Sold out, really? The fake sold out bubble broke out (maybe)

Federico Zampaglione has decided to tell him publicly. He did it with a Facebook post that in a few hours started circulating everywhere, because it touches a discovered nerve of the music industry. “For years he attended the mechanism of the” fake sold outs “,” writes the Tiromancino frontman. “Now everyone knows it: when a concert does not sell, it runs for cover by distributing carpet tickets, sometimes even selling them to one or two euros, in order to fill the place”. Then the sold out is announced, the red sign is printed, the photo is published. “But in many cases, the artist pays in many cases.”

Zampaglione calls him a “diabolical mechanism”, which targeted above all the young musicians: promoted as if they were already stars, shipped to the buildings even before having built a real audience. When tickets are not sold, the system stages the appearance of success. The concert is made anyway, the billboard says “sold out”, but the room is full of free tickets. Meanwhile, the artist finds himself dealing with costs.

The intent, explains Zampaglione, is not to hit someone in particular. It is to show how an industry that seems to have lost the sense of measure works. «A young man should take a gradual path, have time to form. Instead, it is immediately pushed in major events, because it is convenient for everyone to tell that it is already a phenomenon. But if he doesn’t hold up, the fault is his. And this, frankly, is not right ».

The “sold out” has become part of the narration rather than reality. It serves to say that an artist is strong on the market, that the project works, that the public is there. Even when the numbers tell another story.

In this logic, music also – like everything else – has become Data-Driven: led by numbers. The views, streaming, followers, tickets sold. Or, better, those declared as such. The data prevails over the content. The decisions – of booking, sponsorship, investment – take on the basis of the numbers that can be seen online, without wondering how they were built.

Being “data-drive” in itself is not totally negative. It means relying on concrete data to make decisions. The problem arises when those data are swollenmanipulated or used only to make storytelling. When the “Sold Out” becomes an image of image rather than an effective result. And when reality, under that narrative, is more fragile than it seems.

The most obvious risk is for artists. Those who do not have a strong label or a team capable of protecting them behind them. Who are convinced to accept too large proposals for their real possibilities. That end up feeling inadequate if they cannot keep up with a system that needs fast and easily communicable successes.

But the damage is also for the public, who begins to no longer trust, that he buys tickets thinking he is part of an epochal event and then realizes that everything is built, which loses the meaning of the scale: if everyone is sold out, nobody really does it.

And perhaps the point is what Zampaglione says, who wonders: “Do we want success to be something real, or only a well -packaged staging?”.

Maybe there is no definitive answer. But recognizing that the problem exists is already a first step.