Goodwill is a powerful thing. In finance it is the difference in value between the assets of a company and the price it is sold for, representing the momentum built up in its cashflows.

Momentum then is a powerful force whether in sport, music or business. The Live 8 concert carried the goodwill of its audience of 3 billion, in both an altruistic and artistic sense. This would be the largest audience any artist on the bill is ever likely to play to. Although nerves will play a part, on the whole it would be reasonble to expect performances as polished and clipped as that which brought Roger Federer his third Wimbledon title. All these artists are in theory at the top of their game.

It is however a function of the “winner takes all” phenomenon, that this kind of artistic success need not necessarily reflect relative skill, either in composition or performance. Nor does it depend, as Federer’s has, on a continuous effort to improve. For example, REM’s performance of their angst-ballad “Everybody Hurts” was remarkably lacklustre from an objective fan’s perspective. But this does not matter, because all that the audience needs is a representation of what they love to evoke their memory of the song and their emotional attachment. They do not need the thing itself. Knowing this, the artist indulges in what Herbert Simon famously characterised as “satisficing.” The irony is this was coined as a critique of the performance of the firm.

By contrast, anyone attending a small-scale concert by a classical musician on the same night will expect technical precision of the highest order. So such a musician must play better to an audience of 35 than a rock god to 3 billion.