ABSTRACT
The power of popular recordings is overwhelmingly evident in the liveentertainment business. Popular artists performing the songs they have recorded create the vast majority of the income generated in the live-performance stream. For example, in 1995, Performance Magazine reported that only three nonmusical acts, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (East and West editions), magician David Copperfield, and Walt Disney’s World on Ice, were among the top fifty acts, and these three accounted for only 5.7 percent of the reported $635.3 million gross ticket sales.2 Pollstar estimated that ticket sales revenue for major concerts amounted to $2.1 billion in 2002 and their top fifty artists (who only included two nonmusical acts, comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Robin Williams) accounted for 62.8 percent of ticket sales revenue. The top ten tours accounted for nearly 28 percent of ticket sales revenues. As with recording sales, the majority of the revenues are generated by a small number of the artists.
