I grew up enjoying in numerous other bands, and my bandmates and I all the time held onto the conclusion that if shall we simply open for a extra established act, it might pave how you can extra good fortune.
Once I began enjoying within the indie pop band Pastime Pit – a bunch recognized for its shimmering synths, lively are living displays and breakout hits like Sleepyhead and Take a Stroll – we started gaining traction and shortly had the danger to open for the British band Muse, in what could be our first area displays.
Till then, we’d been headlining 3,000-capacity venues. Our label, control and reserving workforce made it transparent that this subsequent step – enjoying in entrance of huge audiences – would catapult us to megastardom.
Truth used to be other. After enjoying our personal packed displays the place lovers cheered and referred to as for encores, we discovered ourselves in 15,000-capacity arenas, the place it looked like everybody used to be ignoring us: chatting amongst themselves, nonetheless attending to their seats or ready in line for food and drink.
It used to be a serious warning call. The transition from being a headliner at a smaller tune venue to opener for a big act didn’t really feel like a step ahead. It felt like beginning over.
Years later, as an educational finding out the tune business, I discovered myself returning to this query: Does opening for a big act lend a hand an artist’s profession?
There’s an assumption that it’s a golden price ticket. However I’d noticed a variety of openers, some extremely proficient, disappear from the highlight quickly after a excursion ended. If traveling is meant to be a stepping stone to long-term good fortune, why do such a lot of promising acts fade into obscurity?
Those questions turned into the foundation for my most up-to-date find out about. I sought after to look whether or not those high-profile alternatives ship any advantages for a singer or band, or in the event that they had been extra like a sugar excessive, offering little greater than a short lived spice up in publicity.
It’s tougher to stand proud of the group
Well-liked tune is a US$28.6-billion international business, and tune intake, consistent with a 2025 file from the Global Federation of the Phonographic Trade, is at an all-time excessive. Other people world wide now spend a median of 20.7 hours a week being attentive to tune on radio, streaming platforms, vinyl, CDs and social media.
The benefit of being attentive to and recording tune gifts each a possibility and a problem for aspiring artists.
On one hand, streaming platforms equivalent to Spotify and Apple Song have got rid of conventional gatekeepers, making it more straightforward than ever to unlock tune and achieve an international target market. However those platforms have additionally saturated listeners with content material, and discovery is dictated extra through algorithms reasonably than through word-of-mouth buzz, native traveling circuits or conventional artist construction.
Social media, particularly TikTok, can release an unknown act into viral stardom inside days. On the other hand, the eye span of virtual audiences is fleeting. The general public devour tune passively – steadily thru playlists they didn’t curate and may now not even keep in mind.
In different phrases, getting heard hasn’t ever been more straightforward. Being known and staying related? That’s the true problem.
For artists looking to destroy thru, it’s not a query of opting for between traveling or posting content material. It’s about doing each, continuously, at a excessive stage.
Josh Ross plays because the opener for nation famous person Jelly Roll in Edmonton on March 13, 2025.
Ron Palmer/SOPA Photographs/LightRocket by way of Getty Photographs
Fleeting advantages
However whilst headlining excursions are steadily noticed as a marker of good fortune, many rising acts first step onto nationwide phases as openers – elevating the query, does opening for a big artist in reality result in significant profession enlargement?
In my find out about, I analyzed the traveling and streaming knowledge of 57 opening acts on primary U.S. excursions in 2022 and 2023. For this undertaking, “major” referred to nationally promoted, ticketed excursions at venues with capacities of two,000 or extra, equivalent to Harry Kinds’ “Love On Tour,” Paramore’s spring area run and Mitski’s “Laurel Hell Tour.” Those excursions drew massive, devoted fanbases – providing opening artists vital publicity.
The usage of platforms equivalent to Pollstar, Songkick and Chartmetric, I tracked each and every artist’s listenership throughout Spotify 4 weeks prior to the excursion, all through the excursion and 4 weeks after the excursion. I additionally carried out surveys with 500 lovers to higher know the way other people had been finding and tasty with openers.
The effects had been revealing. Maximum opening acts noticed a streaming bump all through the excursion – most often between 18% and 20%, with some surging as much as 200%.
However that momentum hardly held. Inside of weeks, streams steadily dropped through 6% to ten%, or returned to their pre-tour ranges totally. Whilst a couple of artists controlled to carry onto new listeners, maximum noticed the positive factors briefly fade. And even if audiences loved an opener’s set, their passion withered: They are going to have looked at a track or two after the display, however few turned into common listeners.
Those findings problem the long-standing narrative that opening for a big artist is a surefire trail to profession enlargement. Publicity is helping, however it’s now not sufficient by itself. With no transparent post-tour technique, that focus briefly fades.
Rapper Rapsody plays as an opener for Lauryn Hill on Oct. 19, 2023, in New York Town.
Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Photographs
Algorithms can’t generate loyalty
I’m now not looking to discourage aspiring bands from occurring excursion. Some distance from it. Traveling stays a the most important a part of construction a fan base.
In a panorama outlined through passive intake, there’s nonetheless one thing tough in regards to the shared enjoy of are living tune. A efficiency can create an emotional connection {that a} move merely can’t.
These days, discovery steadily begins with a playlist. Any person hears a track and possibly provides it to their rotation. However they hardly click on to be told extra in regards to the artist. Listeners observe the playlist, now not the individual in the back of the tune. Many acts land on primary playlists and pass directly to generate tens of 1000’s of streams. Others will also pass viral on social media. And so they nonetheless can’t promote greater than 25 tickets to an area display.
Are living performances be offering one thing other. A perfect set can flip an off-the-cuff listener into a real fan. I’ve heard numerous other people say a selected display modified the way in which they skilled that artist’s tune, that it left an enduring affect and cast a bond with the singer or staff.
That more or less loyalty doesn’t come from an set of rules. It comes from being within the room. And with greater than 100,000 tracks uploaded to streaming products and services every day, artists wish to use each device they are able to to face out.
Chopping during the noise
In an technology when streaming income is notoriously narrow, traveling has transform probably the most few dependable resources of source of revenue for operating artists. The highest artists in 2017 earned 80% in their source of revenue from traveling, 15% from recorded tune and 5% from publishing charges.
Despite the fact that traveling is a ways from a ensure – particularly for those who’re now not the headliner, as my analysis displays – it’s nonetheless probably the most few techniques left to chop during the noise. Within the survey I ran for my find out about, 68% of concertgoers stated they came upon a minimum of one new artist thru an opener, and 39% stated the opener influenced their price ticket acquire.
And there are good fortune tales – circumstances the place opening slots have helped release lasting careers.
Billie Eilish opened for Florence + The Gadget early on in her profession, the use of that visibility to construct a large following. Taylor Swift, specifically, has a name for choosing long run stars: Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes, Sabrina Chippie and Chappell Roan all opened for her prior to changing into primary names.
Billie Eilish’s excursion with Florence + the Gadget in 2018 helped catapult the younger singer to stardom.
Jeff Hahne/Getty Photographs
Those examples are outliers, after all. For many openers, visibility comes briefly however fades simply as rapid.
These days’s artists want multiple giant second. There must be some form of plan, whether or not it’s liberating new content material, crafting a powerful id or working out techniques for brand new lovers to stick engaged after the display ends.
As a result of on the finish of the day, it’s now not about being noticed as soon as. It’s all about being remembered.
