What Is Blue Dot Fever? Music Expert Explains Why So Many Tours Are Being Canceled (Exclusive)

0:02 Everybody here.

0:06 You know, some artists are more transparent

0:08 than others about their reasons for castling tours.

0:11 Welcome to the Aerys tour.

0:15 The appetite for live music has not diminished at all.

0:19 If anything, it's growing.

0:21 And you know, the huge tours we've had like the Aerys

0:24 tour have raised the bar and and people have higher expectations.

0:29 Um, so you know, the artists they feel

0:31 can meet those expectations and deserve those prices,

0:34 they're going to pay for and the ones that seem kind of iffy,

0:37 they're gonna maybe stay home.

0:39 The public has suddenly become very aware of blue dot fever.

0:44 And uh, it's partly because just out

0:46 of morbid curiosity about tours that are not

0:48 doing well and partly because they are

0:51 sometimes hoping that if the seats don't sell, they'll get a bargain later on.

0:55 Blue dot fever is the theory that when artists in their teams

0:59 see so many unsold seats on ticket sites marked by blue dots,

1:03 they decide to cancel those shows instead of lowering prices

1:07 or moving to smaller venues that may better match demand.

1:11 The fans are looking at arena shows and seeing that the nosebleleeds are

1:16 often in the 100 to 200 range and not even for a superstar act,

1:20 but kind of a mid-level act.

1:22 and that if you want to sit on the floor or the loads,

1:24 you're getting into the 300s on up to um you know a thousand for the best seats.

1:29 And people are saying either I just can't do that anymore.

1:33 I'm too worried about the economy.

1:35 Or they're saying that's one night out a year I'm going

1:38 to do now instead of going to four or five concerts.

1:41 And so, uh, the mid-level acts are are really, um,

1:45 feeling the hit right now because people can't afford to spend hundreds

1:49 of dollars for as many concerts as they would like to go to.

1:57 Some acts like the Pussycat Dolls and Kid Cuddy are

2:00 upfront with that reasoning for pulling the plug on certain concerts.

2:04 hailing to our never land.

2:10 We'll never die, you and I.

2:12 I think it's really refreshing when people are honest about

2:15 the fact that uh they're cancelling because of low ticket sales.

2:19 And it's easier to say that for one gig than an entire tour.

2:23 So, Kid Cuddy just said, "Yeah, Birmingham was not selling.

2:26 That's just the way it is." Um, you know,

2:28 more often we have people uh seeming to offer excuses uh rather than

2:34 actually acknowledge uh the poor sales that are causing them to call things off.

2:37 Pussycat Dolls did not make an excuse.

2:40 They didn't come right out and say we have poor ticket sales, but they said,

2:44 "We took an honest look at the tour." So, euphemistically, if in no other way,

2:48 they were saying, "Yeah, things were bad ticket wise." Meanwhile,

2:52 others put the blame on personal issues or in the case of Post Malone,

2:56 not having new music ready to perform yet.

3:09 With Post Malone and Jelly Roll,

3:10 they canled about a third of the tour in stadiums.

3:14 The excuse was that Post Malone needed more time to finish a new album.

3:19 Um, I think that's maybe not just an excuse.

3:23 There is the factor that maybe there needs

3:25 to be new music to help sell the tour actually.

3:27 And that may be the difference between this year

3:29 and last year cuz last year's tour sold out, this year's tour not doing so well.

3:34 And, you know, having a new single,

3:36 a new album out there helps people give a sense of vitality and freshness

3:41 and not like they're getting a rerun of of what happened a year ago.

3:46 What are the consequences of cancing an entire tour?

3:49 It's not a decision that could be taken lightly.

3:51 You know, there's been a lot of people hired for a tour

3:54 by the time these cancellations happen at the last minute.

3:58 It's been happening in a lot of cases like Megan Trainer,

4:01 Zayn, and Pussycat Doll.

4:03 Certainly, you know, people are are left on the hook and um you wonder

4:09 if these decisions should have been thought through a lot earlier,

4:15 but you know, booking tours is an art.

4:18 It's not a science.

4:19 And whether someone is an arena act, a stadium act, a small theater act,

4:24 um there's a lot of people who are stakeholders who are making

4:28 these decisions and a lot of the time they get it right.

4:32 Sometimes they get it drastically wrong.

4:34 And certainly we're seeing a lot of tours where uh people's

4:38 appetites were for more seats than the public really wanted to buy.

4:43 And um it puts people in a tough spot when uh they've

4:46 been hired as crew or whatever and suddenly they're they're out of work.

4:51 And you know, even opening acts on these tours um suffer from having

4:55 committed for three to six months and suddenly they have nothing to do.

5:00 Still don't care.

5:02 That makes you go again.

5:04 I still don't care.

5:06 Are you in my head?

5:08 I still don't care.

5:09 We weren't surprised when the Megan

5:11 Trainer tour got cancelled because, you know,

5:13 we live in an era where people are looking at those seating charts,

5:17 seeing that a tour is doing really badly and just waiting

5:20 for the axe to fall on some of these poor performing tours.

5:24 And Megan Trainer was high among those.

5:26 you know, she was just really not selling enough

5:30 tickets to fill a small theater, let alone an arena.

5:35 So, there there was no surprise there.

5:37 Megan Trainer um cited, you know,

5:40 the need to spend time with her young children,

5:42 but there was just no way business-wise

5:45 that tour could have continued with the, you know,

5:48 amount of tickets they were selling that was really

5:50 more at the club level than the arena level.

5:52 It's hard to figure out what a sweet spot is for tickets sometimes,

5:56 but overall we can say that a lot of the public is saying this is just

6:00 too much for someone that is kind of a mid-level act as opposed to a superstar.

6:05 You know, superstars can charge what they want.

6:08 Billy Isish, Taylor Swift, certainly Ariana Grande,

6:11 the sky's is the limit for what they can charge for their tickets.

6:14 I think consumers are feeling like they will pay top dollar for superstar tours,

6:20 but then maybe that's it for them for six months

6:23 and they don't have that money to spend on mid-level acts.

6:27 And so, you know, there's a certain

6:29 tier of performer that's that's suffering because people

6:32 have already spent their their budget for the year

6:35 or six months on one superstar act.

6:38 Um, and you know, I have some sympathy for people who

6:42 in the business who miscalculate these tours because on the one hand,

6:47 you look at Megan Trainer and you say, "Well,

6:49 who thought she could fill arenas right now?"

6:52 But she did just fill arenas a year ago.

6:55 Uh, and so what a difference a year makes.

6:58 Um, people may have already felt like they saw her or the economy

7:02 has changed to where they feel like they can't afford that ticket again.

7:07 at your side face to face with your lips on mine and Alex.

7:15 Zane, he also recently cancelled his planned stops in the US,

7:18 but he still has several shows in the UK on his site.

7:21 So why do you think cancel the US dates but keep the UK dates?

7:24 One thing that Zayn and the Pussycat Dolls had

7:27 in common with their cancellations is that they only cancelled

7:29 the US legs and they kept the overseas dates

7:33 and those acts are stronger uh in Europe for some reason.

7:37 And um so you know if someone like Zane uh

7:42 mentions health problems as the reason for canceling the US,

7:46 but he's not having those health problems when he plays overseas,

7:49 you know, it seems like a slightly fishy explanation.

7:53 Uh but um yeah, it's just um people uh tend

7:58 to think that their impact is global and you know,

8:01 they're finding out that um it's very specific to Europe and not the US.

8:12 As far as the Pussycat Dolls, do you think the reunion was too late

8:15 in the making to appeal to the US audience?

8:19 Yeah, you know, I hear several factors for why

8:22 people were not buying tickets for the Pussycat Dolls.

8:25 Um, one was that it seemed like only a partial reunion uh to people.

8:30 There were six Pussycat Dolls originally for this reunion tour.

8:33 There were three.

8:34 We kept hearing about schisms in the group.

8:36 And then there were some fans who just felt loyal to some of the members who

8:41 weren't included in the reunion or just thought

8:44 that three seemed skimpy maybe out of six.

8:47 Um, and then, uh, certainly hearing that ticket

8:49 prices were too high for people and people

8:53 did not want to go pay over $100 to sit in the back of an arena,

8:58 um, let alone the front.

9:00 And so, you know, a lot of miscalculations all around there.

9:03 And they came out with a new song that was kind

9:06 of a dud and they did not have a music video for it.

9:18 It was almost like a perfect storm of of things

9:20 going wrong for the Pussycat Dolls tour between uh some fans

9:24 not being happy with only getting three members out of six

9:27 and the high prices and just the fact that yeah,

9:30 it's it's it's been a while since they were at the top.

9:37 Demi Lovado said she canceled five dates and pushed the kickoff date,

9:41 saying she overextended herself and had to protect her health.

9:44 She is an artist who's always been honest about her health and wellbeing.

9:47 Do you think this affected her tour at all?

9:49 Yeah, you know, certainly when people are citing health issues,

9:53 it's hard to know if that's the real reason.

9:56 You know, we don't want to second

9:57 guess someone who says their health's not good.

9:59 The bad news is it's going to take me

10:01 a little while before I'm up to stage performance level.

10:05 I can't be dizzy carrying around bananos, guitars, and such on 5 in heels.

10:10 Clearly, in the case of a Dolly Parton, we know that health is the real reason.

10:15 You know, she's 80.

10:17 She's had acknowledged problems and she's cancelling dates

10:20 that are long since sold out very reluctantly.

10:24 When you see someone citing health problems

10:26 for counseling shows that are struggling with ticket sales,

10:30 naturally there's a suspicion that sets in like is that the real reason?

10:35 But, uh, you don't want to come out and say, "Hey, we don't believe you.

10:38 We we don't believe you're in poor health,

10:40 you know." So um there's a fine line there between having

10:44 kind of a you know natural skepticism when when people cite

10:49 health issues versus you know realizing that these are human beings

10:53 we're dealing with who uh get sick or don't feel well

10:57 just like the rest of us and most often you know

11:00 that becomes a factor where someone like Dolly Parton who's 80

11:03 but uh Demi Lovado uh Zayn has cited unspecified health things

11:09 you know you're never too young to be having a health issue.

11:13 So, you know, it's hard to know for sure what's going on with things like that.