Touring
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Ticketmaster plans to cancel roughly 50,000 resale tickets to Oasis’ U.K. reunion concerts over violations of the company’s terms and services, Billboard has confirmed. According to Ticketmaster, the canceled tickets were purchased using techniques that have been forbidden for the Oasis tour. Those include a prohibition on purchasing more than four tickets per household, per […]
There’s no disputing that concert tickets are more expensive than ever, with prices rising faster in the last three years than any previous period. Most of the major players in the concert business have recognized the rapid double-digit increase since the end of the pandemic, but few agree on what’s causing prices to spike or whether the increase represents a real problem.
“It’s like going to Disneyland on a really packed day and wondering, ‘How can so many people afford to be here right now?’” says Jed Weitzman, a ticket-pricing expert who specializes in the concert business. “Part of you wonders how a family of four can afford to be there, and yet, clearly, there’s no shortage of people willing to pay to get in.”
This year, the median ticket price to see one of the top 40 highest-grossing tours of 2024 — playing arenas and stadiums — will cost fans $151, according to data compiled by Billboard Boxscore. Three years from now, in 2027, the average cost of such a tour ticket is on track to hit $200 due to steady year-over-year increases to see in-demand top-tier acts like U2, The Weeknd, Sabrina Carpenter and Billy Joel.
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Prior to the pandemic, the price of admission to a top 40 concert had increased 3% to 4% a year, according to Billboard Boxscore. That number more than doubled when touring resumed, increasing an average 9.9% annually. A recent study from Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, concluded that tickets were increasing at about 11% a year.
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The reason for the price increase is less straightforward. Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, attributes the escalation largely to the inflationary costs of global business in 2024. It also contends that tickets to see superstar talent, whether it be Oasis, Beyoncé or Bruce Springsteen, have long been underpriced by image-conscious artists who don’t want their fans to accuse them of price-gouging.
The problem with this argument, say officials with the U.S. Department of Justice who have filed a historic antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, is that it ignores the structural advantages the megapromoter enjoys against nearly all of its competitors. Prices are rising, the government claims, because Live Nation can outbid its rivals by overpaying for touring talent and making up its losses in the concert promotion sector through its affiliated businesses: venue ownership, Ticketmaster and sponsorships.
The government argues that by overpaying for talent, Live Nation is also passing on these increased costs to consumers through higher prices. The problem with this theory, many concert experts argue, is that it oversimplifies the economics of touring and lets the government off the hook for its failure to enforce the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, which was signed into law in 2016 to thwart mass ticketbuying by scalpers using bots.
That failure to rein in the illegal use of software and hacking tools — which lead to huge markups on the secondary market — these experts contend, has created a pricing crisis that has made accessing tickets to popular tours at face value practically impossible. In a piece on StubHub’s postponed initial public offering earlier this year, longtime music analyst Chris Castle alleged that the wholesale use of bots to acquire and sell concert tickets “is not a theoretical antitrust case,” but one “dealing with real-time massive consumer fraud” that’s “perpetuated and funded by the public financial markets.”
WME agent Kirk Sommer, whose artist clients include Bruno Mars, The Killers, Adele and Hozier, says he’s cognizant of what other artists are charging for tickets, but fans tend to evaluate concerts on a case-by-case basis and are less concerned about pricing trends.
“I’m never focused on creating one price for a tour that is going to satisfy an artist’s fans,” Sommer explains. “The goal is always to create a wide range of opportunities that fans from all income levels can buy into. It’s important there is something for everyone.”
Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras Tour rolled into New Orleans on Friday (Oct. 25) for the first of three sold-out shows at Caesars Superdome. After a lengthy run of overseas dates, Swift returned to North America for three shows in Miami last week; New Orleans is the second city on this final leg of the Eras […]
Crypto.com Arena hosted the first game of the 2024-2025 NBA season on Tuesday night (Oct. 22), which saw the arena’s tenants, the Los Angeles Lakers, take on the Minnesota Timberwolves. The evening notably featured the first appearance of a father-son duo (LeBron James and son Bronny James) in NBA history — while the 25-year-old arena also showed off its new, nine-figure renovations.
A quarter of a century is a long time for any entertainment arena to remain culturally relevant, but Crypto.com Arena (formerly Staples Center) has completed its third round of multi-million-dollar renovations to keep up with technological advancements and a new era in fan enjoyment.
During the Oct. 22 game, the arena — at the center of the entertainment campus L.A. Live — unveiled its new outdoor space, refreshed food and beverage offerings and state-of-the-art technology designed to reduce wait times throughout the facility. The arena’s first outdoor space, the City View Terrace, offers concert and game attendees the option of enjoying food and drinks with downtown Los Angeles as the backdrop while still being able to view the game or concert taking place inside. The terrace features several food and beverage stops and is open to all ticket holders.
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For floor- or ice-seat ticketholders, the arena revamped its exclusive Chairman’s Club to become the Delta SKY360° Club. On Wednesday (Oct. 23), Crypto.com Arena senior vp of guest services and security Danielle Snyder took media on a tour of the reimagined space, which includes a private bar in a lounge setting that is only accessible to premium seat holders and friends and family of the team or act playing. For the first time in its history, Crypto.com Arena will also now offer VIP tours to the general public, allowing guests to access behind-the-scenes areas such as the Delta SKY360° Club.
Danielle Snyder, Crypto.com Arena Senior Vice President of Guest Services and Security
Courtesy of Crypto.com Arena
This season, founding partner Coca-Cola is also continuing to expand its presence with the newly unveiled Coke Studio, a 3,300-square-foot music-driven studio and event space at Crypto.com Arena that will host concerts, artist appearances, podcast recordings and more. Coca-Cola is supporting the arena’s sustainability initiatives, including the r.Cup program, which replaces single-use cups with reusable ones to help further the arena’s commitment to reducing waste. As part of this program, Coca-Cola products, along with other non-alcoholic beverages, will be served in r.Cup’s reusable vessels.
The arena’s new food offerings include chef and TV host David Chang’s spicy fried chicken concept fuku and chef and restaurateur Ludo Lefebvre’s two new concession stands: Mediterranean-focused Ludobab and Trois Familia, a fusion of Lefebvre’s French background with local Mexican cuisine. Elsewhere, Fresh Brothers will become the arena’s official pizza partner with a new concession stand (replacing Blaze Pizza), while Big Mozz is the arena’s newest official mozzarella stick partner.
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A standout of the new offerings includes the first Doritos restaurant, Doritos After Dark. Located at the arena’s main Star Plaza entrance, Doritos After Dark serves up late-night favorites elevated with the flavor and crunch of Doritos for appetizers and entrees. Special items include Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili Ramen-Rito (a Dorito and ramen-filled burrito) and Doritos Nacho Cheese Crunchtastic Vanilla Cone (an ice cream cone with a chocolate shell covered in cheesy chips). On Nov. 15, for one night only, Doritos After Dark will step out of the arena and into a one-of-a-kind Doritos Night Market pop-up in a free, immersive, neon-filled atmosphere open to all from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at L.A. Live’s Peacock Place.
Courtesy of Crypto.com Arena
New technology has also been installed at the arena. This includes Evolv, a leader in AI-based security technology, which is enhancing fan safety with the rollout of its Evolv Express screening system at all entrances. This cutting-edge technology allows fans to move through security checkpoints more quickly and efficiently, differentiating between potential threats and most everyday metal items such as cell phones and keys. By streamlining entry, Evolv is designed to help fans spend less time waiting in line and more time enjoying the event.
Once inside, fans can also skip lines with Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, which has been installed at multiple locations inside the arena, along with the brand-new Exo self-checkout at the Team LA Store, which also underwent a remodel. Now, all items at the Team LA Store include RFID technology, which allows fans to drop all their merchandise into a scanner that rings up everything instantaneously. The technology is currently only available at sporting events, as tour merchandise is not yet streamlined with RFID technology.
Crypto.com Arena is set to host programming tied to some of the biggest and highest-profile sporting events over the next decade. Among other events, it has been selected to host the 2025 Grammy Awards (the 22nd time the arena has hosted music’s biggest night), the 2027 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Regional, and the men’s and women’s gymnastics competitions for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
As the pandemic was waning, John Summit, an emerging Chicago DJ whose music had blown up online during lockdown, had a plan to translate that internet presence to real life. “Our strategy was to be everywhere,” says Summit’s manager, Holt Harmon. “Like, omnipresent.”
In 2021 and early 2022, Summit and his team canvassed North American nightclubs as they reopened, showing promoters (and themselves) that Summit’s online hype could turn into in-person fun. In May 2021, he sold out a 500-capacity venue in Tempe, Ariz., in just 12 seconds.
The team then transitioned from clubs to 2,000-capacity rooms, investing profits into production for stage rigs. “We were smart with how we were living at the time,” Harmon says. “I did everything from a kitchen table with my business partner, and John was working from his parents’ house.”
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Since then, Summit has sold out headlining sets at Los Angeles’ BMO Stadium and Madison Square Garden in New York, with a three-night stint at L.A.’s Kia Forum set for mid-November. The large-venue bookings function as part of a three-pronged touring plan for Summit, which also includes his intimate Experts Only shows at clubs and festival sets as Everything Always, Summit’s duo project alongside Australian producer Dom Dolla.
The hybrid approach allows for different creative opportunities: Experts Only parties, for instance, offer no-frills production and let Summit stay close to his audience and test new music. They’re also easy to take on the road, often in destination venues like The Caverns in Pelham, Tenn. (“My goal is Experts Only Alps,” says Summit, who named the party, and his label, after his love of skiing. “That would be f–king sick.”)
Arena and stadium sets, meanwhile, satisfy massive audiences, including fans who might just be getting into electronic music through Summit’s accessible style of progressive house. And Everything Always lets two artists unite to play “bigger, more impactful things than if it was [them] separately,” Harmon says, such as the duo’s Coachella performance in April. “People ask how we keep cycling through markets year after year,” says Harmon, who is also co-founder and CEO of management firm Metatone. “It’s that we can come through as three different forms.”
The plan is to do it again internationally. With 50% of Summit’s 2025 touring happening overseas, Harmon says “the future of John Summit is a global business.” Now, Summit’s biggest sets require a crew of 180 and cost approximately $1.5 million to produce. But despite the growth, the essential goal remains the same as it was in the early days. “I’m still working from the kitchen table,” Summit says, “but it’s my own kitchen table now.”
This story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Luis Miguel has postponed a series of concerts scheduled across several cities in Mexico, including two performances in the capital, due to health reasons, the Mexico City Arena said in a statement on Thursday night (Oct. 24). Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The Mexican-raised superstar was […]
With Billboard Hot 100 hits like “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Union of the Snake,” “New Moon on Monday” and “A View to a Kill,” Duran Duran’s catalog is frighteningly fitting for spooky season. So in 2022, when the English quartet found itself playing a Halloween-night gig in Las Vegas ahead of its induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the band decided to don costumes, sprinkle in seasonally appropriate covers and embrace the darkness.
The show was successful enough to inspire the band’s 2023 album, Danse Macabre, a top 10 hit on the Top Album Sales chart. With an expanded version of the album out now, the veterans — who have grossed $118.6 million and sold 1.8 million tickets since 1987, according to Billboard Boxscore — are set to play a show at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Oct. 31 that keyboardist Nick Rhodes promises “will be entirely different than any other Duran Duran show you will ever see.”
Is Halloween as big in the United Kingdom?
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We don’t celebrate it in such grand style as you do in America. I remember the first time I came to America was over the Halloween period. I literally thought, “Wow, they’re so far ahead of us. Why don’t we have these giant blow-up things outside our houses? Why can’t bats be 20 feet wide?” I love the sense of fun, the absurdity and that everybody gets to be a villain for a day.
The deluxe Danse Macabre has “New Moon (Dark Phase),” a moodier take on one of your classics; a cover of ELO’s “Evil Woman”; and “Masque of the Pink Death,” which I’m guessing is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.
I’ve always been a great admirer [of Poe]. We grew up in England in the ’70s, where Hammer horror movies on [TV on] a Friday night, whether it was a Dracula or a mummy movie, were the thing you looked forward to all week. Plus, [I love] Tim Burton’s great contribution to everyone who loves goth. Those things shape the way you feel about life and the possibilities creatively. That’s what makes artists unique — their influences and the different areas they take from, even if it’s subliminal.
The Madison Square Garden show will be your second Halloween-themed concert. Do you see this becoming a tradition?
I don’t know. It’s a lot of work for one show. But Madison Square Garden just happened to be available, and New York is such a good place to be for Halloween. It was irresistible. We are going to make it something unusual and special. It won’t be like a regular show at all. The fans in Europe have been writing in already saying, “When are you going to do one in Europe? This is the second one in America; that’s not fair.” I sympathize with that. We always like to try to balance things, so maybe [we’ll do] one in Europe next year.
You have several other U.S. shows this fall beyond MSG. Will Halloween elements work their way into those?
I suspect some of them will feature a few bits that we’re preparing for Halloween. We didn’t think we’d be back in America this year, but when we decided to do the Halloween one, we slotted some more in. I rather like that way of working. For many years, we haven’t been a band that announces big world tours and ends up on the road for 18 months. But we do seem to play a lot of shows. We just add them when we want to, and somehow the chaos is working.
This story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Is it really summer without The Rolling Stones on tour? The rock icons have toured North America, Europe, or both, for every summer but three in the last 12 years, consistently topping charts and setting records. After a break in 2023, the Stones returned for the Hackney Diamonds Tour, playing 18 shows in 15 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada from the end of April through the middle of July. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the trek earned $235 million and sold 848,000 tickets.
The tour was in support of the band’s Hackney Diamonds album, released in October 2023. The set marked the band’s first album of original material since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. Hackney Diamonds debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 – the group’s highest-charting album since Bang also hit No. 3 – and extended the band’s record for the most top 10s on the chart.
The Hackney Diamonds Tour kicked off at Houston’s NRG Stadium on April 28, 2024,, bringing the Stones to more than 40,000 fans. By the time the band wrapped at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on July 17, it had scored the highest-earning summer of its career. Sixty, its 2022 jaunt, earned $120.8 million, and the biggest of its four No Filter Tour legs brought in $177.8 million in 2019. While they’ve made more money on years-long treks, Mick Jagger & co. have never earned more than $200 million in a single season.
The Stones’ 2024 run was highlighted by double-headers in East Rutherford, N.J. (17 miles outside New York City), Chicago and Inglewood, Calif. (11 miles from downtown Los Angeles). Each of those engagements grossed more than $20 million, topped by the New Jersey shows at MetLife Stadium on May 23 and 26, which earned a combined $29.2 million and sold 105,000 tickets.
Those MetLife dates mark a career peak, setting the highest gross of the Stones’ 35-year Boxscore history. The Inglewood and Chicago dates also fall in the top 10, while Denver, Foxborough, Las Vegas and Philadelphia line up in the band’s all-time top 20, all between $15-16 million.
Every market on the tour delivered an eight-figure gross, with the lone exception of Glendale, Ariz., whose May 7 State Farm Stadium show grossed $8.4 million and sold 44,800 tickets.
Tours
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The Hackney Diamonds Tour sets a new high for The Rolling Stones and pushes the band further into uncharted Boxscore territory. This is its sixth tour to earn more than $200 million and 10th to gross more than $100 million. Both counts are Boxscore records, extending their lead for the most nine-figure tours, now three $100-million tours away from the group’s closest competitors.
Dating back to a report for two shows at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium on Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 1989, The Rolling Stones have earned $2.873 billion and sold 28.9 million tickets.
Across Green Day’s 12 shows in September — 11 at stadiums, plus an amphitheater show in Austin, Texas — the band sold 415,000 tickets at an average ticket price of $114.71, combining for earnings of $47.5 million according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. That puts the California trio’s The Saviors Tour at No. 1 on Billboard’s monthly Top Tours ranking.
The Saviors Tour kicked off in June with a $33.8 million run in Europe, before crossing the Atlantic for a 26-city tour of the United States and Canada. Though Green Day had sprinkled stadiums late in the 2004-05 American Idiot World Tour and then committed fully to the venues with Fall Out Boy and Weezer on the 2021-22 Hella Mega Tour, this marks the band’s first solo headlining run to predominantly play stadiums.
The Saviors Tour is named after Green Day’s 14th studio album. The set debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 earlier this year and spawned “Dilemma,” which spent eight weeks atop Alternative Airplay. But the trek helped juice up the band’s reach by calling back to two of its landmark albums, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Dookie and the 20th anniversary of American Idiot by playing both LPs in full each night.
In September, Green Day hit a high for its entire North American leg, with $5.7 million and 47,800 tickets at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. That’s one of three entries for the band on Top Boxscores, at No. 24. Dates at San Francisco’s Oracle Park and San Diego’s Petco Park follow at Nos. 27 and 29, respectively.
It’s uncommon for an act to be No. 1 on Top Tours without a similarly high placement on Top Boxscores. Throughout 2024, the highest-grossing touring act has always had at least one entry in the top 10 of Top Boxscores, with the same act ruling both charts in five of the right months before September.
Further, in the 51 editions of Billboard’s monthly Boxscore charts since Feb. 2019, the artist at No. 1 on Top Tours was in the top 10 of Top Boxscores 43 times. Of the eight instances where they did not overlap, four were by Trans-Siberian Orchestra during their annual December takeover. That group routinely rules Top Tours without making impact on Top Boxscores, assembling its massive monthly total by playing multiple shows per day, with the help of two coastal touring ensembles.
Though there is only one iteration of Green Day responsible for its September victory, the strategy is similar. The punk-rock icons have the month’s biggest tour by volume, playing 12 stadium shows between Sept. 1-28. The acts that lead Top Boxscores – Coldplay, Metallica, Bruno Mars – all held splashy multi-night engagements in international territories, but didn’t tour consistently throughout the month.
Timing also helps. In August, Green Day’s $47.5-million gross would have sat behind the entire top five, helmed by Zach Bryan above $90 million and Coldplay over $80 million. The former took September off and the latter wrapped its European leg on Sept. 2, clearing a path for Billie Joe & co. to claim their first monthly victory.
Still, the individual shows on The Saviors Tour mark the biggest of Green Day’s storied career. While the SoFi Stadium shows were the biggest of the North American leg, a June 29 show at London’s Wembley Stadium ($7.9 million; 76,000 tickets) topped the entire tour. It was also the highest-grossing and best-attended night of the band’s entire reported Boxscore history.
Further, Green Day’s 25 top-earning concert engagements all come from this year’s tour. In all, The Saviors Tour grossed $132.4 million and sold 1.2 million tickets, easily ending as the band’s highest-grossing and best-selling tour ever.
Directly following Green Day on Top Tours are two of the biggest R&B acts on the road. Bruno Mars is No. 2 with $43.8 million and Usher is No. 3 with $36 million. The former played in Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan (plus one show in Las Vegas). Three shows at Jakarta’s Beach City International Stadium account for nearly half of Mars’ total monthly gross, bringing in $21.5 million from 142,000 tickets.
Notably, Mars is not technically on a tour, rather playing one-off engagements around his ongoing residency at Las Vegas’ Dolby Live. His last trek was the 24K Magic World Tour, which earned $396.1 million and sold 3.6 million tickets in 2017-18. His current Vegas stint is among the top 10 residencies in Boxscore history, now up to $138.8 million.
Usher, on the other hand, is amidst his first proper headline tour since 2015, after closing out his own Vegas residency late last year. Usher: Past Present Future kicked off in August, averaging $2.3 million per show in September. Its biggest stop so far was a four-night run at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, which brought in $10.2 million and sold 58,000 tickets.
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Rock tours flood the rest of the top 10, with Metallica, Jeff Lynne’s ELO and Pearl Jam following at Nos. 4-5 and 8, respectively. Coldplay, Twenty One Pilots and the Eagles line up consecutively just outside the top 10.
While Green Day crowns Top Tours while missing the top 10 of Top Boxscores, Coldplay does the opposite, at No. 1 on the latter chart while sitting at No. 11 on the former. Coldplay only had two shows during September, but they made them count. The British quartet played four concerts at Dublin’s Croke Park – two on Aug. 29-30, which counted toward the August chart, and two on Sept. 1-2. The September dates grossed $24.8 million and sold 165,000 tickets.
Further down on Top Boxscores, Sebastian Maniscalco grossed $10.7 million across five nights at Madison Square Garden, earning the No. 8 entry. It’s the highest-grossing report for a comedian in Boxscore history. The number of comedy acts who can play one night at an arena is small, so consider Maniscalco one of very few who could sell out five.
Several of Nashville‘s top independent venues, along with local artists, are teaming up for a new event, 615 Indie Live, designed to celebrate and support Music City’s indie live music scene.
Thirteen independent venues and over 40 local artists and bands spanning genres including rock, hip-hop and jazz will come together for 615 Indie Live on Feb. 1, 2025. Event passes are currently discounted to $15 using all-in pricing, with the passes granting entry to all participating venues. The event will run from noon until 2 a.m., allowing attendees to visit multiple shows at various venues across the city.
Participating venues include 3rd and Lindsley, Acme Feed & Seed, Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge, DRKMTTR Collective, Eastside Bowl, Music Makers Stage at Delgado Guitars, Night We Met, Rudy’s Jazz Room, The 5 Spot, The Basement, The Blue Room Bar at Third Man Records, The East Room, and The End. Participating artists will be revealed in the coming weeks.
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615 Indie Live is presented by Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp and Music Venue Alliance Nashville.
Proceeds from ticket sales will benefit Music Venue Alliance Nashville, including the organization’s Emergency Relief Fund that aids Nashville’s independent venues to help them stay open during periods of financial crisis. Those who buy passes during the presale period — which lasts until midnight on Oct. 31, 2024 — will have a chance to win a Project 615 gift bag and a VIP Nashville attraction pass, which offers complimentary admission for two people to over 25 area attractions, including the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the National Museum of African American Music and the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum.
“Independent music venues are the heart and soul of Music City, providing a stage for new artists across diverse genres to showcase their talent and be discovered,” Deana Ivey, president/CEO at Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp, said in a statement. “We hope 615 Indie Live will inspire Nashvillians and visitors to explore new music and discover venues they may not have visited before. Locals might even find a hidden gem right in their own neighborhoods. By holding the event during the winter, we hope to help boost business at the venues during a traditionally slow season.”
The Greater Nashville Music Census, released earlier this year, highlighted the impact of independent venues and the financial struggles those venues, as well as indie artists, face.
“All of the recent data clearly shows that independent venues are a foundation of Nashville’s live music ecosystem, yet they are quickly becoming an endangered species,” Music Venue Alliance Nashville president Chris Cobb said in a statement. “615 Indie Live marks the beginning of exciting new partnerships born from this data, reinforcing our mission to celebrate and support an essential part of what makes us Music City. My sincerest thanks to the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp for partnering with us to support independent venues and local artists.”