Touring
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Legendary rock outfit Guns N’ Roses are plotting their return to India after a 12 year absence, working with Indian concert promotion company BookMyShow Live. The band’s return is scheduled for May 17 at Mahalaxmi Racecourse — typically used for horse racing — in Mumbai. Live Nation, the band’s global tour promoter, is co-producing the […]
The numbers don’t look good for festival promoters — and they’re getting worse.
Since the end of the pandemic, the economics of stadium concerts have become so much more favorable for fans and artists that major festival promoters are losing headliners who can dependably drive ticket sales.
Take Zach Bryan. In 2023, the then-rising star headlined the Railbird Festival in Lexington, Ky.; the Two Step Inn Festival in Georgetown, Texas; the Pilgrimage Festival in Franklin, Tenn.; and Under the Big Sky in Whitefish, Mont., among the eight that he performed at that year.
After playing just two festivals last year and releasing a wildly successful fifth studio album in July, Bryan, now a superstar, had festival buyers rejoicing in September when he was announced as the opening headliner for 2025’s Stagecoach festival. But instead of signing on as the top draw for other country festivals like Faster Horses or Tortuga, Bryan opted to partner with Stagecoach producer AEG Presents for 10 large-scale shows this summer, including stadium dates in New York, San Francisco and Ann Arbor, Mich., at the newly rebuilt Michigan Stadium, the largest such venue in the country, which will host Bryan as its inaugural concert.
He’s not alone. Festival staples like Post Malone and Kendrick Lamar, who performed at 10 apiece in 2023, are mostly ditching those live events this summer in favor of stadium concerts in major markets like Los Angeles, where the SoFi Stadium is hosting a record 19 shows from Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Shakira, Blackpink and more during the first half of the year.
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Add in stadium dates from Coldplay and Metallica and a co-headliner tour with Chris Stapleton and George Strait, and it’s easy to see why festival promoters are feeling suffocated by the abundance of stadium concerts in most major markets.
“The popularity of stadium concerts represents a significant challenge to festivals,” says Josh Kurfirst, a partner at WME who runs the agency’s 40-person festival department. From a competitive standpoint, festivals face a number of disadvantages compared with stadium concerts “that are very difficult to overcome,” he explains.
The biggest of those drawbacks is the economics. At most, festival headliners earn $5 million to $6 million per appearance, while an artist with an aggressively priced stadium show can generate double that amount. The trade-off is the costs an artist pays — a festival slot has little to no costs to cover, while a stadium headliner is responsible for nearly all of the show’s expenses. On a one-to-one basis, an artist’s net from a big festival date might be the same as what the artist would earn from a stadium show. But when those costs are amortized over a dozen stadium dates, the economics heavily favor the stadiums. That’s especially true in 2025, when the number of festivals capable of paying out high-seven-figure headliner slots has dropped significantly while the number of markets hosting stadium shows has increased.
The numbers work in favor of consumers as well. Most stadium concert tickets cost $200 to $300, while festival tickets have climbed considerably in recent years to offset rising costs, often averaging $400 to $700 per attendee. And while most festivals stretch out to several days and include access to dozens of artists, “many fans would prefer to spend an afternoon at a concert seeing their favorite artists and knowing that they have a seat to sit down in and access to basic creature comforts,” says Jarred Arfa, executive vp/head of global music at Independent Artist Group.
“It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, and there’s significantly more work involved in promoting a stadium concert than booking an artist on a festival,” Arfa continues. “But in general, a stadium concert is more appealing to older fans than a GA pass to a festival.”
That said, Arfa points out that the number of acts capable of leaping from festival headliner to the top of a stadium tour lineup is quite small and that as early incubators of artists, festivals have the resources and reach needed to cultivate a new generation of top talent.
Kurfirst adds that the headliners come and go for most major festivals and that the best brands tend to be defined by their cultural significance, the fan experience and the community that supports the festival. To remain relevant, maintain ticket demand and attract star acts, he says festival organizers need to understand the appeal of their brand and “double down on superserving the fan. Find out what your audience wants and deliver it to them in a way that no one else can.”
This story appears in the March 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.
When Luke Combs’ team won road crew of the year at the CMA Touring Awards on March 3, it marked a passing of the baton — or, more accurately, a passing of the road case — as Combs’ crew took control of a trophy that Chris Stapleton had carted around the country and across the Atlantic during 2024.
Last year marked the first time that the Country Music Association honored an entire crew, and Team Stapleton decided during a post-awards celebration to take the award out where it had been won: on the stages, on the highways and in the back of semi-trucks that took the All-American Road Show from Nashville to the people.
The trophy was unloaded at every venue and placed somewhere on, or near, the stage as a reminder to all of Stapleton’s employees of the reputation they had created. The crew of the year hardware visited the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, The O2 in London and the set of NBC’s Saturday Night Live in New York, just to pick out a few spots on its itinerary.
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“They can never change that,” tour manager Jason Hecht says. “We’re always the first name on the trophy. For us, that’s a very cool thing, and to get to carry it around, and hopefully set a little bit of a precedent, that was definitely a really big sense of pride for us.”
Stapleton’s team had pride in the gig before there was ever a trophy to recognize it. The team had to have been working hard to get that first crew award in a line of work that’s grueling at its very foundation.
“A lot of these people are up at 6 a.m., 7 a.m. — first people in the door, and they’re not walking out until you’ve got doors closing, sometimes in the morning with trucks rolling away,” says Stapleton’s manager, Red Light Management’s Clay Hunt. “There’s ebbs and flows throughout the day, but this is really long, hard work.”
If they do that work correctly, most of the concertgoers won’t give a thought to the quasi-miracle that took place in the venue, as a stage was constructed and complicated sound and lighting was installed all on the day of that particular show.
“I always kind of look at it like a sports official, a referee,” Hecht says. “If somebody’s saying your name, then something’s gone wrong. By definition, your job is to be in the shadows and to stay out of the way.”
The work is likely appreciated most by Stapleton who, along with his wife/band member, Morgane Stapleton, makes it a point to look after their team. She insisted on having a women’s bus for the female members of the crew, they remember employees’ birthdays with gifts and celebrations, and when several on the team came down with an illness during their recent Australian tour, they didn’t even ask about what kind of expenses might be involved in their recovery. They made sure the employees got medical attention, a place to recuperate and plane tickets to catch up to the tour once they had rebounded.
That kind of attentiveness is not surprising for Stapleton. When he left the 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards in Frisco, Texas, he saw the roadies hard at work and picked up a blower to help clean up confetti. He is known, according to his team, to greet the local crew at the end of a show and recognize their role in his success as they prepare to tear it all down.
“I like to play music,” Stapleton said when his team won the crew of the year honor. “Everybody [involved] helps me do that every night in ways that would not be possible in any way, shape or form if everybody wasn’t at the top of their game.”
The CMA rules around the crew of the year trophy don’t allow consecutive wins, though individual members of a team can still collect honors. Two Stapleton employees — tour videographer/photographer of the year Andy Barron and backline technician of the year Derek Benitez — were with Stapleton in Australia and unable to claim their awards in person this year. But the team watched a CMA livestream of the event from Down Under and saw the owner of Stapleton’s PR firm, Sacks & Co.’s Carla Sacks (who also reps Combs), win publicist of the year. Sacks was visibly emotional.
“I really was very overcome in a way I didn’t expect in that room,” she allows. “To look out at that community of people that rarely wants, or gets, the spotlight, and then to be recognized by those peers, hit me in a way I wasn’t really prepared for.”
In the days after his win, Barron kept at the job in Australia and New Zealand, a camera in his hands every day, constantly looking for new angles on the same songs and the same people as he documents Stapleton’s work for social media and for posterity. Even as he moves about the arenas and amphitheaters, he’s cognizant that after the artist and crew head for the next city, they leave an impression behind them.
“We want every person who’s working at the venue — the promoter, everyone involved at the place that is opening their doors up to us — we want them to be excited when we’re coming back,” Barron says. “We’ve just always treated every show like that, and everyone on our team has the same mentality.”
Mirroring the one-nighters that it represents, the crew of the year trophy moves on after one year to its next recipient, though it will still carry a plaque with Stapleton’s name — and the names of each of his team members — as Combs takes it back on the road. In some cases, the award will revisit concert halls where Stapleton carted it in 2024. But it’s certain to expand its travels with Combs’ entourage.
“We’re excited for the Luke Combs team and for them to continue on,” Hunt says. “It sounds like they’re going to try to carry on the tradition.”
Corridos bélicos pioneer Luis R Conriquez is set to hit the road with his Trakas HDSPM U.S. Tour, Billboard can announce. The Live Nation-produced stint will kick off April 25 in New York at the UBS Arena and will visit major cities across the country, including San Antonio and Las Vegas before wrapping up Oct. […]
Venue impressario Peter Shapiro is at it again with a new live music project, announcing Monday (March 10) the launch of Garcia’s, a first-of-its-kind jazz and super club in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood that was built and designed in honor of legendary Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia.
Shapiro has long collaborated with original members of the iconic 1960s band through projects like the Fare Thee Well concerts honoring the band’s 50th anniversary; he also worked as the long-time promoter for late Grateful Dead founding member Phil Lesh. For the new club, he has enlisted the help of Garcia’s family members, including his daughter Trixie Garcia, who said the inspiration for Garcia’s was “a live music club with a comfortable atmosph
The 300-capacity concert venue will feature a full bar and restaurant, says Shapiro, adding that the concept for Garcia’s comes from iconic old supper and jazz clubs of yesteryear, including New York’s Birdland, Harlem’s esteemed Bill’s Place or the Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans.
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It’s a different vibe,” says Shapiro, creator of the Brooklyn Bowl venue chain and owner of the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, N.Y., and the Bearsville Theater near Woodstock, N.Y. “The club is a big open room and it kind of feels like a high-end Vegas-style supper club. It’s a got dark, red and sexy ambiance and most people will be seated in booths, but there will be some [general admission] space for standing on the outer edge for those who want to dance. For some music fans, they’ll travel to Chicago for a show and it’s going to feel like a bucket list experience. But we will also have regulars who come each night for the vibe. Music fans will love Garcia’s — they will feel like this place was built for them.”
Peter Shapiro
Joshua Skolnik
Veteran Chicago promoter Michael Berg has joined the project to support its bookings and management, with an initial lineup that includes the Blind Boys of Alabama, Grace Potter and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The venue will open March 21 with Lesh’s son, Grahame Lesh, playing with his band alongside Nashville improvisational standout and “cosmic country” creator Daniel Donato.
Garcia’s was designed by Bob Quellos of local Chicago architectural firm fc STUDIO alongside designer Tristam Steinberg. The duo developed the venue with art and designs that draw inspiration from Garcia’s life in California and his prominence in psychedelic culture. Garcia’s is decorated throughout with Garcia’s original artwork, as well as previously-unseen family portraits and posters and imagery celebrating Garcia’s favorite films, books and records.
Garcia’s “Spain meets San Francisco” menu was developed by Lowder-Tascarella Hospitality Group with a focus on American comfort food. The kitchen will be led by executive chef Ivy Carthen and the beverage program will be led by award-winning mixologist Chris Lowder. Cocktails will include a tequila-soda called “Mission In The Rain” and a White-Russian variant called “Russian Lullaby”, both honoring his Garcia’s career.
Garcia’s will be powered by Meyer Sound, and performing artists will all have access to a full multitracking and live-streaming setup. The club will feature a full backline, a new Yamaha DM7 console and a state-of-the-art lighting package to enhance the vibe.
A full list of shows can be found below. More at GarciasChicago.live.
Garcia’s
Courtesy Photo
After a difficult 2024 in which a number of major festivals closed their doors for good, Coachella sales were down and Burning Man didn’t sell out, WME global head of festivals Josh Kurfirst says, “Protecting the health of the festival business has become central to everything we do.”
“It’s no longer an incoming call business,” says Kurfirst, the son of Gary Kurfirst, former manager of Talking Heads, the Ramones, Blondie, The B-52s, Jane’s Addiction and Garbage. Early on, the job of most festival agents, Kurfirst explains, was to field offers from festival talent buyers for artists on the WME roster, negotiate where the artist’s name would appear on the festival poster and review daily ticket sales drops. But as the market matured and evolved, he instructed his staff to get more aggressive about pitching WME acts to prospective buyers and finding opportunities for them to bookend tours and live shows around festival appearances.
“Everything is strategic,” he says. “It’s not, ‘Let’s just throw 300 bands on this festival because it’s easy.’ We don’t do things easy.”
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Despite the cancellations of such once-popular festival brands as Faster Horses, Sick New World, Something in the Water and Alter Ego, Kurfirst and his team have plenty of success stories to tell. This year, his team helped land Zach Bryan his first headliner date atop the Stagecoach festival, secure newcomer Benson Boone a top slot on the Coachella lineup, book The Killers as headliners for Lollapalooza and secure headliner slots for Luke Combs, Olivia Rodrigo, Hozier and Queens of the Stone Age at Bonnaroo.
2024 was a tough year for festival sales. What happened?
First, it’s important to acknowledge that the festival market has significantly increased in size in the last decade. When I first started, there was a smaller group of giant festivals that had most of the market share. Since then, we’ve seen the emergence of a middle tier, a lower tier, a genre-specific tier and a lifestyle branch of festivals. And those have taken some market share away from the crossover contemporaries — the Coachellas, the Lollapaloozas and the Bonnaroos of the world. There’s really something out there for everyone now as long as you’re willing to travel. Look at Morgan Wallen’s new Sand in My Boots festival on the same site as the old Hangout Festival, which had been a steady market for years. Some years it sold out. Some years, it came close, but it never blew out on the on-sale. All of a sudden, Wallen comes in and launches his own festival on the site and it sells out instantly.
Atop a bowl of all-access festival and tour laminates, Kurfirst displays a copy of photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s Music in the ’80s book, open to a shot of the Talking Heads, whom his father, Gary, managed.
DeSean McClinton-Holland
What did Wallen do differently from Hangout Festival?
Instead of trying to create an event that appealed to as many people as possible, Wallen created an event that overdelivered to his fan base. He rebranded the festival under his own name and booked more than a dozen similar artists that he believes will connect with his fans. [This year’s lineup includes Bailey Zimmerman, Post Malone, Wiz Khalifa and The War on Drugs.] If you’re a fan of Morgan Wallen, then you won’t want to miss out on the Sand in My Boots festival. And, by the way, if you live in the Southeast, it might be your only chance to see him play this year.
How are overall festival sales so far, compared with 2024?
Last year was interesting. It wasn’t just straight down. It was choppy water. This year is still early. Most of the festivals just announced their lineups, and from what I’m hearing, it’s been positive. The overall market feels like a bounce-back year, and a lot of that has to do with the headliners. We’ve had a solid crop emerge — Olivia Rodrigo and Hozier, for instance. To a young artist like Olivia, these festivals mean something. It’s a notch on her belt and a way to do something in her career that she hadn’t done before.
Kurfirst’s mother, Phyllis, created this framed collage that, in addition to ticket stubs from concerts that Gary promoted, depicts (clockwise from top) Phyllis and her pet huskies; Gary and Phyllis at his parents’ house; and at their alma mater, Forest Hills High School.
DeSean McClinton-Holland
How do you judge success at WME?
It’s not based on quantity or how many festival slots WME artists are on. We’re very selective. We’re building careers. And we want to make sure when it’s our clients, they’re in the right cycle in terms of their music cycle. Typically, that means the artist has new music ready for the fans to discover and plans for either touring or other dates that they want to build momentum behind. They’re going to play the right slot, they’re going to get the right billing, they’re going to get the right money. That’s the time to play the festival. If any of those things are off, we’ll just do our own thing — meaning, we’ll work with a promoter, headline our own tour and continue building their hard-ticket business, which is incredibly important for all our artists.
Are festivals still a healthy launching pad for an artist’s career?
They are a good developing mechanism for new artists, but again, it has to be the right moment. I don’t know that it would make sense to just throw a new artist that doesn’t have any music out on a festival [stage] at 12:30 p.m. when the doors open. That’s a wasted booking. It would be better for that artist to be in cycle, have music out, have some press, garner some reviews ahead of time, so people actually have the ability to do their research and [want to] show up in front of their stage.
Pillows commemorating Madison Square Garden shows by artist clients whom Kurfirst represents in addition to overseeing WME’s festival division.
DeSean McClinton-Holland
The festival market has had an uptick in cancellations in recent years. In that environment, how does WME maintain a positive relationship with promoters?
We look at the promoters as our partners. They’re not on the other side of the table; they’re on the same side of the table. We want them to succeed, and we have their backs. In return, they have our backs, too.
What does it mean to have each other’s backs?
With festivals, artists sometimes have to cancel. Sometimes they get sick, they break a leg, the album gets pushed. Sometimes it’s our clients. Sometimes it’s clients from other agencies. What we do in those situations is we don’t bury our heads in the sand. If it’s a Saturday at 3 p.m. or 7 p.m. or 7 a.m., we’re there for our buyers to fill that slot that suddenly becomes open. And because we book things through one point of contact, the buyer only has to contact one person at WME. That’s his partner, his festival agent, and that festival agent then canvasses the entire roster and can come back with real-time avails within hours.
Kurfirst with his four kids, from left: Landon, 17; Ariela, 11; Eden, 11; and Lucas, 21.
Courtesy of Josh Kurfirst
Are you bullish on the long-term prospects of the festival business?
It’s a very Darwinian environment out there and the strong will survive. There are times where we have to have tough conversations with our promoter partners and come to a fair settlement where our clients feel good, but where we don’t put the promoter out of business. Because that doesn’t help anyone. Make no mistake: When we do a deal, our clients are entitled to 100% of the money if a festival cancels due to poor sales. There are some reasons why a promoter can cancel, like a pandemic. But in most cases, if a festival is canceled, it’s due to poor sales or some sort of promoter breach, and our clients are entitled to 100% of the money. It’s our job to come up with a fair settlement where the client feels good and the promoter is able to get back up on their feet.
What’s one of the most important lessons your father taught you?
He taught me that loving what you do is the single most important decision we make as adults. If you don’t, you can’t bring passion to the job every day. He also taught me about not trying to be someone else. Don’t just go with the trend. He equated that in how he chose the artists he wanted to work with, whether it be the Talking Heads, the Ramones, The B-52s, the Eurythmics, Jane’s Addiction and Mountain. These bands weren’t genre-defining — they invented their genres.
This story appears in the March 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.
On the evening of July 23, 2024, the last night of her global tour and her fourth sold-out date at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid, a visibly emotional Karol G told the crowd of 55,000: “I’m going to say that truly, tonight will be the most amazing of my life.”
It was, at the very least, a grand finale to the highest-grossing tour ever by a Latin female artist, grossing $313.3 million across 56 concerts, according to Billboard Boxscore. Karol G’s Madrid shows were also record-setting, selling 220,000 tickets and making her the first artist to sell out four shows at the stadium, which finished renovations earlier in 2024.
The fact that a Latin American artist could move so many tickets in a major European city underscores Spain’s growing importance as not just a bridge for Latin music between the Americas and Europe but also a place for music in Spanish — the new global pop — to grow.
In 2023, Spanish promoters and venues reported gross ticket sales of nearly 579 million euros ($604.5 million) to Spain’s Association of Music Promoters, an extraordinary 26.5% increase from revenue of 459 million euros ($479 million) in 2022. While Karol G, Luis Miguel and Taylor Swift brought stadium headlining tours to the country, according to its ministry of culture, Spanish talent is also robustly represented at the stadium level with recent shows from Manuel Carrasco and Dellafuente.
Numbers from the country’s ministry of culture, compiled by the legal and business management firm Sympathy for the Lawyer, show that 40.5% of concertgoers in 2024 attended shows of Spanish pop/rock, followed by 11.1% who went to see canción de autor (similar to singer-songwriter performances).
Meanwhile, beyond the live scene, Spain’s music consumption has grown exponentially.
According to year-end numbers reported by Promusicae, Spain’s music industry trade group, there were 98.5 billion audio streams across all platforms in 2024, compared with 87 billion the previous year. More than 1,180 artists notched over 10 million streams and 70 had more than 100 million streams.
That report of growth aligns with figures from global music industry trade association IFPI. In its Engaging With Music report, IFPI stated that Spanish music consumers averaged 22.1 hours per week of listening, compared with the global average of 20.7.
Spain’s receptiveness to music of all genres and provenance is evident in its five top-selling albums of 2024. According to Promusicae, Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department was the bestseller, followed by Karol G’s Mañana Será Bonito at No. 2, Spanish artists Quevedo’s Donde Quiero Estar at No. 3 and Saiko’s Sakura at No. 4 and Bad Bunny’s 2022 album, Un Verano Sin Ti, at No. 5.
Quevedo at the 2024 Latin Grammy Awards in Miami.
Jason Koerner/Getty Images
No wonder labels are increasingly turning to Spain to develop pan-regional artists. Examples include the success of Colombian artist Camilo after the pandemic; Venezuela’s Joaquina, who won best new artist at the 2023 Latin Grammy Awards and whose first tours were in Spain; and Colombian stadium pop-rock band Morat, which is signed to Universal Music Spain.
And although Spanish-born artists have a tougher time crossing over into the U.S. and Latin American markets than vice versa, a new generation of acts that includes Quevedo, Rels B, Bad Gyal, Aitana, Arde Bogotá and Rosalía is showing that reaching fans in the Americas may be more feasible than ever.
Fifteen months after the Latin Grammys were held in Spain in November 2023 — the show’s first foray outside the United States — Billboard will host a reception for Spain’s industry leaders on March 18 and recently spoke with some of those executives to ask what’s next for the dynamic market.
‘A Flow Of Cultures In Two Directions’
Given its crucial location as an entryway into Europe and its cultural significance as the birthplace of Spanish, “Spain is a place of fusion between Anglo and Hispanic cultures. It’s a flow of talent and culture in two directions,” says Vicent Argudo, head of music for Prisa Media. “Spain imports Latin styles into the old continent and adapts them to pop. It’s a place for mainstream experimentation.” While Spain for years seemed impenetrable for Latin American genres like reggaetón and regional Mexican, an influx of immigrants, coupled with increasing global acceptance of the Spanish language, has turned Spain into a market that imports and reinvents genres. “Spain gives Latin sounds a pop vision that makes them more accessible to the world,” Argudo says.
A Breeding Ground For International Talent
For José María Barbat, president of Sony Music Iberian Peninsula, Spain is a nonstop talent generator, from Julio Iglesias in the ’80s to Rosalía or C. Tangana today.
“In this context, we’re certain the next big Spanish star is around the corner,” Barbat says. “We continue to see artists with the skills necessary to jump to an international stage, showing there’s not only talent but also an industry ecosystem ready to channel all that creativity.” Proof of that is Arde Bogotá, a Spanish rock band garnering success in an urban world. “It speaks to the importance of keeping an eye out not just for popular genres,” he says, “but for talent coming out of niche genres.”
Artist To Watch: “I’m particularly excited about Lia Kali, a very well-rounded and very young artist we just signed,” Barbat says. “She has a mind-blowing voice and the ability to cross over in a big way into other Latin markets.”
Rosalía at the 2024 Met Gala in New York.
Mike Coppola/MG24/Getty Images
The Power Of A Cutting-Edge Stadium
The Spanish music industry is experiencing a golden era, a prime example of which, says Live Nation Spain president Pino Sagliocco, is the newly renovated Santiago Bernabéu Stadium and the sold-out shows it has hosted from Spanish artists Hombres G and Alejandro Sanz, as well as Swift and Colombia’s Karol G. “Those tours highlight unprecedented growth in Spain’s music history, breaking records in the years after the pandemic,” Sagliocco says. “The global industry now recognizes the country’s leadership and enormous potential as a key platform for the growth of Latin music in Europe.” While concerts at Bernabéu were suspended last September due to noise ordinance issues, its string of sold-out shows by artists both local and international highlighted the enormous, previously untapped potential of a state-of-the-art stadium in the nation’s touristy capital. “The global industry now recognizes the country’s leadership and enormous potential as a key platform for the growth of Latin music in Europe,” Sagliocco says.
Spanish As The ‘New Normal’
For José Luis Sevillano, CEO of AIE — Spain’s collecting society for performers, with over 35,000 members in Spain alone and representing the rights of over 800,000 performers globally — music in Spanish is on the brink of “becoming a magnificent new normal.” Not only does music in Spanish now top global charts, “but at the same time it’s placed new value on the diversity and plurality of our culture in the entire world,” he says. AIE’s most recently reported numbers registered a 29% growth in rights collection last year compared with 2023, and AIE’s study on consumption habits in Spain also found that Spanish-language music was more listened to than English-language music on streaming platforms. Plus, after 30 years of work, Spain adopted new legislation providing better compensation and working conditions for artists and musicians. “This will eventually lead to a more just and balanced music ecosystem,” Sevillano says, “which is basic in allowing creators to develop their talent to its full potential.”
Challenge For 2025: “Finding a responsible, respectful and balanced development of [artificial intelligence] for artists,” Sevillano says.
A Streaming Boom
Streaming dominates Spanish music consumption, accounting for nearly 90% of the market, according to Promusicae. Meanwhile, Spanish artists have become major streaming draws worldwide. In 2023, Spanish acts generated royalties of more than 123 million euros ($128.5 million) on Spotify, which is almost four times the royalties they generated on the platform in 2017, according to Spotify’s head of music for Southern and Eastern Europe, Melanie Parejo. That growth “is reflected in local consumption but also in the capacity to generate global business,” Parejo says, noting that over 50% of all royalties generated by Spanish artists on Spotify in 2023 came from listeners outside of Spain. In 2024, Rels B was the Spanish artist most listened to outside of Spain.
Rels B attended Milan Fashion Week in 2024.
Pietro S. D’Aprano/Getty Images
An ‘Explosion’ Of Talent
What was once an insular market is now having an international impact. “The Spanish music industry has undergone a radical transformation in the last decade, becoming a market with great global projection with artists like Rosalía, C. Tangana, Quevedo and an explosion of indie proposals like La La Love You,” says Carlos Galán, host of industry podcast Simpatía por la Industria. “Stylistic barriers have been broken, and even the chasm that existed between alternative and mainstream has grown smaller.”
Challenge For 2025: The fact that “every day there’s a new festival” is huge, Galán says. “But truly, it’s a bubble I’m afraid to see burst. All have identical lineups, little innovation and no one is betting on emerging talent.”
Sponsors Serious About Music
Few brand initiatives surrounding music are as complex and developed as Banco Santander’s Santander SMusic. The bank offers a 360 media platform that includes editorial content and live performances, in addition to its branded events, concerts and partnerships with labels and artists. “In a year we’ve executed over 235 presales and sold 600,000 tickets, becoming a point of reference for music in Spain and creating a complete ecosystem of exclusive content,” says Felipe Martín Martín, Santander España’s director of media, sponsorships and events. Santander’s SMusic has partnerships with festivals including Mad Cool, Sonorama and Rockland, as well as with companies like Universal, Sony and Los 40. But Martín Martín is especially excited about the growth of music tourism in Spain, “maximizing that No. 1 spot Spain has held in the global ranking of tourism to music festivals since 2022.”
An International Gateway
Spain’s geography offers easy access from both the United States and Latin America and to the rest of Europe. “It has the potential [to be a] port of entry for Latin artists to other European markets, particularly the U.K., France, Italy and Germany, who all provide strategic opportunities in the live market,” says Narcis Rebollo, president/CEO of Universal’s Global Talent Service, which manages and books over 100 artists including Aitana, Pablo Alborán, David Bisbal, Lola Índigo and Joaquina. The potential is already being realized in Spain, where ticket sales jumped more than 26% from 2022 to 2023 and more than 250% in the last decade, according to Spain’s Association of Music Promoters.
Growing Trend: “Brand investment in music has grown more than 100%,” Rebollo says, “with music being used as a new driver for brands to position their products.”
Aitana performed at the 2024 Morrina Festival at Port of A Coruna in A Coruna, Spain.
Cristina Andina/Redferns
A Good Partner
Spain’s impressive market stats, including its sizable listening and streaming growth per capita, make it a source of local talent and a priority for imported talent. “We’re listening to more than 260 million songs per day,” Warner Music Iberia president Guillermo González Arévalo says. “Coming to Spain to promote their new albums has had a great return on investment and recognition for artists like Dua Lipa, Myke Towers, Coldplay, Charli xcx and Linkin Park, who have charted high on our charts paving the way for their next tours.” In 2024, Towers was the most listened to artist on Spotify in Spain.
Looking Forward: Warner is also expanding activity in its recently opened music hub in Madrid. “Each day more music is written, and there are more collaborations created with Latin artists,” González Arévalo says.
A Flexible Market In Constant Evolution
Spain’s music market is known today for its strong festival culture and its affinity for music in Spanish, regardless of origin — and it has been receptive to new trends of late. In November 2023, the popular reality music competition Operación Triunfo relaunched on Amazon Prime Video. “It highlighted the extraordinary capacity of the format to adapt to new digital consumption trends, bringing in traditional viewers and new generations,” head of Amazon Music Spain Claire Imoucha says of the show, which will return in September. Christmas music also got a boost in new formats, with artists like David Bisbal, Niña Pastori, and Camilo and Evaluna (who had an Amazon Music Original song in November) reimagining traditional repertoire and “consolidating Christmas as a key consumption period.”
What Comes Next: “Spanish music is living an extraordinary moment, with genres like rock and flamenco displaying their capacity for evolution and renovation,” Imoucha says. “Artists like Arde Bogotá and Carolina Durante are leaders in a new rock scene, and artists like Israel Fernandez, María José Llergo and Ángeles Toledano are bringing a contemporary twist to historic genres.”
Antonio Garcia (left) and Pepe Esteban of Arde Bogotá onstage at the Coca Cola Music Experience Festival in Madrid in 2024.
Juan Naharro Gimenez/Redferns
A Consolidated Value Chain
“Our music industry is a very professionalized industry in every sector of its value chain,” Promusicae president Antonio Guisasola says. “In addition, we have great artistic talent that is mixing genres and renovating the different roots genres of the many cultures that coexist in Spain.” A sign of maturity of the market was the launch of its Spanish Academy of Music, “where all music professionals in the country get together to honor the work we did in the year,” Guisasola says, and the first Academy of Music Awards took place last June.
Beyond Major Cities
The growth of Spain’s music scene has translated to consumption outside major cities, says Alfonso Santiago, CEO of concert promoter Last Tour, which also puts together the annual BIME conferences in Bilbao, Spain, and Bogotá, Colombia. “There’s a wide spectrum of cities beyond the big capitals that have good venues and audiences that respond favorably,” he says. That openness is particularly evident and growing among younger generations. “Traditionally, adult fans have been more close-minded,” he says. “I’m excited to see a young audience open to discovering new things.”
A Rich Culture
Spain’s location has helped foster its rich musical output. “We have a confluence of music from Latin America, Northern Africa, local folklore and, of course, our great contribution to the world’s art, flamenco,” Sony Music Spain GM Blanca Salcedo says. Sony’s new 5020 Studios have become a perfect place to mine that cultural landscape. The studios, which opened a year ago, “are hugely valuable for this purpose,” Salcedo says. “It’s a unique space that combines the best technology, design and services to foster our artists’ creativity.”
A Festival Destination; Many Collaborations
In addition to its massive stadium concerts, Spain hosts nearly 900 music festivals a year, according to the latest Oh, Holy Festivals report. “Spain has established itself as a key market for tours and festivals, positioning itself as a global tourism destination for music,” says Jorge Iglesias, founder and CEO of concert promoter Iglesias Entertainment. In addition, a series of very successful cross-cultural collaborations — including Quevedo and Bizarrap’s “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 52,” which topped Billboard’s Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts in 2022 — has renewed interest in the country as a talent incubator.
A Prominent Indie Scene
The diversity of genres in Spain “is richer than ever,” says Believe Spain GM Maite Díez, adding, “The local independent scene has gained great prominence.” Case in point: Indie artist Iñigo Quintero, whose hit “Si No Estás” made history as the first track by a solo Spanish artist to reach No. 1 on Spotify’s global chart. On Spotify, nearly 60% of all royalties generated by Spanish artists come from indie labels or artists, Díez says. By extension, there has been “an explosion of new talent that has gone from the digital ecosystem to massive success,” including Daniela Blasco, a finalist at the Benidorm Fest song contest.
A Mature Industry
Beyond streaming strength, “Spain’s music industry is mature in all its subsectors,” says Soco Collado, president of Spain’s music federation Es Música, which represents and promotes the industry’s collective interests. “We have huge established artists, a young scene creating spectacular things and the companies working at every level are very solid and are investing,” she says. The sustained growth of streaming stands out for Collado, and she’s particularly excited about a new generation of very young female artists who are “super committed and creating musical marvels,” including flamenco artists María José Llergo, Angeles Toledano and La Tania.
New Opportunities
Universal Music Spain co-managing director Alicia Arauzo was struck by the recent success of David Bisbal’s Todo Es Posible en Navidad, which topped Promusicae’s albums chart in December. “It feels like we tapped a local vein with Christmas music, opening up an eternal opportunity [for the music],” she says. The proliferation of stadium concerts has also been a breakthrough for Spain, she says, along with “the growing strength of female talent, both local and international.”
This story appears in the March 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.