DREAM THEATER - Europe leg of the 40th Anniversary Tour 2024-2025

[Animal]

I'm no expert on this, but EU has 24 shows with 12 days of rest in total in between. That's quite a lot of days off I'd say.
Sure, sometimes three shows in a row (quite intense), but also sometimes two days of rest in between shows. I think they deliberately give James a bit of a break with this schedule.

In the past, they would do about 24 shows in 30 days  (5-6/week). So they are definitely trying to space shows with more vocal rest in mind. I am not sure it will do the trick though - it is still a too busy schedule for high-level singing). It seems they can't (or don't want to) adopt a more relaxed schedule (like some bigger bands do, say, Iron Maiden, with a day off between any two shows).

[The Paddies]

In the past, they would do about 24 shows in 30 days  (5-6/week). So they are definitely trying to space shows with more vocal rest in mind. I am not sure it will do the trick though - it is still a too busy schedule for high-level singing). It seems they can't (or don't want to) adopt a more relaxed schedule (like some bigger bands do, say, Iron Maiden, with a day off between any two shows).

There are so many influences on a performance, especially for a vocalist. We'll just have to wait and experience it. Night to night will be different I guess. I hope James saves some energy for the last show, in Amsterdam. Can go two ways. A last show can mean he will give a little bit extra because there's much rest ahead. He could also be worn out by the travelling and singing. The setlist(s) will also play a big part in this. Let's see what they'll bring. I'm excited.

And I probably won't be sitting out on tours from now on, because if we are lucky there's only a handful of tours we can witness. They can't perform forever, certainly not this type of music. I want to celebrate what they have done and what's still left in the can.

[cramx3]

In the past, they would do about 24 shows in 30 days  (5-6/week). So they are definitely trying to space shows with more vocal rest in mind. I am not sure it will do the trick though - it is still a too busy schedule for high-level singing). It seems they can't (or don't want to) adopt a more relaxed schedule (like some bigger bands do, say, Iron Maiden, with a day off between any two shows).

A day off on tour costs a lot of money.  IM can take the cut I assume, maybe DT can't.  More rest does seem ideal for JLB, but the touring finances may say otherwise sadly.

[MirrorMask]

Which costs? off the top of my head I can guess hotels, renting of the tour bus and depending on the contracts, what happens to a crew member in a day they don't work, but shouldn't all these things be somehow accounted? I mean, no band is gonna play 25 shows in 25 days, there have to be some days off, especially when two cities are too distant and you wouldn't be there in time considering how late concerts end, and how relatively early you have to show up to set up your gear.

[cramx3]

Which costs? off the top of my head I can guess hotels, renting of the tour bus and depending on the contracts, what happens to a crew member in a day they don't work, but shouldn't all these things be somehow accounted? I mean, no band is gonna play 25 shows in 25 days, there have to be some days off, especially when two cities are too distant and you wouldn't be there in time considering how late concerts end, and how relatively early you have to show up to set up your gear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M_SqJfvfRY

[MirrorMask]

That was both interesting and depressing. How do smaller bands can even tour nowadays?

[cramx3]

That was both interesting and depressing. How do smaller bands can even tour nowadays?

Spend less money on touring.  Small bands sometimes dont even use tour busses, just vans and do it themselves basically.  I honestly don't really know, I feel like most small bands sacrifice a lot to go on tour.  Live in the back seat of a van with little food and dirty clothes.  Although I read from Alestorm's reddit (where the band members are active) that they said if you can tour for 500 people a night, you're good.  So it makes me think the bands touring less than that are likely struggling to make those tours work.

[jammindude]

I don’t remember who it was, but I remember a smaller band was manning their own merchandise booth, and one of them made the comment that they had worked all their life to be a musician and it turned out they were just traveling T-shirt salesman.

[Dream Team]

Musicians should have taken a collective stand decades ago to prevent this scenario, but it’s far too late now.

[Cool Chris]

What "stand" should they have taken?

[TAC]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M_SqJfvfRY

Tank The Tech!

Yeah, he has some great info on his channel.

[MoraWintersoul]

What "stand" should they have taken?

Back in the beginning of the file-sharing era, CDs cost a lot, a full downloadable album came a bit later and didn't cost much less and there was basically no legal way to meaningfully sample music you'd be buying, so people started torrenting and stopped buying CDs. People are completely fine paying 11 dollars a month today for legally streaming, including people who used to pirate, and somewhere in the early 00's that willingness should have been funneled into downloadable albums that cost a couple of dollars and a way to sample an entire album before buying - say, you have the right to listen to it once, then you have to download if you want to listen to it again. Yes, there's people who put those 11 dollars to use to listen to way, way more than 5-10 new albums per month, but those people are rare, mostly congregate on music forums, and buy 30-40 dollar vinyl to supplement their collection anyway

A band like Dream Theater has almost 1.5 mil monthly listeners, and I doubt they receive more money from Spotify now than they would receive if somewhere along the line the value of the mp3 hasn't been reduced to zero by labels and executives who did nothing while the internet was becoming a global marketplace of mp3s. Then Spotify came along and legalized this marketplace and the industry went along because at least they'd get some cents out of these files without value, when they should have stepped in a long time ago to prevent them from losing value in the first place.

[gborland]

Uh, what? We were talking about the economics of days off on tour, not torrents and pirates?

[MoraWintersoul]

The reason why they have to squeeze maximum money out of the tour is because that's the only time a musician can actually make money. Bands used to go on tours to advertise their music, now they make new music because that's new material to tour.

[Whitefish]

I’m sure lots of you have used ChatGPT to try to make a setlist. I was playing with it and here’s one it came up with…

Make one using their most popular songs with a total run time of 2.5 hours

Sure! Here's a setlist featuring Dream Theater's most popular songs, tailored to fit within a 2.5-hour timeframe:

**Set 1:**

1. Pull Me Under
2. Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper
3. The Spirit Carries On
4. As I Am
5. Forsaken
6. Panic Attack
7. On the Backs of Angels

**Intermission**

**Set 2:**

1. The Enemy Inside
2. Through Her Eyes
3. In the Presence of Enemies Pt. 1: Prelude / Pt. 2: Resurrection
4. The Dance of Eternity
5. Octavarium

**Encore:**

1. Home
2. The Count of Tuscany

I tried it and got this:

Dream Theater 40th Anniversary Tour Setlist
Set 1:

The Glass Prison (13:52)
Panic Attack (7:16)
Pull Me Under (8:11)
Forsaken (5:36)
The Dance of Eternity (6:13)
Another Day (4:23)
Lost Not Forgotten (8:10)
Set 2:

Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper (9:32)
Bridges in the Sky (11:01)
The Spirit Carries On (6:39)
A Change of Seasons: I The Crimson Sunrise (3:56)
A Change of Seasons: II Innocence (3:05)
A Change of Seasons: III Carpe Diem (3:14)
A Change of Seasons: IV The Darkest of Winters (2:11)
A Change of Seasons: V Another World (1:32)
A Change of Seasons: VI The Inevitable Summer (3:51)
A Change of Seasons: VII The Crimson Sunset (3:51)
On the Backs of Angels (8:42)
Encore:

As I Am (7:47)
The Count of Tuscany (19:16)
Final Encore:

Octavarium (24:00)

Not a bad set! But I would swap out Pull Me Under, Another Day and As I Am, and add in Hell's Kitchen/Lines In The Sand somewhere.

[Dream Team]

The average age of a forumer here must be younger than I thought. I have NO idea what “ChatGPT” means.

[Setlist Scotty]

The average age of a forumer here must be younger than I thought. I have NO idea what “ChatGPT” means.

I'm pretty much the same age as you and I know what it is. With all the AI talk, it's hard *not* to know what ChatGPT is given that it's what has really kicked off all the AI talk of the last year or so, even though there have been various forms of AI long before it. I first learned about it about 18 months ago when a friend of mine experimented with it by posting the results of it writing the 5 minute talk he had been assigned to give. 

[hefdaddy42]

The average age of a forumer here must be younger than I thought. I have NO idea what “ChatGPT” means.

It probably is, but still, I have no idea how you don't know what ChatGPT is.

Even if this were the only site you visited on the internet, because it has certainly been discussed here some.

[TheHoveringSojourn808]

The average age of a forumer here must be younger than I thought. I have NO idea what “ChatGPT” means.

[nobloodyname]

[cramx3]

but does TAC know what ChatGPT is??

[nobloodyname]

I did consider asking ChatGPT whether TAC would fail automatically on point two!

[hefdaddy42]

but does TAC know what ChatGPT is??

Doubtful

[pg1067]

The average age of a forumer here must be younger than I thought. I have NO idea what “ChatGPT” means.

I don't know what it MEANS either.

But I know what it is.

[TAC]

I've heard of it for sure. It's an AI thing, but I don't know what it means, how to access it, or how to use it.

[Setlist Scotty]

I've heard of it for sure. It's an AI thing, but I don't know what it means, how to access it, or how to use it.

https://chatgpt.com/

[DTwwbwMP]

 

[Stadler]

Back in the beginning of the file-sharing era, CDs cost a lot, a full downloadable album came a bit later and didn't cost much less and there was basically no legal way to meaningfully sample music you'd be buying, so people started torrenting and stopped buying CDs. People are completely fine paying 11 dollars a month today for legally streaming, including people who used to pirate, and somewhere in the early 00's that willingness should have been funneled into downloadable albums that cost a couple of dollars and a way to sample an entire album before buying - say, you have the right to listen to it once, then you have to download if you want to listen to it again. Yes, there's people who put those 11 dollars to use to listen to way, way more than 5-10 new albums per month, but those people are rare, mostly congregate on music forums, and buy 30-40 dollar vinyl to supplement their collection anyway

A band like Dream Theater has almost 1.5 mil monthly listeners, and I doubt they receive more money from Spotify now than they would receive if somewhere along the line the value of the mp3 hasn't been reduced to zero by labels and executives who did nothing while the internet was becoming a global marketplace of mp3s. Then Spotify came along and legalized this marketplace and the industry went along because at least they'd get some cents out of these files without value, when they should have stepped in a long time ago to prevent them from losing value in the first place.

I'm going to gently push back here.  Not on you, but on the idea itself; I think this "blaming streaming" is a cop out.  I know it's popular for artists to point to that, but I think that sort of divests culpability from them.   

One, radio.  I used to make entire tapes from songs just off the radio.  Cost me the price of a tape and the radio; didn't pay a dime for the songs. The WRITERS get paid royalties for radio play, but performers generally do not (those are called "performance royalties"). 

Two, the artists themselves. I maintain that file sharing was as much the market correcting itself as anything else.  CDs and LPs started to get ridiculous. $18.99 for a CD that cost a buck and a half to produce.  Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.  There are some records I have that I have bought five or six different versions in different formats over the years (some more).  I grew up making cassettes from my LPs, in order to take my music to the car.   We were advised repeatedly that this was "okay" since it was fair use of the license I bought with the LP. 

I don't know; I'm sure it's had SOME effect, but and there will always be assholes that abuse the systems in place, but those assholes were there to begin with.  I think we're overestimating those that don't pay as having paid in the past; I don't believe that to be the case. 

[gborland]

I like that musicians have to work harder to make a living. They can't just sit back and watch the recording royalties flood in; they have to get off their asses and perform to people.

This is the way it was for hundreds of years, and this is the way it should be. The 20th century was an abberation.

[MoraWintersoul]

CDs and LPs started to get ridiculous. $18.99 for a CD that cost a buck and a half to produce.  Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered..

Well yeah, which is why they had to step in and make digital albums that cost less or their own fairer model of streaming before absolutely everyone got on the "mp3s are to be downloaded off the internet for free" train. These by and large are the same people who now pay the 11 dollars a month to Spotify, so clearly there's still money to be made in digital distribution of music and those mp3s weren't valueless after all. But they wanted to hang on to the 18 dollar CD and thought they'd get the people back into 18 dollar CDs by lawsuits and wagging fingers. Now we have travelling T-shirt salesmen and you can't really get a tour with decent breaks included even if you're a 60-year-old vocalist who's done this for 30 years in a rock band.

[Cool Chris]

There's something in my head, and I am not sure how to articulate it, on the nature of people being able to "make a living" doing... anything. "Should" the band in jammindude's example necessarily be able to make a living making music? If they cannot, do we need to assign blame somewhere?

[HOF]

Well yeah, which is why they had to step in and make digital albums that cost less or their own fairer model of streaming before absolutely everyone got on the "mp3s are to be downloaded off the internet for free" train. These by and large are the same people who now pay the 11 dollars a month to Spotify, so clearly there's still money to be made in digital distribution of music and those mp3s weren't valueless after all. But they wanted to hang on to the 18 dollar CD and thought they'd get the people back into 18 dollar CDs by lawsuits and wagging fingers. Now we have travelling T-shirt salesmen and you can't really get a tour with decent breaks included even if you're a 60-year-old vocalist who's done this for 30 years in a rock band.

I don’t think those people are paying for Spotify now. They just use the free subscription probably, which is why Spotify itself is not profitable.

[DreamerTV]

I don’t think those people are paying for Spotify now. They just use the free subscription probably, which is why Spotify itself is not profitable.

Out of more than 600millions monthly users, 230millions are Premiums.
Spotify makes 13.2 billions out of the 28 of the global music sales.
It's not profitable because record companies are still those who make the most out of all of this.