Kathmandu. In 2024, the final leg of pop star Taylor Swift’s “The Arrow” tour was in Canada. It was the music industry’s highest-grossing music tour of all time. This mega tour lasted for two years. It included 149 live concerts in 5 countries. <\/p>\n
The tour grossed more than $2 billion. Previous Mega Tours couldn’t even reach half of that amount. <\/p>\n
Taylor Swift has set a new record in the music industry. Nine months later, pop band Coldplay completed the next leg of their ‘Music of the Spheres’ world tour. Coldplay’s Mega Tour has grossed more than $1.5 billion so far. The question is, how did the mega tours of music become such a huge source of profit? <\/p>\n
Large fan base<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n To understand how music bands grow their fan base and increase their fan following, it is important to understand the efforts of artists in the South Korean music genre, K-pop. K-pop is a mix of Korean and many Western music styles. Their melodies and lyrics have energetic and lively beats. Intricate and catchy dance moves are common. <\/p>\n In addition, K-pop bands use social media and technology extensively to connect with their fans. To understand their success, we spoke with Kevin Kim, Asia head of music distribution Root Notes, based in Seoul. “The main difference between Western artists and Korean artists is that Korean K-pop artists are always online,” he says. They have a strong presence on YouTube. Many artists also communicate directly with their fans on the ‘Bubble’ app. \u2019<\/p>\n Bubble is a South Korean social networking app. Which allows fans to receive live messages from their music stars. This has played a major role in the success of these bands’ mega concerts. <\/p>\n Kevin Kim says, “With this app, K-pop bands know the regions where they have the biggest fans, and then they plan their concert tours and announce their shows.” \u2019<\/p>\n Many K-pop bands love them so much that they travel to distant cities and other countries to see a particular band’s concert. Their fans come to the venue dancing and singing. As a result, these bands get a lot of publicity. Sometimes these fans bring light sticks. The color of which indicates their area. <\/p>\n The lights on this light stick are controlled by the concert organizers. As a result, it changes colors or flashes with the music. This adds to the lively atmosphere of the concert. <\/p>\n According to Kevin Kim, these light sticks are made with very advanced technology. Their color and light change according to the fluctuations of the music. Sometimes a light stick illuminates the right side of the concert hall and sometimes the left side. This makes the concert experience much more dynamic for the audience and listeners. They think they’re part of the music. <\/p>\n Not only light sticks, Korean K-pop bands also sell various items related to the band to their fans. Kevin Kim said, “Korean bands sell a variety of merchandise, including posters, T-shirts and keychains featuring their band or its stars. T-shirts and keychains with new images are released for each concert. Their fans eagerly buy and collect these items. \u2019<\/p>\n All of these strategies have made concert tours more profitable than ever before. But the question arises, how did they become so successful? And what about the old ways of making money by selling music albums or CDs? <\/p>\n Digital Transformation<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n “Pop bands used concert tours to promote their new albums and CDs,” says Sharona Elton, a professor at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami in the US. So that their fans can buy them. But now these bands are making direct profits from concert tours. \u2019<\/p>\n According to Elton, the main reason for this is the change in digital technology in the last 20 years. In the past, people used to go to music stores to buy artist albums, but now they can easily download their songs online, often illegally, for free. <\/p>\n “In the past, young people bought a lot of music records and CDs,” Elton said. Now they are illegally downloading music from the internet. It has changed the dynamics of the music industry. \u2019<\/p>\n “When artists saw their record sales slowly declining, they chose to monetize their music through concert tours,” she adds. Concert tours increase the online streaming of pop artists’ music, and people start buying their albums online as soon as the concert is announced. However, it does not generate significant income. \u2019<\/p>\n That’s why it’s important for artists to turn their concerts into grand masterpieces. Which generates buzz and attracts a large number of ticket buyers. It takes a huge investment to organize these concerts on a grand scale. \u2013translated from BBC <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kathmandu. In 2024, the final leg of pop star Taylor Swift’s “The Arrow” tour was in Canada. It was the music industry’s highest-grossing music tour of all time. This mega tour lasted for two years. It included 149 live concerts in 5 countries. The tour grossed more than $2 billion. Previous Mega Tours couldn’t even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":283651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45044,45159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news-en","category-news-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283657,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283656\/revisions\/283657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/media\/283651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}