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Kevin Lyman remembers the strong pushback he got in the 1980s from local politicians when he would attempt to host punk shows in Long Beach, Calif., which then (like now) drew mischievous teens and young adults from all around Southern California with its notorious skate and punk culture. So naturally, over 40 years later, Lyman chose the beachside city as one of three sites to host the 30th-anniversary edition of his Vans Warped Tour — the famed touring punk rock festival he founded — this year.
“We outlasted them all,” Lyman says two months after the two-day Long Beach festival sold out 80,000 tickets with performances from Pennywise, Less Than Jake, The Vandals and the city’s own Sublime.
Kevin Lyman will participate in a panel at Billboard‘s Live Music Summit, held Nov. 3 in Los Angeles. For tickets and more information, click here.
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Today, Warped has the local buy-in it once lacked. In June, Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson celebrated Warped’s return at an event honoring a new street named Sublime Way. “He goes, ‘I’m so excited to bring you the biggest punk rock show ever to Long Beach,’ ” Lyman recalls. “I was with Joe [Escalante] from The Vandals and a few other band people, and we all looked at each other. I go, ‘Remember when the politicians used to run on how they were going to get rid of punk in Long Beach?’ ”
Alongside Long Beach, Washington, D.C., and Orlando, Fla., were named as host cities for the anniversary events, which according to Warped sold a combined 240,000 tickets — making Warped one of the most successful festival runs of the year. (After summer plays in D.C. and Long Beach, the fest will stage its Orlando shows on Nov. 15 and 16.) And Warped, which took a break between 2019 and 2025, already has tickets on sale for its 2026 editions in D.C. and Long Beach, with Lyman hinting that international dates are also in the works. According to him, roughly 80% of next year’s acts have already been booked.
Avril Lavigne performs at Warped Tour on June 15, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
Courtesy of Vans Warped Tour
Warped launched in 1995 and grew to roughly 35 dates a summer in the United States and Canada, adding international stops in Australia and the United Kingdom throughout the years. The punk gathering was part of a spate of touring festivals that emerged in the 1990s, including Lollapalooza, H.O.R.D.E. and Lilith Fair. H.O.R.D.E. and Lilith Fair called it quits before the new millennium, while Lollapalooza eventually settled down to one main location in Chicago with frequent international editions. But Warped had impressive longevity. After being held annually for more than 20 years, it executed its final cross-country trek in 2018 and marked its 25th anniversary with three shows in 2019.
By then, Lyman was burned out — and felt fans and the industry were taking Warped for granted. He continued to work on other live events and philanthropic endeavors while pivoting to teaching full time at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. Post-pandemic, he noticed his students were struggling to connect with one another and decided a new generation could use Warped.
Young people “were so isolated from each other. We’re in a society where we’re bombarded with negativity,” he says. “If you could create that atmosphere of positivity within a parking lot, they start to come together and you can affect people.”
Warped’s return coincided with a renewed interest in the punk and emo genres. Early Warped bookings such as blink-182, Green Day, Weezer and Fall Out Boy have recently sold out stadiums, while the Las Vegas package festival When We Were Young — which featured a slew of Warped alums including Alkaline Trio, Dashboard Confessional and Good Charlotte — became a post-pandemic hit.
For Warped’s 30th anniversary, Lyman teamed with the Live Nation-owned Insomniac (producers of EDM festivals such as Electric Daisy Carnival and Beyond Wonderland) for the event’s biggest dates yet. The shows featured larger stages, merchandise tables for every band, an on-site Warped Tour Museum and a Charity Circle with 25 nonprofit organizations. But in keeping with its original ethos, two-day general admission tickets started at $149 to keep the festival accessible, and, in old Warped style, set times for the lineups of more than 90 bands were not announced ahead of time. In Long Beach, gates opened at 9 a.m., two hours earlier than planned, to accommodate the mass of fans who had arrived early. By 11 a.m., more than 30,000 attendees were inside, providing uncharacteristically large audiences for early acts.
“There’s a whole new energy of bands out there that Warped can be a part of the puzzle of their development,” Lyman says, pointing to standout performances from rising artists on 2025’s lineup like LØLØ, Honey Revenge and Magnolia Park. “I did not want to create a legacy show. I didn’t want to create nostalgia. You’re, of course, going to have that. You’re going to tap into your history. But for me, I was looking forward to the future of bands and community.”
Crowd at Warped Tour on July 26, 2025 in Long Beach, California.
Quinn Tucker for Vans Warped Tour
Over the 30 years of Warped, Lyman has seen bands grow from opening acts to headliners — bands that the festival booked early in their careers include My Chemical Romance, No Doubt, Paramore and Panic! at the Disco — and he has witnessed kids transition from waiting hours at the gates to producing the tours themselves. The tour has also been a critical mechanism for educating a generation (or two) of young people about punk music and culture. “You become a very large classroom. That’s what we used to do across the country,” he says. “We’re never going to go across the country with 35 shows again. Physically, I couldn’t do it, and physically, I would insist on being there. I’d have a shallow grave somewhere in a parking lot in America at this point, but we’ll keep doing what we can.”
Lyman’s grateful to have built a career on bringing people together over great music. (He even did his own autograph signings at the most recent Warped dates.) And as the 64-year-old steward of the event ages, he tries to instill one motto in the youth he encounters: “You can do good business and do good with your business.”
This story appears in the Oct. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
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As tens of thousands of fans arrived at Toronto’s Rogers Stadium on Aug. 24, their bucket hats — worn in homage to the night’s headliner, Oasis — protected them from the sun that hung above in the azure sky. The atmosphere at this, the band’s first North American show of its zeitgeist-shaking reunion tour, was convivial, communal, basically euphoric.
But inside the venue, Arthur Fogel sat in front of a weather radar and watched as a storm approached. The meteorologists gathered around him offered guidance: “It’s moving at this speed. It has lightning in it. If it gets this close to the stadium, everyone inside has to go.”
“So you’re sitting there and you’re stressing,” Fogel says. “Like, ‘Aw, f–k. They’re saying it’s going to come right over the top of the place.’ ”
Navigating dilemmas — at times as uncontrollable as the weather — has been part of Fogel’s repertoire for roughly four decades, as he has helped guide some of the biggest musical superstars in history through major, and majorly lucrative, world tours.
Arthur Fogel will be recognized as Touring Executive of the Year at Billboard‘s Live Music Summit, held Nov. 3 in Los Angeles. For tickets and more information, click here.
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On a September afternoon in his sprawling corner office at the Live Nation headquarters in Beverly Hills, his success is tangible. There’s a yet-to-be-hung plaque celebrating Beyoncé’s six sold-out shows at the United Kingdom’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, a June run that earned $61.6 million and sold 275,000 tickets, according to Billboard Boxscore. There are plaques for similarly massive achievements by Coldplay, U2, Madonna. An image of David Bowie commanding a stage during his 1990 Sound+Vision Tour hangs over the room’s sitting area, where Fogel sinks into the couch in his office attire of black cargo pants and a black hoodie.
As Live Nation’s chairman of global music/president of global touring, Fogel has helped these and other greats tour the world in a global market he has seen quadruple in size during his decades in the business. This year, Oasis, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé worked with Fogel to put on, respectively, the aforementioned reunion tour, the opera-themed Mayhem Ball and the country-centric Cowboy Carter spectacular — runs that collectively tallied 160 shows in 19 countries. Coldplay just performed 10 shows at Wembley Stadium, the longest consecutive run ever by an act at the venue, while 1.6 million people gathered on the beach in Rio de Janeiro to see Madonna play a free show in May 2024, a site Lady Gaga drew 2.5 million fans to a year later.
Successfully executing such epic concert endeavors has earned Fogel the trust of icons, a place in the Canadian Music History Hall of Fame and even his own documentary, 2013’s Who the F**k Is Arthur Fogel?, in which his client and friend Bono helps answer the titular question by explaining that artists like Fogel because “he’s calm.” It’s the kind of even temper that, for example, might help one navigate something like a freak thunderstorm hurtling toward a stadium full of rock fans.
“Even though inside I might be tied in knots, I think part of how you lead is to stay calm,” Fogel says. “Being calm is part of what people look to you for in tough situations.”
Today in his office, Fogel is soft-spoken but talkative, and one gets a sense of the steady presence that has helped him develop professional relationships that also transcend business, a goal since his early days in the Toronto rock scene. “The live business is very transactional, but in those early years as a musician and then working with artists as a tour manager, I knew I was looking for a different sort of relationship,” he says.
He instead sought “the anti-transactional. It was like, ‘How do I develop long-term relationships where I’m providing a service and an understanding, and I’m able to converse with artists about different aspects of their career, and certainly about touring, on a global basis?’ That became my fixation because it was, and to some degree still is, the great differentiator in my career — that global perspective.”
Arthur Fogel
Joel Barhamand
To go global, however, one must still start local. Born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Fogel relocated to Toronto as a young adult and began playing drums in various bands before realizing, he says with a chuckle, “that if I wanted to get to a certain place in life, it wasn’t going to be as a musician.” He became the night manager of Toronto club The Edge, then started tour-managing a band that played there, Martha and the Muffins. Fogel was then hired at Concert Productions International by Michael Cohl, the touring impresario and eventual chairman of Live Nation. He was named president of the concert division of Cohl’s Toronto-based company in 1986.
“Michael Cohl had the same view on global business,” says Fogel, who worked with Cohl to book The Rolling Stones’ 1989 Steel Wheels tour, a gargantuan 115-show, 19-country run “that really helped develop my understanding and expertise of putting together a major tour on a broad basis.” Bowie’s 1990 Sound+Vision Tour followed as Fogel settled into a long tenure at CPI. As the live sector consolidated in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Fogel and Cohl’s subsequent company, The Next Adventure, was acquired by SFX, where Fogel stayed as it merged with Clear Channel Entertainment and that company eventually spun off its concerts division as Live Nation in 2005. Fogel, who started working with U2 in 1997, Madonna in 2001 and Sting in 2004, became Live Nation’s president of global touring in 2005. Beyoncé became a client in 2012; she and the rest of these icons — apart from Bowie, who stopped touring in 2004 and died in 2016 — remain Fogel’s clients to this day.
“Arthur has always been a visionary, and we value his expertise in touring,” U2’s The Edge says. “Over many years working with him, we have come to depend on his great counsel. Our tours would not have been the same without him. Beyond that, he’s a fantastic person and he has become a dear friend as well.”
When Fogel started out, he says there were roughly 20 countries artists could tour. Now “there’s probably 70 or 80. Over the last 20 years, globalization has expanded pretty much everywhere, except maybe the heart of Africa.” This quadrupling of the market is “probably the most significant shift in the last 20 years… Artists are able to touch their fans everywhere in the world and generate an income everywhere in the world.” The success of Bad Bunny, he adds, demonstrates how touring has not only opened geographically, but genrewise. “I find that particularly gratifying,” Fogel says.
Certainly, the kind of shows he tends to put on — Beyoncé flying through the air on a mechanical horse, Gaga in a chessboard dance-off with her past self, U2 playing under the cosmic glow of Las Vegas’ Sphere when it performed the venue’s opening residency in 2023 — help foster this global fascination. While putting a band onstage with a few lights “can and certainly does” work, Fogel says, “I like big; I like wow; I like the spectacle.”
He has had no shortage of wow this year. Gaga’s tour behind her new album, MAYHEM, started in April at Coachella, where Fogel was in the audience for the show’s stunning debut. (While he “sort of had a sense of what was coming together, you never really know until you see and hear it, and it was awesome.”) Fogel and Gaga, who’ve worked together since the early days of her career, debated putting the Mayhem Ball in arenas versus stadiums, ultimately deciding that its 87 dates would primarily be held in arenas.
“The last tour, for [2020’s] Chromatica, was in stadiums, and my feeling was that she should go back into arenas for multiple nights everywhere to reconnect with her fans in a different way,” Fogel says. “This show is unbelievable in arenas; it’s so powerful and so well done. She’s an amazing talent, really is.”
“Arthur has been by my side through some of the most defining moments of my touring career,” Gaga says. “His vision, dedication and heart for the live experience have inspired me endlessly. I wouldn’t be the artist I am today without his partnership.”
Arthur Fogel
Joel Barhamand
Meanwhile, Oasis and its team “were quite convinced that stadiums were the way to go” for the band’s first tour in 16 years, Fogel says. “I don’t think there was ever any doubt, certainly in the U.K., about their strength and their ability to sell out stadiums… My gut said it was going to work, but I think everybody was a bit surprised at how big it was.” He notes that the most significant challenge in bringing the reunion to market was simply keeping it a secret for six months before it was announced.
“You’d wake up every day going, ‘Oh, f–k. Did somebody spill the beans?’ Because it was very important to them that it not enter the rumor mill in a serious way.”
Fogel and Beyoncé, meanwhile, decided on a residency structure for Cowboy Carter, where she played multiple nights in nine cities across the United States and Europe. Fogel says he and his clients make such decisions based on how much time a given artist wants to tour and how much of the world they want to reach. “Doing multiple shows in less cities is a model that’s more prevalent now than ever,” he says, “but the flip side is that if you don’t go wide and touch your fans, eventually they kind of move on. You have to find that balance… I don’t think the residency model serves the long-term strategy very well.”
While these particular superstars can reliably play stadiums whenever they want, Fogel says a major development in the business is how stadium dates have opened to artists in earlier stages of their career. In previous eras, “playing stadiums was very rarefied air,” he says. “In the last few years, the volume of stadium shows has continued to increase dramatically, and I don’t see it really slowing down.”
He attributes this development to the sense of community people feel when they’re part of such a major event and to acts being “bigger than ever. The noise about artists and their music [and the culture around it] is so overpowering and motivating to people to want to be a part of it. It’s pretty extraordinary.”
As 2025 draws to a close, Fogel reports that from where he’s sitting — which is, in this moment, still the couch, although he later relocates to his standing desk — “the business is in a great place.”
Still, when your clients are simultaneously putting on several of the world’s biggest tours, things can, and do, get thorny. “There was a period during the summer where Beyoncé was rolling, Oasis started, Gaga was out there, Sting was out there,” Fogel says. “There was a lot of bouncing around, and it was a tough year just physically and mentally with travel. But the flip side is that that’s a one-percenter problem, so you can’t get too dramatic about it.”
This is the even keel that artists love about Fogel, who ultimately watched the Toronto thunderstorm veer south of the stadium, taking the lightning with it and leaving some 39,000 fans joyfully singing “Don’t Look Back in Anger” in a downpour.
“Stuff like that happens. I can give you a million stories where it’s like, ‘What the f–k? How is that happening?’ But it’s part of the game, part of what we do.”
Fogel’s trick is not just staying calm during challenges, but sometimes even enjoying them. “The rain,” he says, “actually added to the vibe of the show.”
This story appears in the Oct. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
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After touring for 30 years, LeAnn Rimes has learned a thing or two about maintaining her sanity on the road.
“Don’t ever fly day of show. You can’t do that anymore,” she cautions. “Even if you’re flying from Los Angeles to Oakland [Calif.], make sure you pack your outfit in your carry-on because your bag still may get f–king lost. And never do more than three shows in a row.”
Rimes has been famous ever since an impossibly big voice came out of a wee girl when she appeared on Star Search in 1991, becoming a one-week champion at the age of 8. Five years later, she sounded preternaturally mature when Curb Records released her first single, “Blue,” which garnered comparisons to Patsy Cline.
More than three decades into her career, the multiple Grammy winner, now 43, finds touring a richer experience than ever before, which has earned her the Unstoppable Award, to be presented at the Billboard Live Music Summit in Los Angeles on Nov. 3. “I love performing now more than I probably ever have because I feel like it’s on my terms,” she says. “I create this show that I want to perform, and I invite people into this space.”
LeAnn Rimes will be honored with the Unstoppable Award at Billboard‘s Live Music Summit, held Nov. 3 in Los Angeles. For tickets and more information, click here.
That’s a far cry from the early days when she moved at a much swifter pace, playing more than 500 shows over three-and-a-half years from ages 13 to 16. “No one really knew how long this was going to last,” she recalls. “And it was that frame of mind of, ‘Get it while you can.’ Then when we were done, people were like, ‘This may actually last and we just killed her!’ ”
For decades she continued touring at a less punishing rate but never took off more than six months out of the year. “It wasn’t until COVID till I ever sat my ass in one place for that long,” Rimes says, adding that the pandemic renewed her appreciation for performing. “These last several years, I’ve really thought long and hard about what I want to be putting out in the world, and it’s important to me to hopefully bring [the audience] some joy when people come to the shows.”
For Rimes, who now aims to play around 60 shows a year, touring remains “a huge part of my income. God knows the music business sucks. This is how we make money as artists.” Along the way, the live veteran has adapted to modern touring — namely, the advent of social media. “It’s just wild to see how much it’s changed,” says Rimes, who now looks out at a sea of cellphones rather than people’s faces every night. “It could easily control you. I don’t think about it too much anymore. I try to just allow it to be what it is because it’s its own beast.”
But as she experienced this summer, she can’t control everything onstage. During a show in Bow, Wash., in June, her front dental bridge fell out as she was singing “One Way Ticket.” She ran offstage, adjusted it and rejoined her band. The moment was, of course, captured on video and went viral. Months later, she calls the incident “pretty f–king funny,” laughing as she relives it. “I realized at that moment I could either quit — I’m four songs in — which I thought I was going to have to unless I was able to hold [the bridge] in. But luckily, I was able to. I’ve pretty much had everything happen to me onstage that could possibly happen, and that was probably one of the most precarious situations I’ve ever been in. I was very proud of myself that I handled it like a pro.”
After that incident and countless others, including tripping over sound monitors and even falling into the pit years ago, she has grown unflappable — and her shows remain potent. “LeAnn’s remarkable voice, her deep artistry and her connection with an audience have all continued to strengthen and grow throughout her 30-year career,” says Seth Malasky, her primary agent and senior vp at Wasserman, which books her in North America. “Her shows feel timeless yet brand-new. She’s earned her reputation as an authentic and captivating performer.”
Still, Rimes has diversified her creative output. Over the past two years, other projects have limited her to about 30 performances annually; in 2024, she was a coach on The Voice Australia and The Voice UK, and this year, she’s shooting ABC’s 9-1-1: Nashville, in which she plays the villainous, jaded backup singer Dixie.
“It’s been insane,” she says of trying to schedule live dates around her often shifting filming schedule. She was initially wary of signing on to the Ryan Murphy-created fire department procedural after watching her husband, actor Eddie Cibrian, deal with the vagaries of shooting an episodic TV series: “I have seen him go through not getting scripts until 24 hours before they’re shooting. I won’t say it’s been easy — I think at one time we were juggling seven episodes [between us] — but I think we’re getting to a point now where we’re starting to kind of get a little bit more in a groove.”
Looking ahead, next year marks the 30th anniversary of Rimes’ album Blue, which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart in 1996 — and celebratory plans include a potential tour. “It is in the works,” Rimes says. “I know everybody’s so into nostalgia right now, which I’m loving. It’s really funny to revisit that record because I was so little. There’s about seven songs on it that I still really love that I would play.” Among all her hits, including “How Do I Live” and “Can’t Fight the Moonlight,” she says she never tires of singing the album’s title track. “There are just songs that melodically, lyrically, they’re never going to go out of style,” she says. “ ‘Blue’ is probably the one that will forever just be a classic.”
As she plots that potential Blue tour and other future outings, she’s confident — and can find humor in the unexpected. “Pretty much nothing embarrasses me onstage,” she says. “I don’t even know if my pants falling down would embarrass me. I’d be like, ‘Whatevs… you guys got more than you paid for today.’ ”
This story appears in the Oct. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Trending on Billboard It was supposed to be a North American arena tour. When Shakira first announced her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran outing in April 2024, the route took her to arenas across the continent that fall. But within months, it morphed into something else. Buoyed by the sustained success of her album of […]
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“I work for every bit of applause I get,” Usher told Billboard on the eve of his first Las Vegas residency in 2021. “I try my hardest to give people an incredible experience.”
That philosophy has propelled Usher’s 28-year touring career, which has taken him to arenas, residencies and the world’s largest stage: the Super Bowl. As a 19-year-old wunderkind in the late ’90s, he scored his first opening gigs for Mary J. Blige, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Janet Jackson. Fast forward to this year, when the 47-year-old superstar completed his most recent arena tour, Usher: Past Present Future.
The eight-time Grammy winner’s latest outing was the highest-grossing and best-selling tour of his career, according to Billboard Boxscore, grossing $183.9 million and selling 1.1 million tickets over 80 shows. All told, Usher has a reported career gross of $422.6 million from 3.3 million tickets over 334 shows. That’s a whole lot of singing and dancing — both of which are an innate part of Usher’s DNA.
Usher will appear in conversation during Billboard‘s Live Music Summit, held Nov. 3 in Los Angeles. For tickets and more information, click here.
Drawing comparisons to Michael Jackson while honing lithe dancing skills and his supple tenor, Usher graduated from opener to solo headliner in 2002 with his 8701 Evolution Tour in support of his third studio album, 8701. Two years later, The Truth Tour, in support of his smash-hit album Confessions, became one of the period’s highest-grossing outings, with $31.4 million earned. Usher more than doubled that return with the 2010-11 OMG World Tour, which grossed $75 million; the trek landed in seventh place on Billboard’s Top Tours chart in 2011.
But it was a post-pandemic foray into Las Vegas’ residency scene — suggested by manager Ron Laffitte well after Usher’s last tour in 2014 — that reintroduced and reinvigorated the R&B star’s musical legacy this decade. The first residency, Usher: The Las Vegas Residency, at Caesars Palace, did $18.8 million and sold 84,000 tickets over 20 shows (2021-22). The second, My Way: The Vegas Residency, staged at the Dolby Live theater at Park MGM, garnered $95.9 million and sold 394,000 tickets over 80 shows (2022-23). Those successes sparked a chain reaction that culminated in Usher’s critically acclaimed Super Bowl LVIII halftime performance and Past Present Future.
Usher performs during the Apple Music Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show at Allegiant Stadium on Feb. 11, 2024 in Las Vegas.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
Usher performs at the grand opening of Usher’s My Way: The Vegas Residency at Dolby Live at Park MGM on July 15, 2022 in Las Vegas.
Denise Truscello/Getty Images
Usher’s singular status as a dynamic performer has led to his recognition as Billboard’s 2025 Legend of Live. For him, however, it’s the connection with his audience that counts most — and fuels his ongoing passion for performing.
“When it all comes together — the song, the connecting message to the audience, the dance — it almost feels like classical music,” Usher said ahead of his Super Bowl performance last year. “I just want to love what I do, make what I love, allow people to come to my space and see what I have to offer.”
This story appears in the Oct. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
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“I hope you feel so proud, and I’m sure you might feel a little scared, too,” said Maggie Rogers as she gave a wisdom-filled commencement address in May at Radio City Music Hall to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts class of 2025 — the school from which Rogers graduated in 2016.
“A lot of speakers might tell you that they remember how you feel,” Rogers added. “But I was sitting where you were sitting just nine years ago, so when I tell you that, I promise that I mean it.”
Nine years ago, Rogers also appeared in Billboard for the first time, on the opening page of the 2016 Top Music Business Schools list. She was shown in a photograph with Pharrell Williams, whose astounded reaction to her self-released track “Alaska” went viral on YouTube and ignited her career straight out of the Tisch School’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.
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For more than a decade, Billboard has been spotlighting schools that are educating the next generation of music industry leaders, as well as the artists and producers who recognize the importance of the business skills that these schools teach.
Billboard chooses its top music business schools based on industry recommendations, alum information provided by honorees from our multiple power lists, years of reporting on educational options and information requested from the schools themselves. We invite selected schools to tell us what makes their program unique, to boast about accomplished alums and to describe specific courses, events and speakers. (This year, the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts claims the coolest campus visit, as LIPA founder Paul McCartney hosted Bruce Springsteen, who took part in an hourlong Q&A session with students in June.)
The schools here are not ranked; they are listed alphabetically. “Rankings have created an unhealthy obsession with selectivity,” former U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a 2023 speech. Despite moves to downsize the U.S. Department of Education, that federal agency still hosts a free, online college scorecard that provides quantitative information to complement the qualitative profiles on our list, including specific data on college costs, graduation rates, employment and student debt.
Acknowledging college costs and debt, Billboard has opted to emphasize more affordable public colleges and universities, which now make up one-third of this list. We also continue to recognize historically Black colleges and universities such as Howard University and Tennessee State University and to add schools from outside the music industry’s capitals, such as the newly included University of Georgia in Athens.
What Rogers said she would have told her younger self upon graduating nine years ago certainly also applies to those now searching for schools to start their music careers — on or off the stage.
“I’d remind her that two artistic careers will never be the same and that numbers do not matter — what matters is how you make people feel,” Rogers said. “I’d tell her that the people you do this with — and how you define what it means to live a beautiful life — matter more than anything. The world is waiting for you and all of the beautiful things you will create.”
Abbey Road InstituteLondon
The Abbey Road Institute offers its students an intensive music production and sound engineering diploma, which, as closely as possible, replicates the experience of working in the music and audio industry. The school prepares graduates to build their careers as professionals in music and pro audio. Its core program is the Advanced Diploma in Music Production and Sound Engineering, which includes an in-depth music business module that covers management, A&R, marketing, synch, licensing and much more. The new Dolby Atmos Mixing for Music course is taught by Grammy Award-winning engineer James Auwarter. More than 90% of graduates are in music- and audio-related work within six months of graduation. The institute now has affiliated programs worldwide and is on track to open campuses in Mumbai, India, and Los Angeles.
Alum: Producer-engineer-mixer Gil Portal at RAK Studios, whose credits include work with Disclosure, Coldplay, Shaznay Lewis, J Balvin, Usher and DJ Khaled.
American UniversityWashington, D.C.
Housed within American University’s Kogod School of Business, the Business and Entertainment Program offers a core business background while students specialize in the entertainment industry with classes primarily taught by industry veterans. Kogod added a focus on artificial intelligence to every class this year, and many speakers at the fourth annual Artist Rights Symposium — including SAG-AFTRA general counsel Jeff Bennett — addressed topics surrounding AI and name, image and likeness rights. Each year, students head to New York and Los Angeles to visit business management firms, agencies and other entertainment companies. On campus, recent speakers include Lionsgate chairman/chief creative officer Kevin Beggs, Academy Award winner David Dinerstein and Kogod alums working at Live Nation, United Entertainment Group Worldwide, CAA and the three major music groups. Recent graduate placements include eight students hired at business management firm FBMM and 12 students hired at major agencies.
Faculty: New program director Linda Bloss-Baum also teaches a class where students attend SXSW and the National Independent Venue Association conference and help promote a showcase.
Auburn UniversityAuburn, Ala.
Auburn’s Department of Music established a music business minor in 2023, and the late-2024 completion of a state-of-the-art recording studio located within the Music Studies complex is the latest enhancement to the Music Studies Program, which offers courses taught by instructors with real-world experience. Students are introduced to all aspects of the music business, from labels and publishers to touring and concert promotion, with an emphasis on a global/entrepreneurial perspective. Speakers including Universal Music Publishing Nashville CEO Troy Tomlinson and former Warner Music Nashville A&R executive vp Scott Hendricks keep the conversation fresh. While the Music Business Program is relatively new, Auburn University grads include Apple CEO Tim Cook and executives working at companies such as WME, Sony, The Trenches Collective, Sun Records and Sweet Talk Publicity.
Course: Record Company Procedures gives students the experience of working for a record company by forming a label, working with an artist from a designated artist pool and creating a marketing, sales and media plan all while staying within a designated budget.
Baldwin Wallace UniversityBerea, Ohio
Located just 15 minutes from Downtown Cleveland, Baldwin Wallace offers a bachelor of arts in music industry and, in 2021, was invited to become an educational affiliate of the Grammy Museum. Last fall, music industry students had the opportunity to attend the Disney+ live production of the induction ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; in the spring, they traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with staff from NPR’s Tiny Desk, Live Nation and the RIAA. On campus, students this year were visited by NPR senior podcast operations specialist Darius Cook and Music Asset Management founder and CEO Mary Jo Mennella, and students also benefit from internship experiences with local partners including Blossom Music Center and Beachland Ballroom & Tavern.
Course: Music Licensing and Placement, taught by music supervisor Joe O’Riordan, delves into practical elements of song placement for film, TV and commercials. O’Riordan has placed songs for projects such as MTV’s Ridiculousness and Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules.
Belmont University (Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business)Nashville
Belmont’s Curb College this year is opening a 17,000-square-foot facility on Music Row to house songwriting rooms, listening spaces, live-sound classrooms and student lounges. The college offers internships, unique projects and A-list guest speakers. Case in point: Ed Sheeran spoke to a songwriting class in the spring, sharing new songs, critiquing student work and participating in a Q&A. And Kelsea Ballerini dropped in with producer Alysa Vanderheym, A&R lead Kelly Bolton and the songwriters she collaborated with on her album Patterns. Curb’s program is enhanced by semester-long trips to New York and L.A. and leads to a bachelor of business administration. Alums include Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Ashley Gorley and Hillary Lindsey, and John Zarling, co-founder of Results Global, whose clients include Dolly Parton, Megadeth and Trisha Yearwood.
Course: Through a partnership with Dolly Parton; her management company, CTK Enterprises; and the team behind Dolly: A True Original Musical, Belmont this spring launched Dolly U, comprising four courses including Dolly Parton: Icon & Influence, which featured lectures and interviews with members of Parton’s team and even a surprise conversation with Lainey Wilson.
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On a late-spring night, Downtown Miami was a place out of time. Thousands of people gathered dressed to the nines, the women rocking sequined gowns and kitten heels, the men wearing tailored suits and polished dress shoes. Their attire fused Puerto Rican culture and Mafia fantasy and seemed beamed in from decades ago — but the crowd entering Miami’s Kaseya Center on this warm evening wasn’t there for an act of yesteryear, but rather one of the hottest arena artists on the planet.
“It was a whole vibe,” Rauw Alejandro says over Zoom months later, now off the road and back home in Puerto Rico. “It felt like we went back to the past and you can feel that energy. It’s not mandatory, but if you dress up, you’ll have more fun because you’re immersed in the story. You’re literally traveling to that time and age.”
Like many arena and stadium stars today, the 32-year-old reggaetón star encouraged audiences to follow a special dress code for his show. His Cosa Nuestra tour this year channeled the elegance and glamour of a certain 1970s New York, along with the Cosa Nostra that ruled it. For the shows, he constructed an alter ego: Don Raúl, a suave Nuyorican hipster living in the Big Apple.
“I lived in New Jersey at an uncle’s house after Hurricane Maria [in 2017],” says the artist born Raúl Alejandro Ocasio Ruiz, who considers New York his second home and whose father was born in Brooklyn. “I went there to work for a year and took the train to the city to continue to do my music. I’m in Puerto Rico most of the time, but for work, my base is New York. So I moved back there three years ago when I was looking for inspiration for this new chapter. I was immersed in the culture… all the Broadway shows, jazz clubs, speakeasies, and I worked with that aesthetic for my new project.”
Rauw Alejandro will appear in conversation during Billboard‘s Live Music Summit, held Nov. 3 in Los Angeles. For tickets and more information, click here.
With Cosa Nuestra, Rauw created a world for his fans to soak themselves in — one far from a typical reggaetón concert. The Broadway-inspired, four-act show featured sophisticated costumes, a six-piece live band and eight dancer-actors, all part of a storyline driven by Rauw’s biggest hits.
The show follows Rauw’s Don Raúl as the young immigrant tries to make it in the big city — and along the way falls in love, experiences betrayal and even gets arrested. “What makes my tour unique is the smoothness of the storytelling and how it connects with my songs from the beginning to the end,” Rauw says. “I think I’m setting the bar very high.”
The ambitious concept has yielded returns that would please Don Raúl. Across spring and summer legs in North America and Europe, respectively, the Live Nation-produced tour grossed $91.7 million and sold 562,000 tickets, according to Billboard Boxscore, making Rauw’s fifth tour the most lucrative of his career. He just returned to the road for dates in South America and Mexico and will wrap the tour with a five-date residency at San Juan’s Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot — his second multidate run at the venue this year — in November.
With its achievements, the trek, in support of Rauw’s fifth studio album, 2024’s Cosa Nuestra, has mirrored his chart success. The album and tour take their name and inspiration from another Cosa Nuestra, the genre-defining 1969 salsa album by Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe, two influential salsa figures who revolutionized the golden era of big-band artistry and popularized the genre in the ’60s and ’70s with the culture-shifting Fania label. For the set, Rauw fused his signature perreo, electro-funk and R&B with bomba, salsa and bachata for a sound entirely his own.
Alejandro backstage at Kaseya Center on May 30 in Miami.
Marco Perretta
Audiences responded: Upon its November release, Cosa Nuestra debuted at No. 1 on Top Latin Albums and Top Latin Rhythm Albums and at No. 6 on the Billboard 200, marking his highest-charting set, and first top 10, among five career entries. In late September, Rauw unleashed another album, the “prequel” Cosa Nuestra: Capítulo 0, which debuted at No. 3 on both Top Latin Albums and Top Latin Rhythm Albums.
“The meaning of Cosa Nuestra is so big that I have to release 20 albums to explain its concept. There’s no time to do that in just one album,” Rauw says with a laugh. “I’m going to continue to bring my roots to the world. Nowadays, I feel so connected with my people and am very proud of where I come from. I don’t have to look outside when I have everything here.” This is how Rauw’s globe-trotting tour came together.
‘I Want To Work With the Best Teams in the Industry’
Rauw’s 2023 Saturno tour grossed $50.2 million but had its entire Latin American leg canceled due to technical and logistical problems. Duars Entertainment, the company led by Rauw’s then-manager, Eric Duars, produced the tour through its Duars Live division, and afterward, Rauw and Duars parted ways. Rauw’s new team, led by the trifecta of co-manager Jorge “Pepo” Ferradas (who has managed Latin stars including Shakira) and longtime Rauw associates Matías Solaris and José “Che” Juan Torres, is now helping him streamline his operation.
Rauw Alejandro: For me, it was very frustrating not completing the Saturno tour. I’m not going to lie: There were months that I would cry in my shower, in my bed, f–king frustrated because I put so much effort in what I do. I took my time. I trained a lot. There were many things that were out of my control. My old team was a mess and disorganized. I consider myself one of the best artists right now, so I want to work with the best teams in the industry.
Jorge “Pepo” Ferradas, co-manager: I received a call from one of Rauw’s lawyers and [his] business adviser, “Che” Juan, and he told me that Rauw was creating a company where he would, in a sense, be the director. I met Matías [Solaris], Rauw’s personal manager, and we created this trilogy management format. We are three different people who have been able to tackle all areas of the business, slightly breaking the norm of having a single manager.
Rauw: After having the same management for seven, eight years, for me, it was a huge change in dynamic in my work and it was challenging. I was kind of scared because there were things I didn’t know how to do. But now, it feels nice to have a team who believes in you and in your project. They’re not afraid to lose anything; they just want an artist that can create and bring new things to the table.
Alejandro (left) with his stage manager Orlando backstage at Kaseya Center.
Marco Perretta
Alejandro (center) with family and friends backstage at Kaseya Center. From left: friend Francis Diaz, uncle Rodny, mom Maria Nelly, and assistant Jose Rosa.
Marco Perretta
Ferradas: Rauw was determined to grow in every area. He knew he was facing the challenge of making perhaps the most important album of his career to date, and we understood that to present it live, we had to put on the best possible production that would reflect the artist’s growth. We had to find strategic partners, in this case Live Nation and UTA [where Rauw signed in 2024], who knew how to think, dream and execute on a grand scale.
Rauw: You either get stuck or you evolve. Now I’m doing the music that I want with the people that I want and I feel really happy. This has been the best year of my career.
‘He Wanted Them To Be Classy With Suits and Ties’
When Rauw headlined New York’s Governors Ball festival in 2024, he introduced his new alter ego by wearing a pinstripe suit reminiscent of a ’70s Nuyorican hipster. But Don Raúl had been in the works well before that — and Rauw would have to wait a little longer to bring him to the masses.
Ferradas: Planning and timing are key to making things happen. Often, the public doesn’t see or isn’t aware of how much time a project like this takes.
Felix “Fefe” Burgos, choreographer: Rauw and I always have conversations, and when he first proposed this entire [Cosa Nuestra] concept to me, I thought, “Oh, damn!” He’ll be working on an album, and we’ll start talking about the next one. As we’re working on one tour, we’re already working on another one. We knew from a long, long, long time ago that he was going to release an album that was going to be very band-incorporated. When he was doing [2022 album] Saturno, he was already talking about Cosa Nuestra.
Adrian Martinez, creator and show director/co-founder of creative agency STURDY: A year before the [Cosa Nuestra] tour started, Q1 of 2024, I went to New York to meet with Rauw and start talking about what Cosa Nuestra was going to be. He played me [lead single] “Touching the Sky” for the first time and told me that was going to be the vibe. We walked around the city that same night for about two hours, went to different parts, took photos of buildings and talked about architecture. We went to eat, went to a bar and talked about what we wanted to do. These were all super-early ideas, but we had a year to develop [them]. It gave us an ample amount of time to really home in on the details.
Rauw: It was difficult to create this tour. I like to wait for people to listen to the album and see how they respond before I create the show rundown — which songs am I going to take out of my old catalog? Which are the new songs I’m going to add? It’s a whole lot of thinking to make it smooth and nice, and that takes time. It all started after my performance at Gov Ball in June.
Alejandro performs at Viejas Arena on April 30 in San Diego.
Marco Perretta
José “Sapo” González, musical director: Right before Saturno came out, Rauw was already saying he eventually was going to need a full band but that he wanted them to be classy with suits and ties. This all became reality for his performance on the Today show in [2024] and he never looked back.
Ferradas: Last year, the strategy was to do festivals and TV specials, always knowing that the tour would be scheduled for 2025. He [played] several [festivals], including Sueños in Chicago, Global Citizen in New York and [played] the MTV Video Music Awards for the first time.
Mike G, partner/agent, UTA: His team invited us to a one-week camp to share ideas and strategies, so they really let us form part of his overall business, which I think gave us an advantage as agents. The more we know about a project, we can plan a lot better.
Rauw: As an artist, what helps me a lot is to plan my work two to three years ahead. I don’t like to repeat myself in projects. I like to do different music, and having a map and being organized helps me go through it. I get a lot of inspiration and I’m always taking notes. Yes, I’m in this chapter right now, but I’m already planning my next one. I think that helps me [remain] innovative and versatile in this industry.
‘It’s a Broadway Show in an Arena’
Rauw knew he wanted a special live treatment for the world he had created on Cosa Nuestra. But translating the album to the stage — and with the elaborate, Broadway-caliber production he wanted — was tough.
Martinez: We knew it was going to be all New York. It was inevitable. Immediately, we thought of the things that were important to New York and how these stories were told. Personally, I thought of West Side Story. How do we take inspiration from that to give an ode to what’s come before? Rauw and I even went to see The Great Gatsby together [on Broadway]. Then we sat together for two straight days to write the script and [develop] what the narrative was going to be. We had a blank page up on his TV, and we went through all the acts.
Mike G: His tour is a movie, very cinematic. I think he set the bar very high. It’s about cultural ownership, authenticity, about pride. The production feels very personal. You follow the storyline, you get invested in it, and that’s hard to do during a concert. He’s telling a story while playing some of his best records.
Rauw: Cosa Nuestra is not a stadium show. It’s a Broadway show in an arena. I would even say it’s the biggest Broadway show. In a stadium, you [wouldn’t] be able to see all the details because it’s too big. We planned this show for arenas.
Alejandro performs at Toyota Center on April 17 in Denver.
Marco Perretta
Alejandro performs at United Center on May 9 in Chicago.
Marco Perretta
Burgos: The part I felt was challenging was, “How do we make a concert into a Broadway play?” Because at the end of the day, this isn’t a Broadway play. This is a concert, but you want it to feel like a show.
Martinez: There were so many props, production elements that all had to work together so closely. We were down to milliseconds on transitions. The Saturno [tour] was also time-coded but [had] less going on and more just [relied] on him singing, dancing and interacting with the crowd. There weren’t really any theatrics [on that tour] compared to what we did in Cosa Nuestra.
Burgos: Everything in that show is choreographed. We needed the cues to be perfect because there was very little room for freedom in certain aspects. When we did the choreography for [the tours supporting 2020’s] Afrodisiaco and [2021’s] Vice Versa, yeah, you can floor-hump because that was the vibe, but for Cosa Nuestra, he wanted it to be classy. We wanted the choreography to be sensual but not vulgar.
Rauw: Throughout my entire career, I’ve been focusing on being one of the best performers in the world, and I focused a lot on dancing, but having a live band was my dream. It allowed me to explore different sounds while feeling more classic, more clean, more elegant.
González: The band unifies all of his catalog into this new universe. The best example is what we did with [Saturno’s] “No Me Sueltes,” which now passes through a bunch of musical genres and fits right into Cosa Nuestra. The band also adds versatility and energy and a vibe. It’s not a background band — everything is about enhancing Rauw and making that connection with the fans stronger.
Martinez: We were all feeling like we were taking a huge risk. This was never done in the genre. How were people going to react to the pace? When you break down the show, it’s so different from your typical concert. We said, “As long as we’re all on the same page about this, it could be great, or not” — but we believed in it.
Alejandro performs at Toyota Center on May 6 in Houston.
Marco Perretta
Alejandro performs at The O2 Arena on June 17 in London.
Marco Perretta
Sean Coutt, merchandise creative director/founder of fashion label Pas Une Marque: Cosa Nuestra is almost a personal story of Rauw and his upbringing in New York, so creatively, [the merchandise] had to tie in. Rauw approved every single design himself. That really shows that he’s very dedicated to his fans and that he cares about what we’re putting out. He really wants that to be an opportunity for fans to see that he’s not only creatively onstage but also 360.
Rauw: I make the final decisions on everything related to the tour: the music, the stage, the band, the dancers, the lighting, the props. I’m very involved with all the teams. I have a huge team who are the best, but I’m very picky and need to see everyone’s work.
Ferradas: Rauw represents this generation of artists who are superinformed, involved and very clear about what they want. He always fought to achieve what he wanted, and he corrected us every step of the way so things would come out as he envisioned it. It came naturally. He’s very involved in the artistic side of things.
‘He’s a Cultural Icon’
With a new team in tow that’s helping him reach an even larger global audience, Rauw is gearing up for his next career move — and a much-needed vacation.
Ferradas: We knew we wanted to start in the United States; it was key to be able to showcase the show there and hold 30 concerts, including [four dates in] Puerto Rico. We knew we had to go to Europe in the summer and continue in Latin America, where the most loyal fans are, and then come back and finish in Puerto Rico.
Mike G: In London he played at the O2 Arena for the first time, and Germany is always a unique market, but he did extremely well. We were never worried about any market. We were very confident, even about the ones he had never visited before. I know there’s going to be growth and opportunity moving forward in Asia. He held a festival there last year, so I think that’s going to be another great market for him.
Rauw: I would love to conquer Asia with my music; it’s one of my goals. I’ve been to Japan many times and performed there for the first time last year. It’s totally different performing for them. Japanese people are really organized. It’s not like us Latinos that are loud and crazy. Setting a new goal is what always keeps me going and gives me energy to continue working and craft my art.
Alejandro backstage on the opening night of the Cosa Nuestra tour at Climate Pledge Arena on April 5 in Seattle.
Marco Perretta
Hans Schafer, senior vp of global touring, Live Nation: When you talk about global benchmarks, Rauw’s position competes on the same level as top global pop acts, not just within Latin music. When we talk about his place in the industry and what this tour has accomplished, it’s as high up with any of the other global acts, regardless of genre.
Mike G: He’s a cultural icon and he’s growing outside of his core genre. The unique thing about Rauw — and what separated him from a lot of artists in certain key markets — is that he can do 50,000-plus tickets.
Schafer: When we look at some of the tours internationally that we’ve been doing, including Rauw’s European leg that we did in the summer, you see the diverse markets and that those fans are there. Those fans are crossing over, even more so than what we’ve seen in the past.
Mike G: When you think about Rauw, he is in the conversation. His work ethic, high energy; he’s physically dynamic, he’s got a strong stage presence. He has that crossover appeal; he has a loyal fan base. The demand is big, it’s major. If he wanted to do stadiums next year, he could do it, but he needs to take a vacation first. He needs to put his phone down, rest, and when he’s ready, we can plan accordingly. He has that luxury.
Rauw: I haven’t taken a break since I started touring this year. I began working on this tour after my birthday [Jan. 10] and continued working until today. My next vacation is going to be Christmas. After the holidays, I’m probably going to disappear for a while, but meanwhile, I’m already with a small notebook and taking notes for my next chapter.
This story appears in the Oct. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Like any good Swifties, Emily and Jamie Dryburgh keep finding connections between themselves and the biggest pop star in the world. As the twin sisters chat with Billboard over Zoom from their Nashville office, they rattle off a list of things they have in common with Taylor Swift: They are the same age, they’re enterprising professionals in the music industry, and their office in Nashville’s Midtown happens to be right across the street from Swift’s apartment.
That literal proximity to Swift is fitting, the 34-year-olds say, considering how she helped inspire them to pursue their careers. “The first time I heard a Taylor Swift song — as obvious and cliché as it is — I realized that she was not only writing her own songs but that she was a businesswoman,” Jamie recalls. “We were like, ‘There’s this girl out there who is our age, who feels like someone [we] would hang out with, and she’s doing it.’ It feels like she opened all these doors and all these opportunities for us.”
As the co-founders and co-CEOs of Young Music City, the leading Nashville media and lifestyle LLC focused on the LGBTQ+ community, the Dryburghs, much like Swift herself, also believe in doing work with a centralized purpose. What started as a music blog in 2016 has blossomed into a coterie of entertainment brands — including the RNBW Queer Music Collective, Country Proud and Girlcrush — advocating for greater representation of and visibility for LGBTQ+ members of Nashville’s music scene by promoting events and curating stages exclusively by and for queer people.
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The pair’s efforts have worked wonders for queer singer-songwriters like Adam Mac, who attended some of Young Music City’s earliest showcases as an aspiring country artist. “When I first moved here, the only visual I had of a path that a queer person could have in country music was Shane McAnally,” Mac says of the acclaimed songwriter. “I think Emily and Jamie really did lay the groundwork for feeding my confidence to say, ‘No, you can keep going.’ ”
Born and raised in the upstate New York city of Elmira, the Dryburgh sisters say they dreamed of moving out of the frigid Northeast to find their passion in the warmer Southern states. Applying to colleges in the South “behind our mom’s back,” they ended up moving to South Carolina to attend Coastal Carolina University in 2009. Once there, they started traveling all around the South, attending concerts and festivals across genres and falling even more in love with music.
Where other fans might try and meet the headliners before their festival sets, the Dryburghs instead chatted up tour managers and assistants, learning how the industry worked in the process. “We’d hang out with them and hear their stories, and they would be like, ‘Hey, you guys need to go be in the music industry,’ ” Emily recalls.
Jamie Dryburgh
Emily Dorio
The duo took their advice, moving to Nashville and transferring to Belmont University’s music business program in 2011. Upon graduating in 2013 — “on Taylor Swift’s birthday,” Jamie points out — they began working in as many different sectors of the industry as they could. Whether interning at small, independent record labels, directing A&R for boutique publishing houses or managing artists nominated by the Country Music Association (CMA) like Joshua Scott Jones, the Dryburghs sought to learn as much as possible through hands-on experience.
Along with that experience came some big personal realizations. Shortly after graduating from Belmont, Emily and Jamie both came out — and, in short order, noticed they identified with few others in the Nashville music scene.
Emily remembers a conversation with her boss at the now-closed publishing house Anchor Down Entertainment, where she worked as an intern shortly after graduating from Belmont. “I was like, ‘I have to tell you something and you might fire me, but I just need to let you know that I’m gay,’ ” she says. “[My boss] was super supportive and just started naming people: Shane McAnally, Brandy Clark, all these high-level people that were queer. We had no clue because there were no spaces for us.”
The longer the Dryburghs spent in Nashville, the more they saw how few opportunities queer artists had. So they took action. In 2016, the two transformed their old blog, Twin Love (“It’s so embarrassing,” Jamie says with a laugh, “it was the sh-ttiest blog”), into Young Music City, a fledgling media organization complete with a YouTube channel and Spotify playlist intended to give bubbling-under artists — many of whom identified as queer — a platform to share their music with a wider audience. “We had newsletters, we had filmed performances, we had all this stuff. We were just covering these bases before things like TikTok happened,” Emily says.
But the Dryburghs found their biggest success with the first subsidiary they launched from Young Music City, the RNBW Queer Music Collective. When they saw a friend perform at an open-mic event titled Big Gay Showcase, they were surprised by the sheer number of people who attended. So Emily and Jamie decided to try their hand at creating communal spaces for queer artists, scheduling monthly RNBW showcases at Tribe, a well-known Nashville gay bar.
“We’d pack the house, but there were only about 15 active, out artists who would come and perform,” Jamie says. After three years of staging their events, the pandemic hit. The sisters figured that their monthly showcase was over for good.
Emily Dryburgh
Emily Dorio
As they tell it, the opposite turned out to be true. During the course of the pandemic, as the Dryburghs scheduled livestreamed showcases for queer artists, they watched their online following grow as more talent started submitting themselves to be featured on the platform. The community that they had been seeking finally materialized. Once public-gathering restrictions were lifted in May 2021, the Dryburghs started booking weekly RNBW showcases at The Lipstick Lounge in Nashville’s East End with smashing success.
“Post-pandemic, a lot of people found themselves, came to Nashville, and there is now this huge world there that was not there before. We [are] easily booking six different artists for every show,” Emily says. “At this point, we’ve had almost 3,000 queer artists come through. It’s been amazing.”
Mac, who befriended the Dryburghs when he first moved to Nashville in 2012, says he has witnessed a shift in the city’s queer music scene — one he attributes, at least in part, to the work that the sisters put into creating a welcoming space. “Before RNBW, there was no place [in Nashville] for creative queers to come together and have a space to share,” he says. “It was so crucial for all of us.”
Having created their own community, the Dryburghs then set out to enlarge that space. As they built relationships around town with LGBTQ+ organizations like Nashville Pride and set up bigger stages for holding their events, they saw an opportunity. When the now-closed entertainment site Nash News approached them about putting on a country-focused concert in summer 2022, they realized that the proposed dates fell during the four days of CMA Fest. The festival was already announced and only two weeks away, but the Dryburghs took their shot, emailing their CMA and CMT contacts to see what was possible.
“We heard back from both of them within the day,” Jamie recalls. Soon, the Dryburghs were hopping on Zoom calls with executives from both organizations, pitching them on CMA Fest’s first Pride-themed stage. When asked whom they could feature there with such little lead time, they pointed to the now-vast catalog of artists they’d worked with through RNBW.
Within a few meetings, they had successfully created Country Proud, the first-ever queer-focused event at a U.S. country music festival. “The audience response was massive — a lot of people who didn’t know what [Country Proud] was still came through because we were able to bring in such great talent,” Emily says.
The show’s debut in 2022 was such a success that, in subsequent years, CMA Fest promoted Country Proud from a sponsored activation to its own main stages, bringing in artists like Brooke Eden, Angie K, Shelly Fairchild and Mac, who remembers going from local showcases to his first crowd of thousands thanks to Emily and Jamie’s advocacy. “They got me my first major stage at CMA Fest,” he says. “To see where all of this started to where it’s at now has been a privilege.”
Emily (left) and Jamie Dryburgh photographed on May 28, 2025 at The Fallyn in Nashville.
Emily Dorio
But 2025 marks the first year since the Dryburghs helped make history with Country Proud that CMA Fest won’t feature the event they created — a fact that they attribute, in part, to political pressures to reduce inclusive programming like Country Proud. “We anticipated it might be weird this year,” Emily says with a sigh.
But the sisters are taking this difficult news in stride. After all, they point out, Young Music City started with grassroots organizing. “When these partners can’t come in and when there’s things that are against their control, that’s where our work comes back in,” Emily says. “If no one else is going to do it, then it has to be us. We can put on a show with our eyes closed at this point, so when organizations back out, it’s important to say, ‘OK, we’re stepping in.’ ”
Jamie also says the music industry should take note of what has happened when major businesses have cut their diversity programs. As an example, she cites Target: After the retailer faced heavy criticism from right-wing activists over its 2023 Pride collection, the store rolled back many of its products supporting LGBTQ+ inclusivity for Pride Month 2024. Four days after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the company announced it was ending its diversity, equity and inclusion programs; in the following months, its foot traffic and sales plummeted.
“It’s a losing strategy,” Jamie says of anti-DEI efforts. “A large part of the population is somewhere in the queer community, and leaving them out doesn’t serve your business.” What might the music industry learn from these cautionary tales? “Think bigger than just today or tomorrow. Think about years down the road,” she suggests. “This is a much bigger conversation than just your bottom line.”
After growing Young Music City from a small online blog into one of the most active LGBTQ+ music organizations in Nashville, the Dryburghs are now looking at how to take their talents national. Emily lists just a few of their long-term goals, like opening an inclusive venue in Nashville or organizing a RNBW Queer Music Collective national tour.
And all the while, they will remain committed to creating connections for queer artists in need of support. “We’ve had artists like Kelsea Ballerini and JoJo and Julien Baker in the audience at RNBW shows,” Emily says. “Our artists have met co-writers through these shows, met their spouses through these shows, and they keep coming because they know that this is a place where they can come and it’s safe.”
The sisters smile at each other. “That’s the ultimate goal,” Jamie says. “Just making our home a safer place.”
This story appears in the June 21, 2025, issue of Billboard.
It has been (another) good year so far for Bailey Zimmerman. The country artist reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 this spring with his feature on BigXthaPlug’s “All the Way” from the latter’s forthcoming country collaboration project. Then, Zimmerman followed that with “Backup Plan,” his inspirational new single featuring Luke Combs, which became his ninth career Hot 100 entry and has reached a No. 36 high in its six weeks on the chart.
Zimmerman and Combs debuted the stomping “Backup Plan” during Combs’ headlining set at Stagecoach in April — though the song’s roots were planted well prior to that performance. According to the track’s producer, Austin Shawn, it was initially created because people compiling the soundtrack to 2024 film Twisters asked Zimmerman to send along songs for consideration. “We sent that one, but ‘Hell or High Water’ landed better for the movie,” Shawn, 27, tells Billboard.
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“Backup Plan” is just the latest extension in the winning partnership between Zimmerman and Shawn, which started with the former’s first EP, Leave the Light On, and includes the hit songs “Rock and a Hard Place” and “Fall In Love.”
Below, Shawn talks about creating “Backup Plan,” his working relationship with Zimmerman and what listeners can expect on his second album.
What did you think the first time you heard “Backup Plan”?
We heard it around early 2023, and I immediately loved the song because it reminded me of “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac. It had a bit of red dirt, a bit of country, a lot of the hookiness of modern country, which is exactly what me and Bailey tend to lean [to] when we make songs. The original demo was just an acoustic guitar and a vocal that Tucker Beathard [co-writer, along with Jimi Bell and Jon Sherwood] did.
Were you involved in the decision to add Luke Combs to the song?
It worked out really well because when Bailey did the vocals, we were thinking, “Who could feature?” When I finished the first rough mix on it, Bailey was like, “Should I text it to Luke?” Luke didn’t get back to him for a month — he was probably just living with it. And then he was like, “Song rips, I’m in,” out of nowhere. We had not gone to anyone else. It was either Luke or nothing.
Were you together in the studio for Combs adding his part?
Luke is, first of all, one of the best dudes in the world. I sent the session over to [his producer] Chip Matthews and then me and Bailey went over to Chip’s house and Luke cut the vocal. We spent about two hours talking and rambling on and laughing and telling jokes — and about 10 minutes doing the vocal. It was mostly just a big hangout session; barely any work was being done. Luke is so good, he can do three passes of the song, and it sounds like it’s a finished thing.
Thematically, it’s like Combs’ song “Doin’ This,” in that if being an artist is your path no matter what, you cannot have a backup plan. Is the end result similar to what the demo sounded like?
The original demo was just an acoustic guitar in a voice memo that Tucker Beathard did. Tucker is one of our good buddies, too, and we write a lot of songs with him, so he usually just plays his guitar and his vocal and sings it into his phone.
From the very beginning, the song felt like an overcoming adversity type of song, so we wanted it to be big. We wanted it to be like an anthem. We wanted it to be something that is charged up. We had to paint the picture from there and carry it into that big, beat-your-chest type of energetic song.
So that stomp feel wasn’t there, but you heard the possibility of that.
It was completely different. It was like someone sitting here in your living room just playing it for you or around the campfire. It was good, though, because the sentiment was there and it gave us all the runway to paint the picture the way we wanted to.
You’ve been collaborating with Zimmerman since the beginning. How has your working relationship evolved?
When you work on so much music together over the years, you learn how to communicate and decipher each other’s emotions, feelings, words — I know when Bailey loves a song, doesn’t love a song. He’ll know when I think a decision that he wants to make is good or when I don’t. That helps us get round the bend on songwriting, production, direction. We’re like brothers. He’s gone through a lot in his personal life; I’ve gone through a lot in my personal life. We’ve been there for each other outside music, too.
This is the second song we’ve heard from Zimmerman’s second album, Different Night, Same Rodeo, which is due out Aug. 8. Anything else you can tell us about the album?
Absolutely. A lot of the stuff is familiar, and then there’s a good batch of songs that go outside of the box where we’ve really pushed the boundaries. There’s a couple of awesome features on the record. There’s familiarity, there’s evolution and there’s a little bit of something for all demographics of music too, not just country.
A version of this story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
When Atlantic Records’ Kevin Weaver was approached about the soundtrack to F1, he says the label didn’t face much competition. “The successes that we’ve had speak for themselves,” he notes, which include recent smash soundtracks to films including Barbie and Twisters. Both boasted chart-topping superstars and spawned multiple hits on the Billboard Hot 100 — and, in the case of Barbie: The Album, even landed three Grammys and an Academy Award. Which is partly why, Weaver adds, “We do get a lot of opportunities to see things early and first.”
Weaver, Atlantic’s president of the West Coast, was first approached about F1 last fall by David Taylor, head of music at Apple TV+ and Apple Original Films. He was then introduced to director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who showed him several scenes from the Brad Pitt-starring Formula 1 racing drama and discussed opportunities for music. “At that point, it felt undeniable to me,” Weaver recalls. “We knocked the deal out in less than a week — that is unheard of.”
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Weaver oversaw and produced F1: The Album — which received a kickoff at the Miami Grand Prix in April and will arrive June 27 alongside the film — with Atlantic executive vp/co-head of pop/rock A&R Brandon Davis and senior vp of A&R and marketing Joseph Khoury. This will be Atlantic’s first soundtrack release since restructuring as Atlantic Music Group, with Weaver sharing his gratitude for the “trust and support” from the new leadership team, including CEO Elliot Grainge, GM Tony Talamo and COO Zach Friedman. “From the very start with our launch at the Miami Grand Prix through each weekly single release, we’re lucky to have a team that is so dialed in,” he says.
Still, Weaver believes securing the deal might have been the easiest part of a process that has yielded one of the more genre-diverse soundtracks in recent memory, with contributions from Ed Sheeran, Rosé, Chris Stapleton, Myke Towers, Tate McRae, Burna Boy and more. “We try to look into a crystal ball,” he says. “And so as much as we go with the staples like the Ed Sheerans, trying to forecast artists that are going to be having the biggest moments around when we’re releasing the project and when the film comes out is always of critical importance, too.”
Plus, as Weaver says, Formula 1 is a “very global” brand, with the average F1 fan having music taste that is equally wide-ranging. “I went to a bunch of races. I got to spend time with drivers and team principals and immerse myself into the sport. A big part of general strategy was, ‘What are we doing that has a global feel?’ A big part of it was, ‘What kind of music would you hear when you’re in the paddock at an F1 race?’ ”
Kevin Weaver (second from left) and Rosé.
Evan Hammerman
The A&R experience, as a result, was much different compared with last year’s soundtrack to Twisters, which primarily featured country stars — fitting for a film about chasing tornadoes in central Oklahoma. (Twisters: The Album debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200.)
Only one artist appears on both projects: Stapleton had an existing song in Twisters and contributed the original track “Bad as I Used To Be” to F1: The Album. “Part of what was exciting was [it would] put Chris on an album and a platform that played in a much broader way than the lane and genre of country music,” Weaver says. “Same thing when I went to Dom Dolla and Tiësto and Peggy Gou: These seminal dance artists saw an opportunity to sit on an album with other global superstars across a lot of different genres, and I think that was part of the coveted nature of why artists really wanted to be a part of this thing.”
For Sheeran in particular, his aptly titled track, “Drive,” came together quickly while he was in the studio with John Mayer and producer Blake Slatkin, saying that “the song fell out of us” after he had seen some of the film. (Dave Grohl is also on the track.) Sheeran recalls how Mayer “just whacked an octave pedal on and went wild” to come up with the song’s riff.
“Movies are my hobby and probably the only thing other than sport that I get, like, starstruck to be part of,” Sheeran adds. “Not just directors or actors or whatever, but being a part of the journey of a movie is so exciting for me.”
Of the album’s 17 tracks, seven singles are already out. McRae’s “Just Keep Watching” has become the first to enter the Hot 100, at No. 33. The song also scored her another No. 1 on the Hot Dance/Pop Songs chart.
“We set out to have multiple hits and to move culture. We always have our own odds of what we think are going to be the records, but then other records come out of nowhere,” Weaver says. “We always felt like the Tate song was going to be big. We always knew the Rosé song [“Messy”] was going to be special and really important. I feel really bullish about the Ed Sheeran song, the Burna Boy song [“Don’t Let Me Drown”], Tiësto and Sexyy Red [“OMG!”]. We have a lot of really strong records here. It boils down to which raise their hand.”
Until then, Weaver is already on to his next project — in fact, his next three are locked in. “I have one I can’t talk about specifically, but all I can say is we are doing the soundtrack for probably the most highly anticipated relevant global media [intellectual property] of our generation,” he teases. “And I think that is going to be a monster.”
This story appears in the June 21, 2025, issue of Billboard.
