There’s a problem with live music.
The immediate, obvious part of the problem is COVID. Disruptions to travel, barriers at border crossings, limitations on indoor gatherings, risks for crowds of any kind are threats to live music as we know it. People have built innumerable spaces for live music around the world, all of which are designed to bring human beings into close contact with one another. Live music simply doesn’t happen without the situation that COVID has made precarious. We make sound by vibrating air; an airborne disease infects every aspect of music making.
But there’s another, more longstanding problem with live music – its increasing reliance on larger and larger shows, and dominance by a very short list of corporations who produce nearly all of them. According to the LA Times, “Of the nearly $22 billion in ticket revenue sold globally for live music events in 2019, Live Nation promoted about 60% of those shows, AEG handled roughly 30% and the other 10% were organized by …
