As the end of summer approaches, numerous artists in the music industry are set to go on tour this fall, with many making a stop in Washington, D.C.
Artists such as Kaytranada, LUCKI, and Nicki Minaj will draw fans and concertgoers alike to the DMV in the months ahead, reflecting the importance of touring amid the digital streaming era in music.
Streaming music online has become a dominant sector of the music industry since getting its start in the early aughts with the music-sharing site, Napster. According to Forbes Magazine, music streaming makes up 89 percent of the industry’s total revenue, pulling in $17.5 billion.
But despite these numbers, artists are paid at a disproportionate rate.
Spotify, the most popular music streaming service with 500 million users and subscribers, pays its artists $0.003 to $0.005 per stream after reaching 1,000 streams annually.
Music industry professionals like Adonis Sutherland, senior vice president of A&R and Operations at RCA Records, share that the current pay structure in digital streaming makes it imperative performers go on tour to maintain a livelihood.
“[Whether] 100 monthly listeners or 100 million monthly listeners, the idea is to create enough demand to get people to want to spend their money to see you live,” he said. “The true measure of an artist is the ability to translate streams and downloads into hard tickets.”
Sutherland said that since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, concert culture has shifted and ticket sales have become a metric to determine an artist’s success.
“A big piece coming out of the pandemic is people were missing that in real life experience. There is so much music coming out now, and the best way of gauging who is a real fan and how big the artist is, at the moment, is ticket sales because people are willing to spend their hard-earned money,” he said.
But there is a risk.
Recently, live show ticket distributors have been under scrutiny for price gouging. In May, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Live Nation Entertainment and its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, for allegedly monopolizing 70 percent of the ticket sales market, resulting in inflated ticket prices, limiting artists’ abilities to play certain venues, and forcing smaller promoters out of consideration.
Despite behind-the-scenes complications, some music fans are still willing to support their favorite artists live and in-person.
Jenay Griswold, a junior international business major and legal communications minor, shared she typically listens to music on Apple Music but will attend a concert “every now and then.”
“I haven’t really been focused on it [tours], but now with me being back at Howard and back into that scene, I will definitely be looking for that stuff,” said Griswold.
Hannah Razor is a freshman international business major who works with the Warner-Music Blavatnik Center for Music Business. She shared her enthusiasm as artists prepare for appearances in the nation’s capital.
“I love going to concerts,” Razor said. “There’s so many artists coming to D.C., so I’m excited to see everybody.”
Copy edited by Anijah Franklin
