The past decade has been one of the most revolutionary in the history of the music industry. The explosion in illegal music downloads has meant that artists lose money and so have to find other ways of obtaining your cash. The main tactic employed is an increase in live performances.

A study by the Performing Rights Society (PRS) found that last year income generated from live music (£904 million) overtook revenue from recorded music (£896 million).

According to the report the biggest live music success of last year was Madonna's Sticky and Sweet tour which has also been called the highest grossing tour in history.

Back in 2007 Madonna shook the music industry up when she announced that she would be ditching her record contract with Warners with whom she had been with since her debut in 1983.

She then signed a ten year £120million deal with Live Nation which combined touring and recording rights.  Other artists followed suit with U2, Jay-Z and Nickelback among them.

Live Nation's position in the live music market is now unrivalled,  globally they control over 100 venues and organise more than 20,000 events that attract over 50 million people.

Venues include Manchester Apollo, Brixton Academy and Shepherd's Bush Empire along with the management of Wembley Arena, Sheffield Arena and Cardiff International Arena.

They directly control Download Festival and any open air gigs at Hyde Park . They also have a majority stake in Festival Republic who organise the Glastonbury and Reading and Leeds Festivals.

This year will see become even more powerful as they merge with Ticketmaster who are the undisputed kings of the ticket sales and distribution business.If you saw a show last year chances are you got a ticket through them as they held the rights for sales of 90% of arena gigs and 75% for smaller venues.

This raises the issue of what to do when a company is so dominant in the marketplace.  There is noticeably no major attempt to stop Live Nation's growth and if there is a global equivalent of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission they certainly are not intervening.

Live Nation is currently leading this boom and whilst it may be good to celebrate the increase in live music,  I personally would urge people to look at who benefits from this.

All that is happening now is money that was being lost through illegal downloading is now being replaced by aiming for the “festival pound” as an advertising executive might put it.   Can one company’s monopoly on live events really be healthy for the music industry?

Oh and despite the furore about illegal downloading, it seems that Jay-Z won't have to sell any mansions or SUV's.







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Posted In Features, Sep 09 2009. Words - Gobshout