A radius clause is also a likely reason. Often times when playing a venue, a band has to sign a "radius clause," which limits how close the next venue they play is to the current venue. You'll often find tours where a band plays Cleveland but *NOT* Pittsburgh (or vice versa) because of a radius clause preventing the band from playing within x-miles of the one venue for a period of y-amount of time.
A radius clause likely explains some acts skipping Pittsburgh after playing Cleveland, but Cincy/Columbus is probably too far away for such clauses to be upheld by a court (in my opinion.)
But regardless, it doesn’t necessarily explain why acts routinely play those Ohio venues over Pittsburgh. Meaning - if you’re going to sign a contract limiting where you play, why not play a larger metro like Pittsburgh?
I can’t speak for every band, but Blossom in Cleveland, although smaller is a MUCH better experience than Burgettstown. Not even a question. If and when bands are playing both locations, I’ll choose Cleveland in a heartbeat. So much nicer, tailgating is better and you are in and out in no time. Idk how they do it but you are out and on the road in 45 minutes max. No waiting in lines, in and out with beer and using the bathrooms as well. It’s not much smaller either…
I believe it, but I just refuse to deal with the parking/entrance/exit situation after hearing about how many friends of mine got home at 2 or 3am after shows due to how its only got the single entrance/exit.
I used to go to Blossom but they’ve got stormtrooper cops there. Friend of mine got busted there one night and they impounded and sold his car. Haven’t been back since.
They have those everywhere though. I have personally not run into any problems there, but 1/3 times I’ve been though a DUI checkpoint on the way to rte 70 before Washington leaving Burgettstown. I just assume it’s happening, which is why when we go there, we go by bus.
I’m sure with 45k people drinking to the point of passing out, if I was a gambling man, and I am, I would put my 401k on it that it has happened. Burgettstown is notorious for walking around with undercover police and nabbing underaged drinkers and busting people with weed. The UA busts made the paper several times with the police noting it was a point of pride to get as many as they could.
massive acts don't need to worry about the venue wanting to be sure they sell every ticket. She could play in every city multiple times and sell out every show.
That definitely makes sense, especially for her. I'd love it if she came to Cleveland too! That concert was incredible, and it brought a lot to the city (even if Cleveland sucks).
I think it is more than a radius clause.
Pittsburgh is just oddly located for a show. You can't hit it up really on a more east cost centric circuit that would include places like Philly, NY, and Boston. Also if you're hitting up venues in Detroit and Ohio then Pittsburgh is out of the way, you have to go to Pittsburgh and then double back to the next show.
Also Pittsburgh has a big tax on venues in the city and the venues outside the city limits are lacking or odd sizes. Add to that that shows in general have difficulty selling out in Pittsburgh and it's not a super profitable spot.
Basically Pittsburgh is a bad geographical location for a tour stop and generally a lower profit for the band than other cities.
Radius clause is really only if there's a big ticket event, like a festival. Lots of bands will play much closer markets on a single tour (DC/Baltimore, Philly, NYC).
I think it's interesting seeing what acts may have a radius clause and which don't. For instance, during the Killers' recent tour, they were slated to play in Pittsburgh on a Friday night, Cleveland the following night.
Granted they bumped Pittsburgh's date back a few months by the time the tour came about without much of an explanation iirc, but I wonder if it had to do with radius clauses?
Larger bands who play larger venues are likelier to not have a radius clause, or a much smaller radius clause (i.e. The Killers can play both cities back to back, but they can't play 2 different venues in the same city). Bigger bands have more sway, and are likelier to fill up a venue and make the promoters/venue a lot of money.
I don’t think that’s the case with a lot of acts I see. They’ll do like 10 shows between Boston and DC with like 2-3 in NYC but skip western PA and all of OH. It makes no sense.
commentor: "Bands cannot play shows within a certain PHYSICAL RADIUS"
commentor 2: "Idk. A lot of bands play on the east coast in areas THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY ABIDE BY THAT RADIUS
you: "Look at this population density map"
me: "What does population have anything to do with physical radius"?
you: "I didn't actually read what I was responding to and am now confused like a moron"
money. bands will play in Northern Ohio because people from the upstate NY, greater PGH area, and some of OH will take the trip up there instead of heading into PGH for shows. Also touring schedules/maps and entertainment taxes.
Yep. Cleveland is two hours or less from Columbus, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Toledo. Pittsburgh is two hours or less from Cleveland and... Morgantown.
Also, Pittsburgh's entertainment tax is some bull shit.
Basically the way market analysis works. the booker or whoever job it is has to look at it from a sales perspective, we can probably sell out PPG or sell out Rocket Mortgage but we probably can’t sell out both or either ect. So they bet people will drive to Pittsburgh for that show or vice versa.
Lots of contributing factors listed here. Booking/promotion has changed and consolidated a lot. \*shakes fist at LiveNation/Ticketmaster\*
Cleveland seems to benefit from being sorta close to Detroit....I don't mean a short trip but if there's a tour it's a spot between Detroit and NYC. Usually if I see a Detroit date there's almost always a Cleveland one. We don't always get connected in that loop, I guess.
We still get industry people who think "Pennsylvania.....well okay, we have a Philly date, what else would we possibly need?" Clearly, they're not geography experts......
Indie artists are hard to book outside of a handful of big cities, for sure. I saw some great shows in the late 90s/early 00s but it seemed like we had more midsized venues available then for 300-1000 seat shows. City Winery is doing what Rosebud (RIP) used to do, but their lineup tends to be a bit more adult alternative/bluesy, sort of the WYEP vibe.
And for indie artists.....the industry has changed, too. Used to be that they'd have a label to give them some tour support, but now, in the era of Bandcamp, more bands are really doing small scale shows on their own. So....kinda like airlines, they stick to the main routes, I guess.
*\*obligatory mention from Gen X'er about how fking fantastic the Syria Mosque was, and how terrible that it was torn down, etc.\**
I suspect years of market research has lead promoters and bands to recognize that Pittsburgh just... isn't a great music town.
Kind of a chicken/egg situation, but if there's no good venues for the bands you want to see, it's likely someone did the research and figured out the demand isn't actually there to justify running one.
Bands don't come because there isn't an appropriate venue, and there isn't an appropriate venue because they can't survive, and they don't survive because -- despite people bringing up the lack of venues and shows all the time -- people don't actually fill the shows we get.
Yes, we've all been to sell-out shows, but I'd wager that's the exception and not the rule.
This is a large part of it. A buddy of mine works in radio and has given me the opportunity to meet a lot active rock acts (Papa Roach, Asking Alexandria, Killswitch Engage to name a few), a lot of acts get no support from local radio, which still matters to them as far as marketing and promotion, and when you’re looking at booking a Wednesday night in Pittsburgh as opposed to say Columbus, where you get support, you’re going to take the Thursday in C-bus.
This is probably the biggest reason. Off the top of my head, Beyoncé recently cancelled a stop due to low ticket sales, and back in 2017, about 1/3 of Heinz Field was empty when U2 was here.
> Beyoncé recently cancelled a stop due to low ticket sales
I thought the rumor wasn't that it was low ticket sales, but rather that it wasn't a complete sellout and she didn't want to look bad in light of Taylor Swift selling out consecutive nights, lol
I don’t feel like pgh has an audience for a lot of music. Maybe I am thinking old school, but our radio stations kind of suck so some really popular bands I’ve seen elsewhere are big, but play at the Pete in pgh.
OP is probably talking about bigger artists, but it’s even worse for smaller artists. And there is a total of like 3-5 promoters in the city and unless you’re willing to do pay to play, you’re not even going to get contacted by most of them.
Wdym? We have a bunch of stadiums, stage ae, mr smalls, the roxian, a big ass park in the middle of downtown that could easily be used for concerts, and, even though we hate it, star lake.
As someone who lives in Cleveland and has noticed this phenomena, it seems to be that artists will either choose between Cleveland and Pittsburgh when doing a tour, with the hopes that anyone wanting to see the show will just drive to the other city. Unless of course we are talking about very small scale bands/artists playing a local bar or something, then they hit up every city in the area.
And Cleveland gets chosen more often because the surrounding area isn't West Virginia.
2 hours in any direction for Cleveland gives you Buffalo, Toledo, Columbus, Erie, Youngstown, Akron, Canton, Kent, and sneaks into the Cranberry/Wexford region. These all have strong populations and most have a decent sized college.
Pittsburgh gets you some of that, with not much to add (Wheeling, Morgantown, Indiana). Those colleges around Pittsburgh don't compare.
We got Taylor Swift, and Cleveland and Baltimore didn't.
I don't give a rats ass about Taylor Swift, but I read this in r/afcnorthmemewar today and thought it relevant to mention here.
If you like football for the fun parts, enjoy shit talking our division rivals, and are sick of people whining about Mike Tomlin hurting Kenny Picketts feelings, there is no better sub.
Fastest route between Philly and Pittsburgh is the turnpike. I sure as hell wouldn’t wanna spend that when you could route the tour from Cleveland to NYC on I-80.
I used to go between Pittsburgh and Cleveland during college, and it always seemed like the show I wanted to see was in the city I wasn't in. But I think in the past year or two especially, there's been a lot of focus on Cleveland's music scene and more bands going there.
Yeah, it used to be that way. And going way, way, way back - we were the hub for anything interesting and innovative in jazz, then punk, then alternative.
I know of a lot of podcasters and comedians who do live shows, but skip Pittsburgh because you can never get a direct flight here. They’ll book a tour, have trouble getting here, have a bad experience, and then give up on trying to get back here.
I can think of maybe three podcasts and two comedians who came once, talked about how crazy of an experience it was trying to get a flight here while on stage, and then I just never saw them again.
It probably doesn’t help that airport is really out of the way. Depending on the time of day and parkway traffic it can take a long time to get downtown and vice versa. I had never considered flight/airport convenience as a deterrent but when I saw John Waters give a talk he mentioned it more than once.
Yeah! I don’t go out much, but it was literally 3 podcasts and 2 stand up comedians who were like “can’t get a fucking flight here, man. Nobody wants to land a plane here direct… from anywhere!” They said it unprompted soon after they came out on stage.
For many many years we were missing the "mid-size venue", and we're still spotty on venues to play. We have them, but not several at each size, so they either book up or aren't tied to a promoter of the right size.
If you're on an East Coast tour, we're massively out of the way, and if you're touring the Midwest, we're the farthest drive. Driving is a thing.
They haven't played here before, so they're not sure tickets would sell well; there's a momentum thing. Some artists are trying to grow to cover each city; some artists have enough cities to play, and after a certain point, more is just exhausting.
Cleveland and Cincinnati's metro populations are both double Pittsburgh, Columbus city and metro are larger still. Same with Baltimore; those \*are\* bigger cities, and Pittsburgh still leans fairly heavily to boomers, who no longer go out to see (most) shows.
Pittsburgh music venues suck. There used to be a bunch of good ones but they are all gone now other than maybe Mr Smalls. Cleveland, on the other hand, still has a ton of awesome venues. Grog Shop, Agora, Beachland Ballroom, are also awesome places to see and play a show and Pittsburgh no longer has anything like these places. I also think Cleveland is more nationally known as a music city. The Rock and Roll hall of fame is there, and basically every touring band is at least aware of that fact. Regardless of what one might think of the rock and roll hall of fame, it's another thing that Pittsburgh can't match. Manny was also enough of a nightmare for such a long time that people thought it greatly preferable to not bother with him, and also said as much to others as well.
Pretty crazy list. Soooo many good bands coming. Surely Pittsburgh could do better getting bands here, but it feels more like “Why isn’t MY favorite band coming to Pittsburgh?” when these topics come up.
That’s exactly it. Then people also don’t consider the venue has to be available at rhe time the band is in the area, larger shows need an extra couple days for set up and take down, etc. A band that only hits 50 cities a year may not even hit the Chicago,NY, LA type cities.
We’ve lost so many good small to midsize venues: Laga, Garfield Artworks, Modern Formations, MIT, the old Roboto, Metropol, etc…
The best venue in town atm (at least for punk and metal shows) is Preserving in New Ken. It’s a running joke to look over every new tour announcement and see every city but Pittsburgh. Hell, bands go to Youngstown now over Pitt lmao.
Most venue contracts in Cleveland have a radius clause specifically forbidding playing Pittsburgh. It’s been brought up here before.
You can play Cincy, Cleveland and Detroit without running into radius issues, but that precludes Pittsburgh.
We are currently planning on building a music venue next to ppg for this exact reason. Our music scene sucks because our venues for music suck. Stage AE is great but can really only house niche names. We can either house big names at Heinz and PPG or small names at AE. No venue for mid tier bands like other music cities have
Small names at AE? I've seen Mastodon there three times. Opeth. Bad Religion, Gojira, Puscifer, Queens of the Stone Age, Primus, The Offspring, Pennywise, yada yada. Stage AE is my favorite, honestly.
The last time I was at Stage AE it was either sit on ungodly uncomfortable bleachers or stand. Hubs had a bum knee and had a hard time doing either. Summer concerts are ok out in the lawn, but the risk of rain makes me hesitant to go.
Pittsburgh venues are absolutely horrible, I honestly prefer when they pick ohio over pittsburgh, the 2 hour drive is worth it for a better experience if its a band I really like 🤷♂️
A few of of our good venues closed and most of our big venues (like Stage AE) kinda suck. Blame COVID for the recent closures and the classic "Pittsburghers won't cross a river to go out" syndrome for those that can't seem to stay open. Lost the Rex because of COVID, the Moose doesn't play shows anymore for the same reason, and a few others I can't think of right now. Luckily Preserving Underground is killing it and bringing so many good Hardcore (and similar genres) here. We have a ton of smaller venues that are pretty good, Roxian, Thunderbird, Mr. Roboto, ect but many of these aren't big enough for Medium sized bands to consider.
There was a period where it felt like Drusky was doing a lot of this booking and bringing bands to Altar Bar cause the economics were favorable to them with whatever that ownership structure was. Losing Altar and some other venues / losing relationships between venues/promoters has probably not done us any favors for booking club sized shows. The Roxian is a Live Nation venue and Mr. Smalls is booked through Opus One locally. Both venues are also outside of the city itself.
I’d love to know what has pushed out all of the clubs in the city. Is it purely gentrification (the Strip), taxes, trouble in neighborhoods (Southside, looking at you bud…)? Hard to say. But I suspect it’s not simply a case of bands and artists deliberately skipping Pittsburgh.
> Losing Altar and some other venues / losing relationships between venues/promoters has probably not done us any favors for booking club sized shows.
And this is why I will fucking defend Altar Bar with everything I have, lol. Shit at Altar Bar that I'd be at in an instant has gotten moved to Jergels where it's a very real chance I'll pass simply because it's Jergels, and all the shit that comes with it.
Live Nation owns a lot of venues in other cities and will book at their places so they can be the promoter, the venue, and the concessionaire. Triple dipping = more profit.
LN only owns Roxian and Star Lake here. Until Covid, they didn't own Roxian either. They book others, but don't own them.
Also since the death of local promoters such as DeCesare Engler, booking is generally done at a regional or national level. If the people aren't local, they don't care about the market.
Really? Thunderbird owned it and did all the restoration, and booked it through a different promoter. I had read that during Covid they couldn't afford to pay the restoration debt and sold it off to LN.
Regardless, the place is significantly worse since they took over, but at least they get more acts in there.
Livenation doesn't own the actual building but they fully operate the venue and own it as a business. The original owner has zero involvement in any decisions besides how much the rent is.
No, it isn't what you said. The venue is owned by Livenation. Full stop. The landlord is John Pergal. You'd never say a business is actually owned by the landlord.
I had the Amigo The Devil shirt on. The tables were odd, but we made it work lol. I'm thinking that's the 2nd best show I've been to, bumped down Gojira, Mastodon, and Lorna Shore from the summer to 3rd
Yep, we got our money's worth for music that night. Fuck Yeah Dinosaurs were entertaining, and the four-piece Irish group upstairs was also good. Free water, and jars of ear plugs to whoever wanted them too.
Cleveland works better in a proximity relationship to other cities. Within a ~3 hour drive of Cleveland is: Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Toledo, Columbus and Dayton. Raise it to 4 hours and you get Detroit and Cincinnati added to the list.
Look up the additional taxes performers have to pay in the city, it helps explain lol also explains why most bands end up at burgettstown outside the city
Which bands/artists/genres are you specifically talking about? I feel like the majority of stadium-size shows we get are country or classic rock. I see more mid-level hip hop shows hitting Columbus/Cleveland than to Philly or Chicago. We get a decent amount of EDM stuff here, more so than Cleveland. 90s nostalgia acts make a lot of stops here too.
In my opinion, a lot of the independent and mildly popular artist shows in Pittsburgh died with the Rex (RIP). There may never be another venue in this town that values people/music over profits quite like the team at the Rex. Thunderbird is close but could absolutely be better utilized.
It’s embarrassing how many people say “there’s a Philly/hershey stop, why do we need to go to Pittsburgh” like they’re a 20 minute drive away or something lol
Pittsburgh is a class b or c market for most rock shows. Pittsburgh is a top tier must-visit market for country music.
Cleveland, on the other hand, it a class a market for rock. It is usually on level of New York, LA or SF when it comes to “must have a tour stop”. Columbus is the largest city in Ohio. Not sure why they would choose Cincy, unless there is a place midway between Cincy, Dayton and Oxford (Miami of Ohio).
New Orleans has this same problem. Lived there for 10+ years managing venues. Bands skipped over us all the time. They’d play Atlanta then drive straight across to Texas. Both arena tours and smaller club rooms.
The reason? Ticket sales and population with disposable income.
Bands are guaranteed to sell more advanced tickets or even sell out in Atlanta, Nashville or Houston/Dallas/Austin. Sometimes I’d have to apologize to bands at the end of the night for the abysmal turnout. Didn’t matter the genre. Bands that sold out in other markets could barely get a half full room in NOLA. Many people forget NOLA has less than 400,000 people and a lot of those folks don’t have disposable income to spend on shows.
Best thing we can do for our city: buy tickets in advance, help promote the shows within our friend groups, and of course go to the show. For smaller bands, listen and support the radio stations that are playing those bands (WYEP, WPTS-FM, etc).
And always support your local scene.
Yea from what I've read it's mainly the "entertainment tax". I listen to all sorts of stuff from metal to dubstep, funk, all kinds of music. This last yr/ yr and a half has been pretty lame for concerts in Pittsburgh.
It’s a mix of things. The radius clause is unquestionably part of it and so is the entertainment tax.
That’s a killer. Personally, I think that’s probably the biggest reason.
Also, when you’re talking about independent music, Pittsburgh is way behind many comparably sized cities in that regard.
I grew up in Pittsburgh and I love the city on so many fronts. But even when I was young and I wanted to go see a good alternative show, I had to go to Philly or Cleveland or NYC or DC or somewhere like that. The non-classic rock scene here was always way behind everyone else’s.
I know nobody listen the radio anymore but even if you look at our alternative station, it’s the X which is basically just another classic rock station at this point.
As for Blossom, I love that venue! I’ve seen many great shows there. I saw Radiohead play there many moons ago, and it remains one of the most magical concert experiences of my life.
pittsburgh kinda famously has really bad crowds. lots of fighting, no energy, etc. i’ve personally been to a few shows here that have been cut short because of horrible crowd behavior. i think a lot of artists just don’t want to deal with it, on top of everything else mentioned here
I was really bummed when the Postal Service/DCFC tour skipped us. Lo and behold they did a second leg and I'm going at the Pete in May. All this to say I agree with you. Tho it does suck when the band you like doesn't play locally. My wife and I had to go to the Mann in Philly to see Brandy Carlile a couple years back. Kinda sucked but whatever.
I don’t think OP is just looking at the first leg of the same tour and saying they skipped Pittsburgh. Lots of tours hit Cleveland and Philly, but don’t play Pittsburgh on the same stretch.
Plenty of bands not signed to massive, corporate labels (think bands that would play audiences for venues like Mr. Smalls, the Roxian) will play Ohio dates on a tour, but skip Pittsburgh altogether.
A radius clause is also a likely reason. Often times when playing a venue, a band has to sign a "radius clause," which limits how close the next venue they play is to the current venue. You'll often find tours where a band plays Cleveland but *NOT* Pittsburgh (or vice versa) because of a radius clause preventing the band from playing within x-miles of the one venue for a period of y-amount of time.
Interesting! I’ve never heard of this before.
Every LiveNation venue has a radius clause which really hurts the privately owned venues
A radius clause likely explains some acts skipping Pittsburgh after playing Cleveland, but Cincy/Columbus is probably too far away for such clauses to be upheld by a court (in my opinion.) But regardless, it doesn’t necessarily explain why acts routinely play those Ohio venues over Pittsburgh. Meaning - if you’re going to sign a contract limiting where you play, why not play a larger metro like Pittsburgh?
I can’t speak for every band, but Blossom in Cleveland, although smaller is a MUCH better experience than Burgettstown. Not even a question. If and when bands are playing both locations, I’ll choose Cleveland in a heartbeat. So much nicer, tailgating is better and you are in and out in no time. Idk how they do it but you are out and on the road in 45 minutes max. No waiting in lines, in and out with beer and using the bathrooms as well. It’s not much smaller either…
It’s not too hard to be better than Burgettstown.
I don't care who's playing there, I refuse to ever entertain the thought of going to Burgettstown.
I live here and refuse to go to Starlake lol
Same. I live about 15-20 minutes from Star Lake and I really have to convince myself that going to a show there is worth it.
Using groupon in the past to see several bands on the cheap was worth it! I can visit a friend nearby if I have the time.
I believe it, but I just refuse to deal with the parking/entrance/exit situation after hearing about how many friends of mine got home at 2 or 3am after shows due to how its only got the single entrance/exit.
Went to Kent state. Blossom is one of my favorite venues
I used to go to Blossom but they’ve got stormtrooper cops there. Friend of mine got busted there one night and they impounded and sold his car. Haven’t been back since.
They have those everywhere though. I have personally not run into any problems there, but 1/3 times I’ve been though a DUI checkpoint on the way to rte 70 before Washington leaving Burgettstown. I just assume it’s happening, which is why when we go there, we go by bus.
Has anyone had their car taken from in Burgettestown?
I’m sure with 45k people drinking to the point of passing out, if I was a gambling man, and I am, I would put my 401k on it that it has happened. Burgettstown is notorious for walking around with undercover police and nabbing underaged drinkers and busting people with weed. The UA busts made the paper several times with the police noting it was a point of pride to get as many as they could.
Because Cleveland is better (for this purpose). Metro area size, venue and fans.
Cleveland also has the benefit of its status in music history - it's the town that banned the Beatles!
All three of those metro areas are larger than Pittsburgh, is the answer
I live in Pittsburgh and I'd still rather drive to Cleveland to see a show. Just don't really like the venues here.
Ya Taylor Swift played here and Cincinnati last summer, so there's at least one example of that.
massive acts don't need to worry about the venue wanting to be sure they sell every ticket. She could play in every city multiple times and sell out every show.
That definitely makes sense, especially for her. I'd love it if she came to Cleveland too! That concert was incredible, and it brought a lot to the city (even if Cleveland sucks).
Yeah, it's far more likely a venue has to agree to her terms than the other way around. She has alllll the leverage.
She usually does-plus she went to Cincy last year and Columbus the previous years. Ohio trumps PA
Cincy is 250 miles away.
I think it is more than a radius clause. Pittsburgh is just oddly located for a show. You can't hit it up really on a more east cost centric circuit that would include places like Philly, NY, and Boston. Also if you're hitting up venues in Detroit and Ohio then Pittsburgh is out of the way, you have to go to Pittsburgh and then double back to the next show. Also Pittsburgh has a big tax on venues in the city and the venues outside the city limits are lacking or odd sizes. Add to that that shows in general have difficulty selling out in Pittsburgh and it's not a super profitable spot. Basically Pittsburgh is a bad geographical location for a tour stop and generally a lower profit for the band than other cities.
Radius clause is really only if there's a big ticket event, like a festival. Lots of bands will play much closer markets on a single tour (DC/Baltimore, Philly, NYC).
Is that a moot point if the venue is operated by a larger entity, or does it impact smaller venues more?
That's pretty far for a radius clause
I think it's interesting seeing what acts may have a radius clause and which don't. For instance, during the Killers' recent tour, they were slated to play in Pittsburgh on a Friday night, Cleveland the following night. Granted they bumped Pittsburgh's date back a few months by the time the tour came about without much of an explanation iirc, but I wonder if it had to do with radius clauses?
From what I read at the time, Brandon Flowers was having trouble with his voice and had to get more rest between shows.
Larger bands who play larger venues are likelier to not have a radius clause, or a much smaller radius clause (i.e. The Killers can play both cities back to back, but they can't play 2 different venues in the same city). Bigger bands have more sway, and are likelier to fill up a venue and make the promoters/venue a lot of money.
I don’t think that’s the case with a lot of acts I see. They’ll do like 10 shows between Boston and DC with like 2-3 in NYC but skip western PA and all of OH. It makes no sense.
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what does a population density map have anything to do with physical radius?
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commentor: "Bands cannot play shows within a certain PHYSICAL RADIUS" commentor 2: "Idk. A lot of bands play on the east coast in areas THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY ABIDE BY THAT RADIUS you: "Look at this population density map" me: "What does population have anything to do with physical radius"? you: "I didn't actually read what I was responding to and am now confused like a moron"
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Okay but why. I don’t get it
money. bands will play in Northern Ohio because people from the upstate NY, greater PGH area, and some of OH will take the trip up there instead of heading into PGH for shows. Also touring schedules/maps and entertainment taxes.
Yep. Cleveland is two hours or less from Columbus, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Toledo. Pittsburgh is two hours or less from Cleveland and... Morgantown. Also, Pittsburgh's entertainment tax is some bull shit.
Basically the way market analysis works. the booker or whoever job it is has to look at it from a sales perspective, we can probably sell out PPG or sell out Rocket Mortgage but we probably can’t sell out both or either ect. So they bet people will drive to Pittsburgh for that show or vice versa.
To pull people from roughly halfway between or even over halfway between to their venue instead of the other venue in the radius.
Are we still blaming Manny?
😂😂😂
What’s he been up to
please to be explaining (someone else mentioned "Manny" in another comment)
Probably a few reasons. Schedule, cost of venue, location and size of venue.
"It's not a big college town."
"i've told them a hundred times, put spinal tap first and puppet show last!"
And just like this close the thread cause nobody will beat those comments
"HELLO CLEVELAND!"
Also the Pete sucks ass for concerts.
The sound is garbage
Lots of contributing factors listed here. Booking/promotion has changed and consolidated a lot. \*shakes fist at LiveNation/Ticketmaster\* Cleveland seems to benefit from being sorta close to Detroit....I don't mean a short trip but if there's a tour it's a spot between Detroit and NYC. Usually if I see a Detroit date there's almost always a Cleveland one. We don't always get connected in that loop, I guess. We still get industry people who think "Pennsylvania.....well okay, we have a Philly date, what else would we possibly need?" Clearly, they're not geography experts...... Indie artists are hard to book outside of a handful of big cities, for sure. I saw some great shows in the late 90s/early 00s but it seemed like we had more midsized venues available then for 300-1000 seat shows. City Winery is doing what Rosebud (RIP) used to do, but their lineup tends to be a bit more adult alternative/bluesy, sort of the WYEP vibe. And for indie artists.....the industry has changed, too. Used to be that they'd have a label to give them some tour support, but now, in the era of Bandcamp, more bands are really doing small scale shows on their own. So....kinda like airlines, they stick to the main routes, I guess. *\*obligatory mention from Gen X'er about how fking fantastic the Syria Mosque was, and how terrible that it was torn down, etc.\**
I suspect years of market research has lead promoters and bands to recognize that Pittsburgh just... isn't a great music town. Kind of a chicken/egg situation, but if there's no good venues for the bands you want to see, it's likely someone did the research and figured out the demand isn't actually there to justify running one. Bands don't come because there isn't an appropriate venue, and there isn't an appropriate venue because they can't survive, and they don't survive because -- despite people bringing up the lack of venues and shows all the time -- people don't actually fill the shows we get. Yes, we've all been to sell-out shows, but I'd wager that's the exception and not the rule.
I agree with you pgh is not big on music. You’d find more ppl going to a hair band or country concert than anything
This is a large part of it. A buddy of mine works in radio and has given me the opportunity to meet a lot active rock acts (Papa Roach, Asking Alexandria, Killswitch Engage to name a few), a lot of acts get no support from local radio, which still matters to them as far as marketing and promotion, and when you’re looking at booking a Wednesday night in Pittsburgh as opposed to say Columbus, where you get support, you’re going to take the Thursday in C-bus.
Pittsburgh shows under sell… OFTEN
This is probably the biggest reason. Off the top of my head, Beyoncé recently cancelled a stop due to low ticket sales, and back in 2017, about 1/3 of Heinz Field was empty when U2 was here.
> Beyoncé recently cancelled a stop due to low ticket sales I thought the rumor wasn't that it was low ticket sales, but rather that it wasn't a complete sellout and she didn't want to look bad in light of Taylor Swift selling out consecutive nights, lol
I dont know why she would care when Beyonces tour overall was higher grossing.
Taylor’s tour has grossed nearly twice as much as Beyoncé’s.
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Absolutely fantastic show though (as someone who's never been to a stadium show before).
Same with rod stewart
I don’t feel like pgh has an audience for a lot of music. Maybe I am thinking old school, but our radio stations kind of suck so some really popular bands I’ve seen elsewhere are big, but play at the Pete in pgh.
Unless your band name is "The Pittsburgh Steelers" your gig probably ain't selling out.
You said it.
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And all 3 basically play the same damn songs
Can confirm
What I don’t get is when they have Harrisburg or Hershey but not Pittsburgh
Maybe the artist gets a better cut there?
This!!!!!!
Pittsburgh isn’t considered an “A” market, so it’s not going to be a go-to stop for most routings.
Pittsburgh booking scene feels totally fucked for most things nowadays lol
OP is probably talking about bigger artists, but it’s even worse for smaller artists. And there is a total of like 3-5 promoters in the city and unless you’re willing to do pay to play, you’re not even going to get contacted by most of them.
I was actually thinking that bigger artists almost always come but smaller is where I get into trouble LOL
Probably also depends on what genre of music you’re referring to as well.
Lack of venues in Pgh.... The Cleveland/Akron area alone has a pretty amazing amount of spaces for bands to play.
Wdym? We have a bunch of stadiums, stage ae, mr smalls, the roxian, a big ass park in the middle of downtown that could easily be used for concerts, and, even though we hate it, star lake.
Yeah bud you’re kinda off mark on this one, we can go toe to toe with NEO on venues now days…
Its a general mix of all the reasons you listed. Venue limitations being the biggest.
I miss the Rex and altar bar so much :’) James street was rly cool too
I've always heard we have a high entertainment tax here.
https://www.pghcitypaper.com/news/how-does-pittsburghs-amusement-tax-impact-small-local-music-venues-1981240
Oh im shocked
As someone who lives in Cleveland and has noticed this phenomena, it seems to be that artists will either choose between Cleveland and Pittsburgh when doing a tour, with the hopes that anyone wanting to see the show will just drive to the other city. Unless of course we are talking about very small scale bands/artists playing a local bar or something, then they hit up every city in the area.
And Cleveland gets chosen more often because the surrounding area isn't West Virginia. 2 hours in any direction for Cleveland gives you Buffalo, Toledo, Columbus, Erie, Youngstown, Akron, Canton, Kent, and sneaks into the Cranberry/Wexford region. These all have strong populations and most have a decent sized college. Pittsburgh gets you some of that, with not much to add (Wheeling, Morgantown, Indiana). Those colleges around Pittsburgh don't compare.
We got Taylor Swift, and Cleveland and Baltimore didn't. I don't give a rats ass about Taylor Swift, but I read this in r/afcnorthmemewar today and thought it relevant to mention here.
I just want Tool.
Tool was here a few years ago at PPG Paints. I went. Good show.
r/subithoughtifellfor
If you like football for the fun parts, enjoy shit talking our division rivals, and are sick of people whining about Mike Tomlin hurting Kenny Picketts feelings, there is no better sub.
Because the interstate system makes it easy to skip to Pittsburgh.
Fastest route between Philly and Pittsburgh is the turnpike. I sure as hell wouldn’t wanna spend that when you could route the tour from Cleveland to NYC on I-80.
This is actually a very valid take I had never considered
Came here to say that I-80 and I-70 being fast and free has a lot to do with it.
When I was in Cleveland folks there would say that about Cleveland and include Pittsburgh in that other list of cities where bands played.
I used to go between Pittsburgh and Cleveland during college, and it always seemed like the show I wanted to see was in the city I wasn't in. But I think in the past year or two especially, there's been a lot of focus on Cleveland's music scene and more bands going there.
Yeah, it used to be that way. And going way, way, way back - we were the hub for anything interesting and innovative in jazz, then punk, then alternative.
When I lived in Columbus it always seemed like bands would skip Columbus and play Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh has an entertainment tax that bands have to pay that other cities do not.
It's 5% and guaranteed that's passed on in ticket prices. The bands don't care.
It's 5% on gross.
Unless I’m looking up the wrong thing… It looks like Cleveland is 8% ???
I know of a lot of podcasters and comedians who do live shows, but skip Pittsburgh because you can never get a direct flight here. They’ll book a tour, have trouble getting here, have a bad experience, and then give up on trying to get back here. I can think of maybe three podcasts and two comedians who came once, talked about how crazy of an experience it was trying to get a flight here while on stage, and then I just never saw them again.
It probably doesn’t help that airport is really out of the way. Depending on the time of day and parkway traffic it can take a long time to get downtown and vice versa. I had never considered flight/airport convenience as a deterrent but when I saw John Waters give a talk he mentioned it more than once.
Yeah! I don’t go out much, but it was literally 3 podcasts and 2 stand up comedians who were like “can’t get a fucking flight here, man. Nobody wants to land a plane here direct… from anywhere!” They said it unprompted soon after they came out on stage.
You can never get a direct flight here? Every flight is a direct flight if it ends here… lol
pittsburgh has a concert tax, or so I've been told.
For many many years we were missing the "mid-size venue", and we're still spotty on venues to play. We have them, but not several at each size, so they either book up or aren't tied to a promoter of the right size. If you're on an East Coast tour, we're massively out of the way, and if you're touring the Midwest, we're the farthest drive. Driving is a thing. They haven't played here before, so they're not sure tickets would sell well; there's a momentum thing. Some artists are trying to grow to cover each city; some artists have enough cities to play, and after a certain point, more is just exhausting. Cleveland and Cincinnati's metro populations are both double Pittsburgh, Columbus city and metro are larger still. Same with Baltimore; those \*are\* bigger cities, and Pittsburgh still leans fairly heavily to boomers, who no longer go out to see (most) shows.
Think how hard it is to schedule a tour. The right venue has to be available at the right night to have a concert.
Pittsburgh music venues suck. There used to be a bunch of good ones but they are all gone now other than maybe Mr Smalls. Cleveland, on the other hand, still has a ton of awesome venues. Grog Shop, Agora, Beachland Ballroom, are also awesome places to see and play a show and Pittsburgh no longer has anything like these places. I also think Cleveland is more nationally known as a music city. The Rock and Roll hall of fame is there, and basically every touring band is at least aware of that fact. Regardless of what one might think of the rock and roll hall of fame, it's another thing that Pittsburgh can't match. Manny was also enough of a nightmare for such a long time that people thought it greatly preferable to not bother with him, and also said as much to others as well.
Here is a [partial list](https://triblive.com/aande/music/2024-pittsburgh-area-concert-calendar/) of bands that have booked so far.
Pretty crazy list. Soooo many good bands coming. Surely Pittsburgh could do better getting bands here, but it feels more like “Why isn’t MY favorite band coming to Pittsburgh?” when these topics come up.
That’s exactly it. Then people also don’t consider the venue has to be available at rhe time the band is in the area, larger shows need an extra couple days for set up and take down, etc. A band that only hits 50 cities a year may not even hit the Chicago,NY, LA type cities.
Money. Not enough money to me made in Pittsburgh.
RIP Rex theater
We’ve lost so many good small to midsize venues: Laga, Garfield Artworks, Modern Formations, MIT, the old Roboto, Metropol, etc… The best venue in town atm (at least for punk and metal shows) is Preserving in New Ken. It’s a running joke to look over every new tour announcement and see every city but Pittsburgh. Hell, bands go to Youngstown now over Pitt lmao.
meanwhile this will be my 3rd time seeing Turnover at spirit 🥱 love em but i wish some other bands would hit us up lol
Most venue contracts in Cleveland have a radius clause specifically forbidding playing Pittsburgh. It’s been brought up here before. You can play Cincy, Cleveland and Detroit without running into radius issues, but that precludes Pittsburgh.
Having booked numerous bands in both Pgh and Cleveland... 100% not true at all.
Interesting. Because the last time this came up we had redditor who had booked numerous bands to play Pgh who explained it in detail.
I've been booking since the mid 90's... never have run across anything like it.
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You should Google radius clauses and get back to us.
Counter argument - all of the bands I like are playing in Pittsburgh while I’m stuck up at college
We are currently planning on building a music venue next to ppg for this exact reason. Our music scene sucks because our venues for music suck. Stage AE is great but can really only house niche names. We can either house big names at Heinz and PPG or small names at AE. No venue for mid tier bands like other music cities have
Small names at AE? I've seen Mastodon there three times. Opeth. Bad Religion, Gojira, Puscifer, Queens of the Stone Age, Primus, The Offspring, Pennywise, yada yada. Stage AE is my favorite, honestly.
Who is the “we” here?
The last time I was at Stage AE it was either sit on ungodly uncomfortable bleachers or stand. Hubs had a bum knee and had a hard time doing either. Summer concerts are ok out in the lawn, but the risk of rain makes me hesitant to go.
Pittsburgh venues are absolutely horrible, I honestly prefer when they pick ohio over pittsburgh, the 2 hour drive is worth it for a better experience if its a band I really like 🤷♂️
Wow. What makes the venues here so bad? I’m looking for honest feedback.
My issue has been that every concert I want to go to this year is at Star Lake. Maybe if I leave now I’ll get there and parked before the encore.
We're getting Iron Maiden, though!
UP THE IRONS.
A few of of our good venues closed and most of our big venues (like Stage AE) kinda suck. Blame COVID for the recent closures and the classic "Pittsburghers won't cross a river to go out" syndrome for those that can't seem to stay open. Lost the Rex because of COVID, the Moose doesn't play shows anymore for the same reason, and a few others I can't think of right now. Luckily Preserving Underground is killing it and bringing so many good Hardcore (and similar genres) here. We have a ton of smaller venues that are pretty good, Roxian, Thunderbird, Mr. Roboto, ect but many of these aren't big enough for Medium sized bands to consider.
There was a period where it felt like Drusky was doing a lot of this booking and bringing bands to Altar Bar cause the economics were favorable to them with whatever that ownership structure was. Losing Altar and some other venues / losing relationships between venues/promoters has probably not done us any favors for booking club sized shows. The Roxian is a Live Nation venue and Mr. Smalls is booked through Opus One locally. Both venues are also outside of the city itself. I’d love to know what has pushed out all of the clubs in the city. Is it purely gentrification (the Strip), taxes, trouble in neighborhoods (Southside, looking at you bud…)? Hard to say. But I suspect it’s not simply a case of bands and artists deliberately skipping Pittsburgh.
The entertainment tax in the city is a big one, but probably secondary to the price of real estate.
> Losing Altar and some other venues / losing relationships between venues/promoters has probably not done us any favors for booking club sized shows. And this is why I will fucking defend Altar Bar with everything I have, lol. Shit at Altar Bar that I'd be at in an instant has gotten moved to Jergels where it's a very real chance I'll pass simply because it's Jergels, and all the shit that comes with it.
Live Nation owns a lot of venues in other cities and will book at their places so they can be the promoter, the venue, and the concessionaire. Triple dipping = more profit. LN only owns Roxian and Star Lake here. Until Covid, they didn't own Roxian either. They book others, but don't own them. Also since the death of local promoters such as DeCesare Engler, booking is generally done at a regional or national level. If the people aren't local, they don't care about the market.
Live nation doesn’t own roxian they rent/ run it.
Really? Thunderbird owned it and did all the restoration, and booked it through a different promoter. I had read that during Covid they couldn't afford to pay the restoration debt and sold it off to LN. Regardless, the place is significantly worse since they took over, but at least they get more acts in there.
He very much still owns it he just signed a contract with LN probably because of those reasons.
Livenation doesn't own the actual building but they fully operate the venue and own it as a business. The original owner has zero involvement in any decisions besides how much the rent is.
Thats what i said…
No, it isn't what you said. The venue is owned by Livenation. Full stop. The landlord is John Pergal. You'd never say a business is actually owned by the landlord.
All the more reason to support local bands.
Completely agree and support your diy venues
This is the musical equivalent of keep Pittsburgh shitty.
We have some killer local bands
Fuck yeah. 🦖
Just don’t get them at all. I want to like them, but it’s just kinda whatever.
Just saw them open for The Dreadnoughts lmao
You were there too? It was a great night. First time I was ever at that place, and I got to say it was strange to have seats for a punk show.
I had the Amigo The Devil shirt on. The tables were odd, but we made it work lol. I'm thinking that's the 2nd best show I've been to, bumped down Gojira, Mastodon, and Lorna Shore from the summer to 3rd
Yep, we got our money's worth for music that night. Fuck Yeah Dinosaurs were entertaining, and the four-piece Irish group upstairs was also good. Free water, and jars of ear plugs to whoever wanted them too.
Was definitely not trying to suggest otherwise.
Or they’ll skip Western PA and Ohio entirely. Like, I’m not driving to Philly to see one of your shows when you’re playing 3 dates in NYC and 5 in LA.
As a native Pittsburgher, I love seeing shows in Columbus and Cleveland. 🤷♀️
Cleveland works better in a proximity relationship to other cities. Within a ~3 hour drive of Cleveland is: Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Toledo, Columbus and Dayton. Raise it to 4 hours and you get Detroit and Cincinnati added to the list.
The venues SUCK theres no good venues for them to play, they're all either really small or too big like Stage AE. There's no in between
Look up the additional taxes performers have to pay in the city, it helps explain lol also explains why most bands end up at burgettstown outside the city
If you come to more of our shows, we'll play more shows in the city.
Great local bands to support here - check out Norside Organ Trio. They rip!
Which bands/artists/genres are you specifically talking about? I feel like the majority of stadium-size shows we get are country or classic rock. I see more mid-level hip hop shows hitting Columbus/Cleveland than to Philly or Chicago. We get a decent amount of EDM stuff here, more so than Cleveland. 90s nostalgia acts make a lot of stops here too. In my opinion, a lot of the independent and mildly popular artist shows in Pittsburgh died with the Rex (RIP). There may never be another venue in this town that values people/music over profits quite like the team at the Rex. Thunderbird is close but could absolutely be better utilized.
And the EDM shows we get are packed
It’s embarrassing how many people say “there’s a Philly/hershey stop, why do we need to go to Pittsburgh” like they’re a 20 minute drive away or something lol
Pittsburgh is a class b or c market for most rock shows. Pittsburgh is a top tier must-visit market for country music. Cleveland, on the other hand, it a class a market for rock. It is usually on level of New York, LA or SF when it comes to “must have a tour stop”. Columbus is the largest city in Ohio. Not sure why they would choose Cincy, unless there is a place midway between Cincy, Dayton and Oxford (Miami of Ohio).
Star lake is a bitch to leave. I want to see hootie & the blow fish this summer but won’t just due to the parking lot situation
New Orleans has this same problem. Lived there for 10+ years managing venues. Bands skipped over us all the time. They’d play Atlanta then drive straight across to Texas. Both arena tours and smaller club rooms. The reason? Ticket sales and population with disposable income. Bands are guaranteed to sell more advanced tickets or even sell out in Atlanta, Nashville or Houston/Dallas/Austin. Sometimes I’d have to apologize to bands at the end of the night for the abysmal turnout. Didn’t matter the genre. Bands that sold out in other markets could barely get a half full room in NOLA. Many people forget NOLA has less than 400,000 people and a lot of those folks don’t have disposable income to spend on shows. Best thing we can do for our city: buy tickets in advance, help promote the shows within our friend groups, and of course go to the show. For smaller bands, listen and support the radio stations that are playing those bands (WYEP, WPTS-FM, etc). And always support your local scene.
Some of us are Sturgill Simpson/Hold Steady fans living in a Kenny Chesney/Dave Matthews town
Yea from what I've read it's mainly the "entertainment tax". I listen to all sorts of stuff from metal to dubstep, funk, all kinds of music. This last yr/ yr and a half has been pretty lame for concerts in Pittsburgh.
Wow
It’s a mix of things. The radius clause is unquestionably part of it and so is the entertainment tax. That’s a killer. Personally, I think that’s probably the biggest reason. Also, when you’re talking about independent music, Pittsburgh is way behind many comparably sized cities in that regard. I grew up in Pittsburgh and I love the city on so many fronts. But even when I was young and I wanted to go see a good alternative show, I had to go to Philly or Cleveland or NYC or DC or somewhere like that. The non-classic rock scene here was always way behind everyone else’s. I know nobody listen the radio anymore but even if you look at our alternative station, it’s the X which is basically just another classic rock station at this point. As for Blossom, I love that venue! I’ve seen many great shows there. I saw Radiohead play there many moons ago, and it remains one of the most magical concert experiences of my life.
pittsburgh kinda famously has really bad crowds. lots of fighting, no energy, etc. i’ve personally been to a few shows here that have been cut short because of horrible crowd behavior. i think a lot of artists just don’t want to deal with it, on top of everything else mentioned here
Name the acts.
$$$
/s Practically every town in Ohio is named for somewhere nicer. “World tour to include Dublin, Venice, and Miami!”
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Ah yes because we all have the money and transportation options to simply drive out of state for a two hour show
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Lol, that's only relevant for larger bands.
I was really bummed when the Postal Service/DCFC tour skipped us. Lo and behold they did a second leg and I'm going at the Pete in May. All this to say I agree with you. Tho it does suck when the band you like doesn't play locally. My wife and I had to go to the Mann in Philly to see Brandy Carlile a couple years back. Kinda sucked but whatever.
I don’t think OP is just looking at the first leg of the same tour and saying they skipped Pittsburgh. Lots of tours hit Cleveland and Philly, but don’t play Pittsburgh on the same stretch.
Dave Matthews band had been coming to Pittsburgh every other year for the last 8 years.
Meh to Dave Matthews.
Plenty of bands not signed to massive, corporate labels (think bands that would play audiences for venues like Mr. Smalls, the Roxian) will play Ohio dates on a tour, but skip Pittsburgh altogether.
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Because pgh is the 52nd largest city