Touring
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Janet Jackson is taking immersive audio to new heights with her new Las Vegas residency at Resorts World Theatre in Las Vegas.
The two-hour show runs through 43 of Jackson’s biggest hits, including tracks “What Have You Done For Me Lately,” “Nasty” and “When I Think of You,” the single from her 1986 Control album that became her first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Powering the show is L-Acoustics’ most advanced loudspeaker deployment to date, with 242 speakers spread out across the stage and proscenium to evenly deliver high-quality sound to each of Resorts World Theater’s 5,000 seats.
The brains of L-Acoustics’ loudspeaker systems is L-ISA, the pioneering immersive audio platform that utilizes patented acoustic algorithms and proprietary technology to create ultra-high-resolution spatial audio with precise sound placement. By utilizing L-ISA, Jackson’s audio team was able to develop a carefully detailed soundscape for the show that’s designed to reinforce the artist-audience connection.
Started in 1984 by French physicist and Pink Floyd fan Christian Heil, L-Acoustics is best known for creating the modern speaker line array, a configuration for evenly distributed amplified sound that came to replace the stacked sound configuration rock bands relied on during the 1980s. L-ISA is an extension of that technology, equipping sound engineers with tools to sonically place any of the show’s 99 channels into specific locations throughout the theater. In using L-ISA for Jackson’s show, sound engineer Caram Costanzo was able to sonically space out instruments for better sound clarity, send other sounds in loops around the audience and enable Jackson’s vocals to follow her across the stage — with her voice even rising in height for one scene in which she utilizes a lift to hoist her atop the stage.
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“Whether you’re seated right in the middle or on the right or the left, the sound draws the audience in and creates greater intimacy,” says Scott Sugden, director of project management at L-Acoustics. “And as an artist on stage, [they] notice the audience is more captivated and engaged and it leads to a better experience for both the artist and the fan.”
This is far from the first time L-Acoustics has had a presence in Las Vegas. Adele used the company for her Weekends with Adele residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, as did fellow Resorts World alums Katy Perry, Carrie Underwood and Luke Bryan for their respective residencies at the hotel and casino. But Jackson’s show represents the company’s most advanced deployment on the strip to date.
Resorts World Theater — named the world’s highest-grossing venue with a capacity of less than 5,000 on Billboard’s annual Top Grossing Venues list for 2023 — boasts the first fixed install of L-ISA in Las Vegas, powered by seven line arrays across the front of the stage, each outfitted with 14 of the company’s k2 loudspeakers and complemented with a complex mix of out-fill and center hung arrays, subs, coaxials and processors.
“This theater is very unique in terms of sound design,” says L-Acoustics CEO Laurent Vaissié, noting the intimate interior design by Quebec theatrical architecture firm Scéno Plus at the venue, where the furthest seat from the stage is just 150 feet away. However, he adds, “It’s L-ISA that creates the show’s unique soundscape and brings it into three dimensions.”
Sugden says that while many audio aficionados have described the L-ISA system as immersive audio because of its ability to fully immerse the listener with sound, he prefers the term “hyperreal” because it “enhances the reality of the show.”
“It’s localizing her voice and making sure that it’s really intelligible and separated from the rest of the instruments we can localize on stage,” he said. “It’s much more than just surround sound; it’s the ability to position sound and the artist’s voice in ways that make the most sense. We have this canvas which allows the engineer and the artist to paint sound in three dimensions, and what they do with that is completely a creative choice.”
Janet Jackson: Las Vegas runs through May 31 at Resorts World Theater. For more information, visit rwlasvegas.com.
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Coldplay has long established itself as a global touring force. By the end of 2024, The Music of the Spheres World Tour had become the most attended tour in history, via 11 legs of international concerts in five continents. Now, the band rules January’s Boxscore recap by breaking new ground with its first shows in India.
Over nine shows between Jan. 9-26, Coldplay grossed $56.6 million and sold 590,000 tickets in January, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. It’s the sixth time that the British quartet has ruled the monthly Top Tours ranking, continuing a cat-and-mouse chase to the record books.
In November, Coldplay scored its fifth win, pulling out of a three-way tie with Beyoncé and Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Then, TSO caught up in December with its own fifth victory. Now, Coldplay inches to six. With a packed schedule between April and September, the band is in a better position to match Elton John and Bad Bunny’s record seven before TSO begins its annual holiday run in November.
Coldplay’s January run began with four shows at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Sports City Stadium between Jan. 9-14. Those dates earned $28 million and sold 203,000 tickets, securing No. 1 on Top Boxscores. The band’s last trip to the United Arab Emirates was a one-night engagement on New Year’s Eve of 2016, raking in $4.3 million from 31,300 tickets during the A Head Full of Dreams Tour. The 2025 shows averaged $7 million and 50,800 tickets, marking improvements of 63% and 62%. But considering the expansion to four nights, Coldplay was able to sextuple its prior stop.
Then, the band went to India for the first time in its career, playing three shows in Mumbai on Jan. 18 and 20-21, grossing $12.8 million from 164,000 tickets. Finally, there were two shows at Ahmedabad’s Narrenda Modi Stadium. Those grossed $15.7 million and sold 224,000 tickets.
At more than 110,000 for each night, Coldplay broke the record for the largest stadium shows of the 21st century. The Ahmedabad shows sold 111,581 tickets on Jan. 25 and 111,989 on Jan. 26, narrowly bypassing George Strait’s 110,905 at Kyle Field at Texas A&M last June. Strait’s date remains the bestselling U.S. stadium show ever.
This is Coldplay’s second leg of shows in Asia during the Music of the Spheres World Tour. Between November 2023 and February 2024, it grossed $129.4 million and sold 884,000 tickets from dates in Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and more. Altogether, the entire continent has generated $186 million in grosses for the record-breaking tour, with more shows scheduled in April in Hong Kong and South Korea.
After that, the Music of the Spheres World Tour will continue with 17 shows in the U.S. and Canada, plus 12 in the United Kingdom, scheduled to wrap the trek with 10 hometown shows at London’s Wembley Stadium. Since its 2022 launch, the tour has sold 10.9 million tickets and grossed just under $1.2 billion, making it the best-selling and second highest-grossing tour in Boxscore history.
Coldplay nearly doubles its closest competition, with Luke Combs and SEVENTEEN at Nos. 2-3 with $30.3 million and $28.8 million, respectively. Only three more acts grossed more than $10 million, as the Eagles, Justin Timberlake and ATEEZ follow.
January was a particularly strong month for K-pop groups, with ENHYPEN as the third Korean act in the top 10, at No. 8 with $7.7 million from just two shows. SEVENTEEN and ENHYPEN score with shows in Asia – the former in the Philippines and Singapore and the latter in Japan. ATEEZ had a string of European dates, peaking with more than 22,000 tickets over two nights at London’s O2 Arena.
As is becoming increasingly common since its 2023 opening, Sphere is No. 1 on Top Venues (15,001+ capacity). Both acts who played shows there in January are among the top 10 touring acts, headed by the Eagles at No. 4. Two weekends of dates combined to $18.7 million and 65,600 tickets, pushing the band’s residency to $98 million and 327,000 tickets since its Sept. 20 kickoff. With four February shows still to be reported and more scheduled in March and April, those totals will likely soar beyond $150 million and half a million tickets.
At No. 9, Anyma posts $7.5 million and 52,300 tickets from three shows at the Las Vegas arena. Combined with its five shows in December, the Italian American DJ drove $21 million and 137,000 tickets, marking a successful close to the venue’s first electronic residency.
January is historically a dry month, with Western stadium tours on pause for cold weather. It makes sense then that Asia and Oceania make up nine of the month’s top 10 stadiums, powered by Coldplay and the K-pop acts mentioned earlier, plus Luke Combs with shows in Brisbane and Sydney. They leave room for Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros at No. 8, with $8.9 million from Kygo ($3.3 million on Jan. 25) and Linkin Park ($5.6 million on Jan. 31).
Even indoors, January calendars were light. In November and December, seven arenas eclipsed $10 million in each month, while Sphere is January’s only entry on Top Venues (15,001+ capacity) to gross eight figures.
Radio City Music Hall lores over the Top Venues (5,001-10k capacity) chart with $13.2 million – nearly five times the $2.7 million of Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion at No. 2. The New York theater benefits from the final shows of its Christmas Spectacular, with engagements later in the month from Dave Chappelle, The Giggly Squad, and Hugh Jackman.
Artist contract clauses to promote environmentally sustainable touring were highlighted Wednesday (Feb. 26) in London at the 37th annual International Music Conference.
The green initiatives have been put forth by the U.K. live music advocacy group LIVE (Live Music Industry Venues and Entertainment). Its members are a federation of 16 live music industry associations representing some 3,159 businesses, more than 34,000 British artists and 2,000 backstage workers.
Delegates to the ILMC, who hailed from some 60 countries, were greeted Wednesday morning with comments from Chris Bryant, the U.K. minister for creative industries, arts and tourism. “Live music in the U.K. is a really important part of what we have to offer,” said Bryant (while he lamented poor wifi at festivals and “utterly inedible” food at many venues).
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The green contract clauses, initially announced by LIVE last October, are “designed to galvanise industry-wide action and transform the environmental impact of live events,” according to a statement from the organization.
Efforts to reduce the impact of travel-intensive touring on the climate have been promoted in recent years by artists like Coldplay.
When the band announced its Music of the Spheres Tour in 2021, it pledged to reduce its direct carbon emissions—from show production, freight, band and crew travel—by at least 50%. Coldplay subsequently announced that carbon emissions on the first two years of that tour were 59% less than its previous stadium tour (2016-2017) on a show-by-show basis, with its figures verified by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative.
The LIVE environmental proposals come at a time when climate change is acknowledged as the driving cause of catastrophes worldwide, from extreme flooding in Europe last fall to the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles earlier this year.
Within the music industry, it has been estimated that extreme weather had affected at least 30 major concerts in 2023, including evacuations, cancellations and postponements, based on a running tally, “while the total number of affected music events worldwide is surely far higher,” Billboard reported.
The contract clauses result from discussions with representatives from the agencies Wasserman and ATC Live, the global event producer TAIT, the Music Managers Forum and other major players in the touring industry. Leading the process has been the working group LIVE Green, guided by Carol Scott, the Principal Sustainability Advocate at TAIT, and Live Green impact consultant Ross Patel.
“It’s a long road, we’re all on it and we’re going in the right direction,” Patel told an ILMC session Wednesday which he hosted, along with Hilary Walsh, general manager of the U.K.booking agency Pure Represents.
The clauses are intended to help artists, agents, promoters,venues and others to create events with environmental sustainability at the core of planning events, with a focus on energy efficiency; waste reduction; water conservation; local and sustainable food; low carbon emission means of transport to encouraging attendees to travel to the show using lower carbon emission transport; offering sustainable and ethical merch; and much more.
“We’re presented with the evidence of a changing global climate on a daily basis,” said Patel as he opened the ILMC session. “And we also know that we hold the keys to be more resilient.”
Patel made the point that the changes to long-standing practices needed within the live music industry to make touring more sustainable are similar to those in the field of health and safety that are now considered standard.
Patel praised “industry professionals who can pack out an empty room at the drop of a hat, or transport thousands of fans to fields in the middle of nowhere, for life-changing experiences…. So why stop there? Why not create events that fill attendees with hope” in the face of climate challenges.
Environmentally sustainable live events exist, said Patel. “The challenge is how to increase the frequency of that.”
Walsh offered the perspective of Pure Represents, a relatively young booking agency, whose founder, Angus Baskerville, has made sustainability a personal and business priority.
“It’s really important to Angus,” said Walsh, noting the agency founder is the father of two small children and “wanted to leave behind a legacy that was sustainable.”
Walsh notes that the green contract clauses (available online from LIVE) have been easily inserted into touring agreements for Pure clients.
But sometimes those clauses have been deleted in returned contracts. Reducing resistance to change, says Walsh, required “conversations, not just on email, on Power Points, or any of that” with promoters, venues, tour managers, production managers and artist managers.
“It’s about us sharing that information,” says Walsh. “I think slowly everybody is getting onboard.”
Katie Bain provided assistance in this story.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is scrutinizing iHeartMedia’s upcoming iHeartCountry Festival in Austin as part of an investigation into whether radio stations have been offering airplay to artists in exchange for free shows.
In a lengthy letter sent Monday (Feb. 24) to iHeartMedia chairman/CEO Robert Pittman, FCC chairman Brendan Carr — who was appointed to the FCC board in 2023 by former President Joe Biden and promoted to chairman via an executive order from President Donald Trump on Jan. 21 — said he “want[s] to know whether iHeart is effectively and secretly forcing musicians to choose between, one, receiving their usual, ordinary, and full scale compensation for performing or, two, receiving less favorable airplay on iHeart radio stations.”
Carr went on to note that “certain owners of federally licensed radio stations are effectively compelling musicians to perform at radio station events or festivals for free (or for reduced compensation) in exchange for more favorable airplay,” a practice he warned violated federal bans on practices like payola.
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The letter follows a previous letter sent by U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to the FCC earlier this month in which she asked the agency to take action to prevent the alleged practice, claiming it was “critically impacting Tennessee’s content creators.” The FCC subsequently issued an enforcement advisory in which it warned that promising radio play in exchange for free concerts would break federal law. The agency further said it would “consider investigating substantive allegations of payola that come to its attention.”
Traditionally, payola investigations have dealt with music labels and publishing groups paying radio stations to illegally promote commercial music and boost album sales. In 1959, popular radio personalities like Alan Freed were investigated by both the U.S. House and Senate for accepting cash “consulting fees” to play songs on the radio as requested by the shadowy radio promotion industry. In the 1970s, the investigation expanded to include the Italian mafia, whom the FCC accused of using drugs like cocaine for payola. In the 1990s, former NY District Attorney Elliot Spitzer won payola settlements against Sony, BMG and Warner Music, and won a civil lawsuit against Entercom.
Carr’s letter to iHeartMedia hints that the federal government may adopt a novel legal theory that radio promotion concerts, held by large FM radio stations in markets across the U.S., could be a form of payola. Specifically, Carr singles out the May 3 iHeartCountry Festival in Austin, Texas.
Carr’s three-page letter to iHeart included eight lengthy questions he asked Pittman to answer within 10 days. Among other things, Pittman is requesting a list of all artists playing iHeartCountry Festival at Austin’s Moody Center, how much they would normally be paid for a concert appearance and whether any of the artists “will receive better or worse airplay on iHeart radio stations based on their participation in the Festival or the compensation they receive for performing at the Festival.”
In the music business, artists’ appearances are typically delineated into two categories: promotional, or media, appearances, when an artist is promoting a new venture like an album or a film and appears on a talk show to promote that project; and paid appearances, when an artist performs or showcases their talents to audience members who have typically paid some type of admission fee. Artists aren’t usually paid for promotional appearances, and radio concerts have long been categorized by radio stations as promotional in nature and typically do not include payments.
Carr continued that he wants to learn more about the upcoming iHeart concert so that he can get “a real-world example of how such events are put together—including artist solicitation and compensation—and the procedures that are in place to ensure compliance with the relevant statutes and regulations.”
Officials with iHeartMedia responded to the letter in a statement, noting that the company looks forward to “demonstrating to the Commission how performing at the iHeartCountry Festival — or declining to do so — has no bearing on our stations’ airplay, and we do not make any overt or covert agreements about airplay with artists performing at our events.”
The iHeart statement goes on to say, “The iHeartCountry Festival provides the same kind of promotion that that we see with artists on talk shows, late night television, the Super Bowl and in digital music performances and events: the promotional value to the artists is the event itself, and, in our case, is unrelated to our radio airplay.”
This lineup at this year’s iHeartCountry Festival lineup, which is slated for May 3, includes Brooks & Dunn, Thomas Rhett, Rascal Flatts, Cole Swindell, Sam Hunt, Megan Moroney, Bailey Zimmerman and Nate Smith.
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