{"id":1054,"date":"2007-12-25T09:59:23","date_gmt":"2007-12-25T17:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/12\/25\/the-pollstar-numbers\/"},"modified":"2007-12-25T09:59:23","modified_gmt":"2007-12-25T17:59:23","slug":"the-pollstar-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/25\/the-pollstar-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pollstar Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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U.S. concert business slumps despite reunion tours<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Another one bites the dust.<\/p>\n

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

Concert promoters cleaned up on the efforts of record companies.\u00c2\u00a0 Labels built the bands and promoters sold the tickets.\u00c2\u00a0 If you want creativity, innovation, don’t look to the concert industry.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the appliance business once removed.<\/p>\n

If Van Halen, the Police and Genesis can’t bring in the bucks, who will?<\/p>\n

Oh, I know… Led Zeppelin.<\/p>\n

A good payday for promoters, but not the answer to their problems.<\/p>\n

You see there just aren’t any other superstar baby boomer\/classic rock acts out there to come back and clean up.\u00c2\u00a0 Barbra Streisand’s tour was a near-disaster, scads of unsold tickets that were ultimately given away.\u00c2\u00a0 Genesis didn’t sell out.\u00c2\u00a0 Even the Police didn’t go clean at every date.\u00c2\u00a0 It seems the boomers just don’t care as much as they used to.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re more into vacations\/second homes\/lifestyle than overpaying to go to the gig.<\/p>\n

Yes, the classic rock tours are EXPENSIVE!\u00c2\u00a0 Kids don’t go, not unless they’re brought by their parents.\u00c2\u00a0 Who can afford the cost?\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not like you’re going to be sitting anywhere close.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s pure nostalgia.\u00c2\u00a0 For a time when music mattered, when it counted, when going to the gig was more important than…almost anything.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 The concert promoters have killed the golden goose.\u00c2\u00a0 Ticket prices keep going up, but grosses are going down.\u00c2\u00a0 The fan has been fucked in the ass to the point where he just doesn’t care anymore.<\/p>\n

Of course that’s an overstatement.\u00c2\u00a0 But concert attendance is not a regular monthly event anymore, more like a once a year outing.\u00c2\u00a0 And the real problem isn’t the tickets so much as a lack of acts people want to see.<\/p>\n

Sure, there’s an occasional instant success like Hannah Montana, but most of the old arena acts were built over years.\u00c2\u00a0 And now it takes even longer, to build that mindshare based on quality and credibility!<\/p>\n

Train-wrecks will get people to come once.\u00c2\u00a0 But this business can’t survive on one time affairs.\u00c2\u00a0 Whether it be Ms. Montana or the classic rock reunion.\u00c2\u00a0 Where’s the investment in the growth of our business, its bottom line health?\u00c2\u00a0 Who is going to break acts?<\/p>\n

It’s hard to get people to pay attention.\u00c2\u00a0 The best avenue is quality.\u00c2\u00a0 But quality doesn’t go nuclear instantly.\u00c2\u00a0 So, those with Wall Street bosses look for something quicker.\u00c2\u00a0 They throw shit on the wall and see what sticks.\u00c2\u00a0 And now, not much.<\/p>\n

So who’s going to make Live Nation’s bottom line?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, they can make some money on ticketing, but people have to want to see the acts!\u00c2\u00a0 And even though AEG does a good job of promoting superstars, we can see that there are very few superstars left.\u00c2\u00a0 Who is asking the tough questions?<\/p>\n

Fuck radio hits.\u00c2\u00a0 You need something that feeds souls.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why Dave Matthews is so successful.\u00c2\u00a0 And even Nickelback.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The good news is that music will survive.\u00c2\u00a0 Like a forest after a fire, there are seedlings that will grow into tall trees.\u00c2\u00a0 But these seedlings are not being planted by major record labels or the usual suspect concert promoters.\u00c2\u00a0 Rick Rubin hasn’t got the answers.\u00c2\u00a0 And neither does Michael Rapino.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re trying to make the old numbers work.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re looking at their operations backwards.\u00c2\u00a0 How do they get to the same numbers as before?\u00c2\u00a0 YOU CAN’T!\u00c2\u00a0 Sony can only survive by selling 10,000 of this and 15,000 of that.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody’s got to make a lot less money.\u00c2\u00a0 And, over YEARS, some of these acts will blow up.\u00c2\u00a0 Sony needs to look a lot more like Jac Holzman’s Elektra than Tommy Mottola’s juggernaut.<\/p>\n

As for LiveNation…\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Does anything this company does resemble the efforts of Bill Graham?\u00c2\u00a0 Where does the audience fit into the equation?\u00c2\u00a0 Where’s the development of new talent?\u00c2\u00a0 Regional promoters weren’t only about the bucks, they loved the acts, the music!<\/p>\n

There are people who still love the music.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of them even with fat cat salaries.\u00c2\u00a0 But the business can no longer support these salaries.\u00c2\u00a0 These people either have to make a lot less, or they need to be wiped clean from the slate.<\/p>\n

That’s reality.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the economics dictate you can no longer support a rich lifestyle.\u00c2\u00a0 Get an MBA, go work for a hedge fund.\u00c2\u00a0 Or follow Marko Babineau into real estate.\u00c2\u00a0 But there’s no way you can jigger the numbers to make them work under the old paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 The days when music drove the culture are done.\u00c2\u00a0 The custodians of the sound fucked up so badly, based on their greed, that the public has moved on.\u00c2\u00a0 Music can regain its force, but not through the efforts of those now in charge, their priorities are all screwed up.\u00c2\u00a0 Wall Street, stock options, bonuses…\u00c2\u00a0 Quite different from Herb & Jerry, Chris Blackwell and the aforementioned Jack Holzman.\u00c2\u00a0 They all sold their companies for a ton of bread.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s not why they got into the business.\u00c2\u00a0 They worked, sweated blood, for years before they cashed out.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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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.\u00c2\u00a0 Labels built the bands and promoters sold the tickets.\u00c2\u00a0 If you want creativity, innovation, don’t look to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-h0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}