Touring
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Multi-faceted musician Billy Strings is bolstering his 2025 touring schedule with a slate of added headlining concerts throughout the spring and summer.
The nearly 20 newly-added dates begin April 3 with three concerts in St. Augustine, Fla. at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre, with more shows set for states including Georgia, Michigan, Missouri and Illinois. The trek winds down with two shows at Lexington, Ky.’s Rupp Arena on June 20-21.
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Pre-sale for all of his April through June shows launch Jan. 8, and general on-sale begins Jan. 10. These shows follow several of Strings’s show which are slated for January, February and March, including six sold-out shows in Asheville, N.C. in February, and a trio of shows in Nashville, Tenn. in February and March.
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Beyond touring, Strings has issued a pair of collaborations in recent months, appearing on Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion album on the song “M-E-X-I-C-O,” and teaming with Zach Top on the Apple Music Sessions Nashville EP, where they revisited two of Top’s own songs, as well as a cover of Ricky Skaggs’s “Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown.”
In October, Strings’s album Highway Prayers became the first bluegrass album to reach No. 1 on Top Album Sales chart since 2002. Strings’s album Live: Vol. 1 is also up for best bluegrass album at the 2025 Grammy Awards, which return to Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena on Sunday, Feb. 2.
See the list of added shows for Strings’s 2025 Spring tour dates below:
April 3: St. Augustine, Fla. (St. Augustine Amphitheatre)April 4: St. Augustine, Fla. (St. Augustine Amphitheatre)April 5: St. Augustine, Fla. (St. Augustine Amphitheatre)April 9: Tampa, Fla. (Yuengling Center)April 11: Savannah, Ga. (Enmarket Arena)April 12: Savannah, Ga. (Enmarket Arena)April 15: Charlottesville, Va. (John Paul Jones Arena)April 17: Cary, N.C. (Koka Booth Amphitheatre)April 18: Cary, N.C. (Koka Booth Amphitheatre)April 19: Cary, N.C. (Koka Booth Amphitheatre)May 30: Grand Rapids, Mich. (Van Andel Arena)May 31: Grand Rapids, Mich. (Van Andel Arena)June 6: Rosemont, Ill. (Allstate Arena)June 7: Rosemont, Ill. (Allstate Arena)June 11: Kansas City, Mo. (T-Mobile Center)June 13: St. Louis (Chaifetz Arena)June 14: St. Louis (Chaifetz Arena)June 20: Lexington, Ky. (Rupp Arena)June 21: Lexington, Ky. (Rupp Arena)
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) is set to collect data on the economic impact of the independent live sector with the launch of its State of Live survey, the organization announced Tuesday (Jan. 7). The initiative will seek to capture the economic contributions and operational challenges of independent venues, promoters, performing arts centers and […]
Since notching his first Billboard Country Airplay chart-topping hit in 2022 with “Fall in Love,” Bailey Zimmerman has ascended to headliner status and amassed a total of four Country Airplay No. 1s along the way.
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He’ll bring his arsenal of hits and energetic headlining stage show to 16 amphitheaters across the country this summer when his Live Nation-promoted New to Country Summer Tour launches June 6 in Indianapolis, with opening support from “Boys Back Home” hitmaker Dylan Marlowe and “She’s Somebody’s Daughter” hitmaker Drew Baldridge.
Following the tour’s Indianapolis launch, the trek will hit cities including Alpharetta, Ga., Richmond, Va., St. Louis and Denver, before wrapping Sept. 13 in Laughlin, Nev.
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Tickets for the New to Country Tour will go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. local time at baileyzimmermanmusic.com. Fans can sign up for the artist presale until Wednesday at 8 a.m. CT. Presale access begins Thursday from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. local time.
Zimmerman has steadily built his career to towering heights over the past few years. Zimmerman’s Religiously. The Album. entered the all-genre Billboard 200 at No. 7 and reached No. 3 on the Top Country Albums chart. In 2024, he sold out his first international headlining tour and earned his first CMA Award nomination, for new artist of the year. He was featured on the all-star soundtrack to Twisters: The Movie with the song “Hell or High Water” and just released his new song “Holy Smokes.”
See the full slate of Zimmerman’s New to Country summer tour dates below:
June 6: Indianapolis (Everwise Amphitheater at White River State Park) *June 7: Sterling Heights, Mich. (Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre) *June 13: St Louis (St. Louis Music Park) *June 14: Rogers, Ark. (Walmart AMP) *June 19: St. Augustine, Fla. (St. Augustine Amphitheatre) *June 21: Alpharetta, Ga. (Ameris Bank Amphitheatre) *July 27: Corning, Ca. (Obsidian Spirits Amphitheater at Rolling Hills Casino) *July 29: Denver (Red Rocks Amphitheatre) *Aug. 9: Canandaigua, N.Y. (CMAC)*Aug. 14: Gilford, N.H. (BankNH Pavilion) *Aug. 22: Bridgeport, Conn. (Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater) *Aug. 23: Richmond, Va. (Allianz Amphitheater at Riverfront) *Aug. 29: Durant, Okla. (Choctaw Grand Theater)Sept. 4: Council Bluffs, Ia. (Harrah’s Stir Cove)*Sept. 12: Reno, Nev. (Grand Theatre at Grand Sierra Resorts) **Sept. 13: Laughlin, Nev. (Rio Vista Outdoor Amp) **
*with support from Dylan Marlowe & Drew Baldridge** with support from Dylan Marlowe
Vivid Seats, an online ticket resale marketplace that went public through a SPAC merger in 2021, is reportedly fielding acquisition offers from several equity firms hoping to take the company private, according to a recent report in Bloomberg. Company officials have brought on an advisory firm to help gauge interest in a potential sale, according […]
Neil Young has announced that he will not be performing at the 2025 Glastonbury Festival.
On Tuesday (Dec. 31), the legendary Canadian rocker, 79, shared a message with fans on Neil Young Archives explaining his decision to back out of the massive music event, which takes place annually at Worthy Farm in Somerset, England.
“The Chrome Hearts and I were looking forward to playing Glastonbury, one of my all time favorite outdoor gigs,” Young wrote in the brief letter. “We were told that BBC was now a partner in Glastonbury and wanted us to do a lot of things in a way we were not interested in. It seems Glastonbury is now under corporate control and is not the way I remember it being.”
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He continued, “We will not be playing Glastonbury on this tour because it is a corporate turn-off, and not for me like it used to be. Hope to see you at one of the other venues on the tour.”
Young did not specify what exactly Glastonbury and the BBC had requested that led to his withdrawal. The BBC has been a long-time broadcaster of the festival, streaming and airing portions of the event, including a global broadcast for the first time last year, according to Rolling Stone.
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Billboard has reached out to Glastonbury’s representatives for comment.
In November 2024, Glastonbury revealed that Rod Stewart would be the first artist announced for the 2025 festival. The legendary musician was the first confirmed act for the event, which is set to take place from June 27-29. Tickets for the festival have already sold out.
While Glastonbury has not yet revealed the headliners for 2025, several names have been speculated, including Olivia Rodrigo, Sam Fender, Harry Styles and Lady Gaga. Young had also been rumored to perform at the festival.
A timeline for the headliner announcements has not been confirmed, but the full lineup is typically revealed in the spring.
In late November 2024, Young revealed plans for a European tour, which will feature mostly outdoor venues. He followed up with another message on Wednesday (Jan. 1), telling Neil Young Archives readers that “tour announcements for the summer are coming very soon.”
Young last performed at Glastonbury in June 2009, with portions of the show broadcast on the BBC. The set included tracks like “The Needle and the Damage Done,” “Words,” “Rockin’ in the Free World” and a cover of The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” Rolling Stone reports.
Young’s new band, the Chrome Hearts, features Micah Nelson (guitar), Spooner Oldham (organ), Corey McCormick (bass) and Anthony LoGergo (drums). The group made its live debut in September 2024 at Farm Aid and recorded a new album last year, tentatively titled Talking to the Trees.
Marcelo Figoli is no stranger to big numbers. As the founder and owner of Fenix Entertainment — the Argentina-based conglomerate that encompasses live shows, amusement parks, soccer teams and media — Figoli has offices in eight countries, produces more than 100 live events per year and has successfully promoted tours by the likes of Ricardo Arjona, Ricky Martin, Romeo Santos and Shakira.
But Figoli capped 2024 with his biggest tour ever: namely, the Luis Miguel 2023-24 Tour — co-promoted alongside Henry Cardenas’ CMN — which became not only the highest-grossing Latin tour of the year but also the highest-grossing Latin tour of all time, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore.
In December, when Billboard published its top tours of the year recap, the Miguel tour had reported more than 2 million tickets sold over 128 shows, generating a gross income of $290.4 million in 2024 alone. That number doesn’t include the 2023 figures or Miguel’s final Mexico City shows.
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“I was very emotional [when I heard the news],” Figoli tells Billboard of his record. “I felt immense happiness, for the artist and for the work we did.”
Below, Billboard speaks with Figoli about the stunning success of the Miguel tour and how it broke all records.
Despite its size, Fenix is an independent company. How do you distinguish yourself from other promoters worldwide?
We offer something different. We do more artisanal work, if you will, and put more thought into each of the artists and the products. I throw myself into it. I’m passionate, I go crazy, I review sales numbers every day, I’m a workaholic. I’m very calm when it comes to handling the stress generated by these massive events that I organize, but I’m very nervous in the day-to-day work leading up to achieving success.
We can provide a plus in markets like Latin America and in some cases — as with Luis Miguel and Arjona— in the entire world. Also, Fenix has partnered with CMN in recent years, and that consolidation continues to open a space for us.
Had you worked with Luis Miguel before?
We did countless concerts with Luis Miguel, but we had worked in the South American markets. Never a global tour like this one. But we’d worked very well because we have great respect and great admiration for his career. For us, he is one of the greatest artists in the world in any language, and we firmly believe in his career and that is why we bet on his tour. I thought the tour was going to be big, solid, strong. It may have exceeded my expectations, but I did know that this tour was going to do what it did. Initially, we were going to partner with CMN only in the United States and we ended up partnering for everything.
There’s a big leap from a “solid” and “strong” tour to the most successful in history. What do you attribute it to?
For me, the key to success was, first, how high we aimed. And second, how we planned the tour launch at the same time at a global scale, rather than market to market. We launched the global tour on the same day. The same day we put all the cities up for sale, and on the same day, with the same launch, we created a global explosion. We were able to get hundreds of thousands of fans around the world talking about it at the same time. We had billboards up in every city that went on sale, and we had digital and radio campaigns in each of those cities from day one. It’s the kind of launch that I have only seen for mass-consumer products. It was important to show that confidence and aggressiveness in the tour, and positioning it as a global tour, not a local tour. The way we framed it made it go viral.
How was working with CMN?
A lot of coming together, a lot of pre-production before launch. We work very well with the CMN team and the artist’s team. Plus, Henry is a legendary promoter.
It strikes me that Luis Miguel didn’t even have a new album or single…
But he was having a good personal and artistic moment, and that had an influence. Also, the launch strategy around the tour. In addition, we did a great job with our marketing teams, influencers, etc. But the basis is in the greatness of the artist. I’ve worked with so many artists, and I can’t think of many who could pull off a tour [of this magnitude and stamina]. He has demonstrated extraordinary professionalism and courtesy.
How do you see next year for Latin tours?
Excellent. We’re trying to convince Ricardo Montaner to do a farewell tour. Obviously we are negotiating for Ricardo Arona’s global tour. And with artists in development, we’ve had extraordinary success with Emilia Mernes and her 10 Arenas Movistar in Buenos Aires, where she played to over 290,000 people. I think Emilia is going to be a big deal in 2025.
A familiar group of faces tops Billboard’s monthly touring report for November: For the third time in 2024, and fifth overall, Coldplay is No. 1 on Top Tours. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the British quartet grossed $71.1 million and sold 609,000 tickets over nine shows in November.
Claiming its fifth monthly victory dating back to the chart’s launch in February 2019, Coldplay sits only behind Bad Bunny and Elton John, who have seven titles apiece. Beyoncé and Trans-Siberian Orchestra have each ruled four times, with the latter currently in the middle of its annual holiday tour.
Coldplay’s November run swept through Oceania, with two shows in Melbourne, Australia; four in Sydney; and three in Auckland, New Zealand. The four dates at Sydney’s Accor Stadium grossed a mammoth $37.4 million, earning the No. 1 position on Top Boxscores. The Auckland run ($19.3 million) follows at No. 2. The Melbourne shows grossed $14.4 million on Nov. 1-2, but were a continuation of a four-night engagement that began in late October. Had all those shows fallen in November, the band’s $28.8 million gross would have given Coldplay a clean sweep of the top three.
The most recent leg of the Music of the Spheres World Tour is, of course, the continuation of a three-year trans-continental trek. Dating back to its March 2022 kickoff in San Jose, Costa Rica, it has earned more than $1.1 billion and sold 10.3 million tickets. That’s a bigger attendance figure for any tour in music history.
It’s been a hard-earned all-time record, with Coldplay meeting demand across the world. The tour has featured sold-out stadium shows in five continents, with 48 more shows scheduled for 2025 in Asia, Europe and North America. Watch the video below to see the band’s road to 10 million tickets, one international city at a time.
Of the tour’s three-year totals, $400.9 million and 3 million tickets came from the 2024 tracking period (Oct. 1, 2023-Sept. 30, 2024), nabbing Coldplay the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s year-end Top Tours and Top Ticket Sales charts. It’s the second consecutive year for Chris Martin & Co. atop the latter list.
Pearl Jam follows at No. 2 on Top Tours, with $41.8 million and 314,000 tickets sold in November. Also in Australia and New Zealand, the band’s run featured two dates each in Auckland, Melbourne and Sydney, plus one in Carrara (suburb of Gold Coast).
Coldplay and Pearl Jam each played a pair of shows at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium, combining for more than $30 million and the runner-up slot on Top Stadiums, only behind Sydney’s Accor Stadium. Altogether, the two bands helped fuel four spots for Oceania on the Stadiums ranking.
Three former Top Tours champions round out the top five, with Zach Bryan, P!nk and Paul McCartney at Nos. 3, 4, and 5, respectively. Bryan and P!nk both landed in the top five of the year-end Top Tours and Top Ticket Sales rankings, with their recent November totals already positioning them well for 2025’s charts.
While Oceania proved dominant as a continent, Mexico City is the most prevalent city on November’s charts, with three of the top 10 spots on Top Boxscores. Two festivals – Corona Capital and Coca Cola Flow Fest – are at Nos. 5 and 9, while McCartney is sandwiched at No. 7 with two shows at Estadio GNP Seguros. All three engagements delivered eight-figure grosses.
Las Vegas is not far behind, with three in the top 15. Billy Joel and Sting earned $11.4 million from one show at Allegiant Stadium, earning the No. 8 spot. More, two weekends of Sphere shows from the Eagles brought in a combined $18.5 million, split at Nos. 11 and 13.
Sure to crest with the December report, November set the stage for the holiday season. Trans-Siberian Orchestra is No. 10 on Top Tours, while Mariah Carey is No. 17 with the first shows of her fall tour. Further, New York’s Radio City Music Hall towers over the Top Venues (5,001-10K capacity) listing with $33.7 million — more than seven times the gross of No. 2 — with the onset of its annual Christmas spectacular.
The board of directors of Farm Aid — including Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young, Dave Matthews and Margo Price — have appointed Shorlette Ammons and Jennifer Fahy to lead the non-profit effective Jan. 1.
Farm Aid’s annual festival, the music industry’s longest-running concert for a cause, began in 1985 and has raised more than $80 million to support programs that help family farmers thrive. Across the decades, it has taken action to change the nation’s dominant system of industrial agriculture and promote food from family farms.
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Ammons and Fahy succeed Carolyn Mugar, Farm Aid’s first and only executive director, who was tapped for the role by Nelson when he launched the organization. She will continue to work as an advisor to Farm Aid. In addition, Farm Aid associate director Glenda Yoder is leaving the organization at the end of 2024 after 34 years. Yoder has been responsible for the launch of Farm Aid’s Homegrown Concessions, demonstrating that family-farm-sourced food could feed concertgoers on a huge scale.
Fahy joined Farm Aid in 2002 and has served as communications director since 2008, while Ammons has served as the organization’s program director since 2022. Together, they will share leadership responsibilities in the ongoing mission to cultivate a family farm-centered system of agriculture in America.
“There would not be 40 years of Farm Aid without Carolyn Mugar — and for all those years she’s made me look good!,” said Nelson in a statement. “ I am deeply grateful for her passion and commitment leading Farm Aid’s work, listening to farmers and always being a champion of grassroots organizations. Carolyn and Glenda rallied the Good Food Movement to bring people together in support of farmers.”
Mugar was recognized by Billboard on its 2020 Women in Music list. At that time, she noted that in the years since Farm Aid’s first concert in 1985, “what has changed is people’s consciousness.” Farm Aid supporters have recognized the links between its mission and “the good-food movement, the environmental movement, the whole issue of structural racism,” she said. “Farm Aid has been working with Black farmers and Black farm organizations since day one.”
From barnyards to backstage trailers, Mugar has networked nonstop on behalf of family farmers, herding artists and activists “like a collie dog,” she joked then. But inevitably, she has deflected and given credit for Farm Aid’s enduring impact to its leading artists: Nelson, Young, Mellencamp, Matthews and Price. “For all practical purposes, they lead Farm Aid — and they do not take prisoners. They really never give up,” she said then.
In a statement announcing her succession, Mugar said, “All of us at Farm Aid confidently trust that Shorlette and Jennifer are poised to lead Farm Aid’s next chapter to benefit farmers, eaters and our soil and water. We face urgent issues with the health of our planet, and I’m are thankful Farm Aid has a strong foundation for the next leaders to build upon.”
In addition to her deep experience managing communications for Farm Aid and co-producing its annual festival, Fahy holds a certificate in nonprofit management from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. Ammons, who comes from a farm family in North Carolina, spent her career prior to Farm Aid addressing the systemic barriers that BIPOC, low-income and rural food and farming communities face. She has 20 years of experience in community leadership, training, education and engagement.
“My two-decade career at Farm Aid has offered me incredible opportunities to dig into a broad spectrum of the work and operations of the organization, for which I am grateful and proud,” says Fahy. “Farm Aid’s people are its greatest strength, and I am thrilled to deepen my work with all of the folks — from farmers and artists to our supporters, advocates, policymakers and everyone who eats — who make up this organization and this movement for thriving family farmers.”
“As a Black Southern woman who grew up in the family farm tradition, I have a deep understanding of the struggles of family farmers and rural communities,” says Ammons. “I know the ways that food and music bring folks together. So, for me, this transition has been taking place over the course of my lifetime of work and service. I’m excited to step into this role to live up to the legacy of Farm Aid’s leadership and the resistance that marginalized communities have demonstrated since the farm crisis of the 80s and throughout our shared history.”
Farm Aid will stage its 40th-anniversary festival in 2025. The venue and date of next year’s concert has not yet been announced.
Earlier this week, Billboard revealed its year-end Boxscore charts, ranking the top tours, venues and promoters of 2024. We’re breaking it down further, looking at the biggest live acts, genre by genre. Today, we continue with R&B. First, the bad news: Grosses for the top 10 R&B tours are down in 2024. Last year’s crop […]
Burning Man still needs to raise $14 million amid its ongoing fundraising efforts.
An email sent out to the Burning Man community on Thursday (Dec. 19) from Burning Man Project CEO Marian Goodell provided an update on the fundraising push that the nonprofit organization launched in October seeking $20 million.
“We started 2024 with a commitment to raise $10 million philanthropically,” Goodell’s email states. “This was up 20% from the $8.2 million raised in 2023. Due to the ticket sales shortfall to Black Rock City in 2024, we found ourselves needing to make mission-aligned budget adjustments and raise the remaining deficit to the tune of approximately $10 million—this, in addition to the initial $10 million goal. And today, with reductions as well as dollars raised from supporters, we’re still about $14 million short of where we ought to be.”
The email continues that “thanks to the generosity of enthusiastic donors” the fundraising campaign is now matching donations through the end of the year.
The update comes amid a fundraising campaign launched in October by Burning Man Project — the nonprofit behind the annual gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert and other Burning Man-related initiatives — that notified Burners that the organization needs to raise $20 million in charitable donations by the end of 2024 due to the fact that the 2024 festival did not sell out “as planned,” per Goodell’s original announcement.
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As reported by Billboard in November, each year since 2016 before the main ticket sale begins, roughly 4,000 Burning Man tickets go on sale for much more than main sale tickets — this year selling at $1,500 and $2,500. These tickets, which are typically purchased by people who have cash to spare and don’t want to risk not getting a ticket during the main sale, usually bring in approximately $7 million — and nearly $10 million in 2023. But in November a spokesperson for BMP said that in 2024, higher-priced ticket sales totaled $3.4 million, down nearly $6 million from the prior year.
This budget deficit is creating uncertainty about ticket prices for the 2025 Burning Man event in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. “If we don’t set ourselves up right, we’re going to have to raise ticket prices,” Goodell told Billboard in November, “[especially because] we don’t have the sponsorships that the other festivals do. And I’d like to lower ticket prices.”
Goodell’s latest update emphasizes that Burning Man organizers are “determined to keep Burning Man financially accessible by offering reasonably priced ticket options for Black Rock City 2025,” and also notes that representatives of Burning Man Project are “making ourselves more accessible. By offering town halls, office hours and more clearly providing contact points for you within the nonprofit, we are making ourselves available to participants as a resource.”