The End of the Road?

Wall Street Journal ^ | 07/09/10 | JOHN JURGENSEN

[AtlasStalled]

The concert business is supposed to be the music industry's one sure thing. But not this summer. The Eagles, Rihanna and Maxwell have canceled tour dates. A wobbling "American Idol" tour has flooded the market with discounted tickets, and the resurrected Lilith Fair tour has called off concerts from Dallas to Salt Lake City. Even teen idols the Jonas Brothers announced this week that they're scrapping some shows. * * * With the continued evaporation of recorded music sales, acts at all levels of the talent pool must lean heavily on their live-performance earnings. That's forcing artists to tour more, and to keep their ticket prices high, despite the weak economy. This has created a glut of seats.

[a fool in paradise]

Meanwhile Jones Hall in Houston (where the Symphony plays) has been selling out massively attended concerts from the likes of Tom Waits, Morrissey, and Neil Young (solo performance). These shows sell out within minutes.

And yet none of those artists can get anything they recorded in the past 20 years (if anything at all) played on radio.

[Freddd]

Are Americans finally waking up to the fact that the ‘stars’ be it, music, movies, t.v., hollywood, media and congress, and sports, do absolutely nothing meaningful for their lives?

I hope so.

[a fool in paradise]

But considering how many young fans acquire and listen to music, the music seems to have less sticking power. For instance, 70% of the music obtained by 13-to-24-year-olds isn't paid for; instead, it's pulled from peer-to-peer networks, or ripped and copied from friends, according to the NPD Group. "They get so much free content, a lot of it they don't really value," says NPD entertainment analyst Russ Crupnick

And people who listen to dance music aren't so impressed to see someone sing (or lip synch) to their club hit either. What's the point?

[a fool in paradise]

Are Americans finally waking up to the fact that the ‘stars’ be it, music, movies, t.v., hollywood, media and congress, and sports, do absolutely nothing meaningful for their lives?

Not likely with the amount of hype that basketball player's "announcement" yesterday drew and continues to draw today. LEAD story. With the Injustice Department letting black supremacists intimidate voters in presidential elections.

But then sports are good for journalism. It's like a storm "tune in tomorrow for...". Keeps you tuning in to keep up with the saga.

[Iron head mike]

“I’m an amateur musician. I’ve been in 8 bands and love watching local acts, both for entertainment and “evaluation and learning”. That said, I don’t do Ticketmaster. The last “big” act I saw was Genesis around 1980.”

I'm in the same boat as you. I am going to see grand funk saturday at our county fair. it's free save the cost of admisson to the fair.

[Le Chien Rouge]

I’d rather listen to a local indie group play something new then pay beau coup dollars for some 70’s group rehashing their glory days of yore.

If memories were all I had I’d rather drive a truck.—Ricky Nelson

[ASOC]

LOL

One need only to look at the band “Poco” to see your point.

THanks for the post.

[Mad Dawgg]

"You always have to ask if going to a concert is worth it. For the price of one ticket you can buy a stack of CDs (or iTunes/MP3 equivalent) and have the music long after your ears would have stopped ringing from the concert. There are a few groups I go to see when they pass through town, but usually the tickets are in the $10-$20 range in a small club."

A few years back we took the family to see Blue Man Group, 25 bucks a ticket and parking was included.

Worth every penny! One of the Best Live Concerts I've ever seen and I've seen all the big acts (like the WHO and McCartney, Eagles, Elton John, Billy Joel, AC/DC Genesis, and the list goes on and on...)

I would love to go to a Concert that a good new band is putting on but I refuse to pay these astronomically high prices these bands ask for now.

Its beyond insulting... (but in my view so is the price of a movie ticket, especially when I can wait and buy a used DVD of the movie for less than price of one ticket)

[wbarmy]

I take personal offense at the slander of the Monkees. Some of their songs hold up far better than any of those other guys you were putting on pedestals. “Take the last Train to Clarksville” was a really good song and talked about a soldier being deployed to Vietnam. Only those people who knew what Clarksville was got the song.

[ClearCase_guy]

I actually like the Monkees. I like a lot of bubblegum pop from the 1960's. I think the bubblegum pop of today is not as good as the stuff from yesterday.

But my comments aren't really about the bubblegum. I'm saying that the Big Companies used to have somewhat serious acts that they pushed and promoted and wanted to do well. But all of that has dried up now. You can go Indie, and you can tune into college radio -- but the "Major Acts" of today are totally vapid.

The Allman Brothers sang a ferociously bluesy "Tied to the Whipping Post" and people loved it.
Today, music gets about as serious as "Girl You Know It's True".

[InvisibleChurch]

To score a pair of tickets to see singer-songwriter John Mayer in Cincinnati on July 27, Beth Collins of Radcliff, Ky., spent $172, including about $30 in service fees, for the best two seats available on Ticketmaster at the time, in section 700, adjacent to the rear lawn at the Riverbend Music Center. Ms. Collins, a 27-year-old homemaker whose husband works in a UPS warehouse, borrowed $75 from a local loan service to help pay for the seats; with interest, she paid the service about $100.

yuk yuk yuk! So what is involved in the service fee anyway?

[JoeA]

Poco! What a terrific band! Though I know I suffered loss of hearing by seeing them at the Fillmore East, about eight rows from the stage. Nothing is as loud as an amplified pedal steel guitar.

[a fool in paradise]

Today, music gets about as serious as "Girl You Know It's True".

And the Industry gave a GRAMMY to the guys who danced in the video and lip synched in concert as "Milli Vanilli"

Then again they gave grammies to Al Gore, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Franken, Jesse Jackson...

[a fool in paradise]

The “service” fee is Ticketmaster’s added scalping fee for tickets they sell, tickets they promote, for venues they own civic leases on.

They will even charge you a service fee to print out tickets using your own printer and ink.

And those scalping er service fees go up as ticket price goes up for the same show. And you are charged the fee PER ticket, regardless of how little additional “handling” is done.

[a fool in paradise]

Based on that woman’s sob story to pay for s***ty seats, Ticketmasterlivenation should also go into the payday loan bidness and make even mo’money mo’money mo’money.

[rockrr]

I paid the princely sum of $13 to see Jimi. The sad fact is that, despite the fact that I am infinitely more flush now than I was then, there are extraordinarily few acts that would compel me to part with that $13 today...

[ASOC]

Ah, the FIklmore

The Fugs...another band you just had to love

Slum Goddess from the lower East side....

[mad_as_he$$]

My father said the same thing only the time frame was the 40’s and 50’s. I said the same to my offspring only it was the 70’s and the 80’s. lol....

[ClearCase_guy]

Most of the teens I know today actually listen to music which is 20 or 30 years old. They tell me that the music on the radio today sucks.

[mad_as_he$$]

The biggest music radio station here in Reno is 104.5 (the dot). They play mostly stuff from the late 80’s and 90’s. Very little stuff from this century.

http://www.kdot.com/pages/3320656.php