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For the past few years, live music has enjoyed an explosive post-pandemic revival, as \u2018revenge spending\u2019 fans itching to get back into concert venues paid top dollar for massive stadium tours such as Taylor Swift\u2019s \u201cEras\u201d tour and Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s \u201cRenaissance.\u201d<\/p>\n
But a recent spate of tour cancellations and changes by well-known artists indicate that consumers\u2019 appetite for\u00a0 live music may be slowing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Friday, Live Nation announced that Jennifer Lopez was canceling her \u201cThis Is Me . . . Live\u201d tour to spend more time with her family<\/a>, a week after the Black Keys said they were scrapping an arena tour scheduled for this fall in favor of smaller venues<\/a>, even after the single from their new album topped Billboard\u2019s<\/em> Alternative Airplay chart in March.\u00a0<\/p>\n The announcements are the most recent signs that at least one facet of the \u201cfunflation\u201d or economy that emerged in the wake of pandemic<\/a> \u2014 where consumers eager to make up for lost experiences boosted demand for things like flights and concert tickets \u2014 isn\u2019t as strong as it was last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jarred Arfa, head of global music at the touring agency Independent Artist Group, said he believes the current concert environment is less of a slowdown than a return to a pre-pandemic atmosphere, where \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of winners, but not everything is winning.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe traffic is catching up to itself a little bit, where you still have so many artists on the road, and people have seen them already,\u201d Arfa told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cSome of that novelty factor post-COVID is no longer there.\u201d<\/p>\n One obvious factor is consumer fatigue with inflated costs. Since the world emerged from pandemic lockdowns, the price of concert tickets has soared. According to the music trade publication Pollstar<\/a>, the average ticket price of a top 100 music tour between 2019 and 2023 increased at a rate that well outpaced inflation, jumping from $91.18 to $122.84.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe days where there was enough demand to sell out arenas at top dollar just isn\u2019t there in this live events economy,\u201d Dave Clark, editor of the entertainment-industry tracker Ticket News<\/em>, said\u00a0in an interview with NBC News<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are seeing some of the prices they\u2019re asking and just saying, \u2018Hard pass.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Arfa also said there are more artists touring now than in the past \u2014 and not just because of time off during lockdown. A big part of it is the streaming era, in which touring generates much better returns for artists than what they make from streams. But since fans\u2019 time\u2014and wallets\u2014are finite, that ultimately translates to a smaller slice of the pie for some performers.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have people who normally might have spaced out their tours . . . who are now jumping back in,\u201d Arfa said. \u201cMaybe they would have taken a couple years off but they got those COVID years off.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe traffic is still probably a little bit higher than it normally would be,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t just tours that are settling down. The first weekend for Coachella, the highest-grossing festival in North America, didn\u2019t sell out for almost a month<\/a>. That\u2019s far longer than in 2023 or 2022, when both weekends sold out in around 40 minutes following a two-year pandemic hiatus. On the day the 2024 festival opened, Billboard<\/em> reported that approximately 80% of the 250,000 tickets had been sold<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ticketmaster was among the biggest beneficiaries of the \u201crevenge spending\u201d phenomenon. Its parent, Live Nation<\/a>, reported its biggest year ever in 2023 before the DOJ sued the company in May, alleging it had violated antitrust laws<\/a>. Following last year\u2019s Taylor Swift and Beyonc\u00e9 megatours, the ticketing giant reported a $10 billion increase in total revenue<\/a>, while concert attendance was up 20%.\u00a0<\/p>\n But there are early signs that growth might slow down in 2024. Last week, Axios reported that resale prices for summer concert tickets are down about 17% (or an average of $45 per ticket) from last year, citing \u00a0data from SeatGeek.<\/a> In May, the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported that April prices for movie and concert tickets climbed 3.4% from last year<\/a>, the lowest increase since 2021.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, in addition to the DOJ lawsuit, concert cancellations, and popular discontent, Ticketmaster is also dealing with a data breach affecting millions<\/a> of customers.<\/p>\n For the biggest artists on tour this summer \u2014 Olivia Rodrigo, Morgan Wallen, and Zach Bryan \u2014 there\u2019s still plenty of demand. The average resale price on SeatGeek for Rodgrigo\u2019s \u201cGuts\u201d tour is $571, according to Axios<\/em>. But even that is a far cry from the astronomical resale prices posted for the \u201cEras\u201d tour last summer<\/a>, which reached into the thousands.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOn the megatour level, I think there may be a few less of them this year,\u201d Arfa said. \u201cSome artists just automatically go out every couple of years and think they\u2019re bulletproof. And that\u2019s not the case. Not everyone can be Taylor and Beyonc\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nSubscribe to The Broadsheet newsletter to stay updated on the world’s most powerful women in business. Sign up<\/a> for free.<\/div>\n