These days, the live music business runs on red-hot fan anticipation, FOMO ticket pricing and careful cost management. The first isn’t new. After COVID, when promoters discovered how much fans would pay to see their favorite performers, tours have been marketed with more sense of event, partly to justify rising prices. At the same time, however, touring costs have spiked to the point that they can eat into profit margins.
The touring business has always involved just that: touring, meaning traveling from show to show, city to city. Established performers usually choose a type of venue, scale a show to suit it, and route a tour to play as many of those places as is practical in a region, in a way that lets them defray the cost of transporting and setting up equipment for every gig. They only make money when they play, but they spend it every day they’re “on the road,” which gives them an incentive to squeeze in shows. Even flying private, the travel is exhausting. But if you want to see a million faces and rock them all, as Jon Bon Jovi once sang, you need to go where the fans are.
Unless you don’t.
Harry Styles has announced plans to play 68 shows in eight cities this year, including 10 in Amsterdam, 12 in London, six in Mexico City and 30 in New York at Madison Square Garden. His tour is essentially just a series of residencies. This has generated some frustration (I have to travel where?), but also a great deal of enthusiasm (We’ll make a weekend of it!). There’s a certain amount of excitement involved: The German newspaper Tagesspiegel recently reported that Styles could play eight shows at Berlin’s Olympiastadion in 2027. Presumably, Styles would prefer to spend time in these cities, rather than on a tour bus — and who could blame him? Whatever the reasons for the residencies, though — Styles’ team didn’t comment — the economics are far better than they would be for a traditional tour.
Residencies essentially let artists and their teams separate the revenue of the touring business from its costs. Those come disproportionately from traveling between shows, with the equipment that needs to be transported by truck and then loaded in and out of venues. Styles will still have to pay a crew, of course, but he won’t need to spend nearly as much on transport and setup costs. Nor will he have to worry about sound, lights and opening acts. (How’s the sound going to be on night five in Amsterdam? Probably the same as night four!)
Although Styles’ residencies have drawn a great deal of attention, the concert business has been moving this way for a while. Starting in spring 2023, Metallica organized its M72 World Tour as a series of two-night stadium stands, partly because the staging was so expensive that it became impractical to play single shows. The following year, Adele did a 10-show residency in Munich at a newly-built 75,000-seat venue, surrounded by an “Adele World” of carnival rides and refreshment stands. Even traditional tours seem to be playing more shows in fewer cities: Ariana Grande’s 2026 tour consists of 41 shows in 10 cities, all three- or five-night stands, except for 10 nights of shows at the O2 in London.
Related
Touring like this doesn’t really reduce costs, of course — it just shifts them from performers to fans, many of whom will presumably need to travel to see the show. This makes a concert more of an event — perhaps the centerpiece of a weekend away — and most already have prices to match. This can also raise the cost significantly, since many fans need transportation and a hotel. Concerts have become high-priced entertainment, more like Broadway shows, with the expected expenses of dinner before or after, rather than a night at a bar or club. This makes them less affordable. Broadway shows aren’t really mass entertainment.
Although this style of touring presents potential problems for the music business, it probably makes economic sense, at least in the U.S. In the current “K-shaped economy,” many people are worse off, so companies of all kinds are depending more on those who have more disposable income than ever. They tend to live in big cities, especially financial centers like London and New York. A generation ago, labels wanted artists to tour the country to promote albums. Now that this is less of a priority, why would artists slog through Cleveland and Cincinnati when they could just play more shows in Chicago? Especially when it will be more comfortable — and cheaper.
The real money, it turns out, is in having the audience come to you.
