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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

> Despite all the luxuries, “corporate events can be sort of soul-destroying,” Viecelli said. “It’s not really an audience. It’s a convention or a party, and you just happen to be making noise at one end of it.”

Expensive noise!

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I work for a Fortune 100 company that fairly frequently has big name artists perform at corporate events. I always feel a bit sorry for them. Most employees are just wandering around, chatting with friends and enjoying the free food and drinks. Hardly anyone pays attention to the musicians.

Most corporate employees tend to skew towards narcissism, lack social skills, and tend to lack colorful life experiences. Ask me how I know.

The musicians are probably the most fun and interesting people in the room.

I really like this kind of informal type of music where you can alternate between chatting to people and listening to some music. There's certainly a place where the music is the #1 attention, but in general I think this more informal type of atmosphere is how music is supposed to work. This is even more even more true if anyone can just join in if they want (which probably isn't the case for these parties).

Joe Rogan told a story where he was at some rich guy's party and Stone Temple Pilots performed. Hardly anyone paid any attention to them. He said that they nonetheless cranked out any amazing set.

Honestly, this could afford a lot of liberty. If no one's really listening then you could treat it like a jam session and polish new work.

Doing a jam session while the crowd are "networking" and exchanging linked-in tier anecdotes about how they thought they were missing a meeting with the CEO because they were helping a homeless person is not a good creative environment.

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