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In 2025, figuring out which artist is performing in your city is as simple as scrolling through Instagram. Your feed becomes a live broadcast of concert stories, and before you know it, a big portion of your friends are there. This digital tidal wave of shared experiences appropriately captures the newfound massive appeal of live events in India's experience economy.
“Entertainment in India has shifted from being largely about mass consumption, where you had movies, dining out, and mainstream concerts, to being far more experiential, more emotionally connecting, and more immersive,” says Sheetal Birla, general manager of Live Your City, India, the organisation behind the Instagram-famous Candlelight Concerts.
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“People want more value for time and something shareable, memorable, not just transactional.”
Live Your City is the Indian offshoot of the global entertainment company from Spain called Fever that helps patrons discover and book curated cultural events in their cities.
The platform goes beyond merely listing events, focusing instead on curating memorable experiences such as Candlelight Concerts, immersive 360° Van Gogh exhibitions, unique dining experiences, cultural tours, and pop-up events.
The making of the viral Candlelight Concert
“It was born from the idea of how to make classical music more accessible,” says Birla, talking about the conception of Candlelight Concerts.
Candlelight Concerts are intimate music concerts held in historic venues of significance, such as The Royal Opera House and the Afghan Church in Mumbai, as well as Sundar Nursery in Delhi.
“It's about taking these concerts out of the traditional auditoriums and having them in unique settings like a church, like a heritage site, like a cave,” Birla explains.
The venues, true to their name, are completely filled with LED candles, offering the audience a multi-sensory immersive experience. These are instrumental concerts performed by emerging local artists.
Initially, the concerts limited themselves to classical music, but later tributes to contemporary artists such as Taylor Swift, Coldplay, and A. R. Rahman have also been added to the line-up.
“We wanted to create a unique experience, one that even a 20-something would love to come to and then bring their friends and family along,” says Birla.
Recalling a testimonial, Birla notes, “I was attending a candlelight concert in Mumbai, where a young couple told me this was their first live classical concert, and it made them feel like they were part of something global yet local. That's the kind of emotion that we wanted to create.”
“And that's exactly what candlelight is doing, not just in India, but across the world.” Candlelight Concerts were first held in Spain in 2019, and now they have a presence in over 40 countries worldwide.
Trends and observations from Tier 2 and 3 India
According to Birla, new thematic and immersive formats like Candlelight Concerts and 360° immersive Van Gogh/Da Vinci exhibitions, respectively, have started becoming immensely popular not just in metropolitan cities but also in tier two and tier three cities in India.
Candlelight concerts began in metro cities such as Mumbai and Delhi, but other regions are also seeing an overwhelming response, as “people want to be able to attend what is happening in Mumbai in places such as Jaipur, Chandigarh, Lucknow and Goa.”
“New India wants experiences, not just events,” asserts Birla. Elaborating on small-town consumption patterns, Birla notes, “We've seen rising disposable income and the willingness to spend more in these tier two and three cities.”
“When we piloted the Candlelight shows in Lucknow, Jaipur, Chandigarh, and Guwahati, we expected a moderate turnout, but the demand rivalled Delhi and Mumbai. And it showed how much appetite there is for world-class cultural experiences outside the metros.”
Additionally, large-scale concerts with over 10,000 attendees saw a substantial increase in 2024. One key component of this shift is the growing "experience economy", where events create spillover economic value.
The entertainment is no longer just about the single event itself but about the entire ecosystem around it.
Improved travel and event infrastructure is helping the live entertainment industry expand beyond major cities. This growth creates a positive economic cycle, as large events boost the economies of smaller cities, and, in turn, better infrastructure attracts more events.
This new, fan-first, experience-driven economy benefits everyone involved, from promoters to ticketing companies and, most importantly, the audience.
Age no bar experiences
According to Birla, Live Your City does not cater to any single demographic; it curates experiences for all tiers of cities and all age groups. “The idea here is to have experiences that resonate well with different kinds of demographics.”
“We have seen that people want to go out in hybrid groups. It could be friends; it could be couples; it could be families with kids choosing a new format. So the new experientials, especially the immersive formats, do really well. And that's a shift.”
While Live Your City experiences a lot of prominence in the Gen Z and Millennial cohorts, it also caters to kids and teenagers with curations from museums and gaming arcades. According to Birla, even the older demographics enjoy their music concerts.
The YOLO and the FOMO Effect
Indians were a movie-going, occasionally dining-out audience before the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequent lockdowns changed everything. Those who could afford it came out of house arrest wanting to avenge lost time and embracing the You Only Live Once (YOLO) motto.
Hence, now Indian expectations after a night out are to “get quality over quantity; people want curated evenings, not just casual outings”.
Another post-pandemic trend, Birla observes in the digital economy, is that “experiences are considered as a status symbol.”
People want to attend experiential events that they can share on social media and go to “things that are Instagrammable”.
Since Live Your City specialises in visually appealing immersive events that make for viral Instagram fodder, it generates a lot of organic virality through word of mouth. According to Birla, people post captions like “I went to this new experience. It was amazing”, leading other people to come out and try it too.
“So that's, again, a big shift where it's not just about going out and experiencing that event one day, but things that create memories, and you share them, more so on Instagram than anywhere else,” she adds.
While most people wouldn’t expect an average Indian to enjoy a Beethoven or a Mozart, Birla asserts that “Indians are more musically literate than we think.” An ABBA tribute in one city does just as well as a tribute to Rajnikanth in another.
“New India is global in taste but very rooted in culture,” says Birla, specifying that the key is to make the curations resonate with the culture of not just India as a whole but also its diverse states.
The road ahead: driving the cultural shift
In addition to the word-of-mouth goodwill that Live Your City experiences generate on social media organically, the company aims to advertise and “get the audiences where they're most active” while also making sure “the best experiences are shown to the most relevant audience”. Hence, Live Your City swaps broadcast advertising for data-driven digital marketing.
Live Your City also wants to channel its resources towards Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. "Let's just say in three to five years, I see people in smaller cities debating which immersive show to go to, just like they discuss Netflix shows. That's the shift we want to drive.”
The folks at Live Your City are looking to partner with venues, promoters and brands to bring world-class experiences to India, aiming “to redefine how Indians consume culture”.
They are also working towards becoming the “cultural connector” that enables international creative exchange across cultures by “not only introducing global IPs to India but also by taking original India-first experiences to the world.”
