TicketNetwork Blog

As of July 31 both of the acts mentioned in the headline have been in the Top 10 for five months, so it's only fitting that they should claim the top two spots for the July list. While One Direction has never left the top 5, the Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan tour has slowly climbed its way up.

The big loser is Justin Bieber, who's dropped completely off the list after holding the top spot for the last two months. It's the biggest downward movement since Van Halen fell from #2 in March. However, it is possible that Bieber will return as the September 29 tour beginner gets closer.

What happened? I can only speculate, but I'll call it the Newbie Effect, which seems to work on sales in two ways. First, the initial excitement for Justin Bieber is long gone. Bieber Fever was at its peak back in 2010, when he was #1 or #2 for nine months. Second, much of that excitement has transferred to One Direction. It's likely that Bieber would be doing better right now if they'd never come along, but they did and so he's not.

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: