What's the impact of Live Nation's dominance on the music industry?

Remember the soul-destroying experience of trying to get tickets to Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour in late 2022? Millions of fans waited in line for hours just to find out that a majority of tickets fell into the hands of scalpers who resold them for thousands of dollars.

It turns out, the company responsible for the mess fared quite a bit better than the fans. Live Nation announced record-breaking earnings of $22.7 billion, a 36 per cent increase from 2022. 

The multinational entertainment company is present in every aspect of live music, from promotion to operations, to ticket sales. In 2010, Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster, further monopolising the concert industry and making tickets to bigger acts less affordable than ever.

Over the years, Live Nation has also been buying up independent local venues. The company currently owns several concert halls in Canada: the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver; Midway in Edmonton; and Budweiser Stage, Danforth Music Hall, History, RBC Echo Beach, Velvet Underground, and most recently, The Opera House in Toronto.

When one company holds that much stake, it raises a question that many people in the music industry are having to contend with: Has Live Nation become too powerful?

The Guardian reporter Adrian Horton and Toronto club-owner Shaun Bowring join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to unpack this question, discuss the effects Live Nation's dominance has on consumers, and if their unprecedented growth is sustainable.                                                                          

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, plus why the internet is so obsessed with Kate Middleton's supposed disappearance, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Shaun, you run two small clubs in Toronto and you also independently promote shows in bigger venues around the city. For you, this business is a daily grind, but you have to go do it in order to make this work. How do you feel when you see Live Nation posting numbers this big?  

Shaun: It's unfathomable. I saw it and was like, "That's an insane number." For independent promoters and a venue operator. Those numbers are not the same numbers we're dealing with.

Elamin: When you think about smaller venue owners and small promoters, you wouldn't even think they extract this much money from the market. But the fact that one singular place can do that is quite startling. How are your venues doing post-pandemic, Shaun?   

Shaun: We're still definitely in rebuild mode, probably about 75 per cent of pre-pandemic numbers. And it's going good, but the cost of everything's up and the landscape is changing.

Elamin: Adrian, when we look at 2023, it was obviously a big year because of Taylor and Beyoncé. But those are not the only things that's driving the Live Nation machine. Let's talk about how big this machine is. What other factors are fuelling their massive growth?

Adrian: First of all, I was surprised to hear Shaun say that he's not fully back to pre-pandemic numbers. I think that the huge Live Nation numbers are evidence of this big phenomenon that's happening. The big get really big and then the small have to keep getting more and more niche, to try and reach an audience. 

Most money is made for music artists in touring. There are a lot of legacy touring artists that reliably make money. You have your Phish, the Grateful Dead reboot with John Mayer, Bruce Springsteen — these artists that are touring pretty consistently and making money — and Live Nation controls a good portion of the venues. When I say venues, I'm talking about arenas, stadiums and amphitheatres, those types of bigger venues. 

Ticketmaster says it represents 50 to 60 per cent of primary ticket sellers. Other estimates have that up as high as 80 per cent

Elamin: Shaun I also want to give people a fuller understanding of the power of Live Nation, because we've just mentioned the fact that they control these mega venues because people tend to think of Live Nation as the company that has these larger stars, but it's also pretty deeply embedded in the small, independent venue ecosystem. Can you talk a little bit about how Live Nation is changing that landscape? 

Shaun: There's definitely been some movement there where they're purchasing smaller live venues than the big mega venues. That's happened in New York and L.A. and London. Usually there's an AEG component in there as well. That's what's happening in Toronto now. How is that going to affect things in 5 or 6 years when a bunch of formerly independent venues have been bought up? That's the kind of scenario we're looking at in sizing up. I know people that work at Live Nation. It's a tight community. And up until this point, it's been a friendly competition. We all know what one another's doing. But looking into the future, it's a little bit unknown, but hopefully there's always room for the upstarts and the underdogs. 

Elamin: What do you see in the future of Live Nation's dominance over the music industry?

Adrian: I think for a while at least, it's going to keep being big and the big artists are going to keep raking in these mind boggling numbers. We will see what happens with this Justice Department investigation that's still underway that could put more restrictions on how Live Nation runs its business. 

The one thing we can all agree on is that fees should be less, but I don't know if the bi-partisan bill will actually pass in Congress, but it would not bust up Live Nation. It would change its business practices. In the meantime, people really want to see their favourite artists. And I think it's a good thing that people want these communal music experiences. And I think as things go, if people have the money and are able to, they're still going to pay for these big experience concerts. 

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman