Last weekend, I was up in the capital for the London Jazz Festival, taking in a range of gigs across the weekend from Ronnie Scott’s to the 606 Club.

The artists I saw ranged from up-and-coming talents like Ashley Henry to Jon Weber playing a potted history of jazz piano, from Scott Joplin to Keith Jarrett.

The highlight for me was singer Ian Shaw and saxophonist Tony Kofi interpreting the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

Ashley Henry’s inclusion in the line-up was a late replacement for another pianist, Aaron Parks, who cancelled his tour to prioritise his health and well-being.

He’s far from the only artist to have done so in the last few months: he’s not even the only artist with that surname, with Arlo Parks cancelling her US tour for feeling ‘exhausted and dangerously low’.

Wet Leg, Disclosure, Sam Fender and Shawn Mendes are some of the other acts to have pulled shows for the same reasons.

The practicalities of going on tour have changed in recent years, and then again after Covid. Back in the day, the money in the music industry was in record sales.

Bands would go on tour to promote their albums. But then things switched round, partly thanks to streaming: now albums were there to promote the tours, when the real money was being made.

Covid brought that world to a halt, and gigging hasn’t got back into its groove as yet.

Many artists are finding themselves booked into crazy schedules, an attempt to play catch up that has led to many fearing burnout.

And even for the tours that are going ahead, the new economics are seeing those pre-pandemic profits vanish.

The cost-of-living crisis means that the price of putting a tour on has gone up: at the same time, the number of people paying to see concerts has gone down.

I wrote last week about the financial challenges faced by venues at the moment. But the same is true, and then some, for the artists performing in them.

The latest research from the Audience Agency makes for grim reading: 92 per cent of people are planning to scale back on entertainment spend outside the home because of the cost-of-living crisis; and when they do go out, they’re planning to spend less at the venues in terms of food, drink and merchandise.

Without gigging how do musicians promote their work? There’s a fascinating podcast called Limited Bandwidth by folk group The Last Inklings about the opportunities and challenges from focusing on social media instead.

It’s one answer, but leaves artists isolated, and spending time marketing when they could be writing, creating and performing.

Which, twice over, isn’t music to anyone’s ears.