So, for years now, when we get to this bit of the CMU Review Of The Year we've said something along the lines of "so it's all the doom and gloom in recordings, but my isn't the live sector doing well". So good news for gloomy cloud fans - there was some bad news in the live sector too this year.
Though, that said, most of the big guys - Live Nation, AEG, etc - seemed to do OK, while the London-based MAMA Group continued with its seemingly never-ending expansion. Unfortunately it was the grass roots live sector that began to find times hard, most noticeably in the festivals domain where some smaller players hit the wall. Two kinds of saturation - market saturation and bad weather - were blamed.
Though, if you'll allow me a second 'that said', while it was the smaller operations that actually went under as the festival market peaked, it was troubles at the biggest festival of them all that caught the media attention. Glastonbury, the festival with a history of melting even the biggest switchboards and servers such was the demand for tickets in recent years, suddenly couldn't find anyone to take their final thirty thousand tickets.
A run of Glasto wash-outs, overly complicated tout-combating ticket registration, the growth of local boutique festivals based on the Glastonbury ethos, a lacklustre line up and the scandal of having hip hop headlining day two were all blamed. All was well in the end as tickets sold out in the final hours before things kicked off, and if it was Jay-Z's headline status that had put people off, he demonstrated how dumb they were by putting on a killer set.
But despite the happy ending Glasto man Michael Eavis admitted this year had been more stressful than most, and that measures were being put in place to assure faster ticket sales next year - early bird tickets and earlier line-up announcements in particular. Remains to be seen if it has the desired effect - and also whether the other festivals out there, large and small, can will weather the combined storms of a market saturation and global recession. The real summer weather - which was pretty mediocre again this year - could also have an impact.