Jay Z-Beyonce Tour Breaking Records.

Make Money

First the story, off  Gigwise: “Contrary to reports from Radar Online that sales have been poor, the tour is set to become the second most successful of all time. As it stands nearly a million tickets have been sold so far, meaning that the shows have grossed nearly $100 million already. This is set to leave them in second place after calculations on revenue per-show by Forbes, indicated that they would come in just behind U2’s 360 tour, which took $736 million”

Now the moral: Jay Z’s Holy Grail didn’t sell that well, one hit single but that was it, and even Beyonce, while selling a couple of million true, wasn’t a smash. And both artists were touring straight through 2013. But this was a biggie and sales don’t matter any more, if you are Jey, you are gonna sell out gig after gig after gig.

And this is the moral, indeed it was one of Cliff Richard’s main points at Gramercy, sales don’t matter the way they used to. I mean in the manner they used to. With streaming slowly but absolutely taking over from file sharing, sales decline steadily while popuolar bands make good money touring. Unfortunately the album art form dies out by neccessity while the EP -five tracks at a time, four times a year, leads the way.

It isn’t there yet, the distribution services are still shaking out and until Apple finds a way to cut the major labels into Beats, it feels like Spotify’s game to lose, but the result is here in a diluted form. Jay Z will not make $2M off Holy Grail but from this tour? Figure once every one is paid, $25M mininum and the same for Bey. It is obvious that the way the Beatles retired from touring to make Sgt Pepper? It could never ever happen now.

The future is here and it is not in recorded music.