Demand for tribute concerts in Russia increased by 155% from January to May

In the Russian Federation, interest in concerts of musical groups, tributes to famous performers, is actively growing. Ticket sales in the segment, according to aggregators, grew by 155% from January to May, and the number of events – by 95%. Such concerts allow you to hear the live sound of hits by performers who stopped performing in the Russian Federation after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, the organizers explain. But experts believe that the audience will be saturated in the near future, demand will decrease, and the industry will have to look for new formats.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the data of the Yandex Afisha ticket service on the demand for tribute concerts (we are talking about musical groups and performers who cover the songs of famous artists, copying their appearance and style). From January to May, the growth in ticket sales for such events was 155%, and the number of events in the segment increased by 95%. The average check increased by 43% to 4.3 thousand rubles. Ticketscloud confirms that 135 events have been held or announced since the beginning of 2023, and only 152 for the whole of 2022, says Anastasia Kolomenskaya, head of the commercial department of the service. According to her, 44 tributes were held in March, while in March 2022 – 14 concerts.

MTS Live (an MTS structure) also sees an increase in the number of concerts in the segment, but the absolute figures are not disclosed: “This year, the MTS Live Hall in St. Petersburg hosts a Rammstein tribute show and a tribute to Queen.” First of all, the development of the segment is due to the lack of concerts by foreign performers, the demand for music of which in live performance has remained, “therefore, the niche is growing, it has its own audience and the demand for such shows will continue,” MTS Live believes.

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, concerts of world stars in Russia were canceled (Imagine Dragons, Green Day, Slipknot, Bjork, etc.). Also, for political reasons, many famous domestic artists stopped performing in Russia. This led to a more than halving of concert ticket sales compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019 (see Kommersant dated August 8, 2022).

Now sales in the concert segment are steadily growing, including due to an increase in the number of events, “tribute concerts have become part of this trend, to some extent they provide an opportunity to hear live performances of your favorite foreign hits or play on nostalgia,” says the director of Yandex Afisha content by Enrico Mazavrishvili. However, he believes, tribute shows began to gain popularity not only due to big names – “these are well-designed performances.”

Tributes are popular all over the world. This can be explained by the fact that the original products exist in a single copy, notes Vladimir Burykin, director of the RG Shows production center (shows Harry Potter. The Secret of the Forbidden Forest, Epidersia, Multimania). “For example, one group cannot perform on different continents or cities on the same day, and this genre allows you to close demand geographically,” he notes.

Among the projects, for example, “Tribute Rammstein”. As the creator of the project Sergey Savulyak says, his task in the show is to immerse the viewer in the atmosphere of real Rammstein – costumes, scenery, special effects and, of course, the music itself: “We left the original sound of the songs, their power, as the group wrote them, and strengthened them with the sound orchestra.” He added that he is preparing another project for the fall.

But a number of experts are skeptical about the prospects of the segment. In general, there are already enough tribute concerts: as a rule, when a poster appears in a new city, every third concert is a tribute, Olga Shpigalskikh, Ombudsman for organizing cultural events, notes. “I think that in a season or two the market will be saturated with the trend, it will decline,” she says.

Moreover, there are questions about the legality of such speeches. They can be quite legal – “performers or concert organizers can obtain the consent of the copyright holders, conclude licensing agreements with authors, studios or the Russian Authors’ Society,” says Moscow Digital School teacher Boris Edinin.

But if there is no agreement, public performance is prohibited, emphasizes Kirill Lyakhmanov, chief legal adviser of the EDB intellectual property practice. The remuneration of copyright holders, he adds, is usually built from a fixed part and a percentage of the tickets sold, “taking into account the termination of the activities of the main foreign labels in the Russian Federation and the difficulties with paying residents of unfriendly states, individual concert organizers may neglect the requirements of the law.”

Julia Yurasova