The Business of Touring and Talent Agencies

0:04Dan Runcie: I'm Dan Runcie. Welcome to Trapital. Today's episode is all about talent agencies because these businesses, particularly in music touring, have evolved considerably. This is no longer just collecting a 10 % commission to book an artist in a venue that they probably already would have been booked at. This is now a global product that has more demand, more supply, and more trade-offs than ever. Today's guest on Trapital is Lee Anderson. He is the co-president of music at the team, formerly Wasserman Agency. Lee helped build this practice several years ago, given his work and experience having been both a promoter and later an agent, and then now someone that is in a leadership role building and running an agency.

0:48Dan Runcie: The founder of the agency, Casey Wasserman, had stepped down from the role and chose to sell the company after his name was included in the Epstein files, Chapel Rhone, and other artists to announce that they would be leaving the agency. So we talked to Lee about what that was like and how he as a leader made certain decisions moving forward. We also discussed how his role has evolved over the years, some of the ongoing trends with superstar artists, festivals, and what Lee thinks separates the team from other agencies in the business. Really fun conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

1:21Dan Runcie: Here's my talk with Lee Anderson.

1:26Dan Runcie: Imagine you're running a major record label. Let's say you're Elliott Grange. You run Atlantic Music Group. You have five successful artists on your roster. Bruno Mars, Don Tolliver, Alex Warren, Pink Pantherist, and Stella Lefty. All at different stages of their careers, but with a limited marketing budget, where do you invest your dollars? I put this same exact question to Flo, and I asked it to analyze each of these artists' streams, radio, playlist, audience demographics, and social performance. And let's go one by one here, because it's really fascinating. Take Bruno Mars. His monthly listeners on Spotify are actually declining, but his followers are increasing.

2:09Dan Runcie: A lot of this is what they call post-release normalization. He released an album earlier in 2026 called The Romantic. so it's more a sign of that, not necessarily weakness. But Flo suggested to focus investment for Bruno on Latin America and Southeast Asia. That's where his audience is already concentrated. Let's look at Don Tolliver. He has the strongest streaming acceleration of the group, but 91 % of his radio airplay is currently in the US. There could be an opportunity to expand that internationally. Let's look at Pink Pantheris. She has exceptional engagement economics, but the challenge isn't connecting with fans, it's reaching more of them.

2:50Dan Runcie: She could be a strong candidate for incremental marketing span. In Stella Lefty, she's breaking out. But 70 % of her playlist reach comes from editorial. Nearly 95 % of her radio play comes from her one-hit song. That's momentum, but there's also a huge concentration risk. The priority is converting some of that attention into lasting fandom. And that breakdown right there for those five artists, that really impressed me. And that's what Chartmetrics Flow can do. It doesn't just tell you who's winning. It doesn't just tell you their streams or their followers. It helps you identify where the next dollar can make the biggest difference.

3:28Dan Runcie: And that's the power of turning music data into strategic intelligence. If you want to check out Flow for your own roster and see what insights you can pull yourself, then click the link in our show notes. All Trapital listeners can use our promo code before you sign up for Flow. And please let us know what it comes up with. All right. We are here on the Trapital podcast with Hartford County's finest, Lee Anderson. The 860. The 860. We got to represent. There's not many of us. Have to. I love it. I know. Well, I appreciate you coming on. you started your career in this industry as a promoter, and then now you're on the agent side, which I do think makes you probably have a distinct view on things.

4:05Dan Runcie: So it would be interesting to start there, hear how you feel like your experience as a promoter has shaped how you approach things as an agent. I think it's always given me a great advantage in working as an agent because you understand what it's like to be in somebody else's shoes. I believe that a number of people who end up in the agent business go through some sort of training program and grow, but they're sitting and trying to route a tour, sell a show, get their clients the most money, whatever the goals might be and objectives. And it's hard to really understand what the person on the other end is going through if you've not done that job.

4:42So I think that having the insight of producing over 500 shows myself where I took the risk myself in venues where I didn't have the ticketing deals or the F &B and insides was challenging. It made you be creative. And I think I understand how to do the job well. Oftentimes when I was an assistant and starting on the agency side or supporting other agents in the job, I would interface with promoters a lot. And I could tell when there might be an issue with the money, or I could tell when there might be an issue with our ticket sales. Is there like a telltale sign? Usually when people are avoiding your calls or giving you the runaround.

5:23I often say you can't bullshit a bullshitter and I knew how to bullshit better than anyone who was bullshitting me. So when you do that, I would find that a promoter had a problem with the show's guard would come down a little bit and I would tell them, if you're honest with me, I'm here to work with you and find a solution. If you lie to me, I can't do that. 99 out of 100 times, they would then become very honest and I would work with them through it because you're in a business where Murphy's Law kicks in. Nobody goes out and hopes to have money problems on a payment schedule or poor ticket sales on a show.

5:59It happens sometimes. And you've got to work together. And I think when you look at the business as a whole, oftentimes it's us versus you. It's a game of cops and robbers chasing promoters down. At least it used to be, right, with a lot of independent promoters in an industry that was more deconsolidated than it is today. but I really think that we're all working together with the same goals and you've got to work in partnership to maintain a healthy ecosystem and economy where everyone gets to prosper and you can continue to move forward and grow the business. And I've always approached it that way.

6:34When I was promoting shows, I was running around and working with the alt-weeklies to get press. I had a street team hanging flyers. Sometimes I was hanging the flyers myself with a messenger bag and a staple gun. I was helping bands load in and load out and carrying drum kits up two flights of stairs. You see how hard it is on the road for your clients or how long of a day it is for the promoters. Now, we work very closely with publicists and labels and business managers and attorneys on strategy, on all the clients. We're part of the teams. But when you really are getting into just an actual deal centered around the performance, you're usually working with the promoters, our marketing team, artist marketing team, promoter marketing team might work together, but you're not usually tying in label lawyer business managers on all of those deals one at a time.

7:27Dan Runcie: And for you now, you've been building this practice at this company for several years and in many ways helped spearhead what does the music strategy look like for formerly Wasserman, but now the team. For you, a big focus was we want to make sure that this is a place where artists feel seen, feel heard, and that we are a place that can do business well for them. When you have that as the North Star and then circumstances outside of your control happen, like earlier this year, how do you navigate all of this, given that you're the leader? I think we've always had two what I think are pretty simple North Stars to strive for and to hold ourselves accountable to be.

8:07and that is we set out to build the best place to work in the agency business, which is a tough business to work in. And we always strive to be the best place to be represented by talent. You can control the things you can control and you cannot control the things you can't. Those things shift quite a bit because the artist support ecosystem is constantly changing. There's a large shift in where artists and their teams are being supported. They look to us many times as a partner who probably makes up somewhere between 70 to 90 % of their annual revenue to help them with these things. There are new services that our clients are looking for us to provide and support them with that historically might have been done by a different partner within their team.

9:01So we're constantly looking at where we need to do that work. We don't look at all of the new bells and whistles that we add for our clients as new revenue streams and just try to generate more money. Usually they start with a client needing us to help them in those areas. And that's where we'll try to implement some of that stuff.

9:19Dan Runcie: In terms of the, I guess you could call it crisis management part of it. If you were in an instance earlier this year where artists do announce that they're leaving, some of it's in your control, some of it's not in your control, where does your mind go to? Are you saying, okay, how do we salvage this? or are you saying, hey, some of this is out of our control, we got to move forward? We did not have control and don't have control of clients who want to get up and leave our company. Fortunately, very few have chose to be represented somewhere else. And while we had some distractions impacting our company, 100 % of our employees stayed at the company.

10:00So it's very easy for people to walk away with any excuse, a client, an employee. The fact that they didn't, I think is a testament to the work that we do, who we are as people and the culture that we've created internally within our music division and a broader company as a whole at the team.

10:17Dan Runcie: And I do wanna go back to the services piece of it because I do think that, especially for a lot of people that may see, okay, how do we differentiate the agencies from one another when you see, okay, why some talent chooses one over the other. Can you talk a little bit more about what you all do there and how it is different? In an agency business for music, 90 % plus of the revenue at any company is based off of doing touring and live performances. There's a lot of other work that gets done outside of those things in a non-touring capacity. So those could be endorsement or brand partnership deals.

10:51Those could be creating IP or festivals for a client, creating a podcast where somebody wants to do it. It could be a book deal, a memoir, a coffee table book. It could be a desire to immerse themselves more in gaming deals or digital deals. There's different genres that are more popular in other areas. So for us, somebody says, hey, I want to grow my touring business in Asia. It doesn't start with, well, let me just go get you more offers. It starts with, where is your audience down there? What's the work you've done down there? Helping them build a strategy and their teams build a strategy and helping them implement those strategies.

11:27Take just partnerships, for example. Majority of partnerships come through financial institutions or telecom companies. If you look at Asia or you look at Latin America, those companies differ country to country. Those deals are not being originated out of Los Angeles, New York, and London. Very, very few are done in global deals. But it's important for us to be able to service our clients in those areas the same way that we would do it in North America or any country in Europe. That's one area that we've put a big focus on in added bodies. When you look at tour marketing, the ticketing companies are really deconsolidated all over Asia.

12:03So if you look at Japan, just only Japan, there's four different ticketing companies there. Those are not owned by the promoters, so they don't participate in that revenue. So you're going to end up with anywhere from two to four ticketing companies ticketing a concert. The marketing budgets are run by the ticketing companies who spend money to market the show so they can recoup on their ticketing fees. The Zep Venue Network, one of the largest venue networks in Asia, is owned by Sony. It's not owned by a promoter. So it's deconsolidated. And because of that, you have to figure out how to handle each one of these platforms, your streaming services, your collabs, and navigate those things.

12:44Dan Runcie: And I'm curious how you may differentiate what part of that is in the regular mandate of, okay, we're your touring agent and you want to do a tour in Japan, we would have to do this regardless versus, okay, we are now going to be the partner to help with this strategy deeper. Like where's that line? I think it all starts with the strategy. So you need a strategy to execute a plan. And that goes beyond touring. You may be on cycle and rolling an album out and you're looking for partnerships that create visibility. So that might be a retail business where you're inside the windows and a thousand malls to amplify the album.

13:23You might be in a cycle where somebody has a really ambitious show that they want to bring out that's expensive, and they're looking for partnerships to come and help them from an economic standpoint. Those are different goals. They may be looking to amplify things around docs or doing podcasts, a series of podcasts like this, and you're helping them get on there and working in conjunction with their publicist. They may want to create a coffee table book that's based off of the tour and the album and the whole cycle and you're working there. From what I hear, a lot of times when there's an agency meeting, client comes in with their team, you've got folks from a number of different departments, there's a big presentation and all the things they're going to do for the artist, but they haven't actually asked the artist what their goals are or what they want to do.

14:07So what we try to do is understand what those goals are, then put the right people and the team around to go out and execute those things. And we're accountable for doing it. You don't have a contract with an agency. So if an agency doesn't do what they tell you they're going to do, you can and should fire them. That doesn't happen often. So I think that speaks for our track record and for us delivering on the things that we say we're going to do. But I think that we're honest with folks. I've had developing artists that want to go out and do a bunch of partnership deals. And I'll have to say today, I do not believe that you are going to be very attractive to these brands because here are your Instagram followers.

14:49This is the size of shows you're doing. But this is a plan I have to put you in a position in 18 months where you will be. So let's work towards that. You're solution focused. But if we just say yes, and you don't believe that you're going to get it, then ultimately you're full of it, right? And that hurts your reputation and your credibility long term. And that's something that we never want to compromise. at our company.

15:10Dan Runcie: We should talk a bit about festivals because that's been a big focus for the team primarily. There are a number of festivals that you all represent, over 30 % of the artists that are on the lineups. Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, and there's probably several others. Not that you're necessarily tracking exact percentages, but is having that strong penetration at these festivals something that has been a goal for you all? We don't have metrics and a percentage of a lineup, goals that we're tracking. I see the data on the bookingagentinfo.com and shares. I think it reinforces where we feel we sit in the marketplace, speaks to our roster and the relevancy of it.

15:57But a festival booking, it's not like you want to go out and just get as many festivals as you can, right? Like they have to make sense on each booking. Every booking has to have some thought and strategy behind it, whether it's a headline play, whether it's a festival, you're thinking about how you're approaching that audience over a span of a number of years and the way that you're approaching it. So we don't strive to hit 40 % of the lineup or 50 % of the lineup.

16:24Dan Runcie: But are there benefits that having that level of penetration does offer the team where, okay, you have a relationship with this festival and And therefore, if you wanted to get another artist that is developing a particular slot, do you have an advantage that another agency may not? You don't go in and leverage talent. That's not the right way to behave. It's unethical. You clearly, if year after year, have developing acts on festivals, then clearly you are trusted by those buyers and probably have a good track record with them. I think one of the biggest things that we bring to the table is that we have a lot of information and intelligence.

17:05And I think that's helpful to help make informed decisions for any artist. Clearly, we have strong relationships and we end up with a lot of acts on these events. So I think about it if I'm looking at it through the artist or their team's lenses. Clearly, we are able to do this. We have a strong relationship with them. And that's something that would probably come back as a positive for me if I was the manager of the artist making that decision on who I wanted represented me. But in terms of going in and leveraging like you have to book these five acts if you don't book this one, that's unethical.

17:43Dan Runcie: Let's take a break for a chart metric stat of the week. One topic that Lee talked about in this episode is about how streaming data doesn't always correlate with hard ticket sales. Let's look at Mohegan Sun Arena. That's in Connecticut, which is Lee's home state, and it's also my home state. This is one of the busiest music venues for major artists in Connecticut, and there are artists that headline that arena that have more than 45 million Spotify monthly listeners, and there are artists that headline that arena that have 2.6 million Spotify monthly listeners. At the high end, I'm talking about Charlie Puth, Kesha, Teddy Swims, and at the lower end, I'm talking about Adam Lambert, Brantley Gilbert, and the rock band Wet Leg.

18:27Dan Runcie: Very wide range there, and this exists at most venues, even the major ones like MetLife Stadium or Madison Square Garden. This variance exists across the board. Let's get back to the episode. I'm curious how the festival business and some of the changes there may coincide for you all with the superstars that are touring more than ever in stadiums and arena shows because the festival business has gotten a bit tougher because these artists are making so much more money than doing the biggest shows in the world. They are. So when the ticketing industry figured out surge pricing in an effort to sort of undercut scalpers and make sure that the artists are able to participate in what should be the true gross based off a true ticket price on a show, that's changed the economics of touring.

19:21Because you can now make 2X what you would have before in an arena, now you're looking at your opportunity in a market differently than you would have. I think that most artists, if they can make more money playing only to their fans in a controlled environment, presenting their show, would choose to do that. I think the market cap grows every single year in terms of concert goers. That has allowed artists to appeal to a larger audience of potential buyers. And now you're seeing more artists do stadiums than you have in the past. So that's made it really challenging for the festivals to be able to deliver these lineups because the artists are able to earn more and sell more tickets than they were in the past.

20:10Personally, when I look at a festival, it's really about the moment. Who are we against? who's playing into us? What day of the weekend is it? What's the hour? Will it be dark? Not dark. Are we set up to win? What is that moment going to be? Does that line up around other dates when we're touring or does it stand alone and is it isolated? That changes the budget on a show. So there's a lot of factors that go into it beyond just like, I want to get on Lollapalooza. I want to get on Coachella. Where are we in the cycle? Are we at the beginning of it or at the end of it? Are we off cycle? Do I have a side project?

20:44Is that side project going to do headline shows? We want to do soft ticket stuff inside. Like there's a variety of things that go there. But I think because the touring business has gotten smarter and more evolved, that has made it more challenging for the festivals.

20:59Dan Runcie: You said something earlier that I want to go back to because you mentioned two factors for the rise in prices for the stadium shows, particularly for these superstars. You talked about both the surge pricing, but then also just the increase in demand purely from the fans themselves. Which of those do you think is a bigger factor in the current pricing for tickets? I think supply and demand, basic economics is what's going to drive that. Artists have choices and they have different goals. If you want to realize the true price is off supply and demand economics and fully capitalize on the elasticity of the pricing to participate in the potential of the gross revenue as it actually should be, that can be a goal for somebody and you have more data and understanding and tools to be able to achieve that.

21:53But not every artist does. That's not always their goal. Sometimes artists want to fight as hard as they can to sell the most affordable tickets and stop a secondary economy getting involved in their shows. And people work really hard on that. Some people want to make sure there's 500 tickets available for folks that can't afford the more expensive ticket price that probably is the right ticket price. And they look at how they can offset that and get like an average price based off of VIP or some other lifts there. So folks that are willing to pay more and have more disposable income, you're willing to give them the perks to get that while having sort of the no frills ticket available at a ticket price that's affordable for other fans.

22:39Everyone has a different approach to that in the strategy. And before we finalize a tour, get into the offers, we have pricing analysts that work on this. We understand what a client's goals are. Same way that I ask an artist what their goals are in their career for a cycle, we would ask, what are your goals for this tour? And with that, we'll put methodology and a strategy behind the pricing there. And that will drive what the deals look like and the plan for announcing what ticketing we're working with and how all of that works.

23:06Dan Runcie: In terms of the goals piece, you have the goals of the artist. The agent themselves may have their own level of tolerance for risk, what they're willing to do versus not do. But then I wonder, is there anything that is the team specific there that may make you all different in terms of how you may approach things versus other agencies? Or is that piece of it a bit more table stakes? I think we are more intentional with our approach to booking a strategy there. It's not just random offer comes in for a dollar amount. We are more in control of what our destiny looks like and what our plans are. So you can be intentional with things.

23:44You're not just submitting a list of a thousand acts, got an offer, do you wanna take it? Here's the money or not. There's a plan and a play there. You think the other agencies do that? I know that there are some agencies that do that more and some agents that do that more. And I think overall, we have more of an approach on the strategy. I can speak to what we do and I can speak to hearsay of what I see or hear. I think that in terms of our pricing strategy, I'm not aware of other agencies that are doing this today, at least from the volume of the tours that we're touching and doing that. So I think that is a new approach.

24:16And that's an approach that we looked at so we could be better informed, better inform our clients and also be better partners to promoters. because promoters understood this. And oftentimes the agents were dug in or they didn't know how to talk to a client about it. A big reason why we wanted to bring folks in to do that work for us was to work better with everyone and to better understand that process across the board.

24:38Dan Runcie: It reminds me of something that we've seen a lot with culture related businesses, where for so long, taste was the key differentiator in how people made decisions. Now you have analytics coming in, which theoretically should make the business better, but we've seen how that tension can play itself out. Has any of that played itself out? So I think you have to have great taste and you have to go with your gut. The reason I believe that we're hired to do our job is to build a strategy that you can execute that is centered around the client's goals. And we have a responsibility to advise clients on why they should do things or not do things and offer an opinion.

25:17I don't think we're here to push paper, right? When you look at data, data and the boatloads of it that we now have access to gives you more information to help you better inform your clients or give them advice on a decision. I do not make decisions just based off of what the data says. I think you've got to have taste, ideas, creativity around it and go with your gut. but I will use as much data as I can possibly get my hands on to arm myself with the most information possible to help in my suggestions and advice that I give to my clients.

26:00Dan Runcie: Are there any common places where you've overruled the data from what it may say to say, eh, no, I understand this market. I understand this artist. I represent two artists named ISOXO and NOC2. The streaming data and the socials data would tell you that they could not sell the amount of tickets that they sell because I understand and have a feel for what that audience is. We went up, I think we did like 20 ,000 tickets in Los Angeles. And the top streaming song, we did this a few years ago, had like 13 million streams on it. I don't think either of them had over 10 ,000 followers on Instagram.

26:35The data would tell you that wouldn't work, but I knew that that would work and it did.

26:39Dan Runcie: Phish feels like a classic example of this. If you look at the streaming numbers for Phish compared to how well Phish does, and I know you're a fan of them. I am a fan of Phish, yes. But you've got all the touring data that would tell you exactly how big they are, right? So that's a difference there. Phish knows what their audience is. Phish knows, comes up with great touring ideas that makes their audience excited. That's like the moment. Working as a promoter, I got into it because I wanted to put amazing experiences together for people at concerts and do, you know, just cool stuff. The thing that like brings me the most joy right now is working towards the announcement of something creative, right?

27:18You know that you have these shows and you know that people are just going to lose their shit when this goes up on the internet and seeing that work. Those are things that data can't do for you. Can't tell you why you should do a five-night stand at this one bespoke venue in a major market where people are just going to like lose their marbles when they see it go up. And that's the fun stuff that you work around. And that's where I think having a feel and a touch and taste provides a lot of value for as an agent.

27:44Dan Runcie: What's the last thing that you put out and you felt like the audience had that, oh shit moment. Skrillex shows in Seattle and Chicago over the past month. They lost, I think, yeah, we had several hundred thousand people in the queues trying to buy tickets to both of those and 10 ,000 available in Seattle and 13 ,000 in Chicago. and yeah, it was fun. And then on that note, I know like dance music particularly has been a focus for you and your career. And I'm curious if there's anything that's unique with dance music, particularly when it comes to touring that may be distinct from pop or hip hop or R &B.

28:18There totally is. And when I ended up taking a job at AM Only in 2005, it was like the 11th employee there. It was very fortunate on timing because the term EDM didn't exist. They called it dance music or electronic music. It was growing in the traditional live touring industry, didn't really understand it or where their point of entry was. And the way that it developed on the live side wasn't the way a lot of other genres had come up and developed. And I was in a place where I was sort of able to bring my relationships and understanding of the traditional touring business to dance music and sort of help connect a lot of those dots and bridges.

29:04I remember I went to Wallapalooza the first year. They had Perry stage and it was like 2 ,000 people there. It's insane. When I look at touring and my approach, you have to understand the fan base, the audience, and their behavior from a sociological standpoint. What works, what types of venues the fans want to see these artists in, and where you can get creative there, what markets are most important. And so I've always been able to apply those things there. With electronic music, oftentimes they're looking for GA as much as possible. I think it does work in seated venues or amphitheaters, but usually you're looking for those types of venues, a large field like Navy Pier, a Bill Graham Civic in San Francisco.

29:54They're hard to find when you find fields. It's hard to get a permit. And it's also very expensive because you have to put everything up and four wall it yourself. Those artists are kind of like looking for those types of places all the time. People are always looking to do something first as well. I think it's more, there's more of an element of it being experiential than it is just watching a concert. And I think that that's a big differentiator with the artist in that space. With language barriers, electronic music was probably global before a lot of other genres were because you didn't have the language barrier issue that you have a lot of other genres.

30:28I think those barriers have come down now and it's changed quite a bit, but it was a global business from the get-go, not just sort of a domestic business where the artist was from.

30:37Dan Runcie: I'm curious now with the stadium and arena show boom that we've had in recent years, how you've navigated understanding what you think the consumer may want without maybe playing it too conservative because there seems to be an insatiable demand right now to see a lot of these tours. And it's that ongoing balance between, okay, do we leave some money on the table or do we try to add that third night? If I'm going to look at what I think the business is, what it supports, I'm going to look at historically what the artist has done. You can look at the velocity of their sales on their last show, how many signups were there, that sort of info.

31:15You can look at the info with other artists of that genre within that market or at that venue. You can take that and sort of assess what that looks like. If you layer in the pricing methodology of where you want to be, that does a good job of giving you sort of your projected gross, and then you work through the budget from there. What's going into talent? Where are their production expenses? What does that look like? So when you talk to an artist, you can talk about what they could do for business, but you also want to understand what they want to do. Skrillex can do stadiums everywhere. That doesn't mean Skrillex should do stadiums everywhere.

31:51What's the right thing, time of year? What's the artist goals? What are they trying to achieve? Work within there. Starting to go into seated venues. There's a big thing where folks want to move around. So you would look at doing a lot of seated places, arenas, a stadium, GA by section, which means rather than buying, you know, section 118 row k seats three and four you bought tickets for section 118 and you would sell the 85 of the tickets available there and people could move around by section so i think that's shifting a little bit and changing uh that's something that would i would i would have probably answered differently five years ago or ten years ago and the way i would approach that with the client but you're still looking at you know that for the most part you're dealing with the same buyers that everyone else is dealing with and you're dealing with a lot of the same venues and you're dealing with the same economics and you have the same challenges of costs on the road and crews and all of those things.

32:45So it's not that much different. I just think that the fans of this music are looking for something different, a first time only experience more than others are, where they're just expecting to go to the concert. And I think that they have the ability to be nimble a bit more. Oftentimes the band, you're carrying a bunch of musicians, you're carrying a bunch of gear, you've got a whole staff out on the road. With electronic stuff, many times you can back the show and the artist expenses are really like their team salaries, flights to get there, but they don't have to have trucks, rent all the gear, carry it for a while.

33:19So I think it allows a lot more flexibility to be able to like put up some bigger one off shows where that can be more difficult with other artists.

33:25Dan Runcie: So for you, you're obviously closer to both the data and the taste and understanding the touring business than most people. What are some trends that you think people are going to be talking about in three, five years that you're starting to see now the same way that these artist residencies are things outside of Vegas that are just become more and more more and more popular. I think historically when you're looking at the margins on a tour and you're being fiscally responsible with the budget of an entire tour there's a lot of markets you need to add in to make the numbers work. Artists don't always love them it's an extra show that week it's a market that's connecting they weren't maybe dying to get to, but they need to do it.

34:07Often more risky to go into those venues for the artists, which nobody wants to go out and do 60 % business or stress about the ticket sales. You're beginning to see events get eventized more or a series of shows get put up where you're drawing people into different geographical hubs. So you're in Seattle and you're trying to draw from Oregon, Washington State, and British Columbia. You're in New York and you're hoping to draw from Philly and Boston and New York and doing it across multiple nights and setting up that way. I could see that happening more frequently and less of the connector shows on the Tuesday in certain markets.

34:48I think that one trend you'll begin to see is not having to buy the merch at the shows or ship it out and just buy it on a QR code. I don't have to jam it into my suitcase. I don't have to carry it around in a bag. Skrillex, one of my clients, Instead, the same thing in Chicago at the Navy Pier shows. I think that that is something that you could see start to happen a little bit more at shows. Do you think that would increase revenue or just save on the cost side? It could increase revenue. It could help on your margins, eliminating the shipping, paying a seller. Logistically, it's easier not having to set it all up and take it down.

35:20It can save space on a bus or a trailer or a truck to ship stuff. I think there's a lot of advantages to it. But I'm also, my wife will tell you I'm a hoarder. I say I'm a person who collects and has many interests. I like the idea of buying something physical at a merch booth, but I can see that being a trend.

35:38Dan Runcie: Yeah. That was the one thing that I think about. There's that physical piece. People want to have something tangible that they're like walking away from, right? Yeah. Which maybe that complements the QR code aspect of it. I think people are really trying to understand who their super fans are and find better ways to serve them and communicate with them. So I think that you can see the rise of add-ons around touring or a show geared towards servicing the super fan emerge quite a bit over the next few years. Well, Lee, we'll definitely have to follow along that trend to see where things play out.

36:10Dan Runcie: But I appreciate you coming through and joining us on the show. You got it. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Go Hartford. Go Hartford. And that is a wrap. Thank you again to Lee Anderson. thank you to Trevor Potter for capturing both the audio and video at the studio thank you to G, Eric, and Abigail for everything you did post-production to help make this episode possible and most importantly, thank you for listening if there's one person you know that would really enjoy Trapital and get a lot out of it whether it's this episode, on talent agencies, and music touring or any of the conversations that we have then send them a link to the show word of mouth is still the best way to grow And if you have a moment and you're not already following us, tap that follow button on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts, make sure you get the next one from Trapital.

37:02Dan Runcie: Leave a review, leave a comment. That helps make sure that the algorithm does its thing and that Trapital reaches the right people. Thanks again. Talk to you next time.