What MiniResidencies, And Major Stadium Shows, Taught Us About The Future Of Dance Music
In February, Fred Again..., Skrillex and Four Tet turned New York's Madison Square Garden into a sweaty party, a five-hour, rocking show that sold out in two minutes and, in some ways, set the tone for the dance music. in 2023. Question The trio is proving to be the perfect replacement for Frank Ocean in the second weekend of Coachella, who will headline Sunday night. In October, Freed again sold 42,300 tickets and grossed $2.9 million in a three-night residency in New York, according to Billboard Boxscore, and then played eight nights in Los Angeles.
"We've been trying for months to take this show to the next level and really push ourselves to make it musical, dynamic and live," Fred wrote on Instagram.
Fred Again..., now nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, is an even bigger star in 2023, but he's not the only one benefiting from the return of live events post-pandemic. In June, future bass stars Illenium played Denver's Mile High Stadium, selling 47,300 tickets and grossing $3.9 million. Meanwhile, Beyoncé toured the world with her dance album Renaissance , which sold 2.8 million tickets worldwide. Live electronic master ODESZA headlines the festival circuit including Bonnaroo, Governors Ball and Outside Lands.
"There was a moment when I realized that electronic music was in a very healthy state from a live perspective," said Lee Anderson, executive vice president and general manager of Wasserman, which represents electronic artists such as Skrillex, Z and Disclosure. "It's probably bigger than ever, with the rise of electronic music."
This wave started with the pandemic, when the dance floor was still empty. Before 2020, dance shows had been declining “since the end of 2010 in terms of tickets and live events,” Anderson said. This was the same era that house music replaced EDM as the preferred dance genre in the United States.
But with artists turning to live streaming during lockdown, dance music has become more accessible through live DJ sets. The word is spreading on Twitch and other platforms as a new generation of fans grows up and when streaming comes back, they want to dance. "There's a new generation of kids who think, 'Oh my God. What is this? I want to get out of the house,'" Anderson said.
أدى الطلب المكبوت إلى التذاكر لعروض الرقص في جميع أنحاء الولايات المتحدة وفي عام 2022 ، قال أندرسون: "كنت أتحدث إلى في في Live Nation و AG ،" تُباع المعدات المعدات المعدات مثل الكعك الساخن الساخن الساخن الساخن الساخن لقد البيانات وأدركنا وأدركنا أن هذا الاتجاه الاتجاه Others."
Contributing to this growth is the expansion of the American dance market in general. While there used to be about a dozen cities where techno artists could perform, Anderson says there are now 30. In addition to major markets like Miami, New York and Los Angeles, the United States now has thriving centers for bass, commercial dance and trap music. And house music. And other styles in cities like Denver and Phoenix. (Anderson says artists' social engagement is the best indicator of where they can sell tickets.) Meanwhile, festivals that used to book three or four dance shows are now booking four times that amount.
While house music's current dominance is a result of a greater level of live success from established artists (Anderson cites legendary Chicago band Green Velvet as a prime example, saying they are "probably bigger than ever" ), I'm also on the rise for newer artists. After playing their first major show earlier this year, San Diego bass producers ISOXO and Knock2 played four sold-out shows at The Shrine in Los Angeles in November.
"Between the two, the most streamed song has about 13 million streams," Anderson said. "It wasn't a huge amount, but they sold 20,000 tickets in Los Angeles as fast as the train processed the transactions, and we had enough people in line that we would have done four more [nights] if the space had been available."
These one-off residencies and concerts also indicate the preferred touring style of dance shows, where groups often perform a small number of seemingly distinct shows (to which fans are more likely to travel) rather than performing them over and over again. time. (The group will play two more shows at Sophie Stadium in Los Angeles in February 2024), as Fisher and Chris Lake did in October, when they shut down a section of Hollywood Boulevard and drew crowds. 12,000 fans (Anderson described the show as "one of the biggest stories in dance music this year.") Pretty Lights' comeback tour includes a series of short residencies, including 27 shows across nine venues. And on December 16, John Summitt will headline Los Angeles' 22,000-capacity BMO Arena, the kind of show Kx5 proved he deserved last December, when he played to 46,000 people at the LA Coliseum.
"When the era [of the EDM bubble] was 'Can it be this big again?', did you see electronic artists filling stadiums?" -Anderson asked. "Because it happened today and you'll see it will continue to happen. It's never happened before. It's new."
This story first appeared in the December 9, 2023 issue of Billboard magazine .