noWax

Recent data from Pollstar has highlighted that while the music industry’s revenue is falling year on year monies earned by touring bands is going through the roof. The Rolling Stones made $150.6M from touring in 2006 and that was aside from any tour merch! This figure made up 92% of their income for the year.

As the geriatric industry falls to its knees, could we see a return to the gig going heyday when bootleg tapes were passed around the playgrounds amongst fans of last night’s show. That being the treasured item far more than the current release album. Of course now it’ll be sites with downloads, but you get the gist. A lot of bands these days (with record deals) make more money from albums they sell at gigs than they do from high street shop sales. Could gigs become the new record shops?

The Bays are another interesting model as they have developed a large cult following from solely playing live gigs and not selling any recorded albums.

As digital adoption continues, with music blogs and sharing software getting more and more prolific, can the industry claw anything back? Interesting times ahead to be sure.