What Happens When an Artist Like Lil Uzi Vert Is a No-Show at a Concert?

Lil Uzi Vert is the latest artist to no-show at a concert. What happens next?

Lil Uzi Vert performs during JMBLYA at Fair Park
Getty

Lil Uzi Vert performs during JMBLYA at Fair Park

Lil Uzi Vert performs during JMBLYA at Fair Park

This past weekend, Lil Uzi Vert was a no-show at Minnesota's Soundset Festival. The missed set came as a surprise to concertgoers, though the festival explained towards the end of the day that Uzi missed the show due to illness. The rapper's label, Atlantic, declined to comment any further.

So what happens now? What goes on behind-the-scenes when an artist misses a concert? There are a myriad of factors, of course, and the type of show and the reason for the missed performance are two of the biggest. 

Most tours these days have non-appearance insurance, so that costs are covered when a star can't get onstage for reasons outside of their control. The situations covered by the coverage range from the banal (illness, bad weather) to the extreme (terrorism, epidemics). But one thing not taken care of by this insurance? A voluntary no-show. In that case, the performer and his or her team is liable for everything.

When a headlining artist cancels multiple dates on a huge tour, like Kanye recently or Lady Gaga back in 2013, things can get complicated (and expensive!) quickly. Losses from ticket sales can quickly reach into the tens of millions of dollars when double-digit numbers of shows get nixed. Insurance will cover most of that, but there's still a giant headache—notifying the venues, rescheduling if possible, getting all the people and gear home, letting the press know, none of which is easy or cheap. 

But what about individual concert or festival appearances? According to Guy Routte, a partner in W.A.R. Media who has long helped guide the career of rap legend Pharoahe Monch, sometimes artists try to take care of that on their own by finding a similar act to hop on the bill in their stead. Routte remembers a time when Pharoahe couldn't make it to some scheduled festivals, so they hit the phones themselves to find a replacement.

"We were in Copenhagen, and Pharoahe got really sick and we had to pull out of a couple of festivals that we were headlining. So I started calling our contemporaries like De La Soul and Talib [Kweli] and Black Star and The Roots to see who was available to try and make up these dates. We'd just give them our first half [of the pay], and the promoter would pay them the second half, or we'd work something out. So sometimes the artist can be in cahoots with the promoter to try and cover the date if they can't make it due to illness or something like that."

Routte points out that in live show situations, artists generally receive half the money up front, and half on the day of the show before hitting the stage. That, of course, leaves someone in Uzi's situation liable for the money he's already been paid. But because of the way the music business works, that's unlikely to be an issue for very long.

"For somebody at Uzi's level, you're dealing with his booking agent," Routte explains. "His booking agent's probably somebody Soundset deals with all the time, so they're working behind-the-scenes to make it right financially. I'm sure that there'll be no issues in terms of, 'Uzi owes us money.' They'll get it back one way or the other. They'll do a makeup show, or they'll send the money back with apologies. There's definitely negotiations going on behind-the-scenes."

Those negotiations are happening because one missed show affects a lot more people than tens of thousands of disappointed fans in Minnesota. A concert appearance is a delicate negotiation where everyone involved—people at venues, promoters, bookers, people on the artist's team—are making a promise that the artist will be where he or she says, at the time proscribed. On the rare occasions that doesn't happen, everyone has to work together to try and make things right. As Routte points out, "It's way bigger than Uzi."

Latest in Music