IQ Magazine: Touring Is Getting Simpler, and Faster
"Instead of trying to make a big, bulky, crazy thing, they're going for thoughtful moments on stage." Anders Rahm, IQ Magazine
IQ Magazine built a June 2026 feature around an argument Cort Lawrence and Anders Rahm have been making for a while. The spectacle arms race is turning, and audiences who see dozens of shows a year are starting to want less on the screen rather than more.
The piece is good on the squeeze in creative timelines. Six months is still the standard lead, but IQ reports that established acts now come to us as late as six weeks out, while some newer artists plan further ahead than they used to. Rahm also described a tour that replaced a content team with a single AI artist, and what came back had the wrong resolution and visible mistakes in it. On Calvin Harris, who Raw Cereal works on with the design agency EighteenTwentySix, Rahm told IQ the brief was to avoid being another artist with a robot banging on a screen.