Left off the circuit: the impact of shrinking live music tours on cities

ABSTRACT

In recent years, leading music artists have been performing significantly fewer shows, in part due to growing concerns for their wellbeing, but also because of rising energy cost, environmental issues, and industry consolidation. As a result, many cities now host much fewer top ‘headliners’ artists and bands than before. This study investigates what being effectively ‘left off’ tours means for cities. Proceeding from industry data, it first quantifies the decline in the number of stops for large tours between 2010 and 2019, and shows that many North American cities increasingly find themselves on the outside looking in. It then provides insights drawn from interviews with city officials on both the negative and positive impacts of this trend. Namely, this study suggests that hosting fewer shows results in economic, cultural and reputational losses, yet also enable cities to grow a stronger local scene, design better policies, and develop distinctive new offerings.

KEYWORDS:

• Music city
• live music
• music geography
• concerts
• festivals

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A simulation using the National Independent Venue Association economic impact calculator shows how, for a mid-sized city (100-250K population), a ‘large’ venue (1–7.5K seats) with low usage generates roughly the same economic impact and supports the same number of jobs as a ‘small’ venue (50–250 seats) with high usage. Considering that a single popular artist can draw 80K+ fans on a given night, we can extrapolate what that means for cities and how this compares with smaller concerts.

2. It should be noted here that we also elected to include two music-specific officials with broader provincial and national jurisdictions for their ability to provide further insights into impacts and policies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Louis-Etienne Dubois

Louis-Etienne Dubois is an Associate Professor of creative industries management at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Creative Industries, as well as Associate researcher at MINES ParisTech’s CGS and the National Circus School’s CRITAC. His research activities focus on emergent business opportunities and challenges, as well as on innovative management practices in the cultural and creative sector.

Stan Renard

Stan Renard is an Associate Dean of the Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts and Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Arts Management and Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Oklahoma. He also directs the Arts Incubation Research Lab, a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab.

Salman Rana

Salman Rana is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Industries and the School of Professional Music. He’s a lawyer and legal theorist. His practice based research focuses on law and culture, socio-legal theory, legal pluralism, Hip Hop culture, music law, copyright and human rights.