MNEK Cancels Tour Over Poor Sales, High Costs — SkimNews
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- MNEK cancelled his UK and Europe tour for second album Bulldozer!! (released last month after an eight-year gap), citing weak ticket sales and the production not being "ready to the standard" he wanted
- The Pussycat Dolls called off almost their entire US reunion tour earlier this year for the same reason, and MNEK said he joins them as artists grappling with "high production costs" and "over-ambitious planning"
- Booking agent Joe Booley told BBC Newsbeat that post-Covid shifts in how fans spend money are "definitely a contributing factor" behind the wave of cancelled tours
- Blur drummer David Rowntree, chair of the Featured Artists Coalition, told the BBC it is now "virtually impossible" to make touring pay for itself
- Artists are increasingly downgrading to smaller venues, shortening tours or postponing shows in place of outright cancellation, Booley said
- Zara Larsson, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Becky Hill publicly backed MNEK after his announcement, with Hill writing that "touring is devastatingly expensive"; tickets for the cancelled dates had started from about £30
Why it matters: For an artist of MNEK's stature — a Grammy-nominated songwriter who's worked with Beyoncé, Madonna and Little Mix — to pull a tour before it starts signals that the live music economics problem has moved well beyond legacy acts into middle-tier headliners. Fans face an extended wait for live Bulldozer!! performances, while the industry-facing data points (Rowntree's "virtually impossible" line, Booley's post-Covid spending shift) frame this as structural, not a one-off flopping tour.
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