trends
FESTIVALS
Rock Enters a New Age—Again Rap, hip-hop and pop are dominating the music industry these days, but rockers say their genre is just in a down cycle
festival artists directly reflect the numbers. More than 30% of all on-demand audio and video streams in the U.S. last year were of tracks recorded by R&B and hip-hop artists, according to MRC and Billboard 2020 data. The R&B/hip-hop category claimed more than a third of all plays, at 33.9%. For audio streams, R&B/hip-hop accounted for 30.7% of on-demand plays, and across audio and video streams combined, it claimed 31.1%. So, what does it all mean for rock artists? The first Lollapalooza lineup in 1991 was
By Kendall Polidori
B
ack in the ‘90s when Blink-182 was touring on angsty albums like Cheshire Cat and Dude Ranch, singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge would spend weeks on end in the back of a van, dirty and getting into fights with random people. Today, traveling with his space-rock band Angels & Airwaves, DeLonge noted that it doesn’t look quite the same as it used to for punk-rock bands—for a multitude of reasons that are easier to explain by saying, “We’re in a new era.”
Musicians are bringing back guitars, angst and soul ... That’s rock ‘n’ roll. During an interview with Luckbox before his July Lollapalooza performance in Chicago, DeLonge said rock goes through cycles. These days, rap/hip-hop and pop artists dominate the U.S. music industry, with rap/hip-hop the moststreamed genre, according to 2020 MRC data. But rock remains the second most-streamed music genre with 16.3% of on-demand audio streams last year. Pop was behind it with 13.1%. However, the streaming numbers are driven by golden oldies performers like Queen (929,000 streams), Elton John (743,000), Fleetwood Mac (721,000), Creedence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty (630,000), and Journey (561,000). For today’s festivals, headliners are undeniably chosen for their streaming numbers
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Angels & Airwaves returned to live music with their first in-person show since before the pandemic when they played the Lake Shore Stage in July at Lollapalooza in Chicago.
and popularity. At Lollapalooza this year, the only obtainable classic rock artist with high streaming numbers was Journey, and they headlined one day of the show. With rap/hip-hop holding the No. 1 spot for most-streamed music genre, featured
made up of artists grounded in alternative rock, industrial music and rap: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, and Ice-T and the Body Count. For a few years, the festival maintained musical acts within those three genres but has gradually expanded to embrace
Luckbox | October 2021
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9/3/21 12:13 PM
