India's Gig Era Is Now: Why the Country Is Becoming a Global Hotspot for Live Entertainment

In March 2024, British singer Ed Sheeran promptly took the internet by storm in the country with a torrent of viral moments from the India leg of his “Mathematics Tour”. He returned this year in February, travelling to six Indian cities this time. This came days after the much-anticipated “Music of the Spheres” tour by British rock band Coldplay, a multicity act by Canadian singer-songwriter Bryan Adams, and a concert by American rock band Maroon 5; the latter two were preceded by Dua Lipa’s Mumbai concert in November. Sheeran’s tour was followed by American rock band Green Day performing for the first time ever in India at Lollapalooza in March this year. Subsequently, the iconic American hard rock band Guns N’ Roses announced their return to India after 12 years for a concert in Mumbai in May this year. This seeming beeline made by international acts and artistes is fast propelling the Indian “concert economy” into a comfortable zone, where governments and tourism boards are now looking at drawing in domestic and overseas fans.

Music entrepreneur Ritnika Nayan, owner of the music consultancy firm Music Gets Me High, which recently collaborated with Lollapalooza India, believes it’s a response to years of reputation building, despite the occasional mismanagement that spirals out of control. “Back in 2011, I attended the Metallica concert in Gurgaon (as an audience member), which got canned (because of riots following a postponement) and it made artistes hesitant for a long time. People talk about such incidents,” she points out. But “thankfully”, some of the damage was reversed with fewer instances of event mismanagement and cancellations in the years following the incident. “From an external perspective, majority of the feedback has been positive so that reputation obviously travels. A brand like Lollapalooza inspires faith because it is such a major international player,” says Nayan, who had also helped organise Guns N’ Roses’ first India tour in 2012. “There were organisational problems with that show as well, which doesn’t really get spoken about, but over the years, even if the infrastructure hasn’t gotten better, the reputation surely has.”

While the journey isn’t linear, the origins of the cumulative impact of building up to this point can perhaps be traced back to 2008 with the Eastwind festival — a three-day music event held in Delhi — touted as the only “multistage” festival platforming indie performers and bands back then. “The person who tried to organise Eastwind (Adhiraj Mustafi of Prospect Advisory & Management) had the vision but not the experience and knowledge, so some of us in the music business jumped in and helped; it was a big thing back then. Now, the concepts of a multistage festival and festivals with an audience of 50,000 have become a common thing in India, so it’s just general growth,” she says. There are also more people interested in the management side of music, which wasn’t the case when Nayan started out in the mid-2000s, when only three management firms — including hers — occupied the space. “We have now become more organised. And after Coldplay, the government too has started to take more interest in concerts, which makes getting permissions and dealing with other logistical challenges easier.”

A New Kind of Music Literacy

The run-up to the Coldplay Mumbai concert was overshadowed by concerns over ticketing scams on BookMyShow, the official seller. Over 13 million fans attempted to secure one of the 150,000 tickets, which sold out within 30 minutes. This unprecedented demand caused the portal website and app to crash, preventing some users from making bookings. Fans raised concerns over the fairness and efficiency of the process, questioning how tickets were distributed. Reports of scams further fuelled frustration, with many demanding transparency from BookMyShow regarding the sale and allocation of tickets. This also led social media users to question the “authenticity” of the people who got their hands on tickets, claiming that “genuine fans” lost out on the opportunity. Their argument? Following herd impulse, people who haven’t genuinely engaged with the band have bought tickets to avoid “fomo” (fear of missing out). But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Ask Kshitij Deolekar, a native of Pune who attended the Ahmedabad performance by the band with his sister who only knew one song by them, “Yellow”. “How does it matter? It has now gotten her interested in their music and she’s discovering more of it on her own and exploring other artistes in the genre. Concerts are about more than just songs; they’re about experiences,” he says. Nayan agrees. “Because of multistage performances these days, you might go to a show where you may or may not know every artiste on the line-up, but you could discover a new one. Say, you go to watch Green Day and discover (English rock band) Glass Animals in the process,” she points out.

The routes taken to discover new artistes and sounds, therefore, are irrelevant to the music literacy of the country, if the foundations for it are being strengthened alongside streaming platforms that weren’t a reality even 15 years ago. There’s also the fact that the current urban and upwardly mobile audience is tired of having to fly overseas to catch their favourite artiste live. The ground, therefore, is fertile for the Indian music market to ramp up operations.

It’s reflected in the figures quoted in top online ticketing platform BookMyShow’s 2024 year-end report, which states that last year, 30,687 live events were held across 319 cities, reflecting an 18 per cent growth in India’s live entertainment consumption. “A defining trend has been the rapid rise of music tourism, with over 477,393 fans travelling beyond their cities to attend live events,” says Anil Makhija, COO, live entertainment and venues, BookMyShow. “Tier-two cities such as Kanpur, Shillong and Gandhinagar have also seen exponential growth in live entertainment, with a 682 per cent surge in events, signalling a democratisation of access,” he adds, stating that these developments have occurred hand in hand with the premiumisation of the live entertainment experience that continues to gain traction, with a “123 per cent increase in fans opting for curated elements such as gourmet food, bespoke merchandise and interactive engagements”. Music, therefore, is only a part — albeit an important one — of the larger outdoor experience being sought out by the audience in 2025.

A More Robust Ecosystem

While the Covid-19 pandemic may not have directly impacted the concert space, according to Deepak Choudhary, founder and managing director of Eva Live — an events company that recently organised some of the Bryan Adams concerts in India, like Mumbai and Goa — it reminded people that “they only live once”. “The wireframe started to gradually change over the last four to five years, as people began getting screen fatigue and wanted to step out more. The digitisation of transactions has also helped to a great extent, along with private venues like Jio World Garden or Jio Convention Centre in Mumbai being big supports. The governments have also been helping in building infrastructure,” Choudhary says.

In December 2024, when Bryan Adams performed at the GMC Athletic Stadium in Bambolim, Goa, to a 15,000-strong audience, the local government ensured residents weren’t disturbed and that traffic remained uninterrupted. Similarly, the Meghalaya government declared a local holiday on 10 December to ensure decorum in the city when Adams performed there. “We came in, performed, and exited these cities peacefully because the governments made sure we could do that,” Choudhary says.

Large corporates coming into the system has changed it in better ways, according to Choudhary, who believes more money and increased ease of transactions can only strengthen India’s position as a destination for performers. There’s also the fact that India’s proximity to other Asian hotspots like Dubai, Singapore, Malayasia and Thailand works in its favour. “If an artiste comes to perform in one of these countries, they might inquire about India, so it all adds up.”

Smaller Steps, Bigger Gains

When Arjun Sagar Gupta started The Piano Man Jazz Club in Delhi in 2012, the idea was to build a venue that is respectful of artistes, which would eventually encourage a niche subculture for jazz enthusiasts. For this musical genre, often thought of as an acquired taste, Gupta believes years of effort have finally led to a thriving scene, with his establishment now boasting three outposts in Delhi-NCR. American jazz stalwarts Dianne Reeves and Herbie Hancock performed at one of his venues in January 2024, besides a host of others that have graced The Piano Man over the years. While a steady flow of international acts and artistes keeps the conversation on diverse music going, it doesn’t necessarily add to the local, smaller scene.

“They are largely independent of each other. An artiste like Ed Sheeran has a legion of followers, right? And while we’d love to have them here, they will only start contributing to the local scene if they decide on doing smaller, more intimate performances while on tour for their bigger ones,” says Gupta, adding that this is common practice in European cities, where artistes just walk into a local pub and perform, simply for the love of it. “For some reason, that doesn’t happen in India yet. But once these big artistes start hitting the smaller clubs, then it’ll start seeding more interest into the local industries as well,” Gupta says. It also adds avenues for opening acts — who might get some solid airtime performing on a big stage but get capped at only a handful of such opportunities every year — to perform on stages before or after artistes that can then generate more interest even in smaller, more niche venues.

Coldplay fan Manju Mitra remembers this one time when the band’s frontman Chris Martin decided to spontaneously drop in at Delhi’s Summer House Cafe in Hauz Khas in 2015 with an eclectic bunch comprising singer-composer Vishal Dadlani, Raghu Dixit and comedians Tanmay Bhat, Gursimran Khamba and Rohan Joshi. She was at the right place at the right time. “It was a super tight, and thankfully, the right kind of crowd, who knew exactly who Chris was and everyone went bonkers,” Mitra recalls. She was among the many who managed to get a ticket in the very first instance this time round for one of their Mumbai concerts and counts herself lucky to have had such a serendipitous encounter with her favourite artiste a decade ago. “I studied abroad and loved going to small cafes to watch the biggest names perform for smaller crowds. I understand the Indian audience and market aren’t the same, but if you don’t grow the big and small acts simultaneously, you won’t be able to hold our interest for so long. How many big concerts can you even attend every year?” she asks, while bookmarking the ticket sale date for the Guns N’ Roses show. “It’s a lot better than how it was even five years ago though, and I can’t say I am not happy.”

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