From ticket sales to COVID safety – US industry insiders on the return of live music in 2022
NME about what US fans can expect from live music during the next stage of the ongoing pandemic.With some tours and festivals continuing to be postponed and others’ rescheduled dates due to start in the months ahead, some concern and confusion remains over what to expect from the state of live music this year. The producers of Governors Ball music festival, the people behind ticket-selling app Bandsintown, and an infectious disease specialist told us their insights and projections for events and festivals in 2022.Live music discovery and ticket purchasing app Bandsintown have reported an increase of 8 million users in the last six months. Fabrice Sergent, the app’s managing partner, told NME that those numbers were “pretty astonishing,” adding that recent ticket-buying behaviour in the US showed that “demand for live events is very strong.”“In terms of the number of upcoming shows and festivals being announced [in 2022], we’re still at about half of the number that were announced during this same period of time in the US in 2019 and 2020,” he said. Even with 50 per cent less shows, however, Bandsintown still described “a high level of consumer interest”.“We saw a very strong January in terms of the number of tickets sold; it was twice as many as 2019.