Live Nation Promo Emails & Gender Equity
A review of promotional emails & one systemic fix for equity
Inside This Issue
A review of Live Nation Promo Emails
Conclusions
Music videos for FFFAs promoted and not promoted
ICYMI (podcast, collabs, new releases)
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Live Nation Promotional Emails & Gender Equity
Every week, Live Nation sends emails promoting upcoming events in cities across the nation. I receive emails for Detroit area events. After six months of reviewing their Detroit promotional emails, it seemed newsworthy to share my findings, which analyze systemic gender bias in promoting female and female-fronted acts (FFFA, for the sake of brevity) in music.
The good news is that with one simple systemic adjustment, it’s easy to start closing the promotional gap.
Detroit Metro area venues that Live Nation includes in these emails (I’ll call them weekly roundups) are listed here. The subject line starts with “Your Upcoming Concert Lineup…”
Michigan Lottery Amphitheater
Pine Knob
Meadowbrook Theater
Fillmore Detroit
Little Caesars Arena
Huntington Center
Dow Event Center
The Shelter
St. Andrew’s Hall
Fox Theater
Stranahan Theater
Masonic Temple
I randomly chose one weekly roundup for each month going back to December 2023, when I first actively took note of the disparities. Non-musical events were excluded from the stats. Randomly choosing one weekly roundup per month, this is what the numbers look like for promoted acts:
Question: are FFFAs promoted in these sampled emails at a 1:1 ratio with who is actually booked in venues?
Keep scrolling to see music videos from these acts!
Slicing open just one piece of the pie, let’s take a look at events booked for April 2024 at the Fillmore Detroit. I chose that month because only ~ 6% of the April weekly roundup promos were FFFAs. The April email contained 2 Fillmore promos, neither were FFFAs. Using ConcertArchives.org as the source, The Fillmore Detroit hosted nine musical events featuring 16 headliners and openers in April. Only Glyders, who opened for Black Crowes, was a FFFA. Which means 6% of weekly roundup promos were FFFA but 0% of Fillmore-specific promos in the email were FFFAs.
Let’s try that again with a different venue.
Pine Knob is one of my favorite outdoor venues, so let’s see what they booked in June 2024. Pine Knob hosted 10 musical events featuring 24 headliners and openers, per Concert Archives. Four were FFFAs (zero were listed as the headlining act). They were Maren Morris, Paula Abdul, Dess Dior, and S.G. Goodman. That’s about 16.7% of all acts in June. Of 8 Pine Knob shows listed in the June weekly roundup, one FFFA was listed (Janet Jackson). So, 16.7% of June acts were FFFAs, but only 12.5% of Pine Knob-specific promos in the weekly roundup were FFFAs.
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Conclusions
Indeed, there appears to be a gap between how many females are booked on Live Nation stages and how many are getting promoted via the weekly roundups. Live Nation venues predominately book male acts (no surprise there). When they do get booked, women tend to fill opening act slots.
There are multiple reasons promoters, venues, and booking agencies give for not booking more women (see this Rolling Stone article about Book More Women), and I’m not going to address them here. In the case of promoting women, an easy and effective systemic step toward gender equity would be to start posting opening acts’ names on these weekly promo roundups, social media event postings, web sites, posters, and every other f’ing place the headliner is promoted. Voila! You’re promoting more women. Benefits:
Get more butts in seats. I can’t tell you how many times I showed up for a show and was surprised by an opening act that wasn’t promoted. Those acts may have passive fans who don’t follow their tour schedules, but would buy a ticket if they saw them named in a roundup email or social media post. By not listing openers, venues try to bring in headliner fans in earlier for increased booze/vending sales. But there is nothing more annoying than getting to a venue and feeling purposely misled. Want to make a real difference in early attendance/sales and create some good will? Offer 25% off your $15 beers during opening acts.
Increase fanbases. I became a fan of many FFFAs after seeing them open for a headliner. This is how we build audiences and help FFFAs rise to the level of headlining their own tours. A big shoutout to My Morning Jacket for introducing fans like me to Joy Oladokun, Jade Bird, and SG Goodman.
A rising tide lifts all boats. Male opening acts benefit from getting promoted as well. All opening artists work their asses off and deserve their names on the marquee and in all promotions, print or online. It’s called giving credit where credit is due and should be on every promoter’s list of best practices.
Large headliners wield power over choosing opening acts. Let’s not forget how Madonna insisted that a little-known rap trio from Brooklyn called the Beastie Boys open her tour in spite of pushback from industry know-it-alls. Stars can use that weight to ensure FFFAs are booked *and* promoted!
Before we get to the fun music videos, please share your thoughts on this topic.
Here are some videos from the FFFAs mentioned in this email and whom I found in the weekly roundups. The Buy/Listen buttons link to artist profiles in Amazon. Buying music, merch, and tickets is the best way to keep artists making music!
GLYDERS
Mariah The Scientist
Maren Morris
S.G. Goodman
Joy Oladokun
Samantha Fish
Otoboke Beaver
Maggie Rogers
ICYMI
🎧 Connie Reeves: Saved By The Light
👓 The New New Release Party Concept: Cause Collaboration
👓 New Music From Women We Love!
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I think there's a very real disparity happening here, but as a 20+ year marketer, there is an element of nuance to consider with show round-up marketing like this specifically. Typically what's being included in those emails are shows that aren't selling well on their own. Not universal and not the only criteria, but it's a big part of which shows are included. I'd be curious to compare final ticket sale data to the percentage of inclusion for that part of it. 1,000,000% agree with you on all the points about standard practice for promoters (and headlining acts) to include their openers in all of their marketing. Really feels like a massive missing piece of the promotional puzzle. See it too often.
As many of us have found out, Live Nation is a closed -loop system; a corporate theme-park built to simulate the music business. They control their signed artists, they control the venues those artists play in; and they control every cent of the ticketing revenue their theme park generates. Their booking staff is impossible to develop any relationship with, as they turn over too frequently; + they have proven themselves (like most staff at HoB, to name the most identifiable LN venue chain) to be borderline-hostile to any other part of a city's scene.
What's worse is, AEG and Bravo are trying to copy their model.
To be frank, women (or any) artists are far better off not trying to engage with LN on any level if they're not already arena-level themselves. They don't seem to do much for the bands that work in their lower levels at all, promotion-wise; as almost none seem to have 'graduated' above their smaller venues to big ones.
It's better to deal with independent venues, that are more likely to care about you as their success is tied into each show they book.