Of course you can understand why the major labels would want to diversify. Digital music may be growing rapidly, and the record labels may be recovering slowly, but once again it was the live sector that most prospered in 2004.
Despite the launch of numerous new festivals in the last couple of years, most of the big players across the world - and especially here in the UK - achieved record time sell outs. Such is the demand for Glastonbury tickets there isn't a phone network or web server in the world which could cope with the high traffic that kicks in the minute tickets go on sale. Despite the Eavis' best efforts, expect a lot of disappointed music fans listening to engaged tones and watching websites crash when tickets for 2005 go on sale in the Spring.
But it wasn't just the festivals which were doing good business this year. Numerous major artist tours packed out the arenas on multiple nights while, from what we could see, things were just as good at the other end of the scale - the smaller gig venues and new bands that trek round them benefiting from the rise and rise of live music, and all this despite the government's attempts to restrict the number of small scale venues by making entertainment licensing laws even stricter.
All in all everything was very healthy - except, perhaps, the performers, with a number of tours called off this year due to the ill health of their headline acts (David Bowie, Paul Weller, Marianne Faithful, Elton John and Sting among the artists to hand in sick notes this year). Then of course there were the cancelled gigs involving one Pete Doherty - summer gigs with the Libertines called off after he was initially suspended from the band, and Autumn gigs with Babyshambles which became legendary for the 'will he show, won't he show' suspense that came free with every ticket. But, needless to say, more on him later.
So, if you want to be successful in music in 2005 is the live sector the place to go? Well, both Kylie and Oasis have already sold out multiple arena dates for next year, and seem to keep selling out additional dates as soon as they are announced. But we don't like good news here at CMU - so we're pleased to report that the live sector in the US was not as healthy in 2004 as it had been in 2003. While top grossers Madonna, Prince and Simon & Garfunkel performed well in terms of ticket sales, the live scene lacked the pulling power Paul McCartney, Elton John and Billy Joel had delivered the previous year. Some say promoters, who could pretty much charge whatever they wanted for McCartney et al, as a result increased ticket prices across the board, which makes music fans less likely to splash out on concerts by b-list artists. A handful of low turn-outs for previously bankable artists this year, and the cancellation of the Lollapalooza festival, suggest the US live sector may have peaked. With ticket prices in the UK also steadily creeping up, some say promoters on both sides of the Atlantic will not enjoy as successful a year in 2005 if they don't alter their ticket pricing strategies.