The 1970s were the golden era of the mid-sized music venue. From Max’s Kansas City, CBGB and the Bottom Line in New York to the Troubadour in L.A., a fire code of 500 to 1,500 people seemed like just the right size for rock ‘n’ roll. The larger theaters, like the Fillmores and the Beacon, were waiting to take touring acts to the next level, but the middle tier was the night-to-night Petri dish for the era’s music, a place for artists to develop and let fans watch them do it.
The Mid-Tier
The mid tier was bumped from the limelight in the 1980s and 1990s, during the reign of arena rock, when even country acts like Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks found 20,000-seaters too small. The technology that supports live stage performances duly scaled up to meet the demands of the stadiums — line arrays cornered the market, and their hangs grew ever longer; digital mix consoles were introduced as much for their ability to manage ever-larger I/O lists as for their sonic qualities; video screens became large and bright enough to be seen from the Space Shuttle.
The drop-off in recorded music sales seemed, at least initially, to signal that, as live music ticket sales supplanted CDs as the primary revenue source of the music industry, the large-scale evolution of the technology to support live performances would continue as well. But as it turned out, the underpinnings of the arena-rock era were just as vulnerable to being over-scaled. After steadily rising through the first decade of the century, live music revenues stalled. Ticket sales for the 50 biggest grossing tours globally fell 12 percent in 2010 to $2.93 billion, from $3.34 billion in 2009. In the U.S., the world’s single biggest music market, the proportional drop-off was even larger, with concerts here reporting a 15 percent decline in sales and widespread last-minute discounting reported. And those same top 50 acts played eight-percent fewer shows in 2010, according to Pollstar, which blamed rising ticket costs to consumers as a major reason for the downturn.
500 to 1,500
The response has been what is becoming a strategic repositioning away from arena-sized touring and on to night-after-night gigs at mid-sized club venues that are in that same 500-to-1,500 sweet spot that we saw emerge 40 years ago. In some cases, individual entrepreneurs are starting up new mid-sized venues, such as classical musicians David Handler and Justin Kantor, who opened Le Poisson Rouge in New York (on the site of the old Village Gate), featuring John Storyk-designed sound and acoustics. In other cases, it’s the large corporate entities, Live Nation and AEG Live, that had come to dominate the big concert business in the previous decade and that are now focusing on the mid-sized tier in search of revenues.
In 2007, Live Nation took over the venerable rock club, Irving Plaza, in Manhattan, in the process revitalizing the classic Fillmore franchise that Live Nation also represents. A year earlier, Live Nation acquired the House of Blues chain of music clubs. Not to be outdone, in 2007, AEG Live bought two high-profile Seattle clubs, the 1,147-capacity Showbox at the Market, and the 1,511-capacity Showbox SoDo. But what’s as interesting is the fact that some of the best-known brands in the mid-size world, like Manhattan jazz Mecca, The Blue Note, and, more recently, the Highline Ballroom, have adopted expansionist strategies, taking their mid-market expertise and marquees to new locations. For instance, the Blue Note Entertainment Group has backed new mid-sized venues in Baltimore, Richmond and Washington, D.C., with more to come.
Mid-Sized Gear
The scale of the technology has been responding to this trend. Some visceral evidence of this is found in what has become a new category in PA products, the compact line array. Bose, though better known for its consumer products, was an early player in this silo with their ingenious MA12 system. But they were quickly joined by other contenders, like Renkus-Heinz’s Iconyx, JBL’s VT4886 subcompact line array and its CBT Series line array columns, the Meyer Sound MINA compact line array and Community Professional’s Entasys column array.
Pro audio retailers are noticing the uptick in this venue category. Dan Scalpone, regional manager for south-central U.S. for Guitar Center Professional, says the mid-sized clubs he’s seeing in the Midwest and South are looking for powered PA systems, with JBL VerTec and QSC WideLine-8 being among the most popular.
“I’m also seeing these systems going into existing businesses,” he says, identifying a trend that sees restaurants and other establishments adding live music to attract more revenue.
Good News for Mixers
All this activity around the burgeoning mid-sized music venue should be music to the ears of sound mixers. The indie-artist paradigm that increasingly dominates the record business is creating a horde of new artists who are perfectly scaled for this type of house, and that means more jobs available for mixing and systems maintenance. Furthermore, after 20 years of being treated to eye-popping big-venue technologies, patrons are expecting a much more sophisticated experience, no matter what sized venue they’re in. So mid-sized clubs that two decades ago would never have considered video and moving lights are now buying those technologies, in part to support the rise of DJ-based electronica in the U.S. That will create even more employment opportunities as club management looks for qualified operators to run them.
This isn’t pie-in-the-sky stuff — it’s happening, and it’s a nice and upbeat note to end 2011 on: more jobs in more places around the U.S. And more of you get to sleep in your own bed every night.
