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The top of the Top Tours chart is younger than ever as the next generation of headliners starts to sell out stadiums TOP TOURS Total No. of Artist Gross Attendees [...]

CONCERT INDUSTRY EXPERTS generally thought 2024 would be a down year--or at least less busy than 2023, when Taylor Swift and Beyonce catapulted the sector to new heights and challenged [...]

BILLBOARD'S MIDYEAR REPORTS ARE IN, and once again, the box-office ticket sales data voluntarily submitted by promoters and venues shows continued growth in the top tier of tours. This year's [...]

WAS 2022 THE worst 'best year ever?' By some measures, the concert business had its most successful year. From Nov. 1, 2021, to Oct. 31, 2022, the top 10 tours [...]

For decades, festivals have created weekendlong oases for music fans --and left a mind-boggling amount of waste in their wakes. But as artists and fans increasingly learn about their impact [...]

The first half of 2022 shows how the concert business is becoming younger and more diverse THE FIRST SIX MONTHS of 2022 have lived up to the hype predicted for [...]

EXECUTIVE VP/HEAD OF GLOBAL MUSIC, INDEPENDENT ARTIST GROUP AS THE SON of veteran agent Dennis Arfa, whose clients include Billy Joel, Metallica, Def Leppard and Rod Stewart, Jarred Arfa felt [...]

* IN EARLY SEPTEMBER 2022, organizers of the Harvest Moon festival in Miramar, Fla., were forced to cancel their three-day country music event for an unusual reason: They could not [...]

WHEN THE CONCERT business unilaterally shut down in March 2020, many executives didn't expect live music to return until after the pandemic ended. But the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines [...]

TRAVIS SCOTT ENCOURAGES his concert audiences to 'rage,' so his Astroworld festival, which this year drew 50,000 fans on Nov. 5 to NRG Park in Houston, needs to be organized [...]

FROM THE LARGEST LED SCREEN ON earth to the first net zero carboncertified arena, this year's class of future-forward music venues is reenvisioning what it means to connect artists with [...]

WERE DAVID Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross adapted for the music industry, Tom Windish's mantra --'Keep booking'--could replace the play's motivational line 'Always be closing.' At a time [...]

JORDAN HARDING NEVER expected the Drive-in OC series to last. 'When we started, we were dipping our toes in the water, trying to find things that would work and keep [...]

THE CONCERT TRAVEL BUSINESS, once a reliably modest slice of the estimated global $25 billion concert industry, is being primed as a potential growth category as promoters of all sizes [...]

ON THE EAGLES' HOTEL CALIFORNIA TOUR THIS year, the band's set includes 'Life's Been Good,' a Joe Walsh classic that might well be rock'n'roll's greatest tribute to business managers. 'I [...]

The concert business shutdown is creating a credit crisis that's choking indie promoters. The industry that emerges when it's done will be more competitive--and concentrated--than ever THE CATERER Shelleylyn Brandler, [...]

LAS VEGAS IS A TOWN OF contradictions--a city that celebrates both long shots and sure things. Ronn Nicolli chose a perilous path between the two. The Youngstown, Ohio, native got [...]

HOW DID SO MANY ARTISTS break touring records in 2019? Simple: They never stopped performing. Four of the biggest tours of 2019 made Billboard's Top Tours of All-Time list, a [...]

AFTER WEEKS OF STRATEGIZING how to salvage Ticketmaster's reputation in the wake of last November's Taylor Swift presale debacle and Live Nation president/CFO Joe Berchtold's January grilling by the Senate [...]

AS NORTH America's largest independent promoter, Gregg Perloff, the co-founder/CEO of Another Planet Entertainment, isn't the type to ask for permission from the majors before making his next move. Perloff [...]

FOR MANY ARTISTS, IT CAN BE HARD TO SAY GOODBYE. BUT AS VETERAN acts are discovering, it can also be very lucrative. Elton John has the highest-grossing tour at the [...]

THE BIGGEST MISTAKE THAT StubHub made in recent memon was putting out a year-end list in 2015 saying Taylor Swift's 1989 Tour was its No. 1 seller. 'When I saw [...]

FESTIVALS HAVE TRANSFORMED the live-music business and become a vital revenue stream for the industry, reshaping live entertainment into an economic engine, and even occasionally challenging humanity to live by [...]

THERE'S ONE WORD THAT BEST SUMMARIZES the 2020 midyear touring charts: zero. That's how much money the concert industry has generated since mid-March, when the world's two largest concert promoters [...]

Halfway through 2018, touring revenue is down slightly even as top artists experiment with raising prices. But the question remains--does slow ticketing actually work, or leave fans out in the [...]

The CD-peddling, gatekeeper-guarded record industry is dead. But the meme-crafting, data-mining, spon-con-placing, royalty-chasing, wearable-designing, Chipotle-playlist-making industry is thriving, and to get a piece of the action, you'll need a very [...]

Executive Of The Tear JASON OWEN The president/CEO of Sandbox Entertainment and manager of Faith Hill, Kacey Musgraves, Kelsea Ballerini and Little Big Town has emerged as the leader of [...]

JAY-Z HAS ALREADY CANCELED TWO DATES ON his 4:44 Tour, seen very few of his shows actually sell out and been mocked on social media for tickets selling as low [...]

BY NEARLY ALL MEASURES, THE touring industry continued to see growth in 2017, with steady increases in ticket sales and attendance adding up to a record $25 billion in spending [...]

(PUBLISHING) JORGE MEJIA, 44 President, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Latin America & U.S. Latin Mejia's investment in 'Despacito' has paid dividends beyond anything he could have imagined. Penned by Sony/ATV's own [...]

THE MARCH 2021 announcement that Ron Bension had been named president/CEO of ASM Global, the world's largest facility management company, was received with great interest in the live-event industry. And [...]

* LESS THAN A YEAR AFTER THE FINAL coronavirus restrictions were dropped on concert capacity and attendance, the country's largest two concert promoters are forecasting record sales in 2023 across [...]

ERIC CHURCH ISN'T thinking about music. After six months on tour --playing to arena crowds across North America, from Lincoln, Neb., to Nashville --for 62 nights, the country music superstar [...]

After swearing 20 years ago they would never tour again, Guns N' Roses boast the top-grossing tour in what has been another record year for the concert business so far, [...]

INSIDE THE NEW $1.5 BILLION UBS ARENA in Elmont, N.Y., 18,500 fans scream in unison as they await Harry Styles. It's Nov. 28, the last night of the 'Watermelon Sugar' [...]

THE CONCERT INDUSTRY is officially in recovery mode, but not everyone is experiencing a sustained rebound. While data from Live Nation shows that the record year predicted by CEO Michael [...]

OACK IN MARCH, veteran country concert promoter Louis Messina was thrilled when George Strait sold out his Aug. 13 and 14 comeback shows at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. On [...]

AS THE SOUTHERN California-Las Vegas corridor develops into the largest year-round U.S. festival market, rival live-industry giants Live Nation and AEG are battling for control through competing minifestivals--genre-specific, commuter-friendly events [...]

(*) When can I go to a concert? That depends on where you live. The return of shows will be decided largely on a state-by-state basis by both governors and [...]

WHEN VENUE MANAGEMENT companies AEG Facilities and SMG merged at the end of 2019, combining management for 300 venues, Dana DuFine didn't print out a list of the 112 arenas [...]

THE FIRST AVENUE nightclub in Minneapolis is striking at any angle; its grand entrance towers over a busy downtown intersection, beckoning music fans. Built as an art deco Greyhound bus [...]

THIS IS THE WAY THE concert business will return: not with a bang, but a shot--into the arms of music fans, who will then be cleared to attend live shows [...]

SUMMER IS THE SEASON THAT MAKES OR breaks the live business for the year. Concerts in North America between Memorial Day and Labor Day of 2016 grossed $1.7 billion in [...]

BOTTLEROCK HAS MADE playing until the plug gets pulled a rite of passage at its annual Napa, Calif., festival, where the event's 10 p.m. curfew is enforced with a kill [...]

LIKE RECORD LABELS, concert promoters have long operated on a model in which they offer advance payments against a percentage of sales--with artists getting paid more when shows do well [...]

Coachella moved to fall first, and other festivals are following its lead. Can the season sustain them all? AT THE END OF February, Live Nation president/ CEO Michael Rapino told [...]

FOR WEEKS, AS THE threat of the coronavirus loomed in China, then in Europe, the concert business seemed to hold its breath --waiting to see if, and how much, the [...]

DADDY YANKEE WAS only planning to perform four shows when he announced that he was bringing his Con Calma tour to the Coliseo de Puerto Rico Jose Miguel Agrelot in [...]

ON DEC. 20, 2019, THE U.S. Department of Justice released the terms of its settlement with Live Nation. It found five separate instances in which the concert promoter allegedly violated [...]

EVERY DAY I WAKE UP AND FEEL like I am climbing Mount Everest on roller blades,' says Ali Harnell, Live Nation's first president and chief strategy officer of Women Nation. [...]