Without artists and their connections to their fans, no one else can make money.

Artist Power

Movies are struggling at the box office, but Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” is tipped to bring in over $1B.

The sorry state of ticket prices, dynamic algorithms and artists scalping their own tickets to increase demand, all play their part to increase these revenues.

Artists deserve to be compensated well because it is their connection with the fans which brings in the dollars, however it sure look like everyone else is getting a larger cut of the pie than the artist.

And the government investigation into the monopoly that Ticketmaster and Live Nation have, ended up like all other government investigations against monopolistic corporations.

Business as usual for the corporations.

When monopolies exist, prices go up, so it’s no surprise that the previous highest tour revenues have came from 2017 to now.

Elton John’s “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour is still going I think and it’s almost to $900M for shows played between 2018 and 2023.

Ed Sheeran’s “Divide Tour” grossed $776M between 2017 and 2019.

Hans Zimmer

If he comes to Australia again with his 38-piece orchestra and band, I’ll be in the audience.

Truth is, his music was and still is performed by Orchestras around the world to sell out crowds.

While they pay a licence fee to perform his material, the bulk of the money is in the show.

So Zimmer has seized the day and over the last 5 or so years, he’s hit the road himself.

And he’s selling out arenas at the moment. Because he knows he has fans. He’s seen his streaming stats and he knows there is money to be made.

An 80’s Doc

“I Wanna Rock: The ’80s Metal Dream,” is coming to Paramount+.

Dee Snider from Twisted Sister appears.

But.

Then you get Kip Winger from Winger, Janet Gardner from Vixen, Dave ‘The Snake’ Sabo from Skid Row and John Corabi from The Scream along with former Guns N’ Roses manager Vicky Hamilton.

Most of these are smaller players.

Apart from Twisted Sister, the other artists had their big breaks from 1988. The Scream didn’t even release an album in the 80’s as their first and only album came out in the early 90s. However two of their members were in Racer X who released three albums in the 80s.

But we will hear stories of rejection and resilience.

Because, regardless of what happened in the 90s and the wastelands of the early 2000’s, all of these artists survived the chaos and are still making music and creating in 2023.

I’ll still watch it. It’s only three episodes.

Discography

One album or one song can make an artists career. But no one knows which song or album it’s going to be.

The problem after that, is artists fall in love with the one album or the one song that breaks them and suddenly all the albums and songs sound the same like the hit album. Suddenly their discography is that one album over and over again.

The best Discography’s have some albums or songs that are out there or ahead of their time or just bad. They often end up as the ones most talked about. Variation is good for the career.

However there are some artists who are the exception to the rule. Like AC/DC.