Is Live Music Feeling The Ecomomic Pinch?
Live music has been the one place left where many musicians can count on making money, but this summer have been signs that ticket sales are in toruble. This latest in a series of weekly announcements from Live Nation arrived in my inbox just this morning:
Concert Fans say 'Give us one more week!' Live Nation extends end of summer
blow-out sale
with $10 all-in lawn tickets and $15 all-in reserved,
absolutely
no service fees,
24 hours only at LiveNation.com
When formerly $45 reserved seats and $30 lawn seats are once again going for $15 and $10, things can't be good in the live music sector. And in fact, at a marvelous Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal show I went to over the weekend, the cheap seats were packed, but there were a feww too many empty seats in the more expensive section. At two other two club shows I attended in the last few days, talented gypsy rockers Scythian had an storng and entusiastic crowd for an explosive club show in Balitmore and the always amazing Arturo Sandoval had no trouble selling multiple shows in Washington, DC.
So are live music sales in a slump or have Live Nation and the big concert venues simply over booked and over priced their seasons? Or perhaps concert goers are learning to prefer a more intimate experience? What trends have you seen this summer? Are live music ticket sales in a slump?
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Both Rock the Bells and an Erykah Badu/Foreign Exchange concert at Meriweather Post Pavilion in MD were nowhere near as crowded as I expected them to be. With the caliber of artists performing, I thought attendance would be much higher. Maybe the recession has people pinching money for tickets…
Both the economy is affecting concert ticket sales and the fans getting tired of paying high prices in general for bands that come around every year.
The economy is hitting in a lot of areas. Video game sales are down. Vacation driving is down. Concert ticket sales are down. Back-to-school spending is down. McDonald’s is doing very well.
I’ve been following the economy very closely because people with limited funds don’t have the money to pay for music. That doesn’t mean they aren’t listening to music. There are a lot of ways to hear it for free. And there are a lot of ways to hear/see live music for free or little money. So music will always be around. But in terms of providing a living for people, the prospects don’t look all that good.
A number of economists have said that we’ve been living in a bubble economy for a long time, perhaps as far back as 1980. So even when we’re out of the recession, the new “normal” isn’t going to be like the old normal. People are going to have to downsize in lots of areas.
That doesn’t mean the quality of life has to suffer. People can still enjoy their families, friends, and neighbors. But they are going to do it in ways that don’t require spending much money.