All You Can See Is Money

Happy New Year! Look at what's on the books for 2020. The concert business is exploding this year, and you wonder what hasn't yet been revealed.

Garth Brooks and Kenny Chesney are going to be playing to a million people each this year with stadium shows from the East coast to the West. Luke Combs will start his stadium career, and Taylor Swift is back on the road in 2020. New stadiums near LAX and Las Vegas will be concert christened. Add to it the big festivals and others using stadiums for non-sporting events and we are talking big, big money.

The classic rock artists are going giant size this year too. Motley Crue is back, and the Original Doobie Brothers 50th and the Eagles' "Hotel California" tours are generating excitement that is amazing.

Artists make their money on the road, but to get there they still need radio hits. Future Entertainer of the Year Combs is doing radio and everything else. Miranda Lambert got a boost from the Grammy nominations, and her "Wildcard" tour with Cody Johnson should do well.

A recent Forbes magazine issue listed the top 10 Country money makers, and the interesting part of that story is that making $15 million a year only gets you in the top 20! Country music is creating a great deal of multi-million dollar-generating acts.

Looking to this month, you have many tours getting underway, and the Grammys are on January 26th. Before that you have Luke Bryan's sold out Mexican fiesta, Crash My Playa, and it always seems to get the coldest in Nashville while that sunny event is going on.

There is great competition from the streaming services, but Country radio is still the place where you feel the vibrancy, the energy. Ever felt any energy from streams? No.

Look what's happening to cable TV. Cord cutting is an epidemic. Live sports is about the only thing keeping many plugged in. Radio is already lean and mean. If anything, it needs to find a way to be more live and local. The jukebox is dull, and if that's all you have why not go to streaming? The weather alerts, the excitement of new music and buzz -- radio has lived this long because it's a companion. Traffic, weather, information, life: It's all there on the radio when it's at its best. Canned voice tracking is, for sure, the road to the glue factory.

Concert energy should tell the money people everything they need to know. People love to feel the electricity of a live show, the unpredictable nature and the surprises. Local TV stole the radio ball in the morning when the information went away. Radio is portable and still great when it's working on all eight cylinders.

This should be a great year, an election year. How crazy is that going to be? The Census, the Tokyo Summer Olympics, get pumped up! The music business is alive and well. Radio is alive and well. New TV streams are going to make that world even more crazy, including NBC Peacock and HBOMAXX from Warner Media. Radio needs to help keep everyone from getting lost online.