Video certainly hasn’t killed the radio star. One of the largest radio stars of the century, Taylor Swift, anchors the eleventh highest grossing movie in the United States in 2023 — her own concert film of the culturally monolithic Eras Tour. It seems that concert films, simulcasts, and even live album debuts are increasingly powerful presences in the American media landscape, particularly at its streaming frontier. And with reflection on these concert films and streams and other live music media, it’s clear that the benefits they offer to streamers and audiences alike aren’t going away anytime soon. It’s logical, in fact, for the radio star to become the video star.
While Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” film is the most high-profile concert on video recently, hip hop has had its share of filmed concerts in recent years. Amazon released both a concert film for Kendrick Lamar’s “The Big Steppers Tour” and livestreamed his recent Los Angeles concert “The Pop Out” both on Prime Video and Twitch. Max hosts an excellent concert film for The Weeknd’s 2022 shows at SoFi Stadium, and this December, Netflix will debut a holiday variety show with Sabrina Carpenter performing cuts from her Christmas album as well as other, unspecified seasonal material. Streaming services seem particularly interested in live and recorded performances from star artists, and it makes perfect sense. Shows with such stars appeal to younger target audiences while featuring content that is too adult for broadcast networks to host, thus allowing streaming services to position themselves as the less censored viewing conduit of the future. Additionally, for live concerts, streamers don’t necessarily have to pay for the physical concert and can market the pre-sold intellectual property in the shows — the public characters of the artist personas. The audience wins, too, as there is great joy in entering into the world of a concert, even if through a screen, and this probably doesn’t cost as much as attending the concert would these days.
A closely related phenomenon is the live album debut, whose main proponent in recent years has been Kanye West. Starting in 2016, live events showcasing his albums, termed “listening parties,” have become central to his vision. The most famous instances of this are his 2016 hybrid album premiere and fashion show at Madison Square Garden and his 2021 showcases of drafts of the album “Donda,” though he has done it for a few other albums as well. The “Donda” listening parties were particularly successful in garnering attention and excitement for the record and were genuine spectacles with moody, stadium-size visuals that matched the aim of the album. Staged both for a live and livestream audience, the possibilities for listening parties as a rendering of an album’s world and narrative are still unbroached, though no other mainstream artist is committing as intently to the form as Kanye did with “Donda.” Billie Eilish deployed two listening parties for her newest record, and Drake, Beyoncé and Frank Ocean have debuted their albums live through different means — Drake using radio stations to debut “More Life” and “Her Loss,” Beyoncé introducing “Lemonade” through a stunning accompanying film on HBO and Frank Ocean showcasing the ephemeral “Endless” during a livestream of him building a wood staircase.
Are concert films and live album debuts just the flavor of the times or a growing staple in our media diet? While it’s impossible to say with certainty, I think both are here to stay. Concert films and simulcasts will continue to be an easy sell for streaming services. As for the live album debuts or listening parties, they exist secondarily to the album they introduce, so they will never be the audience or record label’s focus. But they are still an attractive offering for an artist’s more fervent fans and an effective promotional vehicle, so I believe they will continue, and I hope that artists in the future will recognize the untapped potential of the live listening party format. The appeal of both forms, in my opinion, is both simple and instinctual: they satisfy our innate desire for live, communal experiences, to be at the center of culture as we create it. And, of course, watching these at home is far less expensive, both in terms of time and money, than trying to get to these cultural wellsprings in person.
