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White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, Kansas City, MO, USA

Is a backlash against digital culture underway?

Participation and revenue in the live music industry indicate a backlash against digital culture may be underway. The box office gross of the 100 highest-grossing live music tours set an all-time record last year.

This shows that people still crave in real life exciting musical experiences and will spend extravagantly on them, even when they can get music on Spotify for $12 a month. But they want high-fidelity IRL experiences performed by musicians in venues with lots of enthusiastic fans. As Ted Gioia said in a recent The Honest Broker blog article (www.honest-broker.com/ p/ live-music-is-coming-back) , "Fans don't want more streaming-they want more screaming." He says if a return-to-the-real-world backlash can occur in music with people putting down their phones and seeking engagement in the physical world, we should expect it elsewhere.

Implications

This is good news for location-based entertainment venues. People will leave their homes and put down their phones to attend IRL entertainment experiences. And they will spend lavishly on them. But they have to be over-the-top, high-fidelity experiences, premium experiences (see Premiumization (www.whitehutchinson.com/ news/ lenews/ 2024/ september/ article102.shtml#article) article in this issue.).

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