U.S. concert business slumps despite reunion tours

Another one bites the dust.

The major labels blamed Napster/P2P…what is the concert business going to blame its nosedive on?

Concert promoters cleaned up on the efforts of record companies.  Labels built the bands and promoters sold the tickets.  If you want creativity, innovation, don’t look to the concert industry.  It’s the appliance business once removed.

If Van Halen, the Police and Genesis can’t bring in the bucks, who will?

Oh, I know… Led Zeppelin.

A good payday for promoters, but not the answer to their problems.

You see there just aren’t any other superstar baby boomer/classic rock acts out there to come back and clean up.  Barbra Streisand’s tour was a near-disaster, scads of unsold tickets that were ultimately given away.  Genesis didn’t sell out.  Even the Police didn’t go clean at every date.  It seems the boomers just don’t care as much as they used to.  They’re more into vacations/second homes/lifestyle than overpaying to go to the gig.

Yes, the classic rock tours are EXPENSIVE!  Kids don’t go, not unless they’re brought by their parents.  Who can afford the cost?  And it’s not like you’re going to be sitting anywhere close.  And all of these acts are running on fumes, not one of them is putting out new material, it’s not like there’s anything to hook a fan.  It’s pure nostalgia.  For a time when music mattered, when it counted, when going to the gig was more important than…almost anything.

Concerts are no longer edgy affairs, rather they’re corporate extravaganzas, and they feel that way, with their sponsors and rip-off ticket fees and merch.  The concert promoters have killed the golden goose.  Ticket prices keep going up, but grosses are going down.  The fan has been fucked in the ass to the point where he just doesn’t care anymore.

Of course that’s an overstatement.  But concert attendance is not a regular monthly event anymore, more like a once a year outing.  And the real problem isn’t the tickets so much as a lack of acts people want to see.

Sure, there’s an occasional instant success like Hannah Montana, but most of the old arena acts were built over years.  And now it takes even longer, to build that mindshare based on quality and credibility!

Train-wrecks will get people to come once.  But this business can’t survive on one time affairs.  Whether it be Ms. Montana or the classic rock reunion.  Where’s the investment in the growth of our business, its bottom line health?  Who is going to break acts?

It’s hard to get people to pay attention.  The best avenue is quality.  But quality doesn’t go nuclear instantly.  So, those with Wall Street bosses look for something quicker.  They throw shit on the wall and see what sticks.  And now, not much.

So who’s going to make Live Nation’s bottom line?  Sure, they can make some money on ticketing, but people have to want to see the acts!  And even though AEG does a good job of promoting superstars, we can see that there are very few superstars left.  Who is asking the tough questions?

Fuck radio hits.  You need something that feeds souls.  That’s why Dave Matthews is so successful.  And even Nickelback.  You might hate Nickelback, but the band’s rock is more akin to the heyday of the concert business than any of the beat-infused tracks whose purveyors can’t sell out much more than clubs.

The good news is that music will survive.  Like a forest after a fire, there are seedlings that will grow into tall trees.  But these seedlings are not being planted by major record labels or the usual suspect concert promoters.  Rick Rubin hasn’t got the answers.  And neither does Michael Rapino.  They’re trying to make the old numbers work.  They’re looking at their operations backwards.  How do they get to the same numbers as before?  YOU CAN’T!  Sony can only survive by selling 10,000 of this and 15,000 of that.  Everybody’s got to make a lot less money.  And, over YEARS, some of these acts will blow up.  Sony needs to look a lot more like Jac Holzman’s Elektra than Tommy Mottola’s juggernaut.

As for LiveNation…   Does anything this company does resemble the efforts of Bill Graham?  Where does the audience fit into the equation?  Where’s the development of new talent?  Regional promoters weren’t only about the bucks, they loved the acts, the music!

There are people who still love the music.  Some of them even with fat cat salaries.  But the business can no longer support these salaries.  These people either have to make a lot less, or they need to be wiped clean from the slate.

That’s reality.

If you’re not willing to starve, if you’re not doing it for the love, you’ve got no place in the future of the music business.  Because the economics dictate you can no longer support a rich lifestyle.  Get an MBA, go work for a hedge fund.  Or follow Marko Babineau into real estate.  But there’s no way you can jigger the numbers to make them work under the old paradigm.  The days when music drove the culture are done.  The custodians of the sound fucked up so badly, based on their greed, that the public has moved on.  Music can regain its force, but not through the efforts of those now in charge, their priorities are all screwed up.  Wall Street, stock options, bonuses…  Quite different from Herb & Jerry, Chris Blackwell and the aforementioned Jack Holzman.  They all sold their companies for a ton of bread.  But that’s not why they got into the business.  They worked, sweated blood, for years before they cashed out.  Let them be a beacon for all those now getting into the business, not these pricks with the ink who are trying to prop up a decaying castle.