Bands revive classic albums as live income drives tours

Placebo play Munich on Monday with their 1996 debut and 1998 album “Without You I’m Nothing” rather than new material, a strategy increasingly adopted by other bands, BR reports.

The British indie-rock band is calling the run its “30th Anniversary Tour”. Scotland’s Belle and Sebastian are touring with their first two albums, while US indie-rock group Band of Horses is marking 20 years since its debut. My Chemical Romance has been performing its most successful album, released in 2006, on a tour that began in summer 2025.

Touring once mainly served to promote new albums, said Johannes Everke of the German Federal Association of the Concert and Event Industry. That has changed as record sales and streaming now account for only about 5 per cent of income. Live performances, by contrast, make up around half, Everke said.

Concerts are increasingly built around what audiences already know, the article says. Placebo’s German tour promoter, FKP Scorpio, describes the debut album as being “re-read” rather than simply reissued. Music Express editor-in-chief Stephan Rehm Rozanes sees the approach as a way to avoid risk, with the industry’s finances tighter than before. Repeating a band’s best-received album, he said, is a safer bet.

The strategy can also support high ticket prices. Tickets for Oasis’s 2027 anniversary tour in Munich cost up to 270 euros. Older audiences are more likely to be able to afford them and may expect familiar music in return, the article says.

Rehm Rozanes also worries that looking back could make music more conventional and leave less room for experimentation than in the 1980s and 1990s. Placebo’s early records addressed androgyny, addiction and alienation in ways that were often provocative and ahead of their time, the article notes.