The End of the Road?

Wall Street Journal ^ | 07/09/10 | JOHN JURGENSEN

[AtlasStalled]

The concert business is supposed to be the music industry's one sure thing. But not this summer. The Eagles, Rihanna and Maxwell have canceled tour dates. A wobbling "American Idol" tour has flooded the market with discounted tickets, and the resurrected Lilith Fair tour has called off concerts from Dallas to Salt Lake City. Even teen idols the Jonas Brothers announced this week that they're scrapping some shows. * * * With the continued evaporation of recorded music sales, acts at all levels of the talent pool must lean heavily on their live-performance earnings. That's forcing artists to tour more, and to keep their ticket prices high, despite the weak economy. This has created a glut of seats.

[RobRoy]

I’m an amateur musician. I’ve been in 8 bands and love watching local acts, both for entertainment and “evaluation and learning”. That said, I don’t do Ticketmaster. The last “big” act I saw was Genesis around 1980.

[TexasRepublic]

Maybe lack of talent has something to do with declining sales.

[RobRoy]

Correction: John Carlson gave me free Beach Boy tickets last year when I called in to his KVI show. But they were free so it doesn’t count. :)

[tx_eggman]

The Eagles, Rihanna and Maxwell have canceled tour dates. A wobbling "American Idol" tour has flooded the market with discounted tickets, and the resurrected Lilith Fair tour has called off concerts from Dallas to Salt Lake City. Even teen idols the Jonas Brothers announced this week that they're scrapping some shows.

ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ..... whew .... ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ..... whew ....ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha .....

Stop it, you're killin' me

[ClearCase_guy]

I feel old when I say it, but — the pop music that they try to push on the public today is just really bad stuff. In the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s you could find real musicians trying to make real music. Nowadays it’s just manufactured flavor-of-the-month pablum.

[Proud_USA_Republican]

Or more like most of these acts are massively overpriced or nobody cares to see live.

[GOPJ]

Nowadays it’s just manufactured flavor-of-the-month pablum.

AKA bubble gum...

[llevrok]

basic economics. The fourth part of every supply/demand/price equation is the intrinisc - value.

It appears concert goers are not seeing the value in the high prices they pay. Prices will have to fall or supply shrink/value improve to match the shrinking demand.

[11th_VA]

I hear a Jackson Brown song in my head ...

[ClearCase_guy]

Yeah. And there's always been bubblegum. Look at the Monkees -- they were manufactured bubblegum too, so this isn't totally new. But at the same time the Monkees were singing tin pan alley songs, you had Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and many others who were really trying to do something with their music.

Now, the Jonas Brothers are about the best we can do. Monkees with less talent.

[happyathome]

You gotta look somewhere other than top-40 radio and the Billboard charts. Really good stuff is being played on college radio stations - if you can get past the inane sophomoric chatter between the songs. I’m in my 40’s but am still amazed by how much good stuff is still being created, and a lot of it is being played on college stations.

[Snickering Hound]

Packaging different acts together isn't always working. The Eagles, one of history's most successful rock bands, who grossed $42 million touring last year, sought to expand its audience this summer by tapping into country music, recruiting Keith Urban and the Dixie Chicks to open eight stadium shows. But the bill didn't entice country fans en masse, and Eagles fans had already had many opportunities to see the band, which has been touring to promote its most recent album, "Long Road Out of Eden," since its release in 2007. Shows at Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park, and a stadium gig in Hershey, Pa., were jettisoned. An Eagles spokesman says the group recently sold out arenas without the country acts.

So to shorten a long paragraph, ditch the Dixie Chicks and you can sell your tickets.

[KarlInOhio]

You always have to ask if going to a concert is worth it. For the price of one ticket you can buy a stack of CDs (or iTunes/MP3 equivalent) and have the music long after your ears would have stopped ringing from the concert. There are a few groups I go to see when they pass through town, but usually the tickets are in the $10-$20 range in a small club.

[a fool in paradise]

The concert business is supposed to be the music industry's one sure thing. But not this summer. The Eagles, Rihanna and Maxwell have canceled tour dates.

Elvis and Donny Osmond aren't selling out concert tours either these days.

Maybe The Eagles, Rihanna, and Maxwell should find a Branson or Vegas stage somewhere.

How long are they going to milk past hits?

[a fool in paradise]

Even teen idols the Jonas Brothers announced this week

Their fan base is growing up and no longer need to convince daddy to fork over $80 to go see their poster idols prance onstage.

[a fool in paradise]

There has always been flavor of the month pablum and bubblegum.

They tried to call rock and roll a fad and to fabricate a bunch of clean cut poster idols, brill building ATTEMPTS at rock and roll (they had to pull to get their songs on radio as “hits” but they are pre-fab), etc.

Do I need to bring up radio hits like “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window”?

The industry WANTS “flavor of the month” because without pwnership by the industry hype machine, those bands don’t “exist”. There is no “there”. Here today, forgotten tomorrow.

At least in the days before EVERYTHING from concert promotion to ticket sales to venue ownership to broadcast radio, broadcast tv, and newspaper and magazine, a “local talent” could make it up the climb for success. Now if you are published by anyone but your major label, they don’t want you because they don’t OWN you. Elvis and Beatles and Nirvana wouldn’t get out of the gate today. And the wave of music that got on airwaves in their wake is likewise being held back.

The same Pravda Media that insists their political stances are “correct” hold the reigns on music.

There were bands that were shut out years ago too. The Velvet Underground were denied radio airplay and a push from MGM yet they are the first “modern” rock band and responsible for the development of everyone from Bowie to the avant garde stance on rock and roll at CBGB to the independent label sounds of the 1980s.

A band can survive without the hype, but it is hard on the band members.

There were numerous attempts to block these monopoly mergers but they never happened. Big Media owns our government.

[a fool in paradise]

The top 100 tours in North America show gross ticket-sales revenue of $965.5 million, down 17% from a year earlier.

Only made a billion dollars on tickets, with Livenation-Tickemaster owning ticket sales (and handling fees), promotion, a cut of merch sales, and venue leases.

BOO frickin hoo.

[a fool in paradise]

At least you were right to acknowlege you were only seeing ONE real Beach Boy in that concert.

[a fool in paradise]

This summer, everyone seems to be on the road. Classic-rock fans could have paid $95 for two tickets for a recent Chicago and Doobie Brothers double bill at Boston's Bank of America Pavilion. But they also had the choice of Meat Loaf, Cheap Trick, Bad Company or Heart. All had gigs scheduled there in the month of July.

It's like the 70s never ended.