Meghalaya, a trendsetter in concert economy: Paul

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaFebruary 2, 2025

Tourism Minister Paul Lyngdoh said Meghalaya has been a trendsetter in the field of the emerging concert economy.

“You will appreciate the fact that none other than the Prime Minister of India has addressed the media and has tweeted about the emerging concert economy and Meghalaya has been a trendsetter in this field. We started off somewhere in 2004 much before a few other states even started and today you have a state like Gujarat hosting rock bands like Coldplay having a footfall of more than 1 lakh visitors,” Lyngdoh told reporters on Friday.

After reviewing the preparation by Book My Show for the upcoming Ed Sheeran concert to be held in Shillong on February 12,  the minister said, “Since it is a major event and we will be hosting the best known contemporary international artist, so we wanted to ensure that all plans are in place that arrangements will be absolutely topnotch and seamless. We will also ensure that there is minimum inconvenience to both concert goers as well as non concert goers.”

“As a follow up of a meeting that was convened by the district administration yesterday and the meeting today also saw the attendance online of the top officials of Book My Show and we discussed plans to ensure for instance that the logistics are in place, movement of traffic is smooth, entry and exit from the venue is properly taken care of,” he added.

The minister further informed that a crowd of over 27000 is expected to attend the concert.

“So a fairly good response has come from visitors coming from outside Meghalaya. We expect over 60 percent of the concert goers will be from across and beyond the boundaries of Meghalaya. A sizeable crowd is from Assam but also we have had responses from other metros and other parts of the country,” he said while adding “Given the large scale appeal of this particular event in the meeting today was held to also ensure that everything will be flawless, seamless and smooth for which the officials of Book My Show are also arriving on February 6 and they will be holding another review meeting with the DC and also visiting the site and inter-district video conference will also be held between the district administration of East Khasi Hills and Ri Bhoi because a fairly large number of attendees will pass through Ri Bhoi district.”