such as occurring in areas with limited public transport or at times when transport stops running, while car parking is readily available. While the sector may not be directly ‘responsible’ for these emissions, opportunities exist to work with audiences, local authorities and transport providers to reshape travel to venues.”
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So in conclusion, if we can stop artists travelling to venues via planes (especially private ones), stop equipment travelling at all (especially in planes) and stop audiences taking cars or planes to see performances, the world will be much better for it.
Unfortunately, as the Tyndall report outlined, that rules out much of the national and international touring that takes place today. But the report does also tease us that technology is on the horizon that will help.
Now they might be talking about more new, highly efficient forms of transport. But I like to think they are referring to our growing ability to blend the physical and virtual in ways that give people almost the same experience as they used to get in a stadium whilst unknowingly contributing thousands of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
That’s exactly what we are working on at Light Speed. So first up, a brief explanation of how we see the future of live entertainment:
Imagine walking into a venue that seems to stretch off in every direction. You are instantly surrounded by any location, at any moment in time that you can imagine. The photo-real and the stylistic blend to form one glowing world that feels alive as it responds to the movements of those around you. Then imagine noticing something else around you — digital avatars — there to enjoy the show with you.
By turning the walls and ceiling into windows into a real time world and capturing performances as they happen, we can scale the magic of a live performance to other cities, countries and timezones instantly. And by making that world a place digital audiences can explore alongside their physical counterparts, we can scale that same performance exponentially.
On the physical side, Light Speed venues will be designed to be replicated easily, enabling ‘plug and play’ sister sites with identical systems and specifications to be established quickly within some of the world’s biggest markets — mostly within existing buildings. In this way, Light Speed will allow performers to play one show that effortlessly scales around the world and online.
While many of the reasons for developing the model were born out of finding ways to bring people together for live performance again in more covid safe numbers, this model also provides solutions to the problems raised in the Tyndall report:
- It reduces the need for travel by allowing an artist to play one venue, and appear in many across the world. This eliminates the need for air miles, transfers, hotel stays and more.
- It eliminates the need for equipment and set transport. The beauty of surround LED configurations is that they can act as a window into anything. A digital set designed in one part of the world can be sent and loaded to a Light venue on the other side of the world with no delay and no difficulties. Technically, an artist could bring their whole show to the venue on a USB, ready to go. It also means reduced bump in/out time between sets.
- Having a large network of smaller, connected venues means far less audience travel is necessary, because they can be viably placed in more and smaller markets. And by opening up the same digital environments to online audiences, it could reduce audience travel needs down even further, all while dramatically increasing the number of people that can readily access just one show.
Surprisingly though, it’s not really the technology that is holding up these developments. It is the ‘business-as-usual’ mentality that still exists within the industry, despite the dramatic disruption of the past 2 years. And you can understand why. The whole sector has gone through hell and back during COVID. Who could blame them for wanting some normalcy back?
But as Massive Attack indicated at the start of the report they inspired, now is the time to ‘reassemble’ in a better way, not just fight tooth and nail to get back to where we were. Sure it might have felt like it worked at the time, especially in comparison to now, but there was always trouble ahead. That is exactly why this report was released.
Towards the end, it says “artists, managers, agents, promoters, tour and production managers, labels and venue operators, all have roles to play.” Which is true, but as live music consumers, we can certainly help, by showing enthusiasm for new ideas, and encouraging those in the industry to take some risks at a time when they’re probably feeling least up to it. Because there are better, more sustainable shows on the other side.
