As the bottom falls out of just about every aspect of the music business, even the one thing that should keep it moving, the touring business, perhaps its time we put these lazy rock stars back to work again. Somebody, somewhere, should seriously reinvent the rock and roll caravan tour. You know, the one responsible for killing half the greatest rock stars in existence when that plane went down taking with it the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly.
The modern equivalent is the music fest which reverses the basic concept. The Fest takes you to the music, the tour takes the music to you. A line-up like the one above, I mean seriously?, might play five shows in a day at MSG and fill them all. Today, get together a handful of strong bands:
Maroon 5
The Killers
Ellie Goulding
Carly Rae Jepsen
Smashing Pumpkins
Holy Ghost
Screaming Females
Give the minor acts from ten to fifteen minutes, and half an hour for the leads. There is nothing that says the Killers has to bore us for two hours. Let them make their point and get off the fucking stage. And have these bands always traveling. Give em a month off for holidays if you must. Why shouldn't they work for their money? I don't care how big they are, it is a new audience and a new whirl order. Sell their tees, fanclubs, do meet and greets with the fans. If they have talent and if they work hard they should go far.
There might be a real concern that back breaking work, the sort everybody from Elvis to the Beatles had done, can stifle creativity, and it absolutely hurt the Beatles as a live band. 20 minutes of sound in front of screaming women will only make you so many buddies. But there are other venues they can play, small clubs, where they can work on other types of material. In the meantime, your music is going out to the widest amount of people, live, in person, and giving many more people the ability to appreciate your music.
Finally, if you average out at $100 a tix, 20,000 seats that's $2,000,000 times five shows? They are netting $10M a night. And finally, children who can't stay out till midnight can certainly catch a show at 10am in the morning.
It's not that there is no way to make money, it is there is no will to do it.