The pandemic changed the concert culture forever. The old, regular venues are no longer relevant, and they are pivoting to other formats of concert organizations. The most popular innovative forms of live music are drive-ins and online streams. 

With this article, we will help you think outside of the concert box and give you the necessary information on organizing non-traditional concerts. 

Before starting, make sure to understand that the change in venue culture also brings change to promotion. You can also check our TOP 5 Music Marketing Trends in 2020 You Shouldn’t Miss.

Drive-Ins are the New Black

For now, drive-ins are the only option of in-person concerts. The category grew on the platform by an astonishing 1,200% compared to last year. Festivals became a dream for dedicated music lovers, and though there is no lack of online options of music events, nothing could have replaced the concert culture. That is the reason why tickets of the first drive-in sold-out just hours after they were available in June. 

The first post-Corona drive-in concert was organized by the founders of Colorado’s annual Beanstalk Music & Mountains Festival. As organizing the traditional festival was no more possible with the pandemic restrictions, they adapted to the new rules, improvised, and came up with a drive-in solution. If interested, you can check how to organize drive-in concerts in our previous article: Hosting A Drive-In Concert & More.

Since the first try that succeeded, concerts came back to Eventbrite pages in the form of drive-ins and went viral as the audiences were hungry for offline, in-person music consumption. 

Streaming 

Our device screens became the best place to watch live concerts. Well, 2020 was full of surprises, so this is not supposed to be confusing. With the live concert industry shutting down in March of 2020, audience-less shows from artists’ homes became the best alternative to keep the industry alive. 

Live streams went so viral that they even became one of the top trends of 2020. You can read the review on Music Trends of 2020: The Future of The Industry, where we also predict further developments of the music promotion trends. 

For you as for independent promotion, it is essential to know where the industry heads. So while making your marketing plans on live-streams remember that the co-owner of the bar, restaurant, record store, and music venue Songbyrd Music House and Record Cafe in Washington, DC, Joe Lapan, recently invested to retrofit his 200-capacity basement venue for live streaming.

He explained himself by claiming, “I’d rather have a DC channel where all the venues are on it, and people can subscribe, and then we can share the revenues.” He also questioned the how and the where of the channel usage: “The next challenge becomes how and where we’re going to use it. How are we going to monetize it, or how are we going to correctly calibrate everybody’s time investment?” That question is the elephant in the room. Thousands of predictions can be made on the upcoming changes, but one thing 2020 taught us is that everything can turn upside down in a blink of an eye. 

We suggest you keep an eye on the trends and once in a while check industry predictions but hoping on things to work out the way you want is a pleasure you can’t afford, especially in the post-pandemic world. So always have your goals specified, your vision clear, and short time achievable missions to accomplish but be prepared and open to improvising. That is the key to success in our fast-paced reality, and now the insufferable part of that reality are live streams and drive-in concerts. Make sure to familiarize yourself with them more and use them to your benefit.