The Concert Will Be Televised. Il “live” come modello narrativo e produttivo nella musica pop e nei media

The relationship between television and “live music” has been a weak one: the televisive dimen- sion of music was mainly absorbed by the music video model, or by single performances in TV shows. The arrival of digital technology has profoundly affected the dynamics of the music indu- stry: recorded music has undergone a sharp decline in sales while, at the same time, the relevance of live concerts has increased. Live music has become the pivot of musicians’ careers and of the music industry as a whole ‒ therefore the offer of tours and concerts has multiplied. In the last 20 years, the presence of pop music on television has intensified, forming itself as a genre in its own right: the talent show. This phenomenon produces a double movement of exchange and a mutual influence between television and the pop concert: the two areas of that will be the object of study of this contribution. After an introduction on the definition of “live” and “liveness” and after an overview of the relationship between music and TV and on the analysis of the current state of the music industry and its effects on music and media production, the paper will analyze some models of these new forms of transmedia narration of music and the new relationship between concerts live and TV shows. These examples will be aimed at showing both the hybridization of the pro- ductive forms and television/spectacular narration in concerts, and the presence of narrative and production forms derived from concerts in television shows. These pages will show how, in the years two thousand, “live” pop-rock concerts and visual and television entertainment converge on the re-discussion of what “live” means. The goal is to show how the relationship between these spaces has become a sort of oxymoron: the “live” concert is more and more televised, and the musical television show is more and more similar to the concert.