What's up with all these musical acts booking venues they can't sell?
The Black Keys just announced that they were planning to downsize their upcoming tour, but they're not the first to make the miscalculation
Everyone seems to think they can launch their own Eras Tour these days, and the instinct does make sense. We’ve spent almost two years now reading about venues selling out in seconds despite skyrocketing ticket prices, fans who couldn’t attend tuning in via livestream to hear their favorite songs night after night, a film of the concert going on to break its own records, and other massive tours like Beyoncé’s Renaissance impacting the U.S. economy on a level on par with hosting an Olympics.
That sort of hype around live performance must be intoxicating, especially if you have your own cadre of die-hard fans willing to drop significant cash on every new thing you make. But as we all know, most artists aren’t Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, and can’t even come close to supporting a tour on this scale. Increasingly, though, that doesn’t mean they’re not willing to try—often with results that can be described as embarrassing at best.
This weekend, The Black Keys quietly canceled the entire planned North American leg of their upcoming International Players arena tour, before announcing on Instagram that the band had “decided to make some changes… that will enable us to offer a similarly exciting, intimate experience for both fans and the band, and will be announcing a revised set of dates shortly.” While they didn’t explicitly say the change was due to low ticket sales, that’s a pretty clear explanation. Seats cost $100 at the lowest for a band that hasn’t been able to support those sorts of crowds since they sold out Madison Square Garden all the way back in 2011. Many people who used to listen to The Black Keys casually may not have even known they had a new album out at all.