Off Hours: Concerts keep music alive

Most veteran music fans will admit that neither the sound quality nor the artists’ technical performance at a live concert can match what studio albums deliver. Live shows are all about the vibe, the event itself, and the chance to actually watch the artists at work.
And, for a certain few artists, it’s the chance to see and hear them stretch out, expand the music beyond the versions we know from their recordings. Ask any Grateful Dead fan about the magic of a live concert, even when the band is not performing well.
In an industry struggling to negotiate the labyrinth of chances and challenges of profiting on music in the Internet era, live concerts are a salvation. Physical CD sales are down, and music fans are the enemy. The time-tested process of contracting, developing, recording and marketing artists for long-term success has been totally trashed by the major record labels.
For the most part, established artists — in all genres — are kicked to the curb when it comes to recording and marketing efforts. Artist potential is immaterial. Even past performance is immaterial. In the new business model, the current stock price is the only thing that matters.
These days, it’s all about female pop singers, boy bands and hip-hop artists — and new acts had better become stars fast. If the first or second release is not a mega-hit, artists are out the door, and the search goes on for the next big thing.
It’s live shows and tours that make money and advance (or maintain) the career of most musicians now, and the concert business is booming.
Concert tracking company Pollstar has released the numbers for 2009, and they are up by roughly 12 percent from 2008 figures in both revenue and attendance. A pretty fair share of the big concert draws are classic rock acts, groups that haven’t released an album in years. Madonna, for example, was one of the top money-makers last year. Her newest album didn’t even crack the top 50 in sales, but she took in $222 million on a 46-show tour. Britney Spears, who many had already relegated to the music biz scrap-heap, took in $94 million from a 70-show tour.
In a very real sense, the growing importance of concert tours to both the artists and the industry is a threat to their future success. Blind to their own shortsighted and clueless business practices, the record labels continue to blame fans and the Internet for declining CD sales. Clearly, however, the fans continue to support the musicians, attending their live shows in record numbers last year.
In order to draw in the fans, though, and justify ever-higher ticket costs, concerts have become huge multimedia events, full-scale productions with props, pyrotechnics and computer-sequenced backing tracks for the performers. The shows are so choreographed that the set list and delivery are virtually identical at every show — the chance of seeing a band actually jam or vary the material is all but gone.
The spectacle itself can still be fun, but why spend all that money if the music is performed by rote rather than inspiration?
And I do mean “all that money.” Ticket costs and fees are spiraling out of control, representing another real threat to future concert attendance. The top five tour acts for 2009 — U2, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC and Pink — each charged an average of $100 per ticket. According to Pollstar, the average ticket price for all concerts last year was $46.69, more than 4 percent above the 2008 average and a staggering 43 percent higher than ticket prices just three years ago.
By contrast, the Newport Pop Festival in 1968 — featuring the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Byrds, the Animals, Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly and other bands — was priced at $4.50. Bill Graham’s Fillmore and Winterland concerts, which typically featured two or three of the hottest bands of the day, were generally priced at $5 through the 1970s.
The argument that the difference is just inflation, or that “everything costs more now,” can be dismissed by thinking about the hourly wages it took to cover the cost of a ticket then and now.
Neither is the situation likely to get better, or even stabilize. The U.S. Justice Department has just approved the controversial $2.5 billion merger of Live Nation (promoters of the biggest tours and the most concerts worldwide) and ticket-selling giant TicketMaster (which sold roughly 150 million tickets in 2009 — no other ticketing company was even close).
Now, a single outfit will control which acts will tour, what cities and venues they will play, who will have access to tickets and how much the tickets will cost.
The new company, Live Nation Entertainment, controls more than 200 of music’s top entertainers through ownership of Front Line Management, with contracts on artists from Madonna and Jay-Z to the Eagles and Jimmy Buffett; 135 of the top venues in the U.S., including most amphitheaters and stadiums; and exclusive ticket-selling deals with thousands of U.S. concert sites.
Such vertical, top-heavy control of live performance poses a threat to artists, as well. Unless they are willing to transfer control of their careers and ownership of their material, musicians will almost certainly be precluded from playing Live Nation-controlled outlets or touring with bands contracted to Live Nation.
Once again, it looks like the future of rock ’n’ roll, for both artists and fans, is in the performances staged at local schools, churches, theaters, bars and nightclubs.
• Steve Bailey of Boulder Creek has spent plenty of time in recreational activities. Contact him at

sb*****@cr****.com











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