Live music signs its best year with record revenue | Culture

2023 was the big year for live music in Spain, which broke the collection record with more than 570 million euros at the box office. A number that exceeds by 20 million the registrations, already very high, in 2022. The data, presented this Friday in the latest yearbook of the General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE), contrasts with the slow and difficult recovery of the rest of the country’s cultural shows. Attendance at theaters to see theater and dance is still 30% lower than in 2019, the year before the pandemic, which translates to 33% less revenue.

The enormous difference between sectors is explained, according to Rubén Gutiérrez del Castillo, general director of the SGAE Foundation, by the age difference between the audiences. “The main audience for stage shows is 40 or 50 years old and up. And older people continue to have health fears,” he said at the presentation of the yearbook in Madrid this Friday. The trends in the performing arts shown by the SGAE data, and confirmed by Gutiérrez del Castillo, say that, although it is going up, “it is reaching a limit.”

The number of stage show performances, for example, has barely increased by 3% compared to 2022, and is not far from the 50,000 shows the year before the pandemic. And although the number of attendees has increased steadily since 2021, it still represents more than 30% less than in 2019. “We knew that we would see a very slow evolution, and we continue to think that it will continue to affect,” says Gutiérrez del Castillo who, since his position in the SGAE, assures that “there are things that the Government has not done well.” His solution to the slow recovery of the sector involves the “implementation of public policies for audience development for young people.”

An audience that, on the other hand, live music brings together, never better said. As in 2022, in 2023 macro festivals continue to be an important part of the collection: they represent 46% of income. And although the growth of festivals seems to stagnate a bit – there are examples such as the failures of the Madrid edition of Primavera Sound and the Malaga edition of Mad Cool (called Andalucía Big Festival), which will not be repeated this year due to the low public response. Only the concerts, macro festivals aside, are in very good health. They exceed what was collected in 2019 by more than 75 million. The prices of live music, however, have increased by 40% since the year before the pandemic. The SGAE is not concerned. “The shows are of a much better level, people want it that way and, until now, demand naturally absorbs these increases,” says Gutiérrez del Castillo, who has admitted not knowing how far the phenomenon will go. “We hope it reaches a balance point slowly,” he concludes.

Coldplay (221,140 spectators), Harry Styles (120,534 spectators) and Bruce Springsteen (115,850 spectators) take the podium of the most successful international tours in Spain in 2023. If we talk about national shows, first place goes to Manuel Carrasco with 365,652 spectators , followed by Melendi with 308,258 attendees, and Joaquín Sabina with 253,809 spectators.

Cinema, dance and video games

The cinema shows a paradoxical panorama, but according to the SGAE “hopeful”. It presents data similar to those of the performing arts, but the SGAE views it with better eyes. If last year, Spaniards went to the cinema once a week (1.4), in 2023 they will be closer to two visits (1.6). Although almost 100 fewer films were exhibited than in 2022. The United States and Spain share the gold medal in terms of the number of films exhibited. The Americans, of course, surpass the Spanish, as usual, by more than 45% in viewers and collections.

Of the total number of stage performances, dance supply and collections in 2023 represent 4%. And although the performance figures are the closest in the sector to those of 2019, before the pandemic (only 8.7% less), attendance is 27.6% below. “All the alarms are ringing,” said the president of the SGAE. Centralization affects this discipline particularly. Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia account for more than half of the shows and 10 of the 17 autonomous communities had fewer than 100 dance performances in 2023. In La Rioja there were six. In Ceuta and Melilla, one.

Culture continues to be very centralized in Spain. The difference between the Autonomous Community that presented the most stage shows in 2023 (Madrid) and the one that presented the least (Ceuta and Melilla) was close to 15,000 performances. More than half of the stage performances in Spain are concentrated in Madrid (34%) and Catalonia (22%). The one who follows them most closely is the Valencian Community, which does not exceed 7.9% of the total. Then, Andalusia with 7.1%, the Basque Country with 4.4% and Aragon with 5%. None of the remaining ones reaches 5% of the pie, with Ceuta and Melilla not even reaching 1% (0.1).

Vinyl and CDs in front of the streaming

In a trend that was already announced in previous years, in 2023, the sale of vinyl surpasses that of CDs for the second consecutive year and leads the physical market for the sale of recorded music. They resist and expand their niche, while CDs give way. On the other hand, the unstoppable advance of income from the digital market already represents 86.6% of total recorded music income.

In the same market as that of recorded music, that of entertainment, video games have grown exponentially since 2014, a pandemic in between, until reaching, in 2023, 2,339 million euros in revenue. This places it as the leader in its market, far surpassing cinema at the box office and, of course, recorded music, with a market share of more than 60%. Video game players played, on average, 7.7 hours a week in a year that stands out particularly for the physical sales of video games, which rose 24% compared to the previous figure.