Rock Stays Strong on Tour, But Latin & Rap Make Gains

Coldplay crowns Billboard’s year-end Top Tours chart. Not far removed, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, The Rolling Stones, U2 and Metallica follow in the top 10. Half of the ranking’s upper tier is made up of rock acts, allowing the long-dominant genre to have the biggest piece of the Boxscore pie. Among all dollars earned by 2024’s top 100 touring acts, rock is responsible for 36%, more than any other genre.

Rock’s rule is easily explained by its five acts in the top 10. But among artists between Nos. 11-20 on Top Tours, there is just one more name to add: Eagles at No. 19. Dominated by classic rock acts with chart-topping albums from the 1960s and ‘70s, the genre’s towering lead on stage has shrunk considerably over the course of the 21st century.

For every year but one between 2000-2010, rock acts represented more than 50% of Top Tours revenue, peaking at 68% in 2003. It’s only managed that once in the years since, when U2, Guns N’ Roses and Coldplay lined up at Nos. 1, 2, and 3, respectively, in 2017. Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, rock’s share bumped up and down year-to-year, but generally shifted from the majority to the mid-40% range, and now to the mid-30% range.

Watch the clip below to see how the genre makeup of Billboard’s top 100 tours has evolved over the course of the 21st century.

Rock’s share of the top 100 tours is actually up from last year, bumping from 32.4% to 36%. Still, it’s been below 40% for four of the last five years (excluding 2020 and 2021 because of venue closures due to COVID-19), off from an average of 57% throughout the 2000s decade. The genre’s reliance on legendary bands has left a gap as younger acts from other styles elevate to stadium status.

Pop is next in line, with 16.4% of 2024’s top 100 grosses. P!nk, Madonna and Olivia Rodrigo lead the charge, ticking up from last year’s 15.8%. One major caveat is the absence of Taylor Swift and the gargantuan grosses of The Eras Tour. While overall tour figures were published by The New York Times, data was not submitted to Billboard Boxscore for chart eligibility, which means that its earnings are excluded from this equation. It’s estimated that if this year’s grosses were reported, pop would reign supreme with 27-28%, sending rock into the 20%s in both 2023 and 2024.

Pop and rock have been the top two touring genres for every year this century, with the lone exception of 2003, when country music narrowly out-paced pop, 13% to 12.2%. But while they remain on top, the spread has become significantly more even in the post-pandemic years.

Latin music and rap both posted record highs this year, up to 15.8% and 5.7%, respectively. The former hit a new peak in 2022, when Bad Bunny had the year’s biggest tour, becoming the first artist who doesn’t primarily perform in English to earn top year-end honors. While no Latin act has reached those heights since, his stadium success is no longer an anomaly. Luis Miguel grossed $290.4 million this year, and four other Spanish-speaking artists crossed the $100 million threshold. At 5.3% in 2019, Latin artists returned from the pandemic at 12.1% in 2022, then 11.5% in 2023, and now approaching 16% in 2024.

Rap artists have yet to scale their touring business to the extent of their streaming prowess, but this year made quite a dent. The genre’s top-100 share shot from 2.7% to 5.7%, more than doubling its representation and eclipsing its prior peak from 2019. Four women helped push hip-hop’s boundaries, with Doja Cat, Missy Elliott, Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj outnumbering male rappers on the Top Tours chart for the first time. Plus, Travis Scott scores the genre’s biggest year-end gross ever, at $168 million.

The oscillations of each genre’s performance from one year to the next often comes down to scheduling. Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour was impactful enough to shift R&B artists from 5.3% in 2022 to 15.2% in 2023 and back to 5.9% in 2024. But the progression from pop and rock owning a combined 78.5% in 2000 to 52% in 2024 is indicative of gradual growth from a wide variety of diverse artists harnessing the power of their global audiences.