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Ryan Bird's avatar

At some point last year Shawn Reynaldo of First Floor (it's paywalled so I'm not posting it) noted a similar phenomena in dance music circles, where increased volatility in ticket sales/audience attendance has led promoters and venues to book lower-risk events like tribute acts or themed dance nights--'Broadway raves', 'Shrek raves' etc.--that are more likely to draw a crowd than an original touring act general audiences are not as familiar with. (Never mind, of course, that these 'raves' take place in proper venues and, spiritually, cannot in any way be considered raves like the underground dance namesake.) I'm sure attempting to repair pandemic-damaged finances also plays a part in those booking considerations. I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that industry consolidation of venues and an increasing fiscal conservatism of major industry players in favor of established 'old music'--I'm sure you're familiar with Ted Gioia writing about this on streaming--has led to similar effects in live music in primary and major secondary markets.

I know that many of my mid-20s peers here in Chicago, historically the sorts of people to first check out and champion up-and-coming acts, lack the money to go out to live music regularly like previous generations, which leads many of them, when they are able to go out, to avoid taking the bigger risk of potentially being disappointed at a show like Big Joanie (compared to the highs of them being phenomenal) and instead go to a tribute act or something with better prospects of being good not great. Or, you know, they only have the money to see a handful of their favorite acts like Taylor Swift or Blink-182 at phenomenally inflated prices. That might help explain things, but it doesn't make the situation that promising, vital young acts are being further excluded from breakthrough opportunities because of the risk of a bad show, from a business perspective, any more dispiriting and disappointing.

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Will McCollum's avatar

The tribute band phenomenon has been pretty surprising. When I moved to the Bay Area twenty years ago, it wasn't uncommon to see tribute bands around the fringes of the Bay Area. Now they're frequent at one of my favorite live venues in SF, The Chapel. Unfortunately, I've also seen bands that I thought were local heroes struggle to fill up The Chapel.

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