Post by philly on Mar 25, 2017 22:33:45 GMT -5
Twilight of the Rock Gods
Wall Street Journal
By Neil Shah
As rock ‘n’ roll loses its founding megastars—and sales juggernauts—the music industry faces pressure to revamp
For music fans, the recent flood of celebrity deaths has been overwhelming: David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael and Chuck Berry seem like a disproportionate number of superstars to lose in a short time span.
But with many of rock’s founding fathers and mothers reaching their 70s, the end of the age of rock ’n’ roll is just beginning. While every generation bemoans the passing of its great artists, the outsize influence of rock promises to have a profound impact on popular culture and overall music-industry sales.
Of the 25 artists with the highest record sales in the U.S. since 1991, when reliable data first became available, just one—Britney Spears—is under 40, Nielsen data show. Nineteen of the 25 are over 50 years old.
In terms of concert-tour revenue, artists over 50 represent half of the $4.5 billion generated by last year’s top 100-grossing tours, excluding non-music acts and comedians, according to a WSJ analysis of data from Pollstar, the trade magazine. Of the top 10, five were over 50, including Bruce Springsteen (67), Guns N’ Roses (average age 53), Paul McCartney (74), Garth Brooks (55) and the Rolling Stones (73), Pollstar data show.
Rock’s demographic crisis has been a concern for some time. But the spate of deaths over the past 18 months highlights the limited time frame the industry has to buttress its future and figure out how to better attract young audiences and develop young stars.
“Every year I watch the Pollstar charts and the guys at the top are always heritage or legacy acts,” says Jeff Jampol, who manages the estates of Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and the Ramones. “There may be a real cliff—but people just aren’t looking at it,” he says.
WHY NOW?
The oldest of America’s 75 million baby boomers started turning 70 in 2016. (According to the U.S. Census Bureau, boomers are people born between 1946 and 1964). In about 20 years, all the boomers will have reached 70. So, the number of celebrity deaths last year wasn’t exceptional, according to a study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, though the number of “mega famous” celebrity deaths was. Because of their penchant for hard living, rocker deaths are likely to stay consistently high. “The musicians are ahead of their audience, if you will, on the death curve,” says demographer Kenneth Johnson at the University of New Hampshire.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland is already scrambling to keep up. “We play their music all day long, lower our flag, and hang their image in a place of honor for a year. And we have a special exhibition,” President Greg Davis says. “But the exhibitions are getting kind of crowded.” Almost 60% of the Rock Hall’s more than 800 inductees are still living, meaning the biggest wave of the boomer musician deaths has yet to come.
HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT?
Rock has an outsize influence on music sales. It was responsible for 41% of total U.S. album sales last year, far higher than hip-hop and R&B (15%), country (13%) or pop (10%), according to Nielsen.
Boomer rock stars are in a league of their own, the products of an exploding record business that minted celebrities at a time when celebrity was less common. Rock’s heyday is hard to fathom: Unlike jazz and classical music, which became niche businesses after dominating mainstream pop culture, rock was the first musical genre to become a huge, multibillion-dollar global industry with staying power.
A confluence of technological, cultural and musical forces in the middle of the 20th century led to the modern pop/rock industry. Record players, a fixture in most American homes by the late 1960s, let America’s restive youth listen to music away from their parents.
Rock concerts went global and took over sports stadiums. The rise of mass media—especially television—enabled global celebrity. “We produced famous people at a rate we never did before,” MIT professor César Hidalgo and his colleagues said in a study.
WHY IS ROCK SO BIG?
Much of rock’s commercial success was possible because of the way the industry was structured. By the 1980s, cash-rich major labels were helping finance tours, throwing money at fledgling acts and investing huge sums in veteran stars even when their careers floundered.
Such investments—equivalent in spirit to the R&D expenditures of pharmaceutical firms—helped artists build enduring brands and transformed superstars into major corporations that overshadow young pop/rock acts even today.
Guns N’ Roses, whose 1987 album “Appetite for Destruction” is the biggest-selling debut in U.S. history, headlined last year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. At this June’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., the top-billed act is the over-50 band U2, who will perform their 1987 album “The Joshua Tree.”
“All of these [heritage] artists built their careers and profile on massive album sales, when the CD helped create truly global megastars,” says Mark Mulligan, an analyst at MIDiA Research.
WILL YOUNGER STARS FILL THE VOID?
Probably not. Because of the multiplicity of entertainment options today, reduced attention spans, personalized tastes and less record-label support, most of today’s artists will never be as big as yesterday’s rockers.
Radio used to have the power to make even a lower-quality rock release popular. However, the fragmentation of the music industry—fans using multiple formats and splintering across rock, hip-hop, country and electronic music—means most acts will never find the same big audiences.
“It’s going to be easier to become a performer with an audience, but harder to become an entrenched arena act,” Nathan Hubbard, former chief executive of Ticketmaster, wrote in an online piece for the website The Ringer last year.
Last year, Prince’s greatest-hits album, “The Very Best of Prince,” released in 2001, sold nearly 670,000 copies in the U.S. That was more than Rihanna’s “Anti,” which sold 603,000 copies, or Justin Bieber’s “Purpose,” which sold 554,000, two hit records that were among the year’s biggest sellers, according to Nielsen.
WHAT ABOUT CONCERTS?
Young megastars like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and country acts like Carrie Underwood make most of their money on tour. And there will be a successive generation of touring veterans like Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and Nicki Minaj, along with unexpected reunions and area headliners.
But many acts today from rapper Future to rockers Japandroids don’t generate colossal sums compared with older stars.
Last year, Mr. Springsteen topped the concert-tour list with $268 million in ticket sales—a career high—across 76 shows. Beyoncé, 35, was close, pulling in $256 million from just 49 shows. The youngest artist in the top 10, Justin Bieber, 23, brought in $163 million, or 40% less than Mr. Springsteen, even though he played about 40 more shows.
Alan Krueger, a Princeton University economist who has studied the music industry, says concert-ticket prices have skyrocketed over the past three decades—the average ticket is a record $76.55 and 20 acts charged an average of $100 or more last year. But that’s thanks largely to aging rock audiences, who have gotten older and wealthier.
Younger acts are having trouble filling stadiums, Mr. Krueger says. Younger fans have less cash to spend on traditional concerts, so they’re drawn to festivals, which provide a cost-effective way to see over 100 acts. Twenty One Pilots charge under $36 a ticket, on average. Pop singer Selena Gomez: $66. The Rolling Stones? $122. Madonna? $216.
It’s unclear whether today’s younger touring juggernauts will, like the Rolling Stones, rake in more money when they’re older. “I can’t say Drake or Justin Bieber will be selling tickets 30 years from now,” says Gary Bongiovanni, Pollstar’s editor in chief. “There is not a lot of evidence showing that many younger acts are developing the staying power of the boomer bands,” he says.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
The concert business is going in two directions: diversifying into festivals and smaller venues, to focus on younger audiences, while continuing to squeeze every opportunity out of the boomer market.
Joe Edwards, a St. Louis music-venue owner and friend of Chuck Berry’s who managed his affairs, sees the industry shifting focus from big venues such as amphitheaters to the smaller 1,000 to 3,000-seat venues suited to today’s artists. “I see more acts loving those sizes,” he says, since the artists don’t have to wait to play bigger stages. “Smaller venues will be very popular,” he says.
To reach younger audiences, Live Nation, the country’s biggest concert promoter, has been on a music-festival-buying spree. Last spring, the company bought a majority stake in Founders Entertainment, which runs New York’s Governors Ball festival, part of a strategy that diversifies its business away from the 40-plus amphitheaters it runs.
Meanwhile, AEG, the country’s No. 2 concert promoter, launched a boomer extravaganza last October with the Desert Trip festival. The two-weekend show in Indio, Calif., which brought together the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, the Who and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, grossed around $160 million, nearly twice as much as Coachella ($94 million).
This July, Desert Trip is getting a rival boomer review: The Classic East and Classic West festivals in New York and Los Angeles, spearheaded by music mogul Irving Azoff and Live Nation. Both two-day events will feature the Eagles, Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Journey and Earth, Wind & Fire.
Yet many music experts believe a more thorough revamping of the business will be inevitable as rockers continue to age: “Everyone is focusing on what is right in front of them,” says Mr. Jampol, the estate manger. “No one in our business is forward-looking.”
The Top Concert Tours of 2016
Eighty-eight of last year’s top 100-grossing tours were music acts. Of those, 45 were led by musicians over 50. Compare 2016's top performers by ticket price, number of shows played and more.
Corrections & Amplifications
The youngest artist in the top 10, Justin Bieber, 23, brought in $163 million, or 40% less revenue than Mr. Springsteen. An earlier version of this article and a graphic incorrectly stated Mr. Bieber’s revenue was 60% less. (March 25, 2017)
