State Champ Radio festivals
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A billboard along the four-lane highway that runs from King Khalid International Airport across the desert into Riyadh features the smiling faces of the Kingdom’s founder, King Abdulaziz and its current ruler King Salman, as well as the stoic visage of a third, Muhammad bin Salman, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, colloquially known as MBS. “Our real wealth,” the sign reads in Arabic, as well as English, “is in the ambition of our people.”
A second billboard advertises the event I’m here to see and features the images of another three men who could, in their own way, be important to the future of the rapidly changing country: Marshmello, David Guetta and DJ Khaled. They are among the hundreds of artists who in 2022 flew in from around the world to perform at Riyadh’s third annual Soundstorm, a dance-music-focused mega-festival that drew more than 150,000 people a day, including myself, to a site the size of Coachella.
This year, the festival is drawing more superstars to the region, with Eminem, U.K. rock legends Muse, Jared Leto’s band Thirty Seconds to Mars and dance titans Richie Hawtin and Marco Carola set to headline Soundstorm 2024 this December 12-14. Many more acts will be announced in the coming weeks, with this fifth edition of the festival marking the first time all of these phase one artists, outside Carola, will perform in the country.
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Another act that made its Saudi Arabia debut at Soundstorm is Metallica. At the 2023 festival this past December, flames shot from the festival’s massive mainstage — dubbed “Big Beast” — into the cold desert air as the band’s singer James Hetfield demanded “Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire!” while the crowd roared. Like the country’s electronic scene, the Saudi Arabian metal community once existed entirely underground, with secret shows happening at empty highway rest stations. In this new era of Saudi history, Soundstorm drew one of the genre’s most popular bands of all time to Riyadh. In the crowd, fans made devil horns with their hands and thrust them into the night sky as Hetfield yelled “Burn Riyadh, burn!”
This past December, Soundstorm — its scale matched only by longstanding dance festivals like Tomorrowland and EDC Las Vegas — also featured headliners including Calvin Harris, Will Smith, 50 Cent, Swedish House Mafia, David Guetta, H.E.R., Travis Scott and J Balvin, and followed an annual industry conference, XP Music Futures, that featured a mix of global and local music executives discussing AI, emerging artists, climate action and more.
This past May, the festival’s parent company, MDLBEAST, kicked off a series of day-long workshops for groups of roughly 30 people from the local music scenes in Kuwait, Tunisia, Oman and Saudi (last year they also hosted workshops featuring a music production course by Afrojackand a primer on artist management) and they’re gearing up for the next XP conference ahead of this December’s festival.
MDLBEAST, which is leading the charge on music-related endeavors in Saudi, also operate a members-only club in Riyadh similar to the Soho House — Beast House, which also houses a recording studio — and a Riyadh nightclub, Attaché. Saudi’s first opera house is currently under construction nearby, with an arena and art museum also forthcoming.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Johnny Greig/Getty Images
British DJ and event producer Megatronic, whose Femme Fest event hosts shows by female-identifying artists and has been at the conference since its first year, says the event “is going to grow and be an important part of the fabric for the Gulf Region in terms of putting music out to the rest of the world.” She says international music industry figures have been moving to Saudi Arabia from Dubai — where she also lived for six years — because “Saudi is fresh; it’s vibrant compared to Dubai… in 10 years it might squash Dubai.” It’s also possible that with war affecting Israel’s position as the Middle East’s leading dance music destination, Saudi Arabia could rise up in its place.
This was all inconceivable less than a decade ago, when playing music in public was punishable by the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Activities like dancing, public hugging and gender mixing were also prohibited, until bin Salman stripped the religious police of much of their authority when he rose to power around 2016 and launched his national development project known as “Vision 2030.”
As part of that plan, Saudi Arabia has been working to broaden its economy from oil dependency — the state-run ARAMCO posted $121 billion in profit in 2023 — to encompass businesses like sports, technology, tourism and media and culture. That includes getting into the music business, which the country is doing the way it does everything: Fast, and on a grand scale, with no expense spared.
In 2018, Saudi’s General Entertainment Authority announced plans to invest $64 billion — more than double the value of the entire global music industry in 2023, according to the 2024 IFPI Global Report — into entertainment over the next decade. In 2020, the country formally launched the Saudi Music Commission, with British music trade association executive Paul Pacifico joining as CEO in January 2023.
The hope is that Saudi Arabia will develop a music business that can generate jobs, turn regional artists into stars, help the country present a more modern face to the world and unlock the Middle East as music’s next big growth market.
“Over the next few years, it’s going to be all about building the structures that allow people to express themselves creatively,” Pacifico said at a November panel about the Saudi music business at LA3C, an event in Los Angeles run by Billboard parent company PMC. “And building platforms that will enable Saudi artists to tell their stories in a way that will be heard around the world.”
Music execs from companies across the business have flown to Saudi to assess the opportunity. In June, Saudi media company SRMG partnered with Billboard to launch Billboard Arabia and in December debuted its website and two global charts: The Billboard Arabia Hot 100 and the Billboard Arabia Artist 100, showcasing the most popular talent in the Middle East and North Africa regions.
The 2024 IFPI Global Report found that total MENA revenues rose by 14.4% in 2023, following a 26.8% jump in 2022 that marked the world’s third-highest growth rate. According to the IFPI, streaming revenues accounted for 98.4% of the region’s market in the last year. While Saudi Arabia does not yet have its own collecting society, MDLBEAST Publishing was announced in June to support artists across the MENA region, partnering with U.K.-based publisher Sentric to provide global support with admin services like royalty collection.
Fans attend the perfomance of Dish-Dash DJ music artists during the Soundstorm 2022 music festival, organized by MDLBEAST, in Banban on the outskirts of the Saudi capital Riyadh on December 1, 2022.
Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
Pulling a traditional society into the 22nd century gives the country elements of the surreal. The image of the three royals from the highway billboard stares out from all over Riyadh, from banners on the sides of buildings to the Starbucks kiosk in my hotel lobby. In the room, an arrow on the ceiling points to Mecca — a common symbol at hotels across the Arab world to give Muslim visitors direction for prayer — and a live feed from the Great Mosque there plays 24 hours a day on the hotel TV. Other channels offer news, Middle Eastern soap operas and a falconry tournament. A U.K. woman here to work on the festival tells me that she, but not her male colleague, was escorted out of the hotel gym by staff — though hotels here are free to determine their own policies.
During my weekend at the rave, I’ll see a woman in a hijab dance to hip-hop and a tent where attendees observe the call to prayer while the music stops. I’ll be offered party drugs in a country where even alcohol is illegal and hear Fat Joe onstage demanding “what’s love got to do with a little ménage?” in a place where I’ve been advised to keep my ankles and elbows covered.
“This is all a huge change socially,” says Courtney Freer, visiting assistant professor of Middle Eastern studies at Emory University. Saudi women have only been able to drive since 2018. Over the last decade, the Saudi royal family has eased and in some cases eliminated other restrictions on women, including the requirement to wear a hijab, although many still do, often for their own cultural and religious reasons. Women can also now travel outside the country without a male guardian. Human Rights Watch senior women’s rights researcher Rothna Begum says that for some women, particularly the middle class, these changes are “significant,” even in some cases “life changing.”
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia formally opened to non-religious tourists in 2019, and it now takes only about 10 minutes to apply for a visa online. This past spring, the Saudi Tourism Authority web site FAQ was updated to declare that “Everyone is welcome to visit Saudi” in response to the question “Are LGBT members welcome to visit?” (This answer also asks that “they follow and respect our culture, traditions and laws as you would when visiting any other country in the world,” although it doesn’t specify them.) Other questions include “Is Saudi Arabia safe?” (“very”), “Is alcohol available in Saudi Arabia?” (“no”) and “Is it possible for women to wear swimsuits in public?” (“On public beaches, visitors are expected to wear modest clothing.”)
Partying with tens of thousands of strangers at a massive rave about 40 minutes outside of Riyadh is, apparently, perfectly fine.
But despite the new freedoms, there are still constraints. Free speech is not protected, and while the country has no written laws on sexual orientation, judges often use Islamic law to punish homosexual activity and sex outside marriage, and even advocating for gay rights online can be a punishable offense, according to Human Rights Watch LGBT Rights Program Senior Researcher Rasha Younes. In March 2022, the government passed a Personal Status Law that gave women certain rights but also requires that they get the approval of a male guardian in order to get married. This law also says that wives must “obey in righteousness” and that a husband can withhold financial support if his wife “refuses herself” without “a legitimate reason.”
In the historically progressive electronic music scene, a world pioneered by Black and gay people, the Saudi-funded Soundstorm is thus “very polarizing in our community,” says Silvia Montello, who was CEO of the Association for Electronic Music (AFEM) when we spoke.
“Beyond What You Think You Know”
To some critics, Soundstorm is a glitzy distraction from the Saudi government’s human rights violations. Women, LGBTQ people, migrant workers and journalists have faced repression from the same government that’s helping fund the country’s forays into music. In 2018, journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul; in 2021, the Biden administration released a report saying bin Salman approved the killing of Khashoggi, although MBS has denied this. This past August, a retired teacher was sentenced to death for tweets criticizing the government, and in January a Saudi women’s rights activist was sentenced to 11 years in prison for charges including “indecent” clothing and promoting women’s rights on social media.
But some festival participants believe that music and events can drive social change and hope their participation will fuel more progress. “Some of my first shows in Saudi touched me deep,” David Guetta said during his 2022 XP keynote. “I’m sure everyone here can feel it. We’re witnessing a moment in history.”
“Ten or 20 years from now, there’s going to be books written about how Saudi changed,” says a non-Saudi music industry executive who’s worked with MDLBEAST. “If we all play our cards right, electronic music will be a chapter in that book. Don’t we all want that?”
People attend the MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 music festival in Banban on the northern outskirts of Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on December 1, 2022.
Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
Social progress is part of the mission for MDLBEAST, the roughly 100-person organization that produces Soundstorm and several other festivals and events around the Gulf with a combination of government and private funding. Though it operates in partnership with various Saudi government divisions, the country’s politics “have nothing to do with us as an organization,” says its chief creative officer Ahmad Alammary, who goes by his DJ name, Baloo.
Raised in Riyadh, Alammary grew up listening to music — house, disco, new wave — with his family and started DJing in 1997 while attending American University in Washington D.C., once receiving a call from the Saudi consulate telling him to stop playing at clubs if he wanted to keep his scholarship.
Nonetheless, he returned to Riyadh in 2002 with eight boxes of vinyl and began DJing illegal underground parties where, he says, “The people, the ‘extracurriculars,’ everything looked, felt and sounded like any other party I would attend around the world.” When an event Alammary was scheduled to play was raided in 2004, he moved to Dubai, scored a residency at a club in Bahrain, then moved to New York City and earned his Masters from Pratt Institute’s Design Management program.
When he returned home again in 2013, Alammary found “a different society — art exhibitions, film screenings, gatherings with mixed crowds.” In 2019, he helped form MDLBEAST with the government’s blessing, booking the first Soundstorm with local artists, plus dance music titans like Guetta, Steve Aoki, Tiësto and Afrojack. More than one member of the MDLBEAST team compares this first festival to the fall of the Berlin Wall. “Every Saudi DJ got off the decks in complete shambles, tearful, in disbelief,” Alammary recalls.
Alammary says most fans who were interested in this first Soundstorm didn’t even believe it would happen — “they were like, ‘bulls–t,’” he remembers — with the crowd only swelling on the second day when locals realized it was real and began arriving by the carload.
Now, with a staff that’s 50% women, the festival promoter seeks to become “one of the top brands known for gender diversity” with equitable lineups and “minority inclusion across our experiences,” according to an internal strategy document provided to Billboard, while it aims to “own the music industry in the Middle East” by increasing “the GDP of MENA [the Middle East and North Africa] Music Biz,” “promote Saudi as a global music destination,” “export cultural IP” and “inspire and promote progressive culture.”
“The truth is, though, we have to work harder because of where we’re from,” the document reads. “Beyond the money. Beyond the stereotypes. Beyond what you think you know.”
At The Festival
While female dancers in red, skintight latex bodysuits writhe around 50 Cent during a performance of “Drop It Like It’s Hot” on stage at Soundstorm this past December, festival attendees, all 16 and older, wear traditional robes or abayas, streetwear or jeans. Many women wear surgical masks to ensure they won’t be recognized in photographs. Ticket prices start at SAR 169, or about $45. A private suite with its own concierge goes for SAR 80,000, or about $21,000. Fans with premium access never even need touch the ground — a miles-long network of 15-foot-high walkways connect viewing areas at the event’s seven stages. On one stretch, a muscular man with army fatigues and a gun holster escorts a group of elegantly dressed women to the “VIB” — short for “very important beast” — area.
Each evening around seven, the music stops for about 15 minutes during the call to prayer, during which a small percentage of the crowd enters a designated tent to observe. Alcohol is illegal in Saudi, so the drink stands sell bottled soft drinks. Even so, a festival employee tells me backstage that “everyone here is shitfaced.” (I’m told that alcohol is brought in from Bahrain.) In the crowd a man offers me “pills to party.” I decline. A Soundstorm spokesperson says the festival has a zero-tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol and security removes violators.
Attendees dance during the MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 music festival in Banban on the northern outskirts of Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on December 1, 2022.
Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
The first year of Soundstorm was hard to book, as many artists were reluctant to play in the country, says MDLBEAST Strategy Director Nada Alhelabi. She says assembling the lineup “gets easier every year.” The industry executive who’s worked with MDLBEAST says that while artists earned two or three times their normal fee at the first festival, rates have since come down to standard (mid-to-high six figures for top-tier acts). As at most dance-focused festivals, the 2022 and 2023 Soundstorm lineups skew heavily male, although there are performances from women including Peggy Gou, Nervo, La Fleur, Anne-Marie, Carlita, Nora En Pure, and many Middle Eastern artists including Cosmicat, who grew up in the coastal city of Jeddah and was studying to be a dentist before a DJ career became possible.
Saudi’s General Authority of Statistics reports that 67% of the population is younger than 35, data cited repeatedly by artists and executives who are here to assess the market. Backstage before his Soundstorm 2022 set, Dutch producer Hardwell tells me that Saudi “feels to me how it did when I started playing in the States around 2010 when the whole EDM thing blew up.”
The country’s music investments still seem to exist outside the realm of supply and demand, however. Soundstorm is not yet profitable, although Alammary predicts it will break even in the next few years.
The most striking difference between Soundstorm and other festivals is that in 2022 and years prior, attendees were overwhelmingly male. In the 2022 crowd, I count roughly one woman for every 20 men. Sexual harassment has been an issue at Soundstorm since its 2019 debut, and every year, several female attendees post on social media about being harassed, even groped. Co-ed events are still relatively new, and organizers “are doing everything they can to make it safe for women,” says the industry executive who’s worked with MDLBEAST. “They’re not sweeping it under the carpet.”
In both 2022 and 2023, LED signs and bathroom-stall posters promote Respect & Reset, MDLBEAST’S anti-harassment program, which brings in 250 staffers to offer support in the crowd at four tents, where anyone who has been harassed can report the incident and get support. More established events around the world devote fewer resources to the issue, says Respect & Reset Co-Director Judy Bec, who operates similar anti-harassment programs at festivals in her native U.K.
People attend the MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 music festival in Banban on the northern outskirts of Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on December 1, 2022.
Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
On Saturday night during Swedish House Mafia’s 2022 set, I’m groped from behind on two separate occasions by men who stick their hands between my thighs and grab. (I don’t report either incident, since both men disappear into the crowd.) A male friend does his best to protect me and a female companion, but being in the crowd is hectic until a group of courteous Saudi men create a wall around us. I don’t see any similar incidents in the premium viewing areas, where the crowd is older and more gender balanced. A female journalist who traveled from Europe for Soundstorm in 2022 and 2023 says that while the festival was generally less crowded in 2023, GA attendees at this most recent event were more gender balanced, a shift, this journalist says, that made the atmosphere less threatening and more like other festivals around the world.
On the final night of Soundstorm 2022, I see two men embracing on a patch of fake grass in the general admission area. Alammary, the MDLBEAST creative director, remembers asking a DJ he wanted to perform at Soundstorm questioning the offer because of the country’s hostility toward gay rights. “I told him, ‘I understand and respect that, but I need you to also understand that everyone is on the dance floor,’” Alammary remembers. “Everyone is behind the decks. We don’t care about anybody’s background or orientation.”
There’s evidence that he’s right. A 2021 U.S. State Department report on human rights in Saudi Arabia ends with a single sentence: “Observers at the December MDLBeast [sic] Soundstorm music festival reported that it included the public display of LGBTQI+ culture.”
“They’re Taking The Music Business Very Seriously”
Amy Thomson, Swedish House Mafia’s former manager who now runs her own rights management platform, travelled to XP 2022 to speak on a panel because she says “it was important for me to come see if they’re taking it seriously…and clearly, they’re taking the music business very seriously.” Though she says she nearly canceled the trip three times, she ultimately chose to attend, as “you can’t just run around the world just throwing your opinion without education.”
Mirik Milan, the former night mayor of Amsterdam and founder of the nightlife consultancy VibeLab, who has come to XP since its first year, says he’s seen “a cultural renaissance has taken place in the last couple of years,” but “we should also not be naïve. Music and nightlife have the power to change people’s lives, but they won’t inflict a power change in Saudi or anywhere in the world.” To him, the point is the people of Saudi experiencing the joy of dance music.
On the final night of Soundstorm 2022, three Saudi women in their early 30s, all of whom speak English, sit at a picnic table and talk about life before bin Salman’s reforms.
Until a decade ago, they say, the most exciting form of legal entertainment was a restaurant with dancing waiters. The reforms have made dating easier, they say, since they no longer have to chaperone one another on secret visits to mens’ houses. “We’d be nervous, like ‘don’t drink anything; be careful,’” says one. “Now you can just go to a coffee shop.” Even now, though, they say the lives of Saudi women depend significantly on the permissiveness of their fathers. “And if it’s not your dad, it’s your siblings, or your uncles, or your cousins,” says another. “Someone in the family is going to stand up and say ‘no.’”
Dressed in jeans and T-shirts, they say they’re happy that the women here in hijabs can experience the festival, because, the first one says, “It’s getting them out of their comfort zone.” The second says she was excited when tourists started coming, since “a lot of the terrorist [activity] created a big cloud on us that really doesn’t show who we are as people.”
That’s one reason they appreciate the DJs and artists who do make the trip. A third woman says she especially loves Guetta for coming here to play when the country first opened for foreign entertainment.
But she loves bin Salman even more, for making all of this possible.
“I am,” she says, “his biggest fan.”
About this reporting: Billboard assumed all costs related to travel to and from Saudi Arabia, including hotel accommodations. MDLBEAST helped arrange a travel visa. While in Saudi Arabia, the writer was part of a press entourage for which the festival provided transportation to and from XP and Soundstorm, along with sightseeing.
Billboard’s parent company, PMC, received a minority investment from SRMG, a publicly traded media company based in Saudi Arabia and Dubai, in early 2018.
KCON is once again coming to Los Angeles, but fans won’t necessarily have to be anywhere near the City of Angels to experience performances from ZICO, NCT 127 and more K-pop stars. On Thursday (July 11), the music festival announced that its main stage showcases will air live on The CW Network July 18, starting […]
Noel Gallagher seems to believe that two things can be true at the same time, even if they contradict each other. For instance, the famously irascible former Oasis co-founder and High Flying Birds solo star made the scene at the Glastonbury Festival last weekend and while he reportedly said the annual mud-caked music gathering is the second most important thing in the nation — aside from his beloved Premier League soccer — he also lamented that the fest has taken a turn he doesn’t like.
“Don’t get me wrong, I f–king love Glastonbury,” Noel said according to the Sun tabloid. “I think it’s one of the most important things. In fact it’s probably the best f–king thing about Britain apart from the Premier League.” That said, Gallagher added that he fears the event — which Oasis headlined in 1995 and 2004 and High Flying Birds played in 2022 — has changed.
“It’s getting a bit woke now, that place, and a bit kind of preachy and a bit virtue-signaling,” Gallagher reportedly told the Sun. “I don’t like it in music — little f–king idiots waving flags around and making political statements and bands taking the stage and saying, ‘Hey guys, isn’t war terrible, yeah? Let’s all boo war. F–k the Tories man,’ and all that.”
The paper speculated that Gallagher’s comments came after Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap posted messages on the screen during their set decrying Israel’s war against Hamas as the crowd chanted “Free, free Palestine” along with the band. In addition, during a surprise pop-in during Bombay Bicycle Club’s set Gallagher’s former music rival, Blur’s Damon Albarn, asked the 200,000-plus fans to cheer if they were “pro-Palestine” and suggested President Biden, and Donald Trump, are too old to run for office again at the event where dozens of Palestinian flags could be seen flying over the crowd.
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Other statements from stage came via an inflatable boat with dummies dressed as migrants that was launched into the crowd during Idles’ set by elusive artist Banksy while the band also lashed out at King Charles and new British parliamentarian and Donald Trump ally Nigel Farage; singer Charlotte Church also sang “free Palestine” and wore a keffiyeh during her set.
At press time a spokesperson for Gallagher had not returned Billboard‘s request for confirmation of the singer’s comments.
Gallagher, 57, reportedly suggested the music equivalent of “shut up and dribble” in response to all the commentary from artists, adding, “it’s like, look, play your f–king tunes and get off… It’s too much, Donate all your money to the cause — that’s it, stop yapping about it. Let’s just say for instance the world is in a bit of a f–ked up place and you’re all in a field in Glastonbury. What’s the problem with that? I haven’t got a problem with it. I guess if you’re 18 and you’re middle class you might have a problem with it. But what’s all the kids in a field at Glastonbury going to do about it? Everybody knows what’s going on in the f–king world, you’ve got a phone in your pocket that tells you anyway. What is the point of virtue-signaling?”
The Guardian noted that Glastonbury has a long history of support left-wing political causes and actions, from the annual presence of environmental group Greenpeace on site, to a 40-plus year partnership with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the hosting of the Billy Bragg-curated Left Field stage, site of many political discussions and debates.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor‘s 2001 disco pop anthem “Murder On the Dancefloor” has experienced a massive renaissance after its use in last November’s film Saltburn gave new life to the song. The momentum — which has seen Bextor performing the giddy hit at events around the world — kept going in a big way over the weekend […]
SXSW will no longer engage in partnerships with the U.S. Army or weapons manufacturers, the event announced Wednesday (June 26). “After careful consideration, we are revising our sponsorship model,” reads a statement posted to the SXSW website. “As a result, the U.S. Army, and companies who engage in weapons manufacturing, will not be sponsors of […]
Country Thunder Music Festivals and Premier Global Production president Troy Vollhoffer had a decadelong career as a hockey player beginning in the early 1980s — including multiple years in the Western Hockey League and a stint with the Baltimore Skipjacks, minor-league affiliate of the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins. But off the ice, he was already building his status in live music production.
Vollhoffer tells Billboard his money from playing hockey “allowed me to have the capital to invest into theatrical equipment, a lighting system,” which he used to launch Premier Global Production in 1986. For nearly four decades, the company has rigged touring lights and outdoor staging for artists including Metallica, Chris Stapleton, Morgan Wallen, Tim McGraw and Florence + the Machine, as well as for events including Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo Music Festival and Austin City Limits.
Though he was leading a production company, Vollhoffer says, “I never thought the festival business would be an interest of mine.” Still, his experience with live events meant he was able to observe numerous concerts and festivals over the years. “We did a lot of festivals, and we saw some great ones and we saw some not-so-great ones,” he says.
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Years before he transitioned into his current role leading the Country Thunder brand of festivals and the production company, he was already familiar with the territory: Vollhoffer’s father served as a production manager for the Big Valley Jamboree in Saskatchewan, Canada, and as a teenager, Vollhoffer helped as a stagehand.
The festival would change names and shift from country to rock acts and back again, but in 2005, Vollhoffer acquired the festival (at the time called the Craven Country Jamboree). In 2017, the event was folded into the Country Thunder brand as Country Thunder Saskatchewan, one of the six multiday Country Thunder Festivals Vollhoffer oversees in the United States and Canada.
Vollhoffer acquired the Country Thunder brand in 2009 from Larry Barr, for the Arizona and Wisconsin festivals. Country Thunder Alberta (another Canadian event) was added to the fold in 2016, followed by Country Thunder Saskatchewan in 2017, Country Thunder Florida in 2019 and Country Thunder Bristol (in Tennessee) in 2021. Since acquiring Country Thunder Wisconsin and Country Thunder Arizona, attendance has surged from averaging 12,500 patrons per day to up to 30,000 per day.
This year, Luke Combs is headlining Country Thunder Festivals in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Florida. Eric Church and Lainey Wilson were named as headliners this year for the Arizona and Wisconsin events. Country Thunder Bristol, set for this weekend (June 28-29), will feature Cody Johnson, HARDY, Bailey Zimmerman and Trace Adkins.
These names extend the Country Thunder brand’s storied history of headliners — which already includes Keith Urban, George Strait, Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire and the late Toby Keith — who have made for some memorable moments, such as when Strait played the Craven Country Jamboree in 2009 and the time Keith got behind the bar and served up drinks after his set in 2008.
“The music business is going to miss Toby Keith,” Vollhoffer says. “He was such a big personality. After his show, he just went behind the bar. He was like, ‘I got this,’ started bartending, and he was back there rocking it up until three o’clock, four o’clock in the morning.”
Far from a cut-and-paste mentality, Vollhoffer says the brand strives to make each festival as unique as the artists who play them, from Country Thunder Arizona’s site embedded in the mountains to the more coastal feel of Country Thunder Florida. Given the far-flung locations of each festival across the United States and in Canada, Vollhoffer and his team take care to book artists that resonate in each market.
“There are bands you’d play in Phoenix that you wouldn’t play in Wisconsin and people who aren’t even known in Canada that do great business in Arizona,” Vollhoffer says. “The thing about Canada is that records break later there. Something could be super hot in America, but maybe not [in Canada] yet. But when you’re booking a show a year in advance, you’re rolling the dice at times.”
One of those dice rolls that proved fortuitous was booking Wallen just prior to his skyrocketing success. In 2019, Vollhoffer met with Wallen’s team to discuss booking him for multiple Country Thunder festivals in 2020.
“I had dinner with his management. He was a $25,000 act, and that’s what we paid him that year. I agreed to do the deal and I was to take a flier on him for Saturdays [at multiple festivals] — and it didn’t end up working out [due to the coronavirus pandemic, which caused festivals to be canceled in 2020]. We pretty much sold out right across the board when it hit, but that doesn’t happen very often,” Vollhoffer adds.
By the time Wallen headlined three Country Thunder festivals in 2022 — Arizona in April, Wisconsin in July and Florida in October — his 2021 breakout set, Dangerous: The Double Album, had become the No. 1 title on the year-end Billboard 200 Albums chart. The same month that Wallen headlined Country Thunder Florida (October 2022), he also played his first headlining stadium show in Arlington, Texas.
Another risk that paid off was booking Zimmerman in July 2022, just as he was earning his initial hits with “Fall in Love” and “Rock and a Hard Place.”
“When we booked him for [Country Thunder] Wisconsin, I think we were maybe the second show he’d ever done professionally,” Vollhoffer recalls. “He was on around one in the afternoon. We had an influx of audience, which was unusual for [1 p.m.]. There were a ton of people, and it was fantastic.”
For each event, between 500 and 800 staffers are hired to work security, parking, camping, hosting, operational site crews and entrance gates. Vollhoffer has seen the increasing costs associated with putting on a festival, from talent booking costs to expenses for staffing, hotels and transportation.
“I’m pretty fortunate to be able to compile great lineups, and that’s from relationships — but it’s getting a little bit harder now,” he says, adding that the exchange rate hits hard with the Canadian festivals.
Since the October 2017 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas, where 58 people were killed and over 850 people were injured, Vollhoffer has escalated security at his festivals. “Our security budget has been increased by twice what it was previously, and our police presence in each market is very high,” he explains. “We’ve had [police] dogs, we’ve had towers set up so police have a bird’s-eye view all over the site. We’ve done drones, all sorts of things. It’s all about keeping fans safe.”
As with most festival owners, Vollhoffer is aware of the impact the rising overall costs of putting on the series can have on ticket prices. The general-admission ticket price for the six Country Thunder festivals averages less than $300.
“Unfortunately, you have to raise your ticket price,” he says. “I don’t know if there is a correction coming or not, but you can no longer charge the consumer more than what the market will bear. There was a lot of money in the marketplace. Now that’s changed. We’re having a great year, but we take one year at a time. I don’t believe the adage is necessarily correct where in times of economic downturn, the show business will always flourish. People have a decision between buying milk and buying a concert ticket. I think they’re buying milk right now.”
The Country Thunder festivals have also earned the respect of Vollhoffer’s peers, with Country Thunder Arizona, Wisconsin and Bristol each earning the Academy of Country Music’s festival of the year honors. Vollhoffer was also honored with the ACM Awards’ Lifting Lives Award and received the Don Romeo talent buyer of the year accolade.
Vollhoffer says the idea of expanding the festivals beyond North America “is not off the table,” though he says, “We’ve not entertained it. We wanted to become a household name in America first, but Europe’s different … a lot of different red tape to jump through, a lot of different regulations, and it has a very mature festival market, with the rock festivals.”
As for artists Vollhoffer would love to see headline Country Thunder, he says, “We’ve talked about having Post Malone — he’d be a great addition.” He also notes that he’s seeing several newcomers who seem poised for future headliner status. “Riley Green’s coming in hot; I think he’s going to be great. And Tucker Wetmore is on fire.”
Vollhoffer adds, “We have so many great artists this year. We are fortunate to have Luke Combs and Eric Church headlining. That’s always great business. It’s going to be a great year.”
Life Is Beautiful is getting a makeover. The longstanding Las Vegas festival announced major changes for its 2024 event on Tuesday (June 25), with the event trimming down from a three- to two-day show and moving to a new site not far from the old one in downtown Las Vegas.
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While Life Is Beautiful previously happened across 18 city blocks in the downtown Arts District, this year’s show is happening at a smaller site on the other side of downtown’s Fremont Street Experience, a five-minute walk from The Arts District.
The lineup is also more focused this year, with the Sept. 27-28 party featuring 14 electronic acts including LCD Soundsystem, Justice, Peggy Gou, James Blake, Jungle, Jamie xx, Neil Frances, LP Giobbi, Thundercat and Badbadnotgood. Sets will not overlap, with performances starting in each evening at 5 p.m. and happening one after the other until 2 a.m. Tickets go on sale Thursday, June 27, at 10 a.m. PT.
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This year, the festival is called Life Is Beautiful Presents: A Big Beautiful Block Party. The event is now entirely owned by Rolling Stone, which first acquired a majority stake in the festival 2022. (Rolling Stone is owned by Billboard‘s parent company, Penske Media Corporation.)
Rolling Stone CEO Gus Wenner tells Billboard that “for a number of reasons, we had to explore new locations,” but that it was “super important” for the festival to stay in downtown Las Vegas.
While the festival team considered taking a year off from the event, they instead landed on this new format, although Wenner says “our intention is to bring back the full-scale thing” in the coming years. While this three-day, multi-genre format will likely return, “this block party concept is something we might do quite a bit of” as well.
For now, though, “it was exciting for us to put something a little more focused together that wasn’t so multi genre.” He says electronic music has always been a core element of Life Is Beautiful lineups, and that “if you look at the festival landscape, I think this is a product there should probably be more of, as opposed to these big box festivals where you’ve got huge pop acts that are all playing the festival circuit with little permutations on different [events].”
Las Vegas is of course a historically strong market for electronic music, although A Big Beautiful Block Party “is a little bit different than what you get across a lot of Vegas,” Wenner says. “It’s less EDM and more indie electronic — more instruments on stage, riskier. We feel there is room in the market for this lineup and not just pulling mega-DJs that play in clubs on the Strip together into one spot. This has a unique point of view.”
A Big Beautiful Block Party happens on the same days at San Francisco’s electronic festival Portola, which will also feature performances by Justice, LP Giobbi, Empress Of, Neil Frances and Jamie xx. Wenner says “seeing how well people responded to Portola was was a really good sign for us. it’s something they’re excited about.”
Wenner says that since he got involved in the festival, he’s been “kind of overwhelmed at how much support there is for Life Is Beautiful in Las Vegas … I’d been told that, but to meet all the players and spend time in the community and talk to the small businesses that have been in and around the festival for for 10 years now, it’s been transformative. It definitely gives us a lot of appreciation and respect for what’s been built.”
Life Is Beautiful was founded in 2013 by Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos and an entrepreneur who had the vision to transform and revitalize the downtown Las Vegas community. Hsieh died in 2020 at the age of 46. Wenner says this year’s show “honors Hsieh’s legacy and the legacy of Life Is Beautiful and the spirit of it, while also evolving.”
While the festival looks different this year, the goal of A Big Beautiful Block Party is more or less the same as it’s always been.
“Bottom line,” Wenner says, “is we want to throw a f–king party.”
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
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Megan Thee Stallion is coming back to Chicago this summer, as she’s been tapped to replace Tyler, the Creator at Lollapalooza 2024.
The Windy City-based festival announced on Thursday (June 20) that the Houston Hottie will be headlining Thursday night (Aug. 1) of Lollapalooza. The announcement comes on the heels of Tyler revealing that he’s pulling out of Lolla as well as Outside Lands 2024 this summer.
“Hot girl summer in Chicago Unfortunately, Tyler, the Creator will not be able to perform this year. See @theestallion headline Lolla on Thursday, August 1st,” the festival wrote to social media.
There seemed to be a mixed reaction in the Lollapalooza Instagram comments, with the headliner switch leading to some fans asking about a refund.
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“Bro tyler was carrying. who tf decided megan was a good idea,” one person asked while another wrote, “Why is everyone so mad tyler always headlines megan is such a good replacement.”
Megan is currently wrapping the North American leg of her Hot Girl Summer Tour this weekend with shows in L.A. and Las Vegas, before heading across the pond for a handful of European dates through July, which will give her time to make it back stateside to kick off Lollapalooza on Aug. 1.
Megan Thee Stallion will have plenty of new music in her return to Chi City, as her Megan album is slated to arrive on June 28. She previously headlined Chicago’s United Center as part of her tour run in May.
Minutes prior to Lollapalooza making Meg official, Tyler surprised fans when he announced that he’d be dropping out of Lollapalooza and Outside Lands in back-to-back weekends this summer.
“I hate saying this but i have to cancel lollapalooza and outside lands,” he wrote to X. “I made a commitment that i can no longer keep, and that bums me out knowing how excited folks were. That is not sexy at all. please please forgive me or call me names when you see me in person. love.”
Outside Lands also acted quickly when they revealed that Sabrina Carpenter would be replacing Tyler at the San Francisco festival on Aug. 10. Following the performance, the “Espresso” singer will embark on an arena trek this fall, with the Short n’ Sweet Tour slated to begin in September.
Find both festivals‘ announcements below.
Tyler, the Creator has pulled out of his headlining slot at 2024 Lollapalooza about six weeks before the festival was slated to take place. He also won’t be appearing at Outside Lands 2024 the following weekend in August.
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The Grammy-winning rapper made the announcement early Thursday (June 20) that he won’t be making the pair of August festival appearances, but didn’t provide a reason as to why.
“I hate saying this but i have to cancel lollapalooza and outside lands. i made a commitment that i can no longer keep, and that bums me out knowing how excited folks were,” he wrote on social media.
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Though he turned off replies from angry fans on X, Tyler gave them permission to call him names when they see him in person for bailing. “That is not sexy at all. please please forgive me or call me names when you see me in person. love,” he continued.
Billboard has reached out to reps for Tyler as well as both festivals for comment.
The “Earfquake” rapper was slated to headline the annual Windy City festival alongside SZA, Blink-182, The Killers and Future with Metro Boomin. Scheduled for Aug. 1 through Aug. 4, the Chicago festival has more 170 acts across the four days. Other artists on the bill include Tate McRae, Killer Mike, Kesha, Chappell Roan, Zedd and more.
Outside Lands is still going down on Aug. 9 through Aug. 11. Tyler was slated to headline Aug. 10, but his cancellation has left a major hole in the lineup. The San Francisco festival boasts additional headlining acts such as Sturgill Simpson, The Killers and Post Malone.
However, Tyler, the Creator surprised California fans when he popped out to perform “Wusyaname” during Mustard’s set at Kendrick Lamar’s Pop Out concert at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., on Wednesday night (June 19).
Tyler took to X to put into words how wonder the the experience was for him. “It was beautiful to see the whole city come together last night,” he wrote. “my first raps were written at home off crenshaw dr and 82nd, right down the street from the fourm. thank you. shoutout FREE LUNCH.”
Find his announcement cancelling his Lolla and Outside Land sets below.
i hate saying this but i have to cancel lollapalooza and outside lands.i made a commitment that i can no longer keep, and that bums me out knowing how excited folks were.that is not sexy at all. please please forgive me or call me names when you see me in person. love— T (@tylerthecreator) June 20, 2024
Post Malone, Doja Cat, Jelly Roll and Rauw Alejandro have been tapped to headline this fall’s 2024 Global Citizen Festival. On Tuesday morning (June 18), the world’s leading organization seeking to end extreme poverty announced the initial details for this year’s event, which will take place on the Great Lawn in New York’s Central Park on Sept. 28, with additional performers to be announced in the upcoming weeks.
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The concert will be hosted by Global Citizen Ambassador actor Hugh Jackman, with planned appearances from UN Messenger of Peace, Jane Goodall Institute founder and legendary primatologist Jane Goodall, as well as Global Citizen festival curator Coldplay singer Chris Martin.
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In a statement announcing the initial lineup for this year’s event, the organization noted, “the hunger crisis continues to grow, infectious diseases are still spreading, debt is on the rise, and last year was the hottest on record. Meanwhile, governments everywhere are reducing their contributions to foreign aid, with more than half of G7 countries having proposed cuts this year. Despite the emerging gap between what the world needs and what seems politically possible, the plight of the world’s most vulnerable communities is more urgent than ever. This is a critical year for the global community to support frontline organizations, invest in lifesaving solutions, and act today, to save tomorrow.”
“It’s been a few years since I was last on the Global Citizen Festival stage in Paris, and I’m excited to join forces with Global Citizen once again in Central Park this September to drive as much action as we can to make the world a better place,” said Doja Cat in a statement. “We all have a part we can play to help end extreme poverty and stand up for equity. I’m looking forward to being part of this major evening of positive change.”
As usual, tickets for the event are free and can be earned by taking action on the Global Citizen app or website, where fans can demand change from governments and private sector leaders. Among the calls to action this year are ones asking the G7 countries — Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the U.K. and the U.S. — to increase their support for anti-poverty programs worldwide, as well as one calling for businesses, governments and philanthropic organizations to protect and restore the Amazon rainforest by investing $1 billion to help support indigenous communities while pledging to set timelines for phasing out coal, oil and gas to ensure a transition to green energy. The third action point is Global Citizen’s plea for world governments to commit at least $5 billion to equitable access to nutritious food, stronger health systems and quality education around the world.
Jackman added, “As a longtime supporter of Global Citizen and its mission, I am thrilled to be returning as host of the Global Citizen Festival this fall. For over a decade, Global Citizen has driven life-saving impact for nearly 1.3 billion people around the world, and we’ll gather once again on Sept. 28 to help end extreme poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. I can’t wait to see you all on Central Park’s Great Lawn to collectively call for change on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable communities.”
Last year’s festival featured performances from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Conan Gray, Stray Kids and BTS’ Jung Kook, as well as Ms. Lauryn Hill, who staged a surprise Fugees reunion with former bandmates Wyclef Jean and Pras.
