Rock is still king when it comes to the concert industry. Here’s why.
I had yet another conversation about the myth that rock music is dead. To hear the people in this bubble talk, things are so hopeless that us rock fans might as well roll over and start decomposing for our own good.
These death announcements–and there have been many since 1957, the year rock was derided as a passing fade by so many within and without the music industry–continue to be very premature. Want a good idea of rock’s health? Look at the state of the concert industry.
This is from Hypebot.
If you were to believe the music press, the only thing in music that’s hot these days is hip hop. While that may be true when it comes to the charts, rock is far from dead when it comes to the concert circuit, and in fact clobbers most other music genres in terms of ticket sales.
Hip-hop and R&B is indeed America’s most popular genre and accounts for 38% of on-demand audio streams in the U.S. these days versus 20% for rock. It’s a different story when it comes to concerts however, as a Billboard ranking found that there were 3 times as many rock as hip hop acts in the top 50 highest paid music acts, and touring accounted for 80% of their total revenue.
Of the $5 billion in revenue generated from touring last year by the top 100 acts worldwide, rock accounted for 55% compared with just 11% for hip hop and R&B (which are considered the same category, fairly or not), according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from Pollstar. In fact, the only two R&B/hip hop acts to break the top 25 global touring acts were Bruno Mars and the Weeknd.
