LiveNation squeaks by - trouble ahead though?
This coolfer post seems pretty much right on. I think an important point that is being left out is that the concert going market is smaller than the overall recorded music market and is a slightly less elastic market I would imagine. Concert goers are expecting to pay a fair amount of money for a ticket and variants in that cost are going to be handled better than variance in the price of CDs or digital downloads. So while concerts were able to push out a profit now if ticket prices continue to rise or economic strains continue to worsen (or simply don’t recede) I could see LiveNation taking a mighty hit when consumers redirect that music cashflow toward food and energy purchases.
