At first glance the scene could be from any one of several generations of London rock gigs: a flurry of plastic beer tumblers flying through the air as the band strikes up its biggest hit and the lead singer dives onto the uplifted hands of the bouncing Brixton Academy crowd. But closer inspection pinpoints the scene as part of a surging — and financially secure — live pop-music scene in 2006.

What are the clues? First, the sign above the door says Brixton Carling Academy, incorporating the name of the biggest-selling beer in Britain and main sponsors of the 77-year-old south London venue. As the Kaiser Chiefs play their closing-time anthem I Predict a Riot, it's not just any beer flying through the air, it's Carling — the only

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) beer for sale in any of the 16 music venues across Britain that the Molson Coors�owned brand has exclusive pouring rights for. Second, it's not just lads downing the lager; roughly half the 5,000-strong capacity crowd now holding Chiefs' frontman Ricky Wilson aloft are female. And far from a finale, this is just the first in a series of sold-out shows featuring 19 bands, held in relay at eight venues across London over 24 hours over a late April weekend. The Carling Live 24 logo is everywhere, including the livery on the coaches, limos and taxis waiting outside to whisk the fans to north London for the next show, Ian Brown — at the Carling Academy Islington.

Of course, beer and rock music have been acquainted for a while. But at a time when technology is forcing the recorded sector to rethink the fundamentals of how music is produced, consumed and paid for, increasingly it's the communal experience of a concert that consumers are willing to splurge on — and companies want to be associated with. As lead sponsors of the Academy Music Group's eight medium-sized venues across Britain and a giant duel-sited rock festival, Carling is in the right place at the right time. As the biggest single investor in British live music, Carling spends around $13 million a year promoting it. "Live music in the U.K. is in an absolutely strong place," says Martin Coyle, head of sponsorship for Coors. "Three million people are going through the venues each year, and the Carling Weekend sold out within a day."

While comprehensive data is hard to come by, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that live music is healthier than ever. The Performing Rights Society collected $24 million last year in songwriters' royalties from live, ticketed pop events in Britain — more than double the amount collected in 2000. The eFestivals website lists over 300 festivals of all genres for 2006 in Britain, compared to just 62 in 2001. Feargal Sharkey, former singer with Northern Ireland's pop punks the Undertones, and now head of the British government's Live Music Forum, says, "While other sections of the music industry have gone through some growing pains over the last couple of years, the live-music industry has just been getting bigger and more successful."

And it's not just Britain. According to Stéphane Gambetta, marketing director for the annual music-trade get-together MIDEM, "Live is becoming an increasing revenue stream and also a big part of the global music industry." Figures compiled by the Association of German Concert Agencies (IDKV) show that since 1999, Germans have been spending more on attending live music events than on CDs (j2.7 billion in 2003, compared to j1.78 billion). There are 167 festivals listed on German events website meinestadt.de between May and August alone. In Spain the Summercase Festival, which rotates lineups between Madrid and Barcelona, joins a crowded schedule just one week before the well-established Festival Internacional de Benicàssim (FIB), where the likes of Scissor Sisters, Madness and Franz Ferdinand will keep the four-day (and night) party going on a beach near Valencia. Why is the concert business booming louder than a Marshall stack? Partly it's a turn in the fashion cycle from dance music — with its DJs, clubs and records — to live shows. But it's also part of a broader shift in the economics of pop music. Despite a threefold increase in digital-music revenue from downloads, global-retail revenues from recorded music fell a further 2% in 2005; overall the figure is down 20% since 1999. That crisis has seen a wholesale revamping of the music-business model. In the old days, sending a band on tour was seen as a necessity, often purely to promote record sales — and yet another cost fronted by the label. Now playing live is becoming increasingly lucrative for the artists, whether the labels get a piece of it or not. "We used to give artists tour support, then recoup it from their record sales," says David Munns, vice chairman of EMI Music. "It was all done in the name of promotion."

Things are changing. The Kaiser Chiefs' manager, James Sandom, for example, predicts the band will make at least one-third of its revenue in the year ahead from live shows. "Increasingly, as you are selling less records for less money with more advertising, the acts don't see a lot from record sales," he says. "The artists need to benefit somewhere." But labels, too, want a piece of the live action — which means breaking the industry mold to get it. Last fall, EMI inked a deal with U.S. metal band Korn, which gave the label a percentage of everything the band earns, including publishing, merchandise and touring, as well as record sales. The British label struck a similar deal with Robbie Williams in 2002; but despite skepticism over the large check EMI handed over, the label claims that the Robbie deal has already paid for itself. Both artists, already huge live box-office draws, are on world tours this year. "They will both recoup the money and provide a good return for the artist and for us," predicts EMI's Munns.

Not surprisingly, it's the big-name, big-scale events that bring in the biggest bucks. One gig by U.S. supergroup R.E.M. in London's Hyde Park last year grossed over $4.5 million, while Irish giants U2 generated ticket sales of around $300 million from the 110 dates they played in 2005 ensuring, even after hefty production costs, a healthy cut for the promoters, management and venues. For the mega-acts, concerts are now the horse driving the CD cart. In a paper by Princeton economist Alan Krueger and grad student Marie Connolly called Rockonomics: The Economics of Popular Music, the writers found that in the U.S., "Only four of the top 35 income earners made more money from recordings than live concerts."

Some corporations are naturally attracted to music audiences, and are willing to pony up the serious money needed to stage large events and draw big-name acts. For mobile-phone firms like Virgin and O2, it's a branding exercise in front of a natural consumer base. And for beer companies too, it's not just about selling suds to fans. Heineken backs Spain's FIB as well as the Oxegen Festival in Ireland; in Germany Becks is sponsoring 15 summer events this year. "You directly want to link in to something with scale, and yes, there is a cool halo effect of being associated with a festival like that," says Coor's Coyle, of the rotating festivals at Reading and Leeds that Carling has sponsored for eight years. One challenge for the sector is the skyrocketing ticket prices to see the big acts. According to trade magazine Pollstar, ticket sales for the Top 100 shows in the U.S. rose to a record $3.1 billion in 2005, but at the same time as average ticket prices rose from $52 to $57; actual ticket sales fell by 1.5 million from 2004. Most observers attribute the price hikes to market forces; older audiences have more money to spend. But the corporate sponsorship keeps coming, especially since arena attendances are still rising in Britain despite steep ticket prices; indeed, a new 23,000-capacity venue will open next year in London when the former Millennium Dome reopens as the O2, taking the sponsors' name. The legendary Glastonbury Festival is resting this year but plans to return in 2007 with a capacity increased by a further 20,000 to 175,000. Other massive events like Scotland's T in the Park (sponsored by Tennents Lager) and both the duel-sited Carling Weekend and V Festivals (sponsored by Virgin Mobile) in England all sold out within hours.

Popular music, of course, has its rebellious side, so brands are sometimes wary of bands — and vice versa. Peter Jenner, head of the recently established European Live Music Forum, says: "It is a little dangerous for us to rely on alcohol salesmen to promote our events," he says, adding, "but on the other hand, it's hard to resist taking their money." But Kaiser Chiefs' boss Sandom argues, "to some extent Carling are an example of how to do it." He says the brewer "began very subtly and over the years has built it up. They have very clearly and accurately targeted some of the right places and they've done it very much from a grassroots level, and all of a sudden you've got Carling as this all-encompassing, music-associated beer company."

Is live music a fad that could fade? Possibly. But for a generation used to sharing music on the Internet, and listening to it as a solitary soundtrack on mobile phones and MP3 players, going to a gig is the most immediate and rewarding way of getting closer to the band and the music. Says Sandom, "It's a vibrant scene and it is a very exciting time to be managing groups that are part of it." And if that means selling a few beers along the way, few in the music-loving crowd can be heard complaining.

• HUGH PORTER / London
• With falling profits from CD sales, record labels are enviously eyeing the buoyant live-music sector, where sponsors are lining up to back sold-out rock and pop gigs and a multitude of summer festivals