I saw two concerts last week: Xavier Naidoo and Söhne Mannheims. In case you are familiar with German music you see the connection. For those who are not, let me explain.
Xavier Naidoo is a solo artist, well known in Germany and Söhne Mannheims is kind of a boy group, being lead by Xavier Naidoo as well. So far nothing special.
This year they went on tour. Together. Meaning there are 2 concerts in each city, one night Xavier alone, and the other night together with Söhne Mannheims. While it is not uncommon to play for more than 1 night in a city in the US or the UK, it is fairly uncommon in German speaking Europe. Most cities are just not larger enough for 2 shows (unless you’re AC/DC).
This combination has several implications:
Value added for the artists: 2 concerts in 1 town increase revenues, while at the same time decreasing costs. The stage was exactly the same, and some of the band members performed on both nights. Performing 2 shows in the same city probably also takes out some of the hassle of being on tour.
Value added for the customers: some of the cost saving were passed on to customers through a special “combi” ticket at about 75% of buying 2 single tickets. This is besides that fact of course that you get to see 2 performances. Which in itself was considered pretty cool by some people.
Additional revenue streams: Besides the usual merchandising you would expect, one could buy the concert (that special concert from that night in Vienna) on a USB stick right after the show. It was actually a bit misleading: you bought the USB stick which had a code for downloading the concert the next day, but hey…it’s cool anyway. This is not only additional revenue for the artist, I think it’s also increased value for the fans. At least for those who wanted to pay the additional 20.- Euro. Of course this option was offered on both nights. I could imagine such a service being expanded: what about a video of the show? A package containing the album + the live show? Video + CD + live show? Etc. As concert revenues have not to be shared with the record label, I wonder if that’s also the case for the sale of these USB sticks.
As the music industry is fighting for making up the loss of CD sales, I guess we will see more innovations in the future.
