{"id":448117,"date":"2026-05-18T18:43:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T18:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/448117\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T18:43:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T18:43:16","slug":"musicians-are-canceling-their-tours-is-blue-dot-fever-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/448117\/","title":{"rendered":"Musicians are Canceling Their Tours. Is Blue Dot Fever to Blame?"},"content":{"rendered":"

First it was Meghan Trainor and Post Malone. Then came Dolly Parton, Zayn and the Pussycat Dolls.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we announced the PCD FOREVER Tour, we hoped to bring the show to fans across the world,\u201d the Pussycat Dolls announced on Instagram on May 4 after launching what was supposed to be a reunion tour. \u201cAfter taking an honest look at the North American run, we\u2019ve made the difficult and heartbreaking decision to cancel all but one of the North America dates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within a few months, nearly a dozen musicians and bands have either cancelled or postponed their tours, leading to speculation that so-called \u201cblue dot fever\u201d was to blame. The term, which has only recently been coined on social media, refers to the blue dots on Ticketmaster\u2019s platform that indicate empty, unsold seats.<\/p>\n

Is blue dot fever, along with the anxiety around high price tickets at a time of high inflation and skyrocketing gas prices<\/a> \u2013\u2013 really to blame for this recent rush of tour cancellations? Or is it a symptom of broader issues for the music industry?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Andrew Mall<\/a>, an associate professor of music at Northeastern University, doesn\u2019t completely dismiss blue dot fever as a social media-driven buzzword. The current economic reality is impossible to ignore and is likely playing a role in whether concertgoers choose to buy tickets, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have less money to spend on luxuries because the cost of living is going up,\u201d Mall said. \u201cCost of fuel, cost of energy [have] been exacerbated by the war in Iran, and that eats into peoples\u2019 disposable income.\u201d<\/p>\n

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However, not everyone has bought into the panic around blue dot fever.<\/p>\n

Joe Berchtold, president and chief financial officer for Live Nation called it \u201ca nice catchy phrase that is absolutely devoid of facts\u201d during a recent investor conference<\/a>. He called blue dot fever \u201ca good marketing program\u201d for scalpers frustrated by artists who are pricing their tours more in line with market value.<\/p>\n

Regardless of what market value is, it\u2019s true that the cost of concert tickets has only gone up since the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2019 and 2022 the average general admission concert ticket price increased from $96.17 to $106.07, the first time it had crossed $100, according to Pollstar<\/a>, a global music industry data tracker. The price peaked in 2024 at $135.92, but dropped to $132.62 in 2025.<\/p>\n

\"ProfessorFans\u2019 calculus around purchasing concert tickets has changed. Concert tickets are now treated more like assets than just a gateway to a live music experience, said Andrew Mall, an associate professor of music at Northeastern. Photo by Alyssa Stone\/Northeastern University<\/p>\n

But Mall also points to factors within the music industry that could be leading certain kinds of artists to cancel their tours. Leaving aside the likes of Dolly Parton and Zayn, who both cited medical issues as the reason for their tour cancellations, most of the artists who have cancelled their shows fall right below the industry\u2019s A-list tier of talent, Mall said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It might be that there\u2019s more competition and less money that fans feel comfortable spending on live music from such artists, Mall observed, especially given the series of recent high profile concerts from Ariana Grande, Olivia Rodrigo and older reunion acts like Rush and Oasis drawing audience attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It also raises questions about how tours are booked in the first place, according to Mall. The first-tier Taylor Swifts and Beyonc\u00e9s of the world are guaranteed to sell out stadiums. But one of the hazards for the second tier of talent is management booking them in venues that are too big, Mall said. It\u2019s a kind of calculus that artists\u2019 managers and agents are constantly trying to account for: Does the audience demand justify the cost of staging a tour?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat job is hard, and there are aspects of it that average fans don\u2019t really understand or maybe underestimate how difficult it can be,\u201d Mall said.<\/p>\n

Increasingly, however, audiences are looking at a concert ticket not just as the portal to a live experience but as an asset to be banked or traded on secondary resale markets, Mall said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Behaviors that used to be reserved for the scalpers that Berchtold blames for blue dot fever are now spilling over into general audiences for often quite legitimate reasons, Mall explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis pair of tickets is worth $1,200; I paid $400 for it. Do I go to the concert or do I sell them?\u201d Mall said, speaking about how expensive and sought-after tickets to Taylor Swift\u2019s record-breaking Eras tour were. \u201cThat\u2019s a difficult decision, especially for young people to make. That difference can actually be very significant. It can mean paying for rent.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The decision is also hard for those who are considering buying tickets secondary resale markets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you, as a concertgoer, can always buy aftermarket tickets, then you as a person who holds a pair of tickets knows that that\u2019s probably always going to be an option, should you choose to do it,\u201d Mall added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First it was Meghan Trainor and Post Malone. Then came Dolly Parton, Zayn and the Pussycat Dolls. \u201cWhen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[209624,146,85,46,409,18317],"class_list":["post-448117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-andrew-mall","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music","tag-music-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}