Why musicians are touring less and expecting fans to come to them
Attending a concert is no longer just a night out: with the rise of the music residency and select-city tours, artists are saving on travel costs, while fans have to shell out for what's being sold being as the trip of a lifetime.
Streaming has cut into artists' income, so there's more pressure for live shows
Laura Fraser · CBC News
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First, comes the concert tickets.
Then the flights and hotel rooms. The outfits, the drinks and dining out.
By the time your voice is raw from scream-singing along with 50,000 fans in a packed stadium, you're down $2,000 — easily.
Attending a concert is no longer always just a night out. With the rise of music residencies and select-city tours, artists can save on travel costs while fans are shelling out for what's being sold as the trip of a lifetime.
While the residency was once synonymous with aging artists in Las Vegas, Celine Dion helped show its broader potential, staging blockbuster runs that revitalized her career and, more recently, launched her to a residency in Paris.
In the last year alone, Bad Bunny and Harry Styles have held runs of more than 30 shows in Puerto Rico and New York City, respectively. And in February, the Backstreet Boys will begin a 12-night run in Toronto that the group says will be its only North American live performances of the year.
The benefits for artists are compelling: residencies can eliminate travel, teardown and setup costs, reduce environmental impacts and limit the physical and psychological toll of touring.
But they can also make music less accessible, though some fans save for the experience as they would for a vacation, said Leonieke Bolderman, an assistant professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands who researches music tourism.
"Visiting concerts is becoming increasingly expensive, and indeed it will prohibit people from going," she said.
There's also a limit to what the market will support, she said, noting that some of the Harry Styles shows in Amsterdam this spring did not sell out — although nearly half a million people still reportedly attended.
Leonieke Bolderman, an assistant professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands who studies music tourism, said that although live music is becoming less accessible for some fans, others will save for months in order to recapture a moment in their youth or to be part of a new tradition. (Submitted by Leonieke Bolderman)
"But there are still people who find the experience so powerful and important and really save up for it."
Until about a decade ago, travelling for music often focused on nostalgia: pilgrimages to Graceland and Dollywood or to Liverpool, England, to experience the origin story of the Beatles, Bolderman said.
"I'd read some papers saying, 'Oh, music tourism will disappear because these generations will die and then this phenomenon will disappear' — and we haven't seen that at all."
Streaming services have also shifted the economics for musicians. In the past, much of an artist's income came from recorded music, while touring was often a promotional vehicle to drive album sales, said Eric Alper, a Toronto-based music publicist.
Now, much of the money is in live shows.
Consider the Backstreet Boys. If they fill the Rogers Centre's 55,000 seats each night in Toronto, they could gross $124 million before costs, based on 2024 figures suggesting live concert tickets cost an average of $188.
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Artists can then invest some of the money saved on transportation into creating a show that people will fly across the country — or the world — to see, Alper said.
"[Fans] want recreations of the video, they want the greatest light show they've ever seen, they want drones overhead making screenshots," he said. "They want an Instagram-able and TikTok-able moment so they can share on their own socials that they're at the show and you're not."
When nostalgia and FOMO collide
Camille Wenner saw her feeds fill this summer with images of friends at the Backstreet Boys in Las Vegas. It brought her back to Friday-night sleepovers, Teen Vogue covers and an 11-year-old version of herself belting out I Want it That Way.
In August, she got to relive that feeling with her girlfriends at the Sphere as she watched her childhood crush, Nick Carter, and his bandmates perform.
"We spent a month all summer watching on Instagram as all of our girlfriends went weekend after weekend: friends from Vancouver, friends from Toronto," she told The Cost of Living. "It just created this hype — we couldn't wait to go."
The experience cost more than $1,000 for the ticket and her share of four nights at the hotel. While she initially scored a reasonably priced flight, she said the trip ultimately cost more than $1,500 after it was affected by the WestJet flight attendant strike in August.
She was paying for the memories, she said — not just those from her preteen years, but also the chance to make new ones with friends.
"You can't do the trip on a budget," she said.
What it means for smaller artists and smaller cities
Bad Bunny's Puerto Rico residency injected an estimated $200 million US into the local economy, as fans flocked to San Juan where limited shows opened to people from outside Puerto Rico.
But most residencies take place in easier-to-reach destinations that already have the infrastructure needed to support an influx of thousands of tourists.
That's why Las Vegas, Toronto, Nashville, Paris, New York, Berlin and London have been home to these megaconcerts in recent years, said Bolderman. For the shows to succeed, there needs to be easy airport access, enough hotel rooms, a strong public transit system and, often, other attractions.
Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny performs live on stage as part of his two-day concert in San Juan, Puerto Rico in December 2021. This summer, he had a 31-concert residency in the U.S. territory. (Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images)
Smaller cities, meanwhile, are less likely to be selected.
But that can present a different opportunity, Bolderman said, noting research suggesting smaller cities can play a role in supporting up-and-coming artists. In Ottawa, for example, the city hired Mathieu Grondin in 2024 as its first nightlife commissioner.
"For the cities that don't have the big headliners anymore, they can invest in a smaller music scene," she said. "And that can be more affordable for local people, local fans."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Fraser is a senior writer and editor with CBC Radio and is based in Halifax. She writes about justice, health and the human experience. Story ideas are welcome at laura.fraser@cbc.ca
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