Live music has never been as big an industry as it has been in recent years, but so far this year it has seen a surprise reduction in popularity.

Live music is massive. Just look at some of the biggest tours of the past ten years and you’ll see that the scope of live music has grown to immense levels. From the size of the audiences which can go into the hundreds-of-thousands to the massive revenues made from concerts, live music is a major part of the modern music industry.

Despite how giant the live music industry has become this year has seen a dwindling. So far in 2019 the top 100 highest grossing tours have grossed $2.06 billion. It may seem like a lot but it’s a 26.8% decrease from last year, or a $752 million decrease.

This may be worrying for promoters and artists, particularly as live music becomes a more significant portion of artist income. However, it doesn’t necessarily reflect the live music industry as a whole. Independent music is thriving with the advent of music streaming and local gigs are seeing a new surge of life.

It’s not necessarily the case that: whilst the bigger artists are losing out on their concerts smaller artists are picking up the slack. However we are seeing a gigantic shift in the music industry as independent artists are set to
earn more than $1 billion in 2019 and have overtaken both Sony and Warner in their music market share in the UK.