From stage to home: the long life of live albums

David Gilmour, Depeche Mode, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Cave, Bjork, but also generation Z artists such as Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams. Among the Italians, Cesare Cremonini, Lucio Corsi, Omar Pedrini, Vasco Rossi: they are artists who have released or will release live albums in recent weeks. If we broaden our gaze to 2025, there are also Roger Waters, Jovanotti, Ultimo, CCCP, Ghemon, Samuele Bersani – and we are certainly forgetting someone.
It is a format that in recent years it seemed to have become obsolete, in an era in which we are surrounded by images of concerts: when we want to see an artist on stage we open social media or YouTube. Instead Live albums are experiencing a renaissance – or perhaps they never really disappeared. We tried to investigate the reasons for this return, talking about it with artists like Jovanotti and Lucio Corsi, managers like Matteo Zanobini and Paola Zukar and record companies from Sony and Universal.

Live, at home: a format with millions of copies

For years we’ve been hearing the (questionable) statement that the album is dead – let alone the live one. Until the 90s live albums came to sell millions of copies – in the case of Clapton’s MTV Unplugged as many as 24. Then they seemed to have become objects for fans: bands like Pearl Jam had been releasing every concert since 2000 as “official bootlegs”, imitated by many artists, from Metallica to Springsteen. For many it is a catalog operation, of rediscovering archives, for others they have a current role: “They have always been a special listen. And now they are useful to let people know that I give good concerts”, he told me a few days ago Johnny Marr, who just released one.

But it’s not just a question of international rock: it’s interesting that this format is used by artists like Jovanotti – who last summer documented his successful tour with “Jova Live Love”, and also like Lucio Corsi – in his first post-Sanremo publication with “La guitar in the rock”, out in November together with a film. The same month “Cremonini Live 25” will be released, in which duets appear on stage with Jovanotti himself, but also Elisa and Luca Carboni.

It is common practice, several managers explain to me, to record the concerts of almost all major tours in multitrack, to evaluate their possible publication. “This year I decided to take a super band on the road, a great live band without a sequence, without computers on stage, without the backing tracks, and we had a blast; and when I started listening to the recordings I thought: how beautiful is this stuff, I like it, it’s really alive, that is, it’s live because it’s all alive”, he explains to me Jovanotti.

Jovanotti: live albums vs. plastic discs

Jovanotti links live albums to changes in the ways music is made and consumed. “Since records have been so fragmented into a thousand streams, into a thousand different possibilities of being listened to, everything has changed,” he tells Rockol. “As far as my work is concerned, basically little has changed, in the sense that I write songs, make records and take them out live”.
What has radically changed, continues Lorenzo, is the process in the studio, and the effect it has on live: “studio records are plastic, fake records, made with computers, often made with software and artificial intelligence. I recently visited recording studios of the new school of Italian producers: they are white, they are cold, LED lights, there isn’t a guitar, there isn’t an instrument. It’s not that I’m complaining”, he specifies. “Except for the fact that I liked the studios instead that they had a smell, that they had the signs of the passage of other musicians. This sort of the excessive power of the producers generates an inverse reaction, which is that of the enjoyment of live music, therefore the live album differs greatly from the dead album, from the album made in the studio”.

Lucio Corsi and live albums in the rock imagination

There is that artists seem to be very fond of this format, which has an important place in the history of music, both in the official versions and in the illegal ones – the bootlegs – with which several generations have grown up. “I’ve always been very fond of many live records, many Dylan bootlegs, and there are also many versions of Paolo Conte’s pieces that I love,” Lucio Corsi, who recorded “La guitar nella pietra” at the Abbey of San Galgano, in a special place, tells Rockol – the film was presented at the Rome Film Festival, the album will be released on November 14th. “I often love the live version more than the album version of some tracks. I also think of Vasco’s live shows, ‘Fronte del stage’, or ‘The Last Waltz’, or Dylan’s ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’,” says the singer-songwriter.
A constant in the conversations I’ve had in recent days is that the people I spoke to immediately mentioned their favorite live albums as an essential part of their musical education. A tradition that artists want to take part in: “It’s a form of album that I’m fond of and I’ve wanted to immortalize a concert to make my first live album for years”, Corsi explains to me. “This was the right opportunity, also because I have been carrying out this type of approach to live for a few years with the guys who have been playing with me all my life, since high school. It was the right time this year to stop this kind of concert, and I’m very happy about the release”.

An interesting interpretation comes from Matteo Zanobini, who is Lucio Corsi’s managerand also works with Dario Brunori and Baustelle. Explain to me that this live album is coming promoted exactly like a traditional album and at the same time it is like a collection, which summarizes the career of an artist – even more so that of those who, after Sanremo, it made a leap forward. “It’s a way to give centrality to music, it’s right even if we won’t make incredible sales, but it serves to strongly underline the importance of live through a publication. We give it the same discographic importance as an unreleased project, for us it has the same dignity as a studio album”.
Zanonbini, who mentions CCCP’s “Live in Pankow” to me among his favorite albums (“for me it remains their best album”), underlines how the particular event helps – in this case the setting in the Galgano Abbey. Documenting a concert in a unique location makes the record more attractive for both the public and the record company. It becomes even easier to tell, perhaps with a film or video connected.

Paola Zukar, rap and live

Among the concerts that have been recorded recently are the Milanese dates of Fabri Fibra and the stadium tour of Marracash. The live album is an s formattorically linked to rock, but it is not exclusive to the genre – even if In other fields there are still different factors to take into consideration. “Doing a live show well in rap isn’t so automatic, because especially in Italy there are stereotypes,” he tells Rockol Paola Zukar, manager of Marra and Fabri Fibra.
“The first thing they ask you is ‘but there’s no band?’. It can easily not be there and it can be a great live: we with Marra have played both with the band and without. It’s a choice. A really good person who has succeeded, for example, is Salmo, who instead, precisely because he also comes from a punk past, has been able to calibrate these two weights well”.
The point, according to Zukar, is another: “It also depends a lot on the professional figures you find along your path, figures who know how to combine rap in the studio and rap on stage well. We need a sort of simultaneous translator, let’s call it that,” says Zukar, who cites the work of Marz with Marracash and Zef with Fibra. “For me live is fundamental, doing it well and secondarily also recording it well and putting it out well, because it gives a further perspective, a further point of view on the artistic abilities of the rapper, the band, the artist”. Zukar cites “Paris” by Supertramp among his favorite live shows and highlights the Public Enemy as an example of rap that combined live and studio elements, which they fused into “It takes a nation of millions to hold us back”.

The recording value of live albums, between catalog and frontline

In this scenario, what recording value do live albums have?? This week at number 4 of the albums and number 2 of the vinyls is “The luck and strange concerts” by David Gilmour. “Last Live Stadi 2024″ is at 20th, with 22 weeks of stay and a peak in first place in the week of release. “Jova! Live! Love!” it is 75th, with 17 weeks spent in the top 100. Apple Music publishes them as exclusives, like the one by Gracie Abrams, due out soon. Bjork’s “Cornucopia live” just released in regular version, was released as an exclusive preview on the Apple platform. Similar operations have also been carried out in the past by Spotify and Amazon Music. I concerts, as various record companies explained to me, have the power to revitalize the catalog too – so much so that when there are no live albums, the setlists can be found in the form of playlists on the platforms.

Luca Fantacone, Sony catalog director (who released Gilmour) argues that the increased presence of live album releases is a direct consequence of the major live expansion in recent years. “The development of this business has also allowed many artists to develop their live performances, their ability to be on stage, to develop ideas both from the point of view of the actual show and from the musical point of view. Many tours have generated very important shows, some of which then end up on albums and are therefore published because they reconnect with a very large audience who came to the concerts”.

He echoes him Marco Mircoli, Catalog Manager at Universal: “From an exquisitely catalog perspective, live albums represent one of the happy opportunities offered to the customer to delve deeper into the (re)discovery of an artist. Beyond trends and formats, which shape the life cycles and resurrection of productsthe music catalog is a treasure chest that contains the most important treasure for fans and collectors: art, creativity, the evolution of a talentMircoli talks of “consistently positive customer feedback” and lists Universal’s live releases in 2025; Supertramp, Cat Stevens, Florence & The Machine, Simple Minds, Dire Straits, Cypress Hill, Queen, Bono, Metallica, Elton John, Deep Purple, Cranberries, John Lennon and Peter Gabriel, with Stones and Guns N’ Roses arriving before Christmas. “Cremonini Live 25”, with the singer-songwriter as guest of the Milan Music Week, with a launch that resembles that of a traditional album in every way – and which will therefore also promote the artist’s 2026 tour.

In short: live albums are no longer, or are not only, collector’s items for fans. They seem to have rediscovered a vitality – pardon the pun – not only in the imagination, but also in the market. They are used by artists to tell their story, they are important stages in their career, a testimony of moments and tours. And they work. We should expect more and more publications of this type, and it seems to be good for everyone, including the public