By Jim McCarthy Dec 23, 2008 0 comments

The Rising Tide of Live 2.0

This news would be shocking to you if you just accepted the conventional wisdom that consumers aren’t buying things. Here’s an excerpt:

“The concert business grossed just under $4 billion worldwide in 2008, the most ever for a year and up almost 13 percent over last year, according to Billboard magazine.‘Overall, it’s been a pretty good year for touring,” said Ray Waddell, who covers the industry for Billboard. “I’d never say it’s recession-proof, but it’s resilient.’”

But if you’re tuned into the Live 2.0 revolution, you get it.  It’s not that today’s touring acts are so great or that they’re optimally priced.  It’s that the societal megaforces are a rising tide helping all of live entertainment.

How?  Technology makes recorded and ‘virtual’ entertainment cheap and ubiquitous, which drives down its value.  By contrast, live entertainment is made more convenient (and the content improved) by technology, but it remains scarce, even more so by comparison to the recorded product.

Simultaneously, society gets more and more individualistic for a host of reasons that a book like Bowling Alone should explain if you want to dig extra deep.

The result?  Live Entertainment becomes more and more desirable.  It’s simple supply and demand, really, which is exactly what I’ll be talking about at TED (TED-U, actually) and SXSW.

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