The booking fee for Adult alternative musicians can start at $10,000, with booking prices for adult alternative groups going to fee of over $1,000,000.

What is adult alternative music?

Adult album alternative (also triple-A, AAA, or adult alternative) is a radio format. A spinoff from the album-oriented rock format, its roots trace to the 1960s and 1970s. Many would think that the music genre “adult alternative” is actually one of the subgenres of alternative music, and the music format indeed has its roots in the independent music movement of earlier decades, a movement shared with the alternative genre and its various subgenres. But its style gives adult alternative a closer relationship to the album oriented rock format; in fact, most music historians consider adult alternative to be a spinoff of the album-oriented rock format that characterizes artists such as Dave Matthews Band and Indigo Girls.

Adult Alternative, or Adult Album Alternative, boasts a more diverse collection of artists within its genre than almost any other format. Elements of pop, jazz, folk, country, blues, and even world music are often found within AAA outlets, although there tends to be little to no hard rock or rap/hip-hop found within the genre. Most Adult Alternative artists rose to prominence in the 1990’s, and continued to enjoy great success in the new millennium as the genre expanded—U2’s single “Beautiful Day” spent nearly twenty weeks in the top five on the charts in 2000; more recently, Coldplay and Kings of Leon enjoyed multi-week number one hits with “Clocks” and “Waste a Moment,” respectively. Additional Adult Alternative artists with hits in the late 90’s and early 2000’s include The Wallflowers, Matchbox Twenty, and Train. By 2008, Billboard magazine had launched the AAA chart to track specific hits among Adult Alternative artists; Mediabase 24/7 followed shortly thereafter.

Today, notable artists in the genre include the above, but also artists such as Alanis Morissette (“Ironic”); Barenaked Ladies (“Old Apartment”); Blues Traveler (“Run-Around”); and Counting Crows (“Mr. Jones.”) Other notable artists in the genre include Fiona Apple, Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, Lenny Kravitz, and even jam bands such as Phish and folk rock groups such as Mumford and Sons. The genre continues to grow and expand, recognized not only for its diversity but for one binding quality that sets it apart from many other categories; the organic nature of its artists and their tendency to write their own music, as opposed to pop artists or more traditional “top 40” artists.

Adult Alternative continues to defy clean categorization, much to its benefit; as a unique crossover genre, AAA is among the widest reaching and fastest expanding genres in the music industry, and one which has appeal that binds generations. With no sign of slowing down, and with chart-topping artists such as Adele and Jack Johnson having joined its ranks in recent years, Adult Alternative is a music genre here to stay.