Chapter 1. What Stands for the Show

The sixteen Dionyas questions on the stage and the tour settle one thing in the design of their asking: no visible sign of a show may stand for the show until it has been set beside what it might hide. The eight questions on the stage keep the room apart from its images and its measures, the camera's close-up, the precision of a dance, the plan of a controlled show, the scale of a larger hall. The eight questions on the tour keep the count apart from the audience it counts, the sold-out notice, the gross, the price, the loss. The chapter shows how, and adds to the two debates of the Introduction: on liveness and the audience, and on the economics of concerts.

1.1Data and method

The data are Dionyas's public list of inquiries, fetched with plain GET requests and kept as snapshots. The list holds 1,539 inquiries across 32 domains, of these kinds: 759 cases, 500 historical questions, 256 general review designs, 18 chart questions and 6 signal questions. It describes its own type as editorial question design and gives its count of generated judgments as 0. A record has the fields that this study reads: a title, a question, a scope that says what the inquiry covers, a list of the material it needs, a boundary that says what it may not claim, and a state.

The selection rule is one sentence: every general review design in the list that names both the domain of stage and performance and the domain of shows and touring among its domains. There are 8 general designs for each of the 32 domains, and each lists four domains: its own and the three that the studio's domain table links to it. Stage and performance is linked to shows and touring, to growth and turning points, and to arrangement and sound; shows and touring is linked to stage and performance, to capital and portfolio, and to countries and languages. The two domains name each other, and no other domain's designs name both, so the rule yields 16 records: the 8 led by the stage, all in the qualitative lane, and the 8 led by the tour, all in the evidence lane. The domain table files the first under content and experience and the second under business and operations. The rule was chosen to read the studio's general designs on live music, written for no particular case, rather than its historical questions and cases, which make up 55 and 35 of the 106 inquiries led by either domain. None of the sixteen names an artist, a show, a venue, a city or a company. Three figures occur in them, two in one question and one in one title.

The appendix gives the records read, word for word. The records are in Korean; every quoted sentence below is from one English translation made for this study, sentence by sentence, with nothing added. Dionyas does not say who drafted these sixteen, and no fact about performers, audiences, promoters or ticketing is drawn from them. Where a record says what an audience feels or a price does, that is the record's framing, which this study has not checked.

Two kinds of property are set aside before reading. The studio's form, a scope, needs and a boundary in every inquiry, is not a finding. Nor is frame, wording copied from record to record. Frame is measured here by five-word runs, counting a run as frame when it recurs in at least 5% of a site's records and in at least 3. Across the whole list the titles and the questions hold no frame at all, while the scopes are 46% frame, the needs 30% and the boundaries 41%.

Inside the selection the copying is complete. In all sixteen the scope is the leading domain's name followed by one sentence that every general design carries: the artist, work, market and period it applies to are named when it is recorded. The first need is the leading domain's evidence line from the domain table, word for word, and the second is a line shared by all 256 general designs, on the subject, the period, the terms of comparison and counter-examples. The boundary is the leading domain's caution line, again word for word. For the stage it says that edited video and the experience on site are not to be compared as if under the same conditions; for the tour, that the number of admissions is not the number of unique fans, and that gross revenue is not profit.

Inside the selection, then, the scope, the needs, the boundary and the state are 100% frame: two scopes, two need lists, two boundaries and one state among sixteen records. The two boundaries state the studio's stance, copied into every design of a domain, and this study does not read them as findings, though it notes where a question repeats their concern in its own words. What is each record's own is its title and its question: sixteen distinct titles and sixteen distinct questions, which hold 0% frame at the site's threshold and inside the selection. These are the evidence.

The questions share a shape. Every one ends in a single question mark, and none can be answered yes or no. Fifteen of the sixteen set a situation or a condition before the question proper; ten ask what or which, five ask how, and one asks how far. Ten of the sixteen name, in so many words, a distinction, a separation, a comparison or a difference. The two halves divide their vocabulary: six of the eight tour questions name a price, a cost, revenue, profit or loss, demand, supply, a refund, a booking or a purchase, and none of the eight stage questions does; four of the stage questions name the body on stage, its movement, gaze, breath or tempo, and none of the tour questions does. Every number in this paper comes from a script that reads only the snapshots, by simple word tests on the Korean original; the counts describe the records and nothing else.

1.2The room and its images

The first finding is that the eight questions on the stage never take a stand-in for the room as the room itself. Each names something that represents a performance, a camera's frame, a standard of precision, a plan, a larger hall, and asks what that representation adds to the experience of being there, or takes away from it. The plainest instance sets the camera against the stage.

The question sets a member's fancam, one member seen close, beside the full stage, the show as composed. It imagines a scene that works in the first and fails in the second, and it does not ask which view is the true one. It credits the camera with an appeal of its own, an appeal the camera made, and asks how it differs from the appeal of the composition. Auslander, Liveness (2002), asks what the status of the live event is in a culture dominated by mass media. On this study's reading, the question answers in miniature by refusing a hierarchy in either direction: the mediated image is not dismissed as a copy, and it is not allowed to stand in for the stage. The studio's caution line, that edited video and the experience on site are not compared under the same conditions, is frame; the fancam question is the one place where a record turns that caution into a case.

The question on moving a small show to a large hall asks the converse: not what a medium adds, but what it cannot carry.

The question names three means of carrying a show into a large hall: video, sound and movement paths. It grants that they preserve something and asks for the remainder, what experience cannot be carried. Kjus and Danielsen, Live mediation (2016), find artists scaling particular aspects of a studio work up or down on stage, and negotiating authorship and expression as they do. This study reads the question as asking the same thing of scale in the opposite direction, from a small room to a large one, and as naming in advance the two things it expects to be at stake: a gaze that depends on nearness, and silence.

The most searching of the eight concerns control.

The title states a thesis that the question then holds open: that risk persuades. The question sets a perfectly controlled stage beside a live one with small variables, supposes that the audience's immersion differs, and asks for two things at once, what makes liveness and what is a safety problem. Swarbrick and colleagues (2019) note that live music unfolds in a way that is unique and not predetermined, and find faster head movements at a live concert than at playback of the same songs. The Dionyas question takes that unpredictability as a possible source of liveness, but it does not let it pass as a value without limit. It is the only one of the sixteen that names safety, and it asks that the variable which persuades be told apart from the variable which endangers. It does not say where the line falls, and this study does not draw it either.

Two questions take apart what a polished performance can hold together. The first concerns precision and presence.

The second concerns song and dance.

In the first, accuracy is granted and found insufficient: the members leave no impression. The question asks for a different reading of three things the eye can follow, movement paths, gaze and the sections given to one member. In the second, difficulty is granted and found costly: the vocals suffer. The question names what might change, movement, breathing, arrangement, and what is to be kept, the song's core emotion. Both questions refuse to let a measurable virtue, precision or difficulty, stand for the performance, and both locate what matters in what the audience receives, an impression or an emotion. The title of the second speaks of a priority, and the priority it names is between two parts of one performance, not between performers.

Two questions turn to the audience directly.

The first divides the audience into those who already know the artist and those who do not. Swarbrick and colleagues found that self-reported fans moved faster and entrained more than neutral listeners; Brown and Knox, Why go to pop concerts? (2016), found the unknown parts of a show, support bands among them, to be a reason people attend. This study reads the Dionyas question as addressing the listener who has not come for this artist, and as asking what that listener needs first, before any admiration exists. The second question splits the talk between songs into three possible roles, information, persona and rapport, and asks which matters. Pitts, What Makes an Audience? (2005), examines how social and musical enjoyment combine to produce commitment and a sense of involvement. The question on remarks between songs takes the social part of that mixture as something a performer does on purpose, and asks when it serves the music and when it interrupts it.

The last of the eight is the only stage question that names cities, and it brings the tour onto the stage.

The question concerns one tour carried through several cities, and it attends to what changed from one to the next: ad-libs, tempos, breathing. It asks for two effects and keeps them apart, the audience's experience and the burden on the artist. Here the performer's body is something that bears a cost, and the question does not settle whether variation is a gift to the audience or a symptom of strain.

Taken together, the eight questions describe the room as the measure of its own stand-ins: the camera's frame, the large hall's tools, the controlled show, the precise dance, the difficult move, the set built for fans, the remark between songs, the repeated show. In each the question asks what the stand-in adds or leaves out, and in each the experience of an audience in the room stands on the other side. To the question of what liveness is among media, the design answers by refusing to rank the room above its images or beneath them, and by asking, each time, for the difference.

1.3The count and the audience

The second finding is that the eight questions on the tour take the measures by which concerts are usually judged and ask what each cannot say about the people it counts. None of them asks for a figure. Each starts from a figure or a result, and asks how far it reaches.

The first question takes the most familiar sign of success.

The title puts the matter as arithmetic: sold out is a fraction, and its meaning depends on what lies underneath. The question names four things to be told apart, seats first offered, seats added later, invitations and seats held back from sale, and asks how far, once they are told apart, the announcement can speak about demand. It does not suppose that the announcement is false. Becker, A Note on Restaurant Pricing (1991), asks why successful events do not raise prices even with persistent excess demand, and supposes that one consumer's demand rises with what others demand. On this study's reading, Becker treats excess demand as a fact to be explained, while the Dionyas question treats the sign of it, a sold-out house, as a claim whose denominator must first be found. The question names neither resale nor the brokers that Courty, Some Economics of Ticket Resale (2003), finds reselling a significant fraction of tickets; seats held back from sale are as close as it comes.

The question on price keeps four effects apart.

The word each carries the design. A higher price is set beside four things that could move in different directions: gross revenue, new audiences, return visits and the access that fans experience. Krueger, The Economics of Real Superstars (2005), explains a steep rise in concert prices, and Courty and Pagliero, The Impact of Price Discrimination on Revenue (2012), find that pricing by seat category raises revenue. Both works measure what price does to revenue. The Dionyas question includes revenue and refuses to let it summarise the rest; it asks who is in the hall after the price changes, and how getting in feels to those who already care. It does not ask whether the price should be raised, and nothing in it bears on that choice.

Scale is the subject of the next question.

It is one of the two records that contain a figure, and the figures fix a comparison rather than report a result: one large show against three small ones. The question lists four dimensions and asks for differences among them, not for a verdict. Cost and demand are the market's terms; the close experience and the burden on the artist are not. This is the question where the two domains meet most plainly, since the close experience is the subject of the stage question on moving a small show to a large hall, and the artist's burden is the subject of the stage question on change on tour.

The question on movement between cities asks about an audience that cannot be seen in any one hall.

It is the only one of the sixteen that does not set a situation before its question, and the only one that limits its own method: whatever count answers it must be aggregate and must identify no one. The studio's caution line says that admissions are not unique fans; this question, in its own words, asks how far one could get towards unique audiences without tracing persons.

Reputation enters with a show that pleased and displeased at once.

The praise is musical; the complaints concern entry, sightlines and sound, the conditions of the room. The question asks how two responsibilities are to be separated, the artist's and the operator's. It assigns no blame. It is the only one of the sixteen that speaks of responsibility, and it keeps the reputation of the music from absorbing the failures of the venue, or the reverse.

The first tour is the subject of the question that most directly sets a result against what it leaves out.

The loss is not denied. The question supposes that the tour fell short of breaking even, and asks how three other outcomes, an audience, local partners and a capacity to perform, are to be recorded apart from it. It is the only one of the sixteen that asks how something is to be recorded. The studio's caution line separates gross revenue from profit; this question separates profit and loss from everything else a tour might leave. Black, Fox and Kochanowski, Concert Tour Success in North America (2007), describe the industry's annual chart in which performers are ranked by gross concert revenues. On this study's reading, the Dionyas question addresses the tour that such a ranking would place low or leave off, and asks what record of it could be kept besides its account.

Time after the show is the subject of the next.

Its title fixes a window of 12 weeks, the second of the two records with figures. The question names three traces a show might leave in a city, listening again, buying merchandise, waiting for the next show, and supposes that they diverge. It does not ask which of them is the real measure of a relationship; it asks what relationship can be said to have remained when the measures disagree.

The last question concerns failure and its repair.

Smith, Bolton and Wagner, A Model of Customer Satisfaction with Service Encounters Involving Failure and Recovery (1999), find, in restaurants and hotels, that customers prefer recovery that matches the kind of failure, in amounts commensurate with its size. The Dionyas question asks something close about concerts, how the handling of a cancellation bears on later booking, but it names its effect as conditional before any answer, and it divides recovery into speed and manner and into refunds, notices and substitute experiences. This study reads the question as asking for the conditions under which recovery matters rather than for a rule of recovery.

Read together, the eight questions treat every count as a claim about people that needs a denominator. A sold-out notice needs its seats, a price change needs its audience, a comparison of venues needs its artist, a set of cities needs its unique listeners, a reputation needs its responsibilities, a loss needs its remainder, a window of weeks needs its relationship, a cancellation needs its conditions. The economics of concerts explains the figures; the Dionyas questions ask what the figures stand for, and none asks for a figure in return.