For the previous few years, stay music has loved an explosive post-pandemic revival, as ‘revenge spending’ followers itching to get again into live performance venues paid high greenback for enormous stadium excursions corresponding to Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour and Beyoncé’s “Renaissance.”
However a latest spate of tour cancellations and adjustments by well-known artists point out that buyers’ urge for food for stay music could also be slowing.
On Friday, Stay Nation introduced that Jennifer Lopez was canceling her “This Is Me . . . Stay” tour to spend extra time together with her household, every week after the Black Keys stated they had been scrapping an enviornment tour scheduled for this fall in favor of smaller venues, even after the one from their new album topped Billboard’s Different Airplay chart in March.
The bulletins are the latest indicators that at the very least one side of the “funflation” or financial system that emerged within the wake of pandemic — the place customers desperate to make up for misplaced experiences boosted demand for issues like flights and live performance tickets — isn’t as sturdy because it was final yr.
Jarred Arfa, head of worldwide music on the touring company Impartial Artist Group, stated he believes the present live performance setting is much less of a slowdown than a return to a pre-pandemic ambiance, the place “there’s a whole lot of winners, however not every part is profitable.”
“The visitors is catching as much as itself somewhat bit, the place you continue to have so many artists on the street, and other people have seen them already,” Arfa instructed Fortune. “A few of that novelty issue post-COVID is not there.”
One apparent issue is client fatigue with inflated prices. Because the world emerged from pandemic lockdowns, the worth of live performance tickets has soared. In keeping with the music commerce publication Pollstar, the typical ticket worth of a high 100 music tour between 2019 and 2023 elevated at a fee that properly outpaced inflation, leaping from $91.18 to $122.84.
“The times the place there was sufficient demand to promote out arenas at high greenback simply isn’t there on this stay occasions financial system,” Dave Clark, editor of the entertainment-industry tracker Ticket Information, stated in an interview with NBC Information.
“Persons are seeing among the costs they’re asking and simply saying, ‘Onerous move.’”
Arfa additionally stated there are extra artists touring now than previously — and never simply due to day off throughout lockdown. A giant a part of it’s the streaming period, during which touring generates a lot better returns for artists than what they make from streams. However since followers’ time—and wallets—are finite, that in the end interprets to a smaller slice of the pie for some performers.
“You have got individuals who usually might need spaced out their excursions . . . who are actually leaping again in,” Arfa stated. “Possibly they’d have taken a pair years off however they obtained these COVID years off.”
“The visitors continues to be in all probability somewhat bit larger than it usually can be,” he added.
It isn’t simply excursions which are settling down. The primary weekend for Coachella, the highest-grossing pageant in North America, didn’t promote out for nearly a month. That’s far longer than in 2023 or 2022, when each weekends offered out in round 40 minutes following a two-year pandemic hiatus. On the day the 2024 pageant opened, Billboard reported that roughly 80% of the 250,000 tickets had been offered.
Ticketmaster was among the many greatest beneficiaries of the “revenge spending” phenomenon. Its guardian, Stay Nation, reported its greatest yr ever in 2023 earlier than the DOJ sued the corporate in Might, alleging it had violated antitrust legal guidelines. Following final yr’s Taylor Swift and Beyoncé megatours, the ticketing large reported a $10 billion improve in complete income, whereas live performance attendance was up 20%.
However there are early indicators that progress would possibly decelerate in 2024. Final week, Axios reported that resale costs for summer time live performance tickets are down about 17% (or a median of $45 per ticket) from final yr, citing knowledge from SeatGeek. In Might, the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported that April costs for film and live performance tickets climbed 3.4% from final yr, the bottom improve since 2021.
What’s extra, along with the DOJ lawsuit, live performance cancellations, and in style discontent, Ticketmaster can also be coping with an information breach affecting thousands and thousands of consumers.
For the most important artists on tour this summer time — Olivia Rodrigo, Morgan Wallen, and Zach Bryan — there’s nonetheless loads of demand. The common resale worth on SeatGeek for Rodgrigo’s “Guts” tour is $571, based on Axios. However even that could be a far cry from the astronomical resale costs posted for the “Eras” tour final summer time, which reached into the hundreds.
“On the megatour degree, I believe there could also be a number of much less of them this yr,” Arfa stated. “Some artists simply routinely exit each couple of years and suppose they’re bulletproof. And that’s not the case. Not everybody could be Taylor and Beyoncé.”
