By Jim McCarthy Sep 8, 2009 0 comments

There Is No Concert Business

I said this as an off the cuff comment a couple weeks ago, so I thought I’d say a little more about it today.

There’s lots of discussion, because of the secondary market, the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, and the downturn in sales for certain kinds of concerts, about the health of the Concert Business.

But here’s what I have to say: there is no such thing as the concert business.

There are only potential customers of concerts, who, like you and me, have a wide range of interests and tastes.  Perhaps, if you’re staging a concert, some of these people decide to pay you to see their product. Many don’t.  That’s the way it goes.

But very, very few people say to themselves, “Hey, I’d like to buy tickets to a concert.  Who has one available for me?”

They do start with the idea that they might like to be entertained or even just with the idea that they are free and don’t want to be bored on a Saturday night (or whatever).

Or they might start with the idea that they like Bruce Springsteen’s music.

So the people who produce and market concerts should stop thinking of themselves as belonging to a discrete and separate industry or business.  You produce shows.  Lots of other kinds of people produce shows and lots of other people produce things that people do for entertainment and you’re competing with all of them, and the consumer of this stuff doesn’t separate it mentally the way you do.

Just like there’s no toaster oven business, there’s no concert business.

Get over it.

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