The live music business is missing most of the benefits that digital could provide
Concert promoters, ticket-selling platforms, and musicians making a living performing live have one thing in common: they are missing out on most opportunities the digital age could provide, depending heavily on monies from Boomers’ and XGeners’ pockets. This is a tragedy. How can we make it have a happy ending?
Imagine: On a well-curated, comprehensive online news channel presenting Live performances in the performing arts, the news breaks about your favorite act coming to town. The show is 12 months into the future, but you get excited and want to buy a ticket immediately. Through direct links via your social or messenger feed, you enter a ticketing platform with two or three clicks.
Once you land there, the process is about Grown-up service for those who pay grown-up prices.
On the platform, thanks to a great UI that gives you a genuinely satisfying UX, you have immediate transparency on all the prices for the various ticket segments offered for that particular night. If you click on a seat or area of the venue, little boxes explain the pros and cons of this specific position within the venue. There are no confusing floorplans to scroll through, no “best *whatever*” offers that prefer to sell you the most expensive places first … Eventually, you make an informed decision. With three more clicks, you buy the ticket. Send to the ticket platform you prefer in a digital format you like. There is no “advanced booking fee” or other previously hidden costs or charges.
While at checkout, the artist/promoter offers some intriguing add-ons that might be truly interesting to attend or use during the live show. These could be meet-and-greet sessions or merch items for pre-order that you can pay for right away to avoid the hustle of buying at the on-site kiosk by picking them up after the show (because it’s not cool to have to stand in the blistering sun 45 minutes to learn the T-Shirt you where looking for just got sold out a minute ago). These could also be customized travel and hotel offers that make sense for seriously enhancing your experience (e.g., what about that one “Fans only”-Hotel group booking … not to mention an “Only Fans”-group booking, Honi soit qui mal y pense :-) )
Also, you have different payment options at checkout, some of which allow the steep pricing to spread out. Plus, the ticket remains fully refundable. Refunds are not dependent on cancellations. The same return policies apply, like if you buy a hair dryer. Also, you can resell without any problem or “new login,” etc., at the same point of sale at face value or across platforms.
At the end of the process, you select the method of digital communication you want the artist/promoter to use to keep you in the loop before a digital version of the ticket is transferred to a ticket system on a device of your choice.
Overall, it was a fun process and a great experience that acknowledged you as a valued customer. Now you are all set.
The following 12 months, in the run-up to the concert, the artist stays in touch with you about that particular night coming up. Through Messages on the platform of your choice, there is communication, more special offers, and maybe even an “early birds only” unique opportunity to thank you for your loyalty and willingness to spend time and budget with the respective artist, show, or event that night.
Well, wouldn’t all of this be nice?
None of this is a reality in 2024 — at least not as such a package of positive experiences only. And I wonder why.
It’s instead the other way around. Over the last ca. two decades, mostly claiming to “fight ticket scalping,” a monopolistic acting oligopoly of alliances of the biggest names in the live music business got super busy downright disfranchising the ticket-holding concertgoers. Mainly by using Technology only for the benefit of all its tracking abilities, ignoring most other digitalization benefits, such as customer service functions and fun-adding elements. Combined with rising ticket prices and more and more regulation, a combination of limitations and hurdles on the customer side got established that sometimes makes going to a concert rather an effort rather than a generally pleasant recreational experience.
The market still performs strongly, but some cracks have already appeared. Post-Covid pandemic, the live event market profited from a general “it’s now or never” spending spree that led to a revenue high point in 2023. If there is still gas in the tank to top, the record-breaking results in 2024 remain to be seen.
From the outside, the ongoing international success of Taylor Swift’s shows might cover up broader concerns about the live music business for now. However, it might be a “winner takes all situation” provided a vast global community of Swiftys is ready to pay whatever it takes to get blessed by the artist of their choice. Artists like Jennifer Lopez or the Black Keys pulling out of touring plans might be among the first warning signals that the total market potential might have been reached, with the industry going into a plateau phase. With Melt and Hip Hop Open, two well-established and well-known summer festivals in Germany, 2024 will see their last installments after decades of success. Promoters claim, in both cases, a more complicated marketplace as a reason for giving in.
While the artists mentioned before are a list of isolated cases, the H1 numbers for 2024 indicate a business slowing down — although at high standards. Live music industry news page IQ reports,” ‘For the first time in two-and-a-half years, the live industry has returned to earth,’ concludes Pollstar’s mid-year report, “while also pointing out: “ ‘The year’s lower mid-year indices reflect more of a correction than a catastrophic decline,’ adds the Pollstar report.”
General political uncertainty combined with inflation concerns and, as it seems ever, ever-rising ticket prices for many reasons might also curb the live market from growing again and again.
Also, even well-established, unique artists with broad and deep fanbases need extra help selling out their already streamlined live events. For example, Pearl Jam and Adele need a lot of help getting the marquee sold-out stickers on their European 2024 ticket sale announcements. Online advertising for both artists’ Euro shows pushes for ticket sales until the very last minute, repeatedly claiming to “uncover previous unknown ticket contingents.”
By all means, the biggest challenge for the live music event industry might be to pull in younger audiences at the same volume as they used to pull in boomer audiences decades ago.
There is nothing wrong with older or even older artists playing great shows. I’m a fan. I buy tickets. I enjoy these shows a lot. But, let’s face it: biology will eventually put an end to many of today’s Concert Box Office money makers. For example, Neil Young just canceled fifteen 2024 North American tour dates. Bruce Springsteen posted an impressive lot of dates last year. So did Aerosmith with their Good-Bye tour. Pearl Jam canceled some Euro dates of their summer tour. All of this happened for health-related reasons, as official statements indicate.
Long may they run! All of them! But, from a live entertainment perspective, there needs to be fresh blood on the dance floor soon. It’s not a good perspective that most revenue record-breaking monster tour events today are fueled by artists whose fame was established decades ago.
Even Taylor Swift’s constantly record-breaking box office receipts likely come mainly from older people’s pockets, aka parents’ or grandparents’ and relatives. Plus, how high is the percentage of tickets sold for each show to those simply accompanying kids? While I couldn’t find valuable data on these aspects, I assume it’s safe to consider this being a real thing happening on a scale, simply because there is very little chance for an average income household early/late teen to spend hundreds — including travel and accommodation, even thousands — on just one event.
If you look at artists famous with today’s younger generations, you can see they are reducing their touring volume significantly — for example, Travis Scott’s recent tour. Scott is a true flagship artist of his generation. But a tour like his summer “2024 Circus Maximus Europe” would have reached far more cities twenty years ago than it does today. Nowadays, he mostly plays one location per European country, and that is it.
Hence, it is high time the live music industry quickly establishes new business opportunities. Demographics, social conditions, and overall trends in how artists express themselves (and find ways to monetize) are out of the industry’s hands for the most part. (I believe the industry generally could do more to help new artists break out, but that is a different story.)
However, using innovative Technology to run their business, sell their products, and serve the customers best is something the live music industry has in its own hands. It helps make the product more appealing, adding new revenue streams and innovative forms to enable sustainable, direct artist-fan relations beyond the big Social Media platforms. For example, starting to establish a customer-centric ticket sales process, as mentioned above. Especially as anyways, it won’t be suitable to treat Millennials or Gen Z’s with the same arrogance and lack of service that the promoters once were able to treat the Boomers or GenX’s with.
Genuinely comprehensive, up-to-date behavior and spending data by age, income, social affiliation, etc., for the live-music market is a bit hard to get; the available data is complex to compare, while going into all the available details does exceed the limits of this blog post. Most of what is out there published dates back to pre-pandemic times. However, if you take a bird’s-eye perspective and read between the lines a bit, the struggle is real beyond what is going on for big names in big arenas.
Don’t get me wrong. I love concerts and live music. More than most other things, I have been a live music and concert fan ever since. I have gone to hundreds of shows all over the globe. But even for hardcore fans like me, upgrading and updating the concertgoer’s fan experience to more customer-friendly proceedings and experiences is more than necessary.
In the mid-2020s, this inevitably means innovating around everything digital. It’s not rocket science, but it needs to be done. Who’s taking it on first will be the winner of tomorrow.
