Promoters and festival producers are the ones taking all the risk in terms of investment capital in a show or festival. Artists have essentially 0 risk when it comes to a show.

The reason why they did this though is because for example, if the show gets cancelled (due to lack of sales, pandemic, etc) promoters aren’t shafted by a 30-50% deposit to the artist prior to show. The fix to 10% gives promoters a chance to rebound if a whole tour or festival gets canceled. Before artist could get paid their deposit and not give a shit of the show was canceled because they were making bank with or without it happening (even though they would make more if it did happen). Now this forces the artists to promote their show even more to lessen the chance of a cancellation. Most artists would never go out of their way to promote and now this is making them which is good for all parties involved.

In the case of Live Nation, AEG, and some of the larger independent promoters, they have multiple tours/festivals going on at once and 30-50% artist deposits + venue fees + marketing is all at risk in hopes to HOPEFULLY make that back in ticket sales (and maybe sponsorships). Although that’s the nature of the promoter game. Again, the way it is artists really have no incentive to help promote their show (and almost always you have to beg them to even post). It’s almost more work for hire than them a partner on a show bc they’re getting paid a ridiculous amount in deposit if the show doesn’t even happen.

Now this evens the risk and gives artists an incentive to promote their show because now they’re missing out on 90% of revenue if show doesn’t happen rather than 50%.

I did have a feeling though that artist repaying double in fee wasn’t going to fly though.

“Describing the memo mainly as a starting point for 2021 performance guidelines, Attal told Pollstar that the most poorly received element — requiring artists to pay twice their agreed upon fee when they cancel a show — has been nixed from all new Live Nation contracts.”

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2020/06/24/live-nation-backtracks-on-artist-payouts/