Sometimes while on tour, musicians will offer their fans the chance to meet them at a meet-and-greet, where fans can pay to have a moment of interaction with an artist they adore. While some might see this as a great opportunity, The 1975’s Matty Healy thinks the whole thing is nonsense, and he has called for record labels and artists to put an end to it.
On Twitter recently, Healy laid out his case, criticizing the practice as a way to monetize “human connection,” saying, “Who came up with [paid] meet and greets? Did they think ‘Surely there must be something else we can monetise……..OH! Human connection!! They’ll eat that up!’ MEET YOUR FANS OR DON’T. DON’T ONLY MEET THEM IF YOU’RE GETTING [PAID] HONESTLY WHAT ARE YOU DOING.”
Somebody responded by saying that meet and greets are beneficial to up-and-coming artists, to which Healy replied, “You can’t be big enough for people to want to pay to meet you whilst not being big enough to pay for touring. Its a paradoxical excuse for making MUSIC EXLCUISVE. ‘Rich kids, you line up on the left. Poor kids, just f*ck off.'”
Responding to another user who agreed with him, Healy said, “I think the problem is that a lot of artists don’t understand how brutal it is, because MAJOR LABELS have normalised it. So MAJOR LABELS should change it. They should make all fans pay in cash – directly to the artist. They should literally hand over the $200. Would soon stop x.”
Find Healy’s tweets below.
https://twitter.com/Truman_Black/status/1110575868685049858
https://twitter.com/Truman_Black/status/1110931596549545985
https://twitter.com/Truman_Black/status/1110937721856552960
