Emily Lichter has been managing the band Lake Street Dive for more than a decade since they were “playing for tips” in small clubs on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Although the retro-pop group is not well-known, their fortunes have changed quite a bit: Later this year, they are set to play New York's legendary Madison Square Garden for the first time, where the capacity ranges from 12,000 to 18,000, depending on the configuration of a show .
“Our joke is that it's the biggest band nobody's ever heard of,” says Lichter.
Sure, some viewers have expressed surprise that the band has the guts to headline the World's Most Famous Arena. “Someone asked me who Lake Street supports at MSG,” he adds Leigh Millhauser, the band's agent at Wasserman Music. “And I said: The same.”
Every year, a new number of artists try to get their live shows up and make the leap to arenas. Following through on it can be fraught – even for those who are sure they can pull it off. “I've heard all the horror stories about people making the arena jump too early,” he says Ed Harris, manager of Cigarettes After Sex, the laid-back rock band that will also play MSG for the first time later this year. “You have to be very careful.”
“You can't have a weak stomach,” she agrees Andrew Friedman, who manages the Wallows, playing their first MSG show in August. The process can involve “a lot more sleepless nights and more calls to the band's agents and promoter than they'd probably like,” Friedman continues.
Managers and agents often talk about the live side of the music business as if they were basketball coaches, stressing the importance of fundamentals in postgame interviews. Be 'methodical' and 'consistent'. rely on 'hard work' and 'elbow grease'. Almost everyone suggests a variation of the same phrase: “Don't skip steps.” (Olivia Rodrigo used a version of this reasoning to explain why she didn't jump straight into arenas after the smash hit of her first album.)
“You try to sell out every show and you try not to back down,” he says Robbie Fraser, partner of WME Music. “One way to not go backwards is not to jump forward too quickly.”
Those who don't adhere to these rules – who try to fill an arena without the highly enthusiastic fan base required to support the move – may see their live chances suffer. “festival bookers want to know you're worth X tickets,” he explains Kirk Harding, co-owner of the Bad Habit label and management company. “If you're out here saying you're worth 10,000 tickets and 5,000 people show up, you're not as hot as you tell them. You might not get the festival slot you want, which is huge.”
Additionally, “artists' egos get bruised” when ticket numbers are low, according to Duffy McSwiggin, svp at Wasserman Music. Acts can become the joke as screenshots showing large empty seats or rock bottom ticket prices circulate on social media. Plus, logistically, “there's damage control to do,” McSwiggin continues. “That can be upgrading the house, closing the top and moving people down — that takes a lot of people hours.”
To avoid ending up in that position, agents say they look at data from past shows, trying to determine the extent of demand for a performance in any given market. stream numbers offer a measure of an artist's appeal, but are less useful for gauging whether a listen will support an artist financially, whether that means buying a ticket or merchandise.
“Someone can have 4 million monthly listeners on Spotify, but they might not even fill a 500-capacity club,” says Fraser. “It's people who click a button at some point. But that doesn't really equate to your loyal fans.”
Instead of scrutinizing the streams, Millhauser “obsessed over all the data around the previous games in the market:” For example, “were the tickets sold out on sale or did they slowly sell out?” “What zip codes did the fans come from?” “Was it a Tuesday night show or a Friday night show?”
Managers have their own rules of the road. “When you can put on two Radio City shows” — with a capacity of more than 5,700 — “and sell them out quickly, that's a clear indication that you deserve Madison Square Garden,” he says. Drew Simmons, partner at Foundations Artist Management. (A representative for MSG did not respond to requests for comment.)
After Lake Street Dive performed two nights at Radio City in 2022, the band's team did a “zip code check,” Lichter says, and found that only 31 people attended both nights. “Add up all those tickets and you end up with 'we sold about 10,000 tickets,'” he explains. “This is an MSG.”
For Mt. Joy, who make their MSG debut in September, the equation was different. “Last year we did two Central Parks,” he says Jack Gallagher, manager of the band. Like Radio City, Central Park Summerstage can hold more than 5,000 people.
However, “arenas are a lot harder to sell than a field,” according to Gallagher — with a field, “people don't have to coordinate with their friends and figure out where to sit, and the seats are cheap.” While “it's definitely a risk to create a space that's not much bigger than two Central Parks,” he continues, “we just pulled it off.” (Ali Hendrickpartner and agent for Arrival Artists, notes that the band has played more than 30 times in New York state since 2017. New York and Chicago are two of the group's strongholds.)
Wallows also took an alternate route to MSG. “We know the audience wanted to be close to the band and the floor,” Friedman says, “and those balconies at Radio City, they're a long way away.” Instead, Wallows chose to play four shows at Terminal 5, a 3,000-capacity venue. “Now we go back and do Radio City?” Friedman asks. “This is starting to look like a lateral move. You can either play it safe or take a swing.”
Some performers have gusts of wind at their backs that can speed their way into the arenas. A lot of bands didn't tour during COVID, but once the world started to open up a bit, Mt. Joy “did 33 drive-in shows” — outdoor shows with social distancing measures — “during the pandemic,” according to Hendrick. “So when other artists left, they continued to tour and play to a lot of people. That was one thing that made them stand out from the crowd” when life fully returned to normal.
Not surprisingly, TikTok virality can also boost a band. Before COVID, Cigarettes After Sex usually played 3,000 to 5,000 capacity venues. Then, during the pandemic, a new audience began to find the band's music on TikTok. “That injected steroids into everything,” Harris says. “The fan base just got a lot younger and a lot more enthusiastic.” Last year, the band played Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, which fits more people in some scenarios than MSG, even if it's less iconic.
One of Harding's long-standing management clients is The Neighborhood, who have spent much of their career steadily growing their live business. “The tours were leading the way. it wasn't very streaming heavy,” says Harding.
During COVID, songs from The Neighborhood became the soundtrack of choice for millions of TikTok videos, leading to a huge increase in streaming. “If they regroup and come back from hiatus, they'll do an MSG now if they want to — when you have explosive moments, you can lose a step,” Harding says.
But “if you don't have those, you just build slowly,” he continues. “You quietly, diligently take the steps until people say, 'Wait, they're worth it. that many tickets? I had no idea.'”
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/business/touring/madison-square-garden-headlining-acts-2024-1235662382/