This originally came to me in a memo at work. But it's a public blog, so it seems worth passing on.

I don't have a good sense of where this fellow's views fall. Centrist, lunatic fringe, I have no idea. But I think I'll keep an eye on what he has to say just on principle.

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2009/08/02/the-concert-business/

Here are the first couple grafs:

The Concert Business

Now the concert business is imploding.

It’s not like promoters, managers, agents and acts couldn’t see this coming. They just didn’t want to believe it. They’re just as ignorant as their major label brethren. It’s just that their comeuppance is occurring a decade later.

There is just as much vital live music as there's ever been. And it's still in the same places: the clubs.

As to the "concert business", they've been milking $60+ tickets for a while. That's obviously not sustainable.

Agreed. At least as far as the acts that most of us probably care about are concerned, gigging has been the main source of income for a long time. Largely because the labels always cheated them out of their royalties anyway.

I thought this was interesting because the "360-contract" was supposed to save the big-business music business. But apparently there are signs that they've let greed be their undoing ... again.

And what the heck big-ish show can you get tickets to nowadays for 60 bucks? Around here, that'll buy you general admission to an ampitheater in the rainy season.

I subscribed to Lefsetz' letter, BTW.