Alarming news arrives from the US-based music industry platform Chartmetric.com, which shows that mid-range artists are finding the going increasingly difficult in the live arena.
We’ve known for some time that artists at the sharp-end find it hard to make any money at all from touring. It now seems that this is also true for those who don’t have to sweat on where the next buck is coming from. A survey has shown that the number of touring ‘mid-range’ artists has declined from 19% in 2022 to just 12% last year.
Even stadium and arena acts are feeling the pinch. The number of touring superstar acts declined from 44% in 2022 to 36% just two years later. For the purposes of the survey, ‘touring acts’ are defined as artists who perform 10 or more gigs per year.
This could, of course, be a brief dip - it could be that Taylor Swift’s Eras tour sucked up so much disposable income from music fans that there was not enough to go around for everyone else.
But a number of high profile artists cancelled tours last year, including Jennifer Lopez, The Black Keys and Lauryn Hill and the Fugees. And, as we know, many festivals – without the notable exception of Glastonbury – have been struggling in recent years. Even Coachella took a month to sell out in 2024. Usually, tickets go in minutes.
In the UK, the decline of mid-range artists has gone hand in hand with a loss of small venues to nurture them in, coupled with a cost of living crisis, and lest us forget, restrictions on touring that came in after Brexit. Prime Minister Kier Starmer’s tweaking of that deal has made headlines this week, but for UK touring musicians, the pain goes on – the headache of the Carnet and its attendant red tape will remain a major barrier to developing an audience on mainland Europe for some time to come.
One silver lining is the Live Trust has already raised over £500,000 from a voluntary £1 levy on stadium and arena show tickets, money which will be redistributed to grassroots venues. Among the artists who have taken part in the scheme are Diana Ross, Pulp and Mumford and Sons.
Live’s CEO Jon Collins has said: “What this demonstrates is that there is a real appetite from performers and their teams to support the wider live ecosystem and we applaud and thank those that have already taken this initiative.”
He warned, though, that there is “still much work to do if we are to convince government that a voluntary rather than statutory levy is both workable and sustainable.”
For more information about the Chartmetric survey click here.
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