Pollstar’s annual end-of-year summary of the concert touring business is looked forward to with equal parts anticipation and anxiety these days. A decade ago, as it was becoming apparent that the CD’s decline was going to be irreversible, the shift in revenue emphasis to live music was exhilarating. Shed and arena shows were slipping, but theater and clubs shows were accelerating. Festivals were establishing themselves as brands as much as events. Then came the recession, which seemed to put the lie to the anodyne notion that during rocky economic times, people would spend money on entertainment to distract themselves from financial gloom. From a high of $3.3 billion in revenues in 2009, Pollstar’s global end-of-year data for 2012 reveals a slip to an even $3 billion for the year’s top-50 tours globally, which was also virtually flat compared to 2011. The number of tickets sold, at nearly 35 million, was a quarter less than the 45.3 million sold four years earlier. The average ticket price, meanwhile, had increased by almost 15 percent.
Here in North America, the numbers were a bit better. The overall concert business for all touring acts in venues from clubs to stadiums hit a record $4.7 billion, up over eight percent from the previous year. More than $2.5 billion of that came from the top 100 tours for the year. Ticket sales and prices were both up by single-digit percentages, but that was largely thanks to a clutch of high-dollar-ducat tours, most notably Madonna, who at an average price of over $140 per ticket, led that part of the pack to top the Pollstar chart at over $133 million for the year.
Madge was one of 24 tours whose average ticket price exceeded $100, up from 18 in that range the year before. With the Stones already commanding prices in excess of $500 for some seats before scalping, we can expect that trend to continue.
Unsustainable
But not for too much longer. The live touring business has grown increasingly reliant on that handful of aging superstars for the bulk of its bullion. Of the top ten touring shows of the year globally, six — Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Roger Waters, Metallica, Elton John and Cirque du Soleil’s Michael Jackson: The Immortal (tribute shows are age-classified by the artist they portray; sorry) — were over 50 years old. And only the Red Hot Chili Peppers, most of whom are at or just over 50, kept 70-year-old Paul McCartney out of the top10. (The double bill of Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw came in at the number seven spot in last year’s top-10. The math for them is a toss-up: it’s tempting to go with their combined age of 89, but it’s probably fairer to use their average age, 44.5.)
It doesn’t take a math whiz to see that this is an unsustainable trend, even if this particular cohort now consumes more carrots than cocaine. The music industry is no longer producing acts that can build up that kind of steam for the long run. Coldplay and Lady Gaga were the only two representatives of Gen X last year to crack the top-10, and it’s questionable whether or not consumers have had enough opportunity to bond with them to the same extent that an earlier generation did with the artists of the 1970s and 1980s, compelling them to buy pricey tickets for their shows 20 years from now. If they go at all — as per Live Nation’s statistics, the average consumer goes to just 1.5 shows a year, turned off by ticketing fees and a secondary ticketing market, fed by bots, aggressive scalpers, or the artists and ticketing providers themselves, and that often reaps the best seats before the fans can even hit the “buy” link online.
EDM/Electronic Dance Music was supposed to be the big new trend, but Pollstar’s data reveals that the genre has yet to make a real dent in concerts. Bassnectar was the only EDM artist to crack the top-100 tours, and just barely, at number 98.
Inevitable Demographics
If the last Presidential election taught us anything, it’s the inevitability of demographics. The number crunchers were out in full force in 2012, with Nate Silver leading a band of quantitative analysts whose calculations outlasted the hype we saw on endless television commercials for an endless stream of candidates. And one of the key take-aways from Nov. 6 was that we are aging out of a status quo that is dramatically changing the complexion of the country. And it’s not just Republicans who will never be the same again.
This year has already seen some ominous signs, with AEG Live’s assets — including the O2 and the Staples Center — being on the sales block. Irving Azoff, a canary in the coal mine if there ever was one, has left Live Nation. Azoff may be headed into the entrepreneurial maw being created around the music business by venture capital; as of the end of last year, funding levels hovered at about $620 million, a 34-percent bump over 2011, as per statistics compiled by Digital Music News. That could put music in the same boat as tech was in 2000, or, for that matter, banks and real estate in 2008: a bubble of an equity play in which the core identity of the product becomes obscured and ultimately overwhelmed by its putative face value.
But the fuses have been lit for some time now on live music’s time bombs. Will Deadmau5 be the next Rolling Stones for 2033? Will country music’s dilution via 20-something popsters erode its historical ability to bond fans to artists and their live shows for decades? Too soon to tell. But don’t expect the Steel Wheelchairs tours to keep rolling forever.
