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January 15, 2007
The Wiggles and the Children's Music Business
This will come as no surprise to anyone with young kids -- or those of us trying to buy decent tickets for the upcoming (Greg-less) Wiggles west coast concert tour -- but it is still a fairly remarkable Pollstar factoid about the changing live music industry:...live children's music has become the fastest-growing genre in the concert business, according to Pollstar, a concert trade magazine.According to a story a year ago or so, The Wiggles grossed $45m Australian dollars in 2004, up from $14-million in 2001.
"Toddlers are turning these musicians into superstars and somehow making their parents buy tickets," Gary Bongiovanni, Pollstar's editor, said. "Children's music is growing faster than any other kind of genre in the live-concert touring scene."
[via NY Post and Wikipedia]
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I saw the Wiggles performing in an episode of Yes Dear. Beats me if it was product placement or not. But that single episode pre-sold me enough so that if my kids asked me to go to a Wiggles event, instead of, say, the circus, I'd take em.
As a two Wiggles concert veteran, the ticket sales are only the tip of the iceberg. I would estimate that a sizable part of their revenue is derived from the sale of Wiggles merchandise. When you get to their concerts, there is a very large variety of Wiggles gear that you can only buy there. Since the wee ones are already in the Wiggles zone, expect to drop even more money on these goodies. We saw them in Atlanta where there were three shows a day for two days and completely sold out. I was amazed by the sheer volume of merchandise sales going on outside of the concert.
Also, go into any Target, Wal-Mart, etc and I would be surprised if you didn't see at least one Wiggles related item.
The Wiggles and Laurie Berkner are IMHO the "least annoying to parents" groups in the children's music market. Consequently, parents are going to be more likely to go to one of these concerts. Going to a Doodlebops concert would be a nightmare for me.
These two also tend to sing songs which get stuck in your head. I was whistling a tune in the hall at work one day. I realized it was the Wiggles after another parent there started singing the lyrics. :-)
Is there anywhere I can download the Wiggles new song? (sarcastic, of course)
Could this astounding growth merely be attributed to a movement of money from the once successful (and highly downloadable) pop music business to the higher margin (concert sales and merchandise) pre-teen and kids business.
With Napster hitting its peak around summer of 2000 (has it been that long already), the pre-teens of today have not fully experienced the joy of free music, not that I advocate the stealing of music. Accordingly the majority of the parents shelling out money to purchase these goods contain either ethics that were lacked in the Napster generation or do not have the skills to fulfill the "kiddies" Wiggles fix without paying full price.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the percentage of profit due to music and the percentage due to merchandise. My guess would be that the majority would be from merchandise, where the child-targeted market has an enormous advantage over today's pop groups.
I think Disney are the masters of this area... Ask anyone _other_ than a pre-teen girl who the heck the Cheetah Girls are and you'll get a blank stare. But I'd bet they are worth several sets of Wiggles in revenue to the Mouse... And I'd be willing to bet most of your readers never heard of Laurie Berkner, but she sells a buttload of CD's and concert tickets too...