Rolling Stones Said in Talks With Live Nation, AEG
Mick Jagger, lead singer of The Rolling Stones. Photographer: Jack Atley/Bloomberg
By Kristen Schweizer - Jul 28, 2010 3:52 PM GMT+0200 Wed Jul 28 13:52:33 UTC 2010 Email Share
Business Exchange Twitter Delicious Digg Facebook LinkedIn Newsvine Propeller Yahoo! Buzz Print
Mick Jagger, lead singer of The Rolling Stones. Photographer: Jack Atley/Bloomberg
The Rolling Stones, whose hits include “Satisfaction” and “Sympathy for the Devil,” are in talks with promoters AEG Live and Live Nation Entertainment Inc. for a tour, according to a person who declined to be identified because talks are private.
The Stones are planning concerts in the next few years and haven’t yet signed a contract, said the person. An auction for the tour has been under way for about a month and a group of independent promoters is also bidding, the person said.
A spokesman for the band declined to comment on the auction and said The Rolling Stones have no plans to retire. The U.K.’s Sun newspaper reported last weekend that the group’s 50th anniversary shows would be its last. Spokespeople for Live Nation and AEG Live declined to comment.
The band, which turns 50 in two years, holds the record for the most profitable tour with the 2005-2006 “A Bigger Bang,” which took in $558.3 million, according to music news website Spinner. With record sales plunging 30 percent in the past decade and illegal downloads of music accounting for almost all music heard online, live performance has become the industry’s most lucrative and fastest-growing segment.
Fans are paying twice the price for tickets to top concerts compared with a decade ago. Artists who once performed live to promote record sales are now churning out albums to boost attendance at shows.
Higher Concert Sales
AC/DC, whose hits include “Back in Black” and “Highway to Hell” will probably be the second-highest grossing tour band when figures are tallied from their “Black Ice” shows which concluded last weekend, according to Spinner. The concerts may have taken in $441.6 million, the website said.
The live performance market raked in $21.6 billion in 2008, an increase of 54 percent in three years, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Recorded music sales last year were $18.4 billion.
Record companies are scrambling to find ways to get a piece of the live action. They’re signing artists to so-called 360 deals, where they get a portion of an artist’s rights to recorded music, tours, merchandise and marketing.
Live Nation Inc., the world’s largest concert promoter, has 360 deals with Madonna and Shakira.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kristen Schweizer in London at
kschweizer1@bloomberg.net.
