In recent years, live music has experienced an explosive post-pandemic revival, as fans eager to get back into concert halls paid top dollar for massive stadium tours like Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour and Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” in revenge.
But a series of recent tour cancellations and tour changes by well-known artists suggests that consumers’ appetite for live music may be waning.
On Friday, Live Nation announced that Jennifer Lopez is canceling her “This Is Me… Live” tour to spend more time with her familyone week after the Black Keys said they would cancel an arena tour planned for this fall in favor of smaller venueseven after the single from her new album Billboard Alternative Airplay Charts in March.
The announcements are the latest signs that at least one facet of the “Funflation” or economy that emerged in the wake of the pandemic – in which consumers looked to make up for missed experiences and boosted demand for things like flights and concert tickets – is not as strong as last year.
Jarred Arfa, head of global music at touring agency Independent Artist Group, said he believes the current concert environment represents less of a slowdown than a return to a pre-pandemic atmosphere where “there are a lot of winners, but not everything wins.”
“The traffic is catching up a little bit because there are still so many artists out and about and people have already seen them,” said Arfa Assets“Part of the novelty factor is no longer there after COVID.”
One obvious factor is consumer fatigue with inflated prices. Since the world emerged from pandemic lockdowns, concert ticket prices have skyrocketed. According to music magazine PollstarThe average ticket price for a top 100 music tour rose significantly faster than inflation between 2019 and 2023, from $91.18 to $122.84.
“The days when there was enough demand to sell out stadiums at top prices simply no longer exist in this live event economy,” says Dave Clark, editor of the entertainment industry tracker Ticket Newssaid in an interview with NBC News.
“People see some of the prices they’re charging and just say, ‘Don’t do it.'”
Arfa also said that more artists are touring today than before – and not just because of free time during lockdown. A big part of that is the streaming era, where touring brings artists much better revenue than what they earn from streams. However, because fans’ time – and their wallets – are limited, that ultimately means some artists get a smaller piece of the pie.
“There are people who would normally have stretched out their tours … who are now getting back into it,” Arfa said. “Maybe they would have taken a few years off, but they got these COVID years off.”
“Traffic is probably still a little higher than normal,” he added.
It is not just the tours that are slowly gaining momentum. The first weekend of Coachella, the highest-grossing festival in North America, was not sold out for almost a month. That’s much longer than 2023 or 2022, when both weekends sold out in about 40 minutes after a two-year pandemic break. On the opening day of the 2024 festival Billboard reported that about 80% of the 250,000 tickets were sold.
Ticketmaster has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the revenge spending phenomenon. The parent company, Live Nationreported its strongest year to date in 2023 ahead of the Justice Department sued the company in May, claiming it had violated antitrust lawsAfter the mega tours of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé last year, the ticket giant reported a $10 billion increase in total revenuewhile concert attendance increased by 20%.
However, there are early signs that growth may slow in 2024. Last week, Axios reported that resale prices for summer concert tickets fell by about 17% (or an average of $45 per ticket) compared to last year, citing Data from SeatGeek. In May, the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported that movie and concert ticket prices rose 3.4% in April compared to the previous yearthe lowest increase since 2021.
In addition to the Justice Department’s lawsuit, the concert cancellations and the public’s dissatisfaction, Ticketmaster also has to deal with a data leak that affects millions of customers.
For the biggest artists touring this summer – Olivia Rodrigo, Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan – there is still high demand. The average resale price on SeatGeek for Rodrigo’s “Guts” tour is $571, according to AxiosBut even that is still far from the astronomical resale prices for the “Eras” tour last summerwhich numbered in the thousands.
“At the mega-tour level, there will probably be a few less this year,” said Arfa. “Some artists automatically go on tour every few years and think they’re inseparable. But that’s not the case. Not everyone can be Taylor and Beyoncé.”