Is the Concert Business Imploding?

Some worry that the concert business is imploding.

I think not, but it is changing in a way that will end with a near complete transformation.

I’ve been saying for years that the Future is a Niche Market, and way before I started saying that specifically about live entertainment, it’s been observed in the media economy overall that the shape of the popularity curve has shifted.

The past was what I call the Tall Towers world.  Production and distribution were expensive and marketing channels were few and also very expensive.  That meant that the winners were the people who could make a passable piece of general entertainment and, more importantly, control the means of distribution.

For example, if you ran a local paper or a local network TV affiliate, you basically couldn’t miss. The least popular show possible on network TV still got 29% of all TV viewers watching. Imagine that.

The result was that a very small number of things were very popular, including music acts.

Now, there are still hugely popular things, but the Tallest Tower today is much shorter than the tallest tower during the Tall Towers era.

It’s no knock on today’s musicians or other artists to say that being number one isn’t what it used to be.  In fact, that change is inevitable.

And that’s because production and distribution are now relatively inexpensive, and there are many, many more marketing channels, some of which can be successful with little to no money.  Inevitably, the popularity curve in that case is going to be shorter at the top and longer because people can find their way into the niches of entertainment that they like rather than having to settled for the best of the few choices presented to them.  (Not quite a “Long Tail” but longer than the Tall Towers model.)

I call this the Ecosystem of Niches.  In nature, all successful animal species have a niche.  They live in a certain part of the forest on a certain kind of food.

The big stars used to be like fire-breathing, toxic T-Rexs that killed and ate everything but the very smallest creatures, who managed to survive by grubbing around below the scale where a T-Rex could even see them.

Now, being the biggest rock star in the world is more like being a grizzly bear.  The fact is, you’re still pretty bad ass, but the forest still thrives around you.  And you’d better not annoy a herd of elk because collectively, they’ll own you.

So is the concert business imploding? No, it’s not.

It is, however, changing into something new.  No power on earth or in heaven will change the fact that in 10 years, no one will be selling out baseball stadiums night after night with their concerts.  That’s over, or as close to over as it can be.

It’s not a knock on the live entertainment business to say that because what’s happening out there in the world is that live entertainment is happening in dozens or even hundreds of places at a time in a big city like LA or NY or SF every night.  The towers aren’t as tall, but the ecosystem of niches is very healthy.

And one last thing…there is no concert business.

Let that sink in for a minute.

There is no concert business.  There is, perhaps, a live entertainment business, but there is no such thing as a concert business.  People want entertainment, and if it so happens that on one occasion, it takes the form of a musical concert, that’s just an artifact of chance and taste.

In fact, if you’re a marketer who sells concerts, just thinking of yourself as being in the ‘concert business’ is a prison to your thinking.