Are there any rock bands from the post-digital era that could fill a stadium?

Are there any rock bands whose first album came out *after* digital music became the norm that could fill a stadium?

I'm wondering about whether the digital revolution has fragmented listener bases so much that such an act can't get as big as Springsteen, U2, Coldplay, etc. anymore-- especially regarding artists or genres whose audiences are generally middle-to-upper class and have access to digital music, and inclination to look for music that addresses niche tastes.

I'm guessing Radiohead doesn't count? And also, where are we declaring the year or years where "digital music" became the norm?

xp making such a statement assumes all other social conditions that fostered stadium sell-outs are still the same. I don't think you can attribute it to JUST the music--how do people listen to it? What do people want from it (iPod on a train ride vs. at home with a stack of LPs)? Are bands in general selling out stadiums as frequently now as they did then?

yeah, that's a good point. maybe another way to ask this is to questions whether any post-digital bands have become marketing empires in the same way as U2, Springsteen, The Stones, etc.?

Coldplay, Linkin Park, and Nickelback all of those emerged on the cusp of the digital music era and are definitely stadium-level.

Right, but I'm really talking about after everyone started using iPods.

(so I suppose around 2000-2001)

Muse : (

if you're saying 2000-2001 Coldplay Parachutes came out 2000 and surely they could sell out a stadium.

Muse was my first thought

Arctic Monkeys my 2nd :(

I guess I'm unclear about timing; would you say that 2000-2001 was about when we got into a digital paradigm? Or was it later, like 2003?

muse and coldplay are about as early as you can go, based on the question, but i don't consider either of them post-digital era myself.

Glasvegas my third :( :( :(

So we are differentiating between "bands" and "singers", right? Because Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers can certainly sell out stadium after stadium. It'd be interesting to compare demographics/listening habits of their fans versus, say, U2's when they began selling out stadiums.

Jonas Brothers

damn xpost

Daughtry
The Killers

I would set the date back to the late 90s when Napster exploded.

oh shit the killers

question is not just "bands" but "rock bands". i have genuinely never heard the jonas brothers, but i don't think they count?

So we are differentiating between "bands" and "singers", right? Because Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers can certainly sell out stadium after stadium.

i guess i meant people who write their own music and aren't manufactured by corporations.

okay, well then let's define rock. should be quick.

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I would set the date back to the late 90s when Napster exploded.

but is when the primary mode of music consumption became digital? I don't think so.

PS The Killers are playing Terminal 5 in NYC this week which is certainly NOT a stadium.

hardest would be to come up with a truly international answer, i.e. one that can fill stadiums both in north america an elsewhere, which would rule out muse (don't they play to about ten people in the US?) and the jonas brothers (arena level in the europe). killers are arena level even in the UK, no?

killers are not yet big enough to be the answer. at least part of the reason they're not (and the difficulty of this question) is due to the fact they released their first album only 5 years ago. takes time to build up a following that can support a stadium tour, even before the lol internet.

So we are differentiating between "bands" and "singers", right? Because Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers can certainly sell out stadium after stadium.

i guess i meant people who write their own music and aren't manufactured by corporations.

― Mike Crandle, Financial Analyst, Bear Stearns, New York, NY 10185 (res), Sunday, July 5, 2009 8:17 PM (7 minutes ago)

wait for geir to log on

killers are not yet big enough to be the answer. at least part of the reason they're not (and the difficulty of this question) is due to the fact they released their first album only 5 years ago. takes time to build up a following that can support a stadium tour, even before the lol internet.

― caek, Sunday, July 5, 2009 7:22 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OTM. Does anyone have dates on when Springsteen/U2/Van Halen/Led Zeppelin/Pink Floyd a) released their debut, b) started receiving decent airplay, c) began selling out stadiums?

It happened way faster for Zeppelin than for those others. Van Halen might be second in line. Springsteen, U2, and Floyd all had long, slow builds...

Anyway, fuck seeing live music in a stadium anyway. Is this really a problem?

Coldplay is the only band to emerge in the 2000s that can consistently sell out 20,000 seat arenas, let alone 50,000 seat stadiums. Kings of Leon might get there too, but not yet.

kings of leon? really? are they on the verge of hugeness? just an ipod commercial away?

Anyway, fuck seeing live music in a stadium anyway. Is this really a problem?

i don't give a shit about that; i see the stadium as a proxy for popularity, and i was wondering about whether it's possible for a band to get that big again, due to shifts in music distribution, marketing, and segmentation of audiences.

Wait wait wait, we're totally forgetting country acts though. Can't Kenny Chesney and shit sell out stadiums?

for the last fucking time dude, the thread is about rock bands.

kings of leon? really? are they on the verge of hugeness? just an ipod commercial away?

― keythkeythkeyth

i don't know the situation elsewhere but Kings of Leon are huuuuuuuuuuuuge in Britain.

Kenny Chesney and shit

new genre name for "country"

http://www.livenation.com/venue/susquehanna-bank-center-tickets

Nickelback, Toby Keith, Lil Wayne

i thought Killers would be at this point by now but they seem to have drifted off slightly, doubt Kings of Leon will do any better even if that single is pretty hot atm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3672448/Stadium-rock-this-summers-big-noise.html

i guess i meant people who write their own music and aren't manufactured by corporations

P.S. in context, what country is now--in sound, commercialization, and most importantly popularity--in comparison with what country was when Springsteen and U2 gained popularity are completely different, and I'd argue that it would be arbitrary to exclude country from "rock music"

shania's ramones t-shirt to thread.

Yeah, people are tired of me pointing this out, but if the Eagles, Mellencamp, Petty, Bon Jovi, etc count as rock music, there's no logical reason Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney (and Taylor Swift, for that matter) shouldn't. They even have lots of the same fans.

I'd say Keith and Chesney might've emerged too early, though; if they count, why not Dave Matthews.

Taylor Swift definitely fits "people who write their own music and aren't manufactured by corporations."

If these aren't "bands" enough, then...Rascal Flatts.

Pretty dumb to equate "rock bands" with "people who write their own music," though, since lots of fairly inarguable rock bands haven't generally done that, both in the Dianne Warren and "Louie Louie" eras.

i don't know the situation elsewhere but Kings of Leon are huuuuuuuuuuuuge in Britain

Situation in the States: Not huge. Not even close.

pretty big though dude, that stuff's all over mainstream rock radio

not the states, but Kings of Leon had to add an extra show at GM Place in Vancouver

are there any big bands from the post-Beatles era that could fill a USO?

http://www.mattendahl.com/jco/jco_images/clifford2.jpg

mainstream country can't play telephone boxes outside the u.s. and kings of leon and the killers can't play stadia in the uk, never mind the u.s. so we can forget those.

btw yall are wrong about kings of leon - their upcoming tour is all arenas/stadiums and they are charging $80 for general admission im pretty sure that they are going to sell

arenas or stadiums?

who in the US tours stadiums

that's what we're trying to find out.

im saying - is touring stadiums even a practice? i know that like sometimes billy joel or bruce or dmb will play shea or fenway but.. that just doesn't happen in the US anymore, and i dont think it's cuz there aren't bands that can fill stadiums, they just play arenas

and yes the jonas brothers are a good answer

I seem to remember Kings Of Leon playing Madison Square Garden with My Morning Jacket (which, seriously, how could people tell when one band left the stage and the other one came on?).

not to defend either of these guys, but you obviously haven't heard much from either band then. MMJ is infinitely more talented than KoL, even if they don't always show it.

I don't have the energy to figure out how many of these are in actual stadiums

the art of pretend lethargy

I've heard several songs by KOL, none of which I could ID or tell apart under duress. Whichever ones they've made videos for. I've quite possibly heard more by MMJ because when I last had a day job, many of my officemates worshipped them and would crank them on the communal stereo. But they'd also play KOL, which I think is a big part of why they blur together in my head.

brokencyde

The Strokes.

go team

Yeah but has digital music even overcome physical music sales-wise yet? If we're discounting Napster/Kazaa eras we may as well discount torrents as well. I think we've either not yet hit that paradigm shift or we're too close to it to be able to be objective about when it happened.

At any rate its silly to set the split to 5-6 years ago and give musicians that much time to establish a stadium-level following, but exclude 'manufactured' bands!

tokyo hotel !

Here's who's playing upcoming shows at the biggest venues in the Chicago area (one stadium, two amphitheaters, two arenas):

SOLDIER FIELD (capacity: 61,500):
U2

ALPINE VALLEY (40,000):
Dave Matthews Band
Coldplay
Jimmy Buffett

FIRST MIDWEST BANK AMPHITHEATER (28,000):
No Doubt w/Paramore
Kid Rock/Lynyrd Skynyrd
Def Leppard w/Poison and Cheap Trick
Crue Fest 2
Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival
Vans Warped Tour
Brad Paisley w/Dierks Bentley and Jimmy Wayne
Blink-182 w/Fall Out Boy
Nickelback w/Hinder, Papa Roach, and Saving Abel
Aerosmith w/ZZ Top
Creed
Toby Keith w/Trace Adkins
Dave Matthews Band

UNITED CENTER (23,500)
Green Day
Beyonce
AC/DC
Pearl Jam
Miley Cyrus

ALLSTATE ARENA (18,500)
Jonas Brothers
Demi Lovato
Marco Antonio Solis/Pepe Aguilar
American Idols Live!
Ricardo Arjona
Britney Spears
Wisin y Yandel
Pink
Taylor Swift
Vicente Fernandez

Kings of Leon... Situation in the States: Not huge. Not even close.

Kings of Leon sold out Madison Square Garden in a couple hours.
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/kings-of-leon-following-msg-sellout-with-1003939375.story

dub metalol

Still true that Kings of Leon are much bigger in the UK. Only by Night has sold three times as many copies in a country with a fifth as many people as the US.

The Killers are still huge in the UK; they played a sold out date to 50,000 people last Friday in Hyde Park.

The Killers def. The second album may have blown somewhat, but the third one contained a big hit and catapulted them to superstardom if they weren't up there before.

yikes i didn't realize "Human" was one of their biggest songs in most countries besides the U.S.

makes sense that that chorus would thrive more in places were English isn't the first language, I guess.

lol

im saying - is touring stadiums even a practice? i know that like sometimes billy joel or bruce or dmb will play shea or fenway but.. that just doesn't happen in the US anymore, and i dont think it's cuz there aren't bands that can fill stadiums, they just play arenas

if this is true, this doesn't happen "just because." A band sells out a stadium would make a lot more money than if they sell out an arena. there has to be a reason for downsizing, and i really doubt it's because an arena serves as a more intimate venue.

I guess sometimes one stadium gig can be a substitute of sorts for several arena gigs, so it's not that cut and dried

where are all of these kings of leon fans? i was under the mistaken impression that all of their fans wrote for nme. dave matthews sells out fulsom field which probably holds 40,000 for like weeks at a time here in boulder. half of the staff at my job are out sick whenever he shows up.

Any new thoughts on this?

my morning jacket.

they bridge the divide between jam band fans; arena rock fans; and indie fans.

white stripes

The only band I've seen play in the past three years was to a sold-out stadium and the band was Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Tickets were a Christmas present from a friend. I will make this tale even dorkier by telling you that I felt like I was watching...the Gavinners.

http://th09.deviantart.net/fs44/300W/i/2009/129/f/5/Klavier_Gavin__ROCK_GOD_by_Kira759.jpg

These are the kinds of bands you get when you live in a retirement community w/less than 90,ooo people.

Kings of Leon

molly hatchet.

lol maybe this poll was a harbinger of huegness to come: R WE Human or are we SEX ON FIRE?

THIS SEX IS ON FIRE

― Johnny Fever, Friday, February 6, 2009 8:24 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Pink sold out 12 shows or some ridic amount in a stadium in Melbourne, not sure if you'd count her as a "rock" act but I dont see why not.

what about, like, Death Cab?

Interpol

both restricted to large theatre status, along w/ The Shins, Modest Mouse & other OC-era kinda-big indie bands.

Stadiums? I doubt it.

xpost re interpol

in most US cities, at least

yeah, fair enough

I think this has more to do with the music press than with digital downloading. The press doesn't give bands the time to develop, they are constanctly on the lookout for the "next big thing", meaning debut albums, and then tend to tear them down already by the time of the 2nd or 3rd album. And it is very rare for a band with 1-2 albums behind them to be able to fill stadiums (even though I guess Coldplay did)

it is very rare for a band with 1-2 albums behind them to be able to fill stadiums

That is the exact opposite of America. Here it's very rare for a band to fill a stadium without being around for 1-2 decades.

yeah geir, like the music press hyping up bands, dropping them, hyping up newer bands has only happened in the internet age..

That is the exact opposite of America. Here it's very rare for a band to fill a stadium without being around for 1-2 decades.

But it wasn't always like this. I think in the 60s through the 90s, bands could do this without being around for very long.

yeah, thiking of gnr at the kingdome (50k+), being popular less than 5 years

yeah geir, like the music press hyping up bands, dropping them, hyping up newer bands has only happened in the internet age..

It happens to a larger and larger degree. Surely didn't happen a lot in the 60s and 70s, when many of the still stadium filling dinosaur acts were slowly building their careers.

I think in the 60s through the 90s, bands could do this without being around for very long.

Many of the biggest bands of the early 70s were so-called "supergroups" consisting of members who were already partly famous from other bands. Making it easier for them to establish a name quickly.