Touring
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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 Latin. Latin music reached unprecedented heights in 2022, when Bad Bunny staged the year’s highest-grossing tour. While no genre […]
Olivia Rodrigo is leaving the countries she visited on the Guts World Tour better than she found them. As announced Tuesday (Dec. 17), the 21-year-old pop star is donating a hefty chunk of her net proceeds from ticket sales to charities all over the globe, marking just the latest initiative she’s taken through her Fund […]
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. Here, we kick things off with rap. Hip-hop had its biggest year ever on stage. Rap artists accounted for 5.7% of the top […]
On April 26, Argentine trap star and master freestyler Duki will kick off his first major U.S. tour, playing 11 dates (including Puerto Rico) in theaters and arenas. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Duki, who made history as the first urban artist to sell out the […]
Sorry, Arianators. Despite rumors to the contrary, Ariana Grande does not have a tour in the works for 2025, something her label confirmed on X Sunday (Dec. 15). Replying to a fan account speculating that the pop star was gearing up to announce a run of concert dates, Republic Records cut to the chase by […]
At the start of 2024, Chappell Roan was a rising pop singer-songwriter with a core but mighty following. She had released her debut solo album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, in September 2023 to critical appreciation but not much commercial fanfare. By February, she kicked off Olivia Rodrigo’s North American arena tour as its opening act and soon after booked a few appearances at the biggest U.S. music festivals including Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, mostly on afternoon side stages.
Yet the April release of her stand-alone single, “Good Luck, Babe!,” coincided with Roan’s album flying into the top 10 of the Billboard 200 as her back catalog quickly populated the Billboard Hot 100. By the time of her previously booked festival gigs, her name had become synonymous with pop stardom — and she used each set to prove why, showcasing her undeniable stage presence and audacious wardrobe at every stop.
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Apparently, behind the scenes, Roan was just as astonished. “In the moment, it was all so fast that we didn’t even get a chance to talk about what the f–k was going on,” says Roan’s stylist, Genesis Webb, with a laugh. “We were so focused on moving to the next thing that we didn’t have a moment to process.”
Chappell Roan’s “Eat Me” outfit at Coachella in April.
Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
By July, when the organizers for Chicago’s Lollapalooza witnessed her outsize crowds at festivals like Governors Ball and Boston Calling, they met to hastily figure out how to accommodate the throng of fans Roan would inevitably assemble at their own event. “It became a safety concern more than anything else,” says Huston Powell, a promoter at C3 Presents, the company responsible for booking the iconic Chicago festival. “There’s an egress-ingress point to the left of the stage that she was going to be playing, and we knew that the number of people wanting to see her could cause a massive traffic jam on that hill. On the main stages, we had a layout that could handle more people with more barricading, so we decided to move her set.”
Ultimately, Roan’s Lollapalooza performance broke an attendance record for the largest day crowd ever seen in the event’s 30-plus-year history — without a headline billing. And while Powell can’t offer a specific number of people in the audience for the star’s headline-making set, he can confirm what he saw with his own eyes. “There were at least three or four other acts playing at the same time, and the crowd is usually somewhat evenly split between the stages. But just by the sheer appearance, looking around at the number of people in the park and the people you could eyeball at other stages, the vast majority were watching Chappell’s set. We anticipated it would be big, but this completely exceeded expectations.”
Dan Nigro, Roan’s producer-collaborator, explained to Billboard in June that her path to the center of the cultural zeitgeist proved that nothing is more powerful in the industry than good buzz.
“The fact that she’s so phenomenal live means people are finally able to see in real time how good she is. That then becomes this word-of-mouth thing, and it’s wonderful to see her have such old-school success,” he said. “She’s so good at what she does that the system is working again. It really is that simple.”
Her wrestling outfit at Lollapalooza.
Erika Goldring/WireImage
Roan herself told Billboard in 2022 that her career lives and dies by the success of her live performances. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the live show is where the heartbeat of the project is,” she said. “Luckily, it’s my favorite part of what I do.”
Part of her runaway success on the festival circuit came largely thanks to Roan’s maximalist costuming, a running feature along her path to pop stardom. When she started headlining her own tours in 2023 — following the release of her now-Grammy-nominated debut album — Roan decided to create themes for every show, encouraging fans to dress up along with her. Webb says they kept that trend going for Roan’s festival performances, commissioning eye-catching, distinct costumes for every gig. “I think we did 16 different looks all told for these festivals,” she says.
Whether Roan was dressed as a giant pink butterfly at Coachella (in a loving tribute to Deee-Lite’s Lady Miss Kier), the Statue of Liberty at Governors Ball or a professional wrestler at Lollapalooza, she thrived when embracing the outsize nature of her job, creating headlines around her phenomenal costuming and anticipation for what would come next. Webb points out that it’s a tried-and-true method for pop stars, with artists like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry building their own fame with dazzling outfits at the outset of their careers.
“I think it’s the zeitgeist of it all — it’s knowing that this is supposed to be fun,” she says. “It felt like there hadn’t been a pop star in a really long time to have people wanting to see a live-performance look as much as they do with her.”
Her Statue of Liberty costume at Governors Ball in June.
Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images
With that anticipation came unprecedented crowds. Powell saw the numbers Roan drew at Boston Calling and Coachella, which helped his team plan ahead. When an act dropped out the weekend before Austin City Limits in September, C3 Presents promoter Amy Corbin says the festival seized the opportunity to place Roan’s performance on its main stage as well. “When it happens, we look at ways to adjust programming to ensure we are delivering the best fan and artist experience,” Corbin tells Billboard. For the second time this year, Roan’s set drew “the largest crowds in the sunset slot in ACL Fest history,” she says.
Roan’s festival season has since ignited conversations in the live industry about how to recapture the energy that she — and her fans — brought. “We’re all trying to find the next Chappell Roan,” Powell says. “I think sometimes bands worry about what time of day they play and where they play — but if anything, this showed that if you’re hot enough, audiences will come no matter what.”
This story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Coldplay crowns Billboard’s year-end Top Tours chart. Not far removed, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, The Rolling Stones, U2 and Metallica follow in the top 10. Half of the ranking’s upper tier is made up of rock acts, allowing the long-dominant genre to have the biggest piece of the Boxscore pie. Among all dollars earned by 2024’s top 100 touring acts, rock is responsible for 36%, more than any other genre.
Rock’s rule is easily explained by its five acts in the top 10. But among artists between Nos. 11-20 on Top Tours, there is just one more name to add: Eagles at No. 19. Dominated by classic rock acts with chart-topping albums from the 1960s and ‘70s, the genre’s towering lead on stage has shrunk considerably over the course of the 21st century.
For every year but one between 2000-2010, rock acts represented more than 50% of Top Tours revenue, peaking at 68% in 2003. It’s only managed that once in the years since, when U2, Guns N’ Roses and Coldplay lined up at Nos. 1, 2, and 3, respectively, in 2017. Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, rock’s share bumped up and down year-to-year, but generally shifted from the majority to the mid-40% range, and now to the mid-30% range.
Watch the clip below to see how the genre makeup of Billboard’s top 100 tours has evolved over the course of the 21st century.
Rock’s share of the top 100 tours is actually up from last year, bumping from 32.4% to 36%. Still, it’s been below 40% for four of the last five years (excluding 2020 and 2021 because of venue closures due to COVID-19), off from an average of 57% throughout the 2000s decade. The genre’s reliance on legendary bands has left a gap as younger acts from other styles elevate to stadium status.
Pop is next in line, with 16.4% of 2024’s top 100 grosses. P!nk, Madonna and Olivia Rodrigo lead the charge, ticking up from last year’s 15.8%. One major caveat is the absence of Taylor Swift and the gargantuan grosses of The Eras Tour. While overall tour figures were published by The New York Times, data was not submitted to Billboard Boxscore for chart eligibility, which means that its earnings are excluded from this equation. It’s estimated that if this year’s grosses were reported, pop would reign supreme with 27-28%, sending rock into the 20%s in both 2023 and 2024.
Pop and rock have been the top two touring genres for every year this century, with the lone exception of 2003, when country music narrowly out-paced pop, 13% to 12.2%. But while they remain on top, the spread has become significantly more even in the post-pandemic years.
Latin music and rap both posted record highs this year, up to 15.8% and 5.7%, respectively. The former hit a new peak in 2022, when Bad Bunny had the year’s biggest tour, becoming the first artist who doesn’t primarily perform in English to earn top year-end honors. While no Latin act has reached those heights since, his stadium success is no longer an anomaly. Luis Miguel grossed $290.4 million this year, and four other Spanish-speaking artists crossed the $100 million threshold. At 5.3% in 2019, Latin artists returned from the pandemic at 12.1% in 2022, then 11.5% in 2023, and now approaching 16% in 2024.
Rap artists have yet to scale their touring business to the extent of their streaming prowess, but this year made quite a dent. The genre’s top-100 share shot from 2.7% to 5.7%, more than doubling its representation and eclipsing its prior peak from 2019. Four women helped push hip-hop’s boundaries, with Doja Cat, Missy Elliott, Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj outnumbering male rappers on the Top Tours chart for the first time. Plus, Travis Scott scores the genre’s biggest year-end gross ever, at $168 million.
The oscillations of each genre’s performance from one year to the next often comes down to scheduling. Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour was impactful enough to shift R&B artists from 5.3% in 2022 to 15.2% in 2023 and back to 5.9% in 2024. But the progression from pop and rock owning a combined 78.5% in 2000 to 52% in 2024 is indicative of gradual growth from a wide variety of diverse artists harnessing the power of their global audiences.
For the first time in Boxscore history, four female rappers land among the year’s top 100 touring artists. Further, women rappers outnumber male rappers for the first time on the all-genre list. Nicki Minaj (No. 30), Doja Cat (No. 61), Missy Elliott (No. 70), and Megan Thee Stallion (No. 76) finish on the year-end Top Tours chart, while closing at Nos. 2, 5, 6, and 7, respectively, on Top Rap Tours.
This year marks the first year with more than one female rapper among the top 100, let alone four. In fact, there had only been four instances of women in hip-hop ever making the all-genre list, dating back to the first year-end roundup in 1991.
Salt-N-Pepa did it first, at No. 53 in 1994 with a gross of $3.9 million, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
Five years later, fresh off five Grammy wins for her R&B-rap-hybrid The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the titular rapper was No. 43 with $7.1 million.
Then, two of this year’s group made their debuts: Missy Elliott in 2004, as a co-headliner alongside Beyoncé and Alicia Keys on the Verizon Ladies First Tour ($21.8 million), and Nicki Minaj in 2015 on The Pinkprint Tour ($15.5 million).
That means that representation for female rappers across 34 year-end editions has doubled with just this year’s tally. This count excludes year-end appearances by pop and R&B acts who occasionally rap, such as Beyoncé, Lizzo or SZA.
2024 goes down as a banner year for the touring industry overall, with record grosses surpassing $9 billion among the top 100 artists. And amid that enormous success, rap makes up a bigger piece of the pie than ever before, responsible for 5.7% of those dollars, up from 2.7% last year. The genre’s seven tours in the top 100 matches 2019’s high and improves upon last year’s count of three. Nicki, Doja, Missy and Megan made that possible, not only disrupting hip-hop’s gender monopoly — it’s been nine years since a woman was among rap’s top-100 finalists — but taking over and pushing hip-hop over the edge, outnumbering male rappers for the first time on the all-genre list. Travis Scott (No. 15), $uicideboy$ (No. 48) and 50 Cent (No. 49) round out rap’s representation on the chart.
Minaj is No. 30 on Top Tours with $99.8 million and 712,000 tickets, marking all-time highs for year-end rank, gross and attendance among female rappers, barely outdoing the No. 31 finish for Elliott’s Verizon co-headline 20 years ago. Notably, the Pink Friday 2 World Tour continued beyond the confines of the 2024 tracking period (Oct. 1, 2023 – Sept. 30, 2024), finishing in mid-October with a final gross of $108.9 million from 788,000 tickets, making it the first tour by a female rapper to cross the nine-figure milestone.
Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion each made their mark on their debut arena tours. Both acts experienced major breakthroughs in 2020 while concert venues were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They scored their first No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100 just two weeks apart, as “Say So,” hot off a remix with fellow arena titan Nicki Minaj, topped the chart dated May 16, 2020, and “Savage,” boosted by a re-up with rare rap verses by Beyoncé, hit the summit on May 30.
Doja and Megan’s tours reported earnings of $46 million and $40.2 million, respectively, both primarily in the U.S. and Canada, with a sprinkle of European headline shows.
This year also marked the first solo headline tour for Missy Elliott, though it comes nearly 30 years after her debut studio album. Though she wasn’t a road warrior, she amassed major chart success, with six top 20 albums on the Billboard 200 and 10 top 10s on the Hot 100 from 1997-2005.
Beyond hip-hop’s year-end elite, a small handful of female rappers provide promise for the years to come. Ice Spice sold thousands of tickets in Boston, Oakland, and Washington, D.C., while Sexyy Red graduated from clubs last fall (972 tickets in Boston; 1,580 in Richmond, Va.) to arenas, approaching 10,000 tickets in Fort Worth, Texas (9,703 at Dickies Arena on Aug. 30), and Brooklyn (9,631 at Barclays Center on Sept. 17). GloRilla, with eight Hot 100 hits this year, spent hot girl summer as direct support on Megan Thee Stallion’s sold-out trek.
Nicki Minaj, Doja Cat, Missy Elliott and Megan Thee Stallion grossed a combined $227.8 million from 1.7 million tickets across 148 shows in the 2024 tracking window.
After announcing that he’ll be back on the road after seven years with his Importante Tour 2025-2026, Miguel Bosé is preparing to return to the United States next fall, with seven dates in as many cities.
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Ahead of his U.S. dates, Bosé will launch the trek in February in Mexico and will travel across Spain in the summer.
The U.S. leg of the tour, produced by Live Nation, is set to launch on Oct. 2 in New York City at The Theater at Madison Square Garden, according to a press release sent in advance to Billboard. The Spanish pop icon will also make stops in Rosemont, Ill.; Irving and Houston, Texas; and San Diego and Inglewood, Calif., where the trek will conclude on Nov. 8 at the YouTube Theater.
A presale for Citi card members starts Tuesday (Dec. 17) at 10 a.m. ET and ends Thursday (Dec. 19) at 10 p.m. ET through the program Citi Entertainment, with general tickets going on sale Friday (Dec. 20) at 10 a.m. local time at miguelbose.com. There will also be VIP packages available for purchase here.
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After dealing with voice issues that kept him away from the stage for several years, Bosé announced his Importante Tour 2025-2026 on Nov. 18 through a series of posts on social media.
“It’s the reborn BOSÉ. It’s the fully matured BOSÉ. It’s the warrior of the NEW ERA, the family man, the CONSCIOUS, the CONNECTED, the SPIRITUAL. It’s the IMPORTANT one,” he wrote.
A month earlier, on Oct. 18, Bosé hinted that something big was coming by posting a video on Instagram featuring his perennial song “Bandido” as the soundtrack.
“Fantastic. We are all happy, and it will be an honor,” he said at the end of the clip, which included a collage of images of him smiling, posing in a photo shoot, and singing live at past massive shows.
With more than 30 million albums sold throughout a five decades career, Bosé is one of the most recognized Latin pop artists globally. On the Billboard charts, he has placed hits like “Nena,” “Morena Mía,” and “Como un Lobo” on Hot Latin Songs and Latin Airplay, and multiple albums in the top 10 of the Top Latin Albums ranking, including Papito, Cardio, and Papitwo.
Bosé’s influence extends beyond music. Awarded with accolades such as the Latin Recording Academy 2013 Person of the Year, the Global Gift Humanitarian Award and Telemundo’s El Poder en Ti, as a philanthropist, Bosé is deeply involved in causes such as Patrimonio Indígena Mex, Fundación Lucha Contra el Sida, and National Geographic’s Pristine Seas.
Check out the dates and venues announced in the U.S. for Bosé’s Importante Tour 2025-2026:
Oct. 2: The Theater at Madison Square Garden (New York City)Oct. 4: Kaseya Center (Miami)Oct. 11: Rosemont Theatre (Rosemont, Ill.)Oct. 24: The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory (Irving, Texas)Oct. 25: Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land (Houston)Nov. 7: Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre (San Diego)Nov. 8: YouTube Theater (Inglewood, Calif.)