The setlist is the running order of songs for a show, traditionally written in thick marker and taped to the stage floor near the singer’s feet, where it becomes the most coveted piece of paper in the building once the lights go up.
Fans now document them with near-scholarly devotion. Setlist.fm, a wiki-style site where audiences log what was played each night, had already gathered more than 400,000 setlists covering 25,000 artists at 71,000 venues when Live Nation bought it in 2012. Some artists treat the list as a starting point rather than a contract. Bruce Springsteen played for four hours and six minutes at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki on 31 July 2012, a personal record at the time, with 38 songs counting a short pre-show set. Whoever taped that night’s list to the floor presumably needed a second sheet.