26% of the concerts and actions scheduled for the first quarter of the year in Great Britain have been canceled or postponed.
When the agenda of the British bands outside of that country is examined, the cancellations reach 44%.
These data come from the British employer of the concerts, Live, and reflect the harsh reality of 2022: the music tours are not going to be, never again, what they were.
For sudes, the concerts will be aware of a thread by fear of covid buds.
The last example is that of Adele, which on Thursday last week announced the cancellation of three months of concerts in Las Vegas with just 24 hours in advance regarding the first performance of it.
The official reason, as the British singer said crying at full lung, were “delays in deliveries and the Covid,” which has been detected in several members of her team.
Apart, the American press has reported that Adele and the Casino and Hotel Caesar’s Palace, in which she was going to perform her performances, the clutches had been thrown at the head for the design of the concert scenario.
Be that as it is, until July, when she acts at the BST Festival, in London, Adele’s fans will not have more opportunities to see her.
But the problem does not come only by cancellations.
Also because the audience, although buying the tickets, goes less, by fear of contagion.
Before the Covid-19, between 1% and 3% of the people who acquired entries were not going to the shows for the reason it was.
Now, the figure has reached 20% in concerts that Eagles, Billy Joel, The Flaming Lips, George Strait or Dead & Company (latter, formed by three survivors of The Grateful Dead), according to the Wall Street Journal.
That abstentionism of the audience not only puts the artists from nerves, who tend to detest act in enclosures with balds.
It also has a direct consequence in your pocket, because, if people do not go, do not consume drinks, or buy posters, catalogs of the tour, or t-shirts.
All that narrows the margins.
And, in case that was not enough, there are the measures of separation of the audience, the control of food and beverages, and the tests to identify the virus have become part of the live shows, and that raises the costs.
In fact, the sector hoped that 2022 would live an explosion of concerts, due to the combined effect of the reprogramming of those that had been canceled in 2021 by the Covid and the new acts foreseen for this year.
But more live performances did not mean more money for promoters, artists, and tune organizers.
The reason was simple: inflation.
On the one hand, the demand for premises, buses, sound systems and lights, and other components of a tour was superior to the offer.
On the other, as any citizen knows, everything is now much more expensive than a few months ago.
Already last December, the US magazine Pollstar, specialized in live music, had calculated that the rent of a bus for a week for a tour in spring of 2022 had gone from 450 dollars before the pandemic at 750 (from 400 to 650
euros).
For summer, the price would be $ 800 (700 euros).
Inflation, in addition, hits from all angles.
One of the unexpected effects is that insurers also dramatically climbed the raw premiums of tours.
However, the cost was relatively content, because all tours canceled by 2021 – at least in the United States – maintained contracts prior to COVID-19, since it was considered a “major cause” (or, in US legal legacy
, “An action of God”).
The problem, so, was for those who were going to launch on the road in 2022 with a new show.
In total, the managers of the groups consulted by PollStar provided for an increase in costs less than 5%, which was going to be a considerable, but not inaussible blow, for the pocket of the musicians, the agents, and the managers.
Although the consolidated groups did not affect them, because they had the capacity to basically impose the price that gave them their fans basically.
The problem had the little ones, who had also been the ones who had suffered most from the confines of the Covid.
So, until December, the great tours, festivals and concerts looked at 2022 with euphoria.
They did not miss motives.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, when economies began to open, the sector billed around 1.119 million euros worldwide with 15.6 million tickets sold.
Based on these numbers, PollStar expected in 2022 a worldwide business volume of 4,980 million euros with more than 64 million people from public.
It was a figure that beat the record of 2019, although, if inflation was discounted, the box was lower.
However, after the Covid, it seemed a return to normal.
And then Ócomicron arrived, and that scenario jumped through the air, with a cascade of cancellations and postponements.
It must be taken into account, furthermore, that the world of live music is greatly an oligarchical nursing industry, both by interpreters and by the audience and, therefore, of risk groups, the same above the scene that
among the public.
The tours with more past year’s box, which were all concentrated in the fall, were those of the Rolling Stones, Harry Stiles, Hella Mega (ie, Weezer, Fall Out Boy and Green Day), Eagles, Dead & Company,
Bukis and Guns’ n Roses, and Dave Matthews Band.
When the average age of those groups and interpreters is made an average of 58 years.
So live rock is not for children.
And neither the public.
Very few students will be able to spend 703 dollars (622 euros) in August for change of seeing and hearing in the first row for two hours to the former Pink Floyd Roger Waters criticize capitalism.
Only people with resources can afford that luxury.
And those people usually have a certain age, and, for that reason, take care of more from the Covid-19.
The pandemic that came out of Wuhan two years ago, so, he has shown that, despite what the phrase made said, the show should not always continue.
