TicketNetwork Blog

In this edition of the Concert Top 10, Justin Bieber still reigns supreme (was there ever any doubt?), holding steady to his commanding lead, which is fairly considerable given that he only came in on top by a hair in May. The event that almost beat it, American Idol Live!, actually completely dropped out of the Top 10 in June.

Meanwhile, Kenny Chesney took two spots. This is a first for the Top 10. How can someone double-dip, you ask? Well, Chesney is part of a tour with Luke Bryan, but he also had a solo performance on June 20. As it's not part of the Brothers of the Sun Tour, it needed to be split up. Something that's interesting is, if Bryan were part of that event, it would have helped the BotS to convincingly overtake Bieber.

If ever there was a story in star power, it is Justin Bieber. In 10 short days he managed to climb his way to the top of the Top 10 list, and he has a decent shot of being the top seller for June as well. Interestingly, it was a pretty close race, and American Idol Live nearly claimed the crown, but in the end more fans came out for Bieber. It doesn't hurt that it's been more than a year since he toured North America

Then there is One Direction. Last month, the exit question was, "Can One Direction keep up the pace, or will they also begin dropping down on the list?" As it turns out, yes, they began to fall down the list. It wasn't for lack of popularity, though. It happens almost every time a band first sells tickets for a tour. After the initial excitement for the tour dies down, and the first round of ticket purchases happens, the band sells fewer tickets in any given week. Depending on the band's ability to attract people to their concerts, they might fall off the radar completely, but One Direction will likely remain a top-selling act for some time to come.

Last month the story was about One Direction's quick rise to popularity in the U.S. This month, the story is about how tickets for the One Direction tour completely took over the Top 10. The band was the unchallenged leader among all artists, accounting for over 8% of all concert tickets sold on TicketNetwork.com*. Twice as many tickets were bought for their shows than for the Jimmy Buffett tour, which came in second. The story isn't anywhere near over, either, as new dates were announced a couple weeks ago for their next tour in 2013.

Otherwise, things are much the same as March, with a few exceptions. Jimmy Buffett entered the Top 10 for the first time, which makes sense. As the summer approaches, a lot of people are thinking about escaping to paradise, and who better to give them that than Jimmy Buffett? Also new on the list are Rascal Flatts. On the flip side, Madonna has slipped off the list.

N'Sync might not actually be going on tour again (sorry), but we can report that when boy bands do actually go on tour they can still top sales charts. That was the case during March, as Big Time Rush and newcomer One Direction had the most sales at TicketNetwork.com.

Though Big Time Rush was the winner of the month, the real story here is One Direction. They're a band that came almost literally out of nowhere. Okay, not nowhere. Actually, they came out of the UK version of the X-Factor, where they placed third during the show's seventh season. After that, they worked on an album for a while and released it late last year. They were pretty much nobodies in the U.S. until earlier this year, when people really started noticing them. How drastically did their introduction to the U.S. change their fortunes here? This drastically:

The story of February was somewhat like the story of January, with the previous month's top seller poised to again take the top spot if not for the introduction of another very popular act. Unlike January, where I got the sense that people weren't really sure that Van Halen was going to tour until it was actually announced on the 5th, Madonna's world tour was pretty much a sure thing, given the well known details of her new album MDNA well before the announcement and, well, her prominent halftime performance at the Super Bowl.