56 Business The EconomistJune 27th 2020
A
visit to Britain’s West Country on the eve of the summer sol-
stice prompted your columnist to reflect on the serendipitous,
socialist past of live music. The road passed by Worthy Farm,
which 50 years ago hosted the first Glastonbury festival, costing £1
($2.50 at the time) a ticket. Back then its owner, Michael Eavis, a
dairy farmer, had the mad idea of inviting the Kinks, whom he
loved to listen to while milking, to headline a one-off gig, agreeing
to pay them £500. When those rockers pulled out, he approached
Marc Bolan of T. Rex. Bolan was driving through Somerset to play at
Butlin’s, a holiday camp. He agreed to stand in but almost with-
drew when brambles threatened to scratch his velvet-lined car.
As Mr Eavis writes in a book, “Glastonbury 50”, Bolan’s bravura
performance inspired him to continue the festival. On June
24th-28th it was due to celebrate its half-century with headliners
including Kendrick Lamar and Diana Ross. But, as with almost all
live music, it was halted by covid-19. Looking through the fields
(and the Glastonbury rain) at the distant outline of the Pyramid
stage, Schumpeter felt wistful. As a lad growing up in Somerset in
the late 1970s, he would slip into the festival via the back garden of
a friend’s house, too cheap to buy tickets. But Mr Eavis was never in
it for the dosh, anyway. When he failed to make the £500 to pay Bo-
lan, he milked his cows hard for five months to settle the debt.
In the intervening years, the music industry has changed al-
most beyond recognition. Glam rockers have given way to punks,
goths, ravers and rappers. Vinyl was overtaken by compact discs,
then streaming. Recently Spotify and other platforms have given
rise to a magic-mushrooming of “indie” artists, challenging, at
last, the hegemony of the big-three record labels, Universal, Sony
and Warner. As the money drained out of record sales in the 2000s,
live music became the industry’s reliable earner.
Yet live music has enjoyed little of the creative effervescence
found elsewhere in the music business. Quite the opposite. It was
already becoming more bombastic and less edgy. The pandemic
has brought it to its knees. Bands are stuck at home, roadies are on
the dole, and fans face an unfestive summer. But, as at Glastonbury
with mud up to your knees, rock ’n’ roll sparkles in times of gloom.
Covid-19 may be the impetus live music needs to get out of a rut.
If one company gets the credit—and blame—for taking the so-cialism out of rock ’n’ roll, it is Live Nation. The Los Angeles-based
firm helped pioneer the global consolidation of tour-promotion,
venues and ticketing. With $11.5bn in revenues last year, it is the
world’s largest live-entertainment company. In 2010 it bought
Ticketmaster, the biggest ticketing agency. Sales have grown each
year since. Its customers, 98m of them last year, dig deep to see
their favourite acts. Live Nation says they are integral to its “fly-
wheel”: the more fans it has, the more tickets, beer, advertise-
ments and other things it flogs, the more cash it makes, the more
venues it buys, the more artists it attracts—and the more fans.
In the process its promotional power has grown. Alan Krueger,
the late author of “Rockonomics”, an economist’s guide to the mu-
sic industry, calculated that in America the biggest four promoters
were responsible for more than two-thirds of concert revenues in
2017, up from less than a quarter in 1995. Ticket prices rose by 190%
over a similar period, almost as much as college tuition. Consoli-
dation may not fully explain the inflation; concerts generate wa-
fer-thin margins for Live Nation, which suggests big artists have
considerable clout, too. But in December America’s Department of
Justice extended an antitrust enforcement action against it for
five-and-a-half years, prohibiting it from retaliating against con-
cert venues that use a ticketing company other than Ticketmaster.
In what Krueger called a “winner takes all” market, Live Nation has
long been the victor.
Now its streak has stalled. Covid-19 has helped slash its market
value from $15bn to about $10bn. (In April it got a $500m invest-
ment from that bastion of rock ’n’ roll, Saudi Arabia.) This year’s
concerts have been postponed until 2021 and some second-tier art-
ists are likely to be offered less favourable terms to perform. Musi-
cians, whose incomes have collapsed amid social distancing, are
desperate for an alternative. Recession-struck fans, too, will pine
for cheaper gigs.Big Tech on tour
The response may prove the biggest jolt to live music in decades.
From home quarantine or empty concert halls, artists—including
classical musicians—are videostreaming live performances
straight to fans. What they started off doing for charity, some are
now doing for profit. Rolling Stonemagazine reported that bts, a k-
pop band, earned around $20m from a virtual show for 750,000
fans on June 14th—more than Ed Sheeran gets for a gig. An avatar of
Travis Scott, an American rapper, reached an audience of 27m via
“Fortnite”, a video game. Laura Marling, a British singer-songwrit-
er, streamed a paid concert from an empty chapel in north London.
She sold many times more seats online than exist at the venue.
Live-streaming will not replace live performance. “You will
never have a mosh pit on Zoom,” quips Crispin Hunt, former sing-
er of Longpigs, a Britpop band from the 1990s. But it could generate
competition, pitching streaming services like YouTube and
Twitch (owned by Google and Amazon, respectively) against the
likes of Live Nation. Russ Tannen of Dice, a ticketing agency, ex-
pects live-streaming to make music more like sport, enabling fans
to see bands play live in a stadium, or with friends in a bar, or at
home on tv—as they would Liverpool play football. Glastonbury is
ahead of its time. It already streams live via the bbc. As Mr Tannen
says: “Of the festivals, it is the World Cup.” 7Schumpeter Raising live music from the dead
Live-streaming will change rock ’n’ roll for the betterCorrection:Last week’s column mistakenly said that June 4th was the 21st
anniversary of the massacre around Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It was, of
course, the 31st anniversary. Apologies.