The Swedish live music industry generates billions in revenue, and audiences continue to spend heavily on major concert experiences. But behind record-breaking ticket sales, sold-out arenas and expanding entertainment companies lies a very different reality. Smaller promoters are taking increasingly significant financial risks, musicians are struggling to make a living, and the venues responsible for nurturing tomorrow's stars may be disappearing. After decades working behind the scenes in concerts, international tours and event production, I believe it is time to ask an uncomfortable question: Is the entire music industry really growing, or is it mainly the top that keeps getting bigger?
Sweden's music industry generated SEK 18.9 billion in revenue in 2025. Of that amount, SEK 6.9 billion came from ticket sales for concerts and festivals. Live music continues to expand, while revenue from recorded music, adjusted for inflation, has remained largely stagnant since 2022. These figures were presented by Musiksverige on November 10 and have raised concerns about the future livelihoods of musicians and music creators.
But I would like to approach the issue from a different direction.
It is not only the stagnation of recorded music that should concern us. We also need to question what the growth of live music actually means.
When we hear that an industry is growing, we naturally assume that the development benefits everyone. More concerts, larger audiences, higher revenue and better opportunities for artists and promoters.
Unfortunately, that is not necessarily how it works.
An industry can increase its total revenue while becoming an increasingly difficult place to survive for the people who keep it alive outside the largest arenas.
I have spent much of my professional life working in concert and event production, including international artists, tours, festivals, major productions and smaller events. I have seen how dramatically the economic conditions can differ depending on where you operate within the industry.
Behind a sold-out arena concert, there is often a sophisticated organisation involving professional booking agencies, international touring structures, sponsors, production departments and considerable financial resources.
Behind a small club concert, there may be little more than a promoter trying to balance the books, a few technicians, an artist who needs to be paid and an audience reluctant to accept higher ticket prices.
Both businesses are classified as live music. Both contribute to the industry's total revenue.
But they operate in fundamentally different economic realities.
When Billions Grow, Profit Margins Can Shrink
The first thing we need to understand is the difference between revenue and profitability.
When Musiksverige reports SEK 6.9 billion in ticket revenue, it does not mean that anything close to that amount ends up in the pockets of artists or even concert promoters.
The money has to pass through an extensive economic chain. Artists, agents, management companies, venues, stages, technical production, security, staff, transportation, hotels, marketing and ticket administration all need to be paid.
Major productions involve enormous costs, but they also have opportunities to distribute those costs across very large audiences.
A smaller promoter rarely enjoys the same advantages.
Some expenses simply cannot be reduced in proportion to audience size. A sound engineer still needs to be paid. Transportation costs money. The venue must function properly. The artist needs to earn a living.
And when only sixty people buy tickets for a concert that needs a hundred paying customers to break even, there is no international touring organisation automatically covering the loss.
Interestingly, even the largest concert promoters are not necessarily making substantial profits.
An analysis published by the Swedish trade publication Musikindustrin examined the ten largest Swedish live music companies between 2013 and 2022. Their combined profit margin over that period was approximately 0.7 percent. Excluding the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, the margin was still only around 1.4 percent.
The same analysis showed that the largest companies had strengthened their position and increased their share of the market's revenue over time.
That tells us something important.
An increasing proportion of an industry's revenue can become concentrated among fewer companies without those companies necessarily becoming particularly profitable.
Market power, turnover and profit are three very different things.
At the same time, we should be careful about drawing conclusions that the statistics do not support.
The latest Swedish figures demonstrate that live music revenue is growing, but they do not independently establish exactly how the money was distributed between arenas, festivals, clubs and smaller promoters in 2025.
To demonstrate continued market concentration, we need more detailed information.
Nevertheless, there are more than enough warning signs to justify asking the question.
Arenas Sell the Experience – Small Venues Build the Future
There is another dimension to this development that rarely receives enough attention.
The major arena concert is often the final destination of a long musical journey.
The small venue is part of where that journey begins.
Artists do not emerge fully developed onto arena stages. They grow in rehearsal rooms, small clubs, unsuccessful performances, local festivals and venues run by promoters willing to book something other than established commercial names.
These are the environments where musicians learn to handle an audience, where bands develop their identity and where new musical genres find their first supporters.
They are also where future concert promoters, technicians, tour managers and production professionals learn their craft.
I believe many people outside the industry underestimate the importance of this infrastructure.
We like to describe the music industry as part of the creative economy, but we sometimes forget that creativity needs physical environments in which to develop.
Someone has to provide the stage.
Someone has to take the risk.
And someone has to be willing to lose money on an evening because they believe in an artist.
It is a rather strange economic arrangement when you think about it.
We expect tomorrow's music to emerge from businesses that often lack the financial resources to support the very development on which the industry's future depends.
In the United Kingdom, the nonprofit organisation Music Venue Trust has documented just how serious the situation has become.
According to its 2025 annual report, more than 53 percent of the country's grassroots music venues reported making no profit. Their average profit margin was just 2.5 percent.
Thirty venues closed permanently during the period examined, while additional venues stopped presenting live music.
The organisation also reported that 175 British towns and cities with existing grassroots music venues no longer received regular visits from professional touring artists.
These are British figures, and they cannot automatically be applied to Sweden.
But they illustrate what can happen when the commercial music industry's upper tier continues expanding while the conditions supporting the next generation of performers deteriorate.
Britain certainly does not suffer from a shortage of internationally successful musicians, major tours or powerful concert promoters.
Yet its local music infrastructure faces serious economic difficulties.
The danger is that we begin measuring the success of the music industry by counting how many people gather in front of its largest stages rather than asking how many functioning stages remain for those who have not yet become successful.
Ticket Prices, Financial Risk and Audiences Forced to Choose
There is also a change in audience behaviour that deserves greater attention.
A major concert is no longer simply a musical performance.
It has become an event, a social occasion, a journey and sometimes almost a statement of personal identity.
People plan holidays around major artists, travel between countries and spend substantial amounts of money to experience something that will only happen at a particular time and place.
Fundamentally, this is positive.
Music deserves to be paid for. Artists should earn money from their work, and major productions require substantial resources.
But audiences do not have unlimited budgets.
If a couple or family spends several thousand kronor on tickets, transportation, hotels and restaurants surrounding one major concert, that may affect how many smaller performances they can afford to attend during the rest of the year.
We do not know precisely how significant this displacement effect is in Sweden, and it should be investigated rather than presented as an established fact.
But it is a perfectly reasonable economic mechanism to examine.
At the same time, the distribution of financial risk is becoming increasingly important.
Major tours benefit from established brands, extensive marketing capabilities and ticket sales that can generate revenue long before an event takes place.
Smaller promoters often have to make their decisions with considerably less information about likely demand.
They have fewer opportunities to negotiate with suppliers or distribute losses across multiple productions.
Digital ticketing, social media and new marketing tools have certainly made it easier for smaller operators to reach audiences.
But they have also created an environment in which everyone competes for the same limited attention.
The independent concert promoter is no longer competing only with other concerts in the same city.
They are competing with the entire experience economy: international tours, festivals, sporting events, travel and an almost infinite supply of digital entertainment.
And here we encounter another paradox.
Technology has made it easier than ever to organise and promote an event, but not necessarily easier to make that event financially sustainable.
Swedish cultural policy adds another complication that I believe deserves more open discussion.
Svensk Live, the Swedish organisation representing live music interests, has long highlighted how much contemporary popular music occupies an uncomfortable position between commercial entertainment and publicly supported culture.
Popular music is often expected to survive entirely on commercial terms, even when smaller venues operate with limited resources and provide cultural benefits comparable to those of more traditionally subsidised art forms.
This does not mean that every club or festival should be kept alive through public funding.
A bad business idea does not automatically become a good one simply because it involves culture.
But if society believes that a diverse and vibrant music scene has value beyond immediate ticket revenue, we also need a serious discussion about how the infrastructure supporting that scene can survive.
We Count Billions in Ticket Sales – But Should Also Count the Stages We Lose
I would like to see a completely different approach to reporting the development of the Swedish live music industry.
Not just total revenue, tickets sold or the size of the biggest tours.
I want to know how many independent concert promoters remain compared with ten years ago.
How many smaller venues regularly present professional live music?
How have their operating costs changed?
What proportion of total ticket revenue comes from the largest events?
How many emerging artists can genuinely tour Sweden without having to finance their own losses?
And what does the development look like outside Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö?
These questions cannot be answered with a single revenue figure.
They require better statistics, greater transparency and a willingness to examine the entire economic structure of live music.
I also believe we need to discuss new financial solutions.
In the United Kingdom, Music Venue Trust has promoted the idea that a small contribution from major arena concert revenues should help finance the grassroots venues responsible for developing the industry's future.
It is an interesting concept, although the implementation would require careful consideration.
Any such model would need to be transparent, fair and designed to ensure that money actually reaches the venues it is intended to support.
Otherwise, even a well-meaning initiative risks creating additional administration and new intermediaries.
But there are other possibilities.
Municipalities could begin treating smaller live music venues as part of a city's cultural infrastructure rather than simply as entertainment businesses.
Property owners could play a more active role in maintaining local cultural environments.
Promoters could cooperate more extensively on technical equipment, production resources, marketing and logistics.
Digital tools and artificial intelligence could reduce administrative costs and make smaller operations more efficient without removing the human experience that gives live music its value.
Above all, we need to stop assuming that whatever is biggest must also be the best representation of an industry's health.
I have worked behind the scenes on productions where thousands of people gather in front of a stage.
They are extraordinary experiences, and I would never want to see them disappear.
But I also know that such productions depend on knowledge, experience, creativity and people who started their careers somewhere entirely different.
On smaller stages.
Inside small production companies.
In environments where people had the freedom to experiment, make mistakes and gradually develop their abilities.
Musiksverige is right to warn that future musicians and music creators may find it increasingly difficult to earn a living.
But I believe that warning needs to be broader.
We are not only risking the ability of individuals to survive financially through music.
We may also be losing the environments in which they learn to create and perform it.
If we continue measuring the success of live music in billions of kronor without examining how those billions are distributed, we may eventually find ourselves with a music market larger than ever before, but where the path from a first club performance to a major stage has become significantly narrower.
And that would be a problem no sold-out arena in the world could compensate for.
Because what exactly are we going to fill those enormous arenas with in the future if we allow the small stages to disappear?
By Chris...