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Promoters should want their guests to have the best musical experience possible, hence should treat artists’ technical and logistics needs as a priority – as long as demands remain reasonable.
However, a lot of promoters consider they have “bought” the talent, so artists should smile and perform like circus dogs, jumping through every flaming hoop, because it will be primarily their career that gets damaged if the show goes wrong or if they leave because they could not take the abuse.

How do we expect marginalised artists to deliver professional stage performances when getting through soundcheck is already an exhausting battle, and how could promoters not support the artists they booked delivering the best show possible?

As we saw with Grimes’ Coachella fiasco DJ set in 2024, folks were quick to attack a woman’s career until her technician came clean online. Despite his explaining how his rushed tech preps lead to a performance failure, people fell for the clickbait articles and looked the other way when the real story was revealed.

Both promoters and technical teams are protected by their anonymity, and while they benefit from artists’ fame and stage work, once an artist or their team raise an organisational issue, they are quick to shift the blame on the talent being “difficult” or “disorganised”, gaslight performers into thinking they are the problem – and this of course can escalate a lot depending on how marginalised the artist is.

51% women have faced gender-based discrimination in the music industry. We think of lack of opportunity, pay gap, ageism/racism/family status double standards, sexual harassment… but maybe the most common act of casual sexism is technicians patronising women and gender-diverse musicians, schooling them on their own sound, refusing to provide professional service, becoming dismissive or agressive if the musicians keep on asking for their technical needs to be met.

• Promoters and event organisers need to vet their team and be responsible for all aspects of their events, including techs.
• Artists and agents must make it clear on booking contracts that the tech rider is a sine qua non condition to perform.
• Technical teams who are already doing the work, need to make it known, and grow awareness on good practices.
• Technical teams who still believe they can project their own shortcomings on marginalised artists, need to re-train or retire.