After a year of no concerts or festivals, nearly non-existent revenues have become the norm for concert giant Live Nation Entertainment’s quarterly reports. On Thursday afternoon, Live Nation posted figures for the first quarter of 2021 similar to those of the past three — with the company reporting a 79 percent drop in year-over-year Q1 revenue.
Since the advent of the genre in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, the standard trajectory for signed indie-rock bands has been to release an album, tour on it for roughly two years, release another album, repeat. In the industry, this is known as the two-year album cycle, a model that’s ostensibly designed to maximize the impact (and profits) of a sole record by having an artist promote it for the time it takes them to exhaustively gig throughout their markets.
Read MoreThe role of the music label used to be getting an artist's album played on radio and stocked on store shelves. That has changed as the internet has freed artists from their dependence on labels. Today, many opt to market and distribute their music independently through social media and streaming platforms.
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