10 Biggest Stories Live Music Stories of 2024: Live Nation-DOJ, Sphere’s First Year & More 

The festival market continues to face headwinds in 2024 due to rising costs and over-saturation — but that didn’t stop Goldenvoice’s Paul Tollett from launching the risky punk proposition No Values Festival in Los Angeles, paying homage to all things ’80s and ’90s punk. Built around a rare opportunity to book the only U.S. concert for the original lineup of The Misfits, Tollett packed the No Values lineup with beloved legacy punk acts including Suicidal Tendencies, Bad Religion, The Vandals, Social Distortion, Iggy Pop and dozens more. Spread out over the centuries-old LA County Fairplex, the sprawling festival had a post-apocalyptic aesthetic and end-times sensibility. More importantly, No Values was credible and celebrated not as a reunion money grab, but instead as a rare cultural moment celebrating a huge chunk of the L.A. music scene that doesn’t always get its due.  

Eilish and her brother Finneas have been represented by agent Tom Windish, an executive at Wasserman, since the beginning of their careers. But in August, the pair jumped shipped for WME. Sources close to Eilish reported that the singer was upset by news stories of Wasserman Music boss Casey Wasserman’s alleged extramarital trysts, although several Wasserman insiders blamed the shift on client poaching by WME senior staff. During a panel at the Billboard Live Music Summit earlier this month, Wasserman agent Brent Smith criticized large agencies who use their size to steal clients, warning artists, “If you sign with an agent that already has 60 or 70 clients, you will be treated like a customer at McDonald’s.”   

The creator of the When We Were Young Festival, Besame Mucho, Cruel New World and Lovers and Friends festivals abruptly quit Live Nation earlier this year, surprising many festival watchers three years after he left AEG to build a new business at its rival. Those events — part of Live Nation’s highly successful move into mini-festivals at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic — generated tens of millions of dollars in sales for Live Nation and Shuman briefly became the most successful concert promoter at the company, often besting the AEG-owned Goldenvoice on its own Los Angeles turf. But last-minute cancellations earlier this year at Shuman’s events and disagreements with senior leadership led to his surprise exit, ending his fairytale ascension far sooner than most expected.  

Major media companies like Disney that have struggled to execute successful succession plans could look to CAA for guidance. Shortly after closing a $7 billion sale to French luxury company Artémas, long-time CAA head of global touring and partner Rob Light announced that he was being promoted to the agency’s managing director. In his place, CAA elevated three veteran music agents to run the department: Emma Banks, Darryl Eaton and Rick Roskin. The drama-free transfer of power ensures a steady continuity of leadership for the agency as the company begins its next chapter under its new ownership.  

The $2.3 billion sale of ASM Global — the facility management firm that manages venues like BOK Center in Tulsa, Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Caesars Superdome in New Orleans and OVO Arena Wembley in London — finally closed in August, a full 10 months after Legends Hospitality announced it was purchasing the firm from AEG and Canadian private equity firm Onex. The 10-month delay was the result of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into Legends for allegedly violating DOJ rules that the two firms act as separate companies prior to the close. Legends agreed to pay a $3.5 million fine and implement internal controls to examine future agreements.  

Luis Miguel was already one of the most successful and prolific Latin music artists in Billboard Boxscore history when he broke the record for his ongoing world tour. According to figures reported to Boxscore, Miguel’s 2023-2024 tour has grossed $318.2 million and sold 2.2 million tickets in its first 146 shows, making it the highest grossing tour ever among Latin acts. In August, Miguel broke the record previously held by Bad Bunny’s 2022 World’s Hottest Tour ($314.1 million) and Karol G’s 2023 Mañana Será Bonito Tour ($313.3 million).  

Concert promoter AEG Presents made history in March when it announced a merger with and acquisition of Latin entertainment company Cárdenas Marketing Network (CMN). The agreement is the first Latin partnership of this scope for AEG and serves as an enormous achievement for CMN founder/CEO Henry Cárdenas, whose current slate of artists includes Bad Bunny, Luis Miguel, Marc Anthony and Don Omar, among many others.  

James Dolan’s live entertainment moon shot finally made its landing on Sept. 29, 2023, with Irish rock band U2 opening the building with a 38-show residency. Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino recently told Bloomberg that he tried to talk U2 frontman Bono out of the gig, admitting he was worried the bigger-than-life experience would make audience members nauseous and even throw up on one another. But Bono went ahead with the shows and generated an eye-popping $231 million gross. Following U2, Phish, Dead & Company and the Eagles all played extended residencies, with Dead & Company recently lined up to hit the venue again next spring. While high ticket prices have made staging some shows in the building difficult, many fans are closely tuned in to find out which artists are on deck to play Sphere next.

The annual desert dance party has long been a bellwether for the concert business, so when news broke that Coachella still had not sold out of tickets weeks after going on sale, many in the concert business were caught by surprise. After much soul searching, organizers came up with a trifecta of explanations — high ticket prices, weaker lineups and oversaturation of multi-day festivals popping up across the country. Ironically, many in the music business failed to notice the downward trend because of the exaggerated demand for live events created by the pandemic, but now that the dust has settled, most industry watchers believe the best way to save the large tentpole festivals is by reducing the number of smaller events staged each year.   

More than a decade after the Department of Justice signed off on a historic consent decree governing the merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s antitrust division Jonathan Kanter joined 40 state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit aimed at breaking up the concert promotion giant. While much of the alleged “monopolistic” behavior in the lawsuit is exaggerated, the complaint does include several instances of Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino making threats against rival companies. Most legal experts agree that the government had a decent case against Live Nation, but the 2024 presidential election likely did change the long-term trajectory of the case. Live Nation president Joe Berchtold told investors on a recent call that he expects Trump to “minimize government intervention in the marketplace” when dealing with antitrust issues, noting any “request to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster” likely qualifies as the kind of “highly interventionist approach” the Trump-era DOJ is seeking to avoid.