The Rolling Stones, whose hits include “Satisfaction” and “Sympathy for the Devil,” are in talks with promoters AEG Live and Live Nation Entertainment for their next tour, according to a source who declined to be identified because talks are private.
The Stones are planning a tour in the next few years and haven’t yet signed a contract, the source said. An auction for the next tour has been underway for about a month, and a group of independent promoters is also bidding, the source said.
Britain’s Sun newspaper reported last weekend that the group’s 50th- anniversary tour would be its last.
The band, which turns 50 in two years, holds the record for the most profitable tour with the 2005-2006 “A Bigger Bang,” which took in $558.3 million, according to music news website Spinner.
With record sales plunging 30 percent the past decade and illegal downloads of music accounting for almost all music heard online, live performance has become the industry’s most lucrative and fastest-growing segment.
Fans are paying twice the price for tickets to top concerts compared with a decade ago.
Artists who once performed at live shows to promote record sales are now churning out albums to boost tour attendance.
AC/DC, whose hits include “Back in Black” and “Highway to Hell,” will probably be the second-highest-grossing tour band when figures are tallied from their “Black Ice” tour, which concluded in June in Spain, according to Spinner. The tour may have taken in $441.6 million, the website said.
The live-performance market raked in $21.6 billion in 2008, an increase of 54 percent in three years, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
Recorded music sales last year were $18.4 billion.
Record companies are scrambling to find ways to get a piece of the live action. They’re signing artists to so-called 360 deals, in which they get a portion of an artist’s rights to recorded music, tours, merchandise and marketing.
Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, has 360 deals with Madonna and Shakira.
