The Evolution of Touring

The year 2000 marked a turning point in the entire music industry. No matter what type of music an individual was interested in, a startup called Napster changed the way the entire world listened to music. Until this point, if a person wanted music, they either paid for it, or had to deal with low-grade recordings from the radio or from a friends purchased album. Single handedly, Napster made it easy for any person to be able to get the majority of recorded music for free. This seemed like an extremely good thing to the consumer, however this poses obvious problems to the artists who rely on album sales to put food on their plate.

Ten years later, the change in the industry is obvious. Although there has been an attempt to control illegal online music sharing, it would be faulty to assume that it does not still happen regularly. Regardless of legality, the rise in online music buying is evident with the growing popularity of online music stores and web radios such as iTunes, or rhapsody. Sites like these make it easy to purchase music legally, however bringing the price of music down due to its easy availability. This downturn in the amount of money in the purchasing of music lead to a need for artists to come up with a way to increase their revenue in a world where the majority of people were listening to more and more music but paying for it, less and less.

Quickly it became an easy option for artists trying to compensate for the income they were losing in record sales by increasing the amount of touring they did. Typically, it had been common for a band to go on tour to help promote a new album or when a significant event had occurred with the band (single, reunion, ect.). However, a change began to occur. Bands began touring so much that they found themselves returning to cities hundreds of miles from their hometowns, multiple times a year. In addition, the popularity of single day, as well as multi-day music popular music festivals such as Bonnaroo, and Coachella have made it possible for artists to put on live events without dealing with companies like ticket master or live nation who take a portion of the ticket price for their services.

This increase in live events, has caused bands to go out of their way to assure fans that they will see a different show, rather than just playing the same set lists over and over again. This change in structure of the standard concert event has generated a good amount of interest in fans that want to stay on the road with their favorite artists, finding that spending their money on concerts is even more worthwhile then the albums themselves. Seeing is believing, and nothing beats believing that your favorite artists are catering their live events to the fans that keep up with them the most.