A Record Year for Sales and Chaos in the Concert Industry

Concerts are back, but they’re facing shortages in most everything and confronting climate change

The band Love of Lesbian performs at Sant Jordi stadium in Barcelona, Spain, on Saturday, March 27, 2021. The public, the staff and the band are part of a mass experiment that organizers say is the largest concert without social distancing of the coronavirus era.Photographer: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg

Hi all and welcome back. As I mentioned last week, I’m currently sweltering in Dallas for Podcast Movement where it feels like all everyone can talk about is the plague-level amount of crickets (concerning) and their Ben Shapiro, from The Daily Wire, sightings/selfies, which I’ll say more on later. Real drama. I’m wandering around — please do say hi — and if you have hot tips to share, my attention is available to you! My email is acarman5@bloomberg.net, and if you aren’t yet signed up to receive this newsletter, you can do so here

Now, on to the news.

Today I published a story describing the pandemonium that has become the live events business this summer. It’s been a wild couple of years in general, as we know, and all the macro storylines we here at Bloomberg have been following, like inflation, the great resignation and Covid-19, have also played out on a micro scale in the touring world. You can read the whole story here.