Live on Different Levels: Navigating Between Global Superstars and Local ‘Hobbyism’

This article was written for Uncover magazine – From Global to Ground (10th edition). You can read the full magazine here. 

Author: Martijn Mulder is a researcher in the fields of leisure, live music/experience and attractive cities at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. He published his PhD thesis ‘I Was There!’ about pop music venues and festivals and their value in the ecosystem of live music.

Uneven playing field
The recently published Dutch Live Music Monitor (Mulder & Swartjes, 2026) confirms that the live music sector functions as a superstar economy (Rosen, 1981). This concerns sectors whose output can hardly be scaled up and in which substitutes are imperfect. Talent, creativity and symbolic value play a major role in these sectors. In an economy of superstars, a very small upper layer pockets a very large share of all revenues: in the US, the top 1% of pop artists earns over 60% of all artists' income from live performances (Krueger, 2019). And although the Live Music Monitor does not contain figures on artists' income, a good estimate can be made based on the size of the venue and the estimated average ticket price.

The figures for 2024 show that 44% of concerts took place in small-capacity venues (<400), while this group represents only 0.7% of all ticket revenue. 5.1% of all performances were at a capacity of more than 4,000 visitors, this group accounted for at least 73% of ticket revenues (Mulder, 2025; Mulder & Swartjes, 2026). That year, there were 30 mega-concerts (>20,000) in the Netherlands, but this small number had an enormous impact: a concert at the Johan Cruyff Arena attracts as many visitors as medium-sized venues do in an entire year. Based on this, it can be said that the Dutch live music sector also has the typical degree of skewness of a superstar economy.

Global sellers’ market
At the top of the pop music pyramid there is a small group of superstars, operating in a global market in which an extraordinary amount of money changes hands. These artists have a very strong symbolic value and there are no real substitutes. The demand for these artists is much greater than the supply on a global level. This leads to what economists call a sellers' market, in which the negotiating power lies entirely with the supplier: the (management of the) artist, who decides where to perform and under what conditions. If the local promoter makes an offer that is not interesting enough, the artist has enough alternatives. When superstars like Harry Styles plan a world tour, they have the power to decide where to perform and under what conditions.

In recent years, the popularity of the true elite has extended even further than before. Michael Jackson was hugely popular in his heyday, but what artists such as Styles, Swift, and Beyoncé are achieving today is many times greater, powered by (social) media. Consequently, consumers are willing to pay increasingly higher prices for these concerts. Also, global top artists increasingly prefer to do their own tour rather than play at festivals. For a long time, a festival tour in the summer season was the best model for superstars, but recently they have increasingly been opting for their own tours in the summer. A related development is that these artists are more often choosing to tour fewer cities: Harry Styles' world tour in 2026 will only visit seven cities around the world.

Local buyers’ market
On the other side of the live spectrum, a large group of artists perform almost exclusively locally or regionally, navigating between music as a hobby and being a pop musician, and working extremely hard for hardly any income. Why do these artists not simply ask for higher fees from the organisers who book them? Because this part of the live sector is a typical buyers' market: the supply of artists exceeds the demand. So, to put it bluntly, if you ask for more, others will take your place. The laws of the superstars do not apply to these artists either. Even if the local, young band plays very well technically, they still have little or no symbolic value and, in the public's perception, there are plenty of alternatives available. A fair pay scheme is not the solution for this large group of artists either. In fact, if a fair pay obligation were to apply to this group of artists as well, far fewer small-scale concerts would be organised because they would lead to (even greater) losses for the organiser.

The Live Music Monitor shows that the number of venues for these local artists has declined in recent years, particularly the number of small-scale, informal venues. Also, studies into the development of ticket prices in both the US and the Netherlands show that prices for the 10% artists with the lowest ticket prices have risen less than inflation over the past decades. In other words, artists earn relatively less from small concerts than they did a few decades ago.

A sustainable system?
The national live music ecosystem is characterised by a small but highly influential elite and a large struggling base. Two relevant questions arise: (1) Is this a problem? (2) Hasn't it always been this way? To begin with the latter: ever since Elvis in the 1950s, there have always been wealthy superstars. And yet, a lot has changed. Superstars are becoming increasingly popular and wealthy, while the least-earning artists’ income has not increased. Superstars are also increasingly making choices that primarily serve their own interests, focusing more on ‘monetising fandom’: superfans are willing to pay a lot, so make sure they do. Is this problematic? Ultimately, yes. Because although it may seem that the local singer-songwriter has nothing to do with superstars, that is indeed the case indirectly. Festivals that must pay more to their headliners can spend less on the rest of the programme; venues program less riskily in the battle for attention and ticket sales; and visitors who spend hundreds of euros on an arena concert cannot spend that same money at the local venue.

The global level of superstar concerts is flourishing and undoubtedly adds value to the Dutch live music supply. Yet, the funny thing is that although the bottom of the pyramid creates value for the top (if only because every artist started small), the top creates hardly any value for the bottom. There is little structural support for the grassroots in the part of the sector where most of the money is earned. Unlike the world of football, where financial solidarity mechanisms have long existed, this idea is still in its infancy within the music sector. In the UK, however, experiments have recently been conducted with a ticket levy on superstar concerts aimed at creating funds for venues and artists in financial distress.

The remaining question is what these developments imply for the sustainable future of the sector. Clearly, it is great that artists like Harry Styles and Taylor Swift include Amsterdam in their world tours. At the same time, one may wonder how future-oriented the sector is when rehearsal spaces are scarce, local venues are disappearing, and even talented musicians are leaving the scene disillusioned. Meanwhile, although superstar concerts in large arenas generate significant local economic impact, they lack some of the value creation associated with the local offering: community building, residential satisfaction, talent development, and spatial impact, to name a few. Currently, initiatives are being developed across the Netherlands to create more and better facilities for touring superstars. There is nothing wrong with that, but there is a risk that market forces will dominate the sector and that only artists who sell enough tickets will be able to perform. Ultimately, that would be a disastrous scenario for the entire live music ecosystem, from local talent to superstars.

Sources

• Krueger, A. B. (2019). Rockonomics: A backstage tour of what the music industry can teach us about economics and life. Currency.
• Mulder, M. (2025) Wat is de economische waarde van de Nederlandse popsector? [presentation]. Eurosonic Conference 2025.
• Mulder, M. & Swartjes, B. (2026) De Nederlandse Livemuziek Monitor 2008-2024. Boekmanstichting.
• Rosen, S. (1981). The Economics of Superstars. The American Economic Review, 71(5), 845-858.

Photography
Bart Heemskerk, Stepen Mease and Jessie Kamp