Maybe they should get the Steelworkers, since they’re so metal

Goddamn, kids. The hot news today seems to be the fact that Ozzfest tickets are going to be free this year. The tour, with headliner Ozzy Osbourne the only announced act, will simply try and get their corporate sponsors to pony up a little more dough.

There’s been no announcement as to how fans will get tickets. I’m imagining a lot of radio station giveaways, as well as the inevitable corporate tie-ins – i.e., buy four cases of Pepsi and redeem the UPC codes for entry. It’s really not a bad idea, considering the Warped Tour has been sponsored by Vans shoes for the entirety of its existence. The tie-in sponsorships with things like Yoo-Hoo and Peta have allowed the tour to keep its prices below forty bucks, when Ozzfest’s top-tier tickets went for as much as $150 last year.

Car companies sponsor tours every year, as well as the inevitable cell phone providers. It’s not like this a new thing, since New Found Glory and Blink-182 have both had corporate sponsors to offset touring costs, and even the Innocent, a Christian rock tour was sponsored by Suzuki.

However, the trick for the Osbournes and co. will be to not have the show’s image of it being “fucking metal” (as a friend of mine once put it) lost. If your main stage is sponsored by a beer company, your fans won’t give two flying fucks. Rum? No bid whoop. Mike’s Hard Lemonade? You might have issues… especially if the show is free to fans and those running the tour.

There’s a serious possibility for abuse with sponsorship. There’s no gate to count, or even worry about, so that whole problem is eliminated from any tour rider. Even if the sponsors pay enough to cover tour’s operational costs, I don’t imagine they’ll go past it. And that means this quote from Sharon Osbourne seems a little ominous:

“She added that she didn’t expect bands to ‘tour all summer for nothing,’ but invited them to simply ‘come out and play a date or two. They can sell their T-shirts, CDs and whatever else they’ve got,’ she said.”

Yeeeeeeeeeah… that’s going to result in a good tour. No band’s going to sign up for a tour without any guarantee of gas money unless they’re unestablished. Getting to open for Ozzy plus merch sales sounds like a good idea for a band that’s only sold fifty copies of their demo. However, when you’ve sold 100,000 copies of your latest album and sold out a 1500-seat venue, it probably sounds like a bum deal.

It should be interesting to see how this all turns out.

Ozzy – “Crazy Train
Ozzy – “No More Tears

There are many music educational methods but practice is very important no matter what.