Touring
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Only months after announcing the 2025 edition of Byron Bay’s enduring Bluesfest would be its last, festival director Peter Noble has changed his tune.
The long-running festival has become an institution on the Australian festivals calendar across its 35-year history. Names such as Bob Dylan, BB King, Paul Simon, John Mayer, Mary J Blige, and Kendrick Lamar, plus homegrown stars Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil and Crowded House, have all performed over the years, with the dizzying lineups also offering chances for rising stars to receive a vital platform.
In August, however, Noble explained that the festival – held annually across the Easter long weekend on Australia’s east coast – would come to a close after one final outing.
“To my Dear Bluesfest Family, and after more than 50 years in the music business, Bluesfest has been a labour of love, a celebration of music, community, and the resilient spirit of our fans,” Noble wrote in a statement.
“But after the 2025 festival, as much as it pains me to say this, it’s time to close this chapter,” he continued. “As I said earlier this year at Bluesfest 2024, next year’s festival will be happening and it definitely is, but it will be our last.”
News of the festival’s impending demise was another chapter in the ongoing story of the wider festival industry and its struggle to stay afloat. Noble’s announcement arrived only weeks after Splendour in the Grass – another Byron Bay festival and one of Australia’s most prominent musical events – was planned to hold its latest edition prior to an unexpected cancellation.
However, a new interview with Noble has revealed that the festival may be around for some time to come, explaining to IQ Magazine that the decision to call time on the event was an attempt to regain the support of the New South Wales state government.
“August was a time of great disappointment,” Noble told IQ. “We had said to the government ‘Look, we need investment at this time, the cost of living crisis is really affecting events and there are cancellations everywhere’.
“They sent me a Dear John letter saying we’ve decided not to invest in you. During the last 12 years, Bluesfest brought $1.1 billion to our state through inbound tourism. That is a tsunami of gold but it seemingly doesn’t count. The [state government] just wanted to put it in their coffers and not take responsibility for Australia’s great events.”
Noble also pointed to the Australian launch of South by Southwest in Sydney last year, which received sizeable investments from the state government across its first two events.
“So what do we have to do? Do we have to say it’s the last Bluesfest to get people to focus on us?” Noble asked. “Are we the long-suffering wife and South by Southwest is the mistress who gets the diamond rings?
“All we’ve asked our state to do is to show us that they care about the most highly awarded event in the history of Australian music. Regardless, I will always find a way for Bluesfest to go forward – that is my job.”
The 2025 edition of Bluesfest is scheduled to take place across the Easter long weekend in April 2025 and features a largely homegrown list of headliners, including Crowded House, Hilltop Hoods, and Vance Joy. A vast array of international names are also present, including Gary Clark Jr., George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Allison Russell, BJ The Chicago Kid, and more.
Per Noble’s claims, his clarion call will potentially result in the “most successful festival yet”.
“We’re on the path to selling out, with 89,000 passes sold and I’m sure we’ll go past 90,000 after [yesterday’s] artist announcement,” he explained. “We’re probably the best-selling festival in Australia at the moment. We’ve been shown that people care about events and culture.”
During its heyday, Bluesfest averaged 85,000 attendees. That figure swelled to 102,000 in 2022, when live music returned from the lockdown years. The most recent show, however, counted fewer than 65,000 attendees.
Noble also revealed he was in the process of booking artists for the 2026 edition of Bluesfest. The fruits of his recent labor will ostensibly be revealed around August/September 2025, as is traditional for the festival’s first lineup announcement.
Taylor Swift’s orbit is so powerful, it even draws in CEOs.
That’s what’s brought Tim Leiweke, chairman/CEO of Oak View Group (OVG), to Toronto in November. Joining us in a boardroom at OVG’s Toronto office in Liberty Village while an Eras Tour pre-party raffles off tickets to the excited sounds of “oohs” and “aahs” in the next room, Leiweke says Taylor Swift Mania represents a pivotal moment for the city and its big and growing live music industry.
“I’m always amazed not just by her talent, but that she’s just a genuinely very nice human being,” Leiweke said. “But to me, I love Toronto. I’m happy the city gets this moment and this platform. It’s a nice spotlight, and the city always does well in the spotlight.”
OVG played a minor role in the Eras Tour coming to Toronto, arranging the sponsorship of the Canadian leg and helping out with venues behind the scenes. But her presence is a perfect chance for Leiweke to survey the company’s operations in Canada, entertain clients and make ambitious plans.
“Canada is a place where we’re going to plant the flag of this organization and watch it grow,” says Leiweke. “Our entrepreneurial spirit is high in Canada.”
OVG has broken ground on a major renovation of an as-yet-unnamed 18,000-seat arena in Hamilton, Ontario (a large metropolis not quite two hours from Toronto) set to open in 2025. A partnership with Live Nation and the Hamilton Urban Precinct Entertainment Group (HUPEG), it’s a nearly $300-million private-public investment in the former FirstOntario Centre/Copps Coliseum building.
“You’re not gonna recognize the building when we’re through with it,” says Francesca Bodie, OVG’s Chief Operating Officer (Leiweke’s daughter), who also joins the interview with Billboard Canada. She’s excited for the different kinds of entertainment they can bring to Hamilton, from K-pop to South Asian music to boxing. “Hamilton is very diverse, and they’ve got a tremendous appetite for a variety of content. They just don’t have the venue yet.”
As it readies the new arena, which is poised to operate on a scale you’d more often see in Toronto, OVG has been increasing its presence north of the border. It’s hiring new staffers and investing in new ventures, like Departure conference and festival (formerly Canadian Music Week), and partnering with venues like Rogers Place in Edmonton, Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg and Scotiabank Arena in Toronto as part of its Canadian Alliance.
Leiweke is no stranger to Canada. He spent four years as the President and CEO of Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), the company that owns the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors, from 2013-2015. He even personally cut the ribbon on BMO Field, home of the Toronto FC Major League Soccer Team. He has fond memories of the city, telling stories about buying beers for fans and personally ensuring hot dog buns were toasted.
Leiweke, who is also a former CEO of Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), broke away to partner with music industry titan Irving Azoff to form OVG in 2015, initially starting with four employees and funding it with their own money. Now, Leiweke says the company has 62,000 employees and did “half a billion in sales this year.” The company manages approximately 500 facilities, and built a number of them during the pandemic, anticipating the post-restrictions boom in concerts.
The exec compares the Hamilton Arena Project to Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle when it comes to sustainability (reusing 30,000 pounds of steel by renovating instead of building from scratch) and to CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore for how the company built a splashy project in a city that many didn’t then see as a top-tier market. He also compares it to the big-budget Co-op Live Arena in Manchester for its focus on music and special acoustic treatments to get the best possible sound.
The live music industry is hot right now, especially when it comes to stadiums and arenas. That’s good news for OVG, but it’s also increased scrutiny around the most successful companies. In the United States, the Department of Justice is investigating Live Nation in an antitrust complaint that ties back to the company’s 2010 merger with Ticketmaster. Correspondence from Leiweke and OVG was used as evidence in the case, which alleges that the two companies colluded to undercut competitors. Live Nation has countered to say OVG, which is focused on venue operations and services, is not a competitor in the realm of concert promotion, and that the company’s use of Ticketmaster is above board.
In this wide-ranging interview, the first in Billboard Canada‘s new Executive Spotlight series, Leiweke gives his opinion on the legal challenge from the DOJ. He also shares why OVG is investing in Hamilton, and talks about his big dream for a national stadium of Canada.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is arguably the biggest tour of all time, but it seems like there are more mega-tours than ever before. Do you see it as a healthy market for arena and stadium concerts?
I’m also a huge fan of Coldplay, and they kind of sometimes get lost in the Swifties. They opened our building at Climate Pledge Arena in 2021, and they’ve been touring ever since. These guys have been on the road for like four years! We have Sir Paul McCartney at our building in Manchester next month, and to me that’s just another incredible story. Here’s this 80-year-old guy and he’s still in phenomenal shape. We have Springsteen doing three nights. He’s 70-something years old. I mean music is an interesting industry right now. We’ve got a bunch of young turks and a bunch of us old jerks.
It’s a healthy industry. This is still pent up demand from COVID. It’s what people have been talking about forever in our industry, which the transfer of power from recording to touring – because that’s where the money is.
Oak View Group is making a big push here in Canada with the new Hamilton arena that’s coming and then Canadian Music Week, which is now Departure. Is it an intentional push in this country?
Yes. I spent roughly four years with Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment. I very much enjoyed my time here. I was just blown away by Toronto in particular. There’s a lot of great cities in North America, but in my mind there’s not a cleaner, bigger, better city than Toronto. So when we started the new company, I told Francesca I want to focus on opportunities in Canada and I want our company to grow. There were two people when we started this Toronto office. Now, we have at least 40 or 50.
I think the largest single private investment in the history of arenas is what we’re doing in Hamilton. And part of it is just because I was from here [Toronto] for four years. This metro area has to move south. It does. [Toronto’s] metro area is not gonna go backwards. It’s gonna continue to grow. It’s gonna continue to thrive. But if you look cost of living, you look at the campuses and the colleges down there, you look at companies that are moving there, I think Hamilton is an interesting alternative. I mean, just look at the number of condos being built in downtown Hamilton.
Toronto is one of the biggest global touring markets and Hamilton is relatively close by. Is that proximity part of the appeal to build there?
I’ll tell you a story. When I first got here, one of the first things I did is I went to meet every partner. And so I went to the Ford plant [in Oakville, Ontario] to meet the people there, and I realized that plant is almost as close to Hamilton as it is to downtown Toronto. And that was the first time that I understood Hamilton, essentially. It’s like a suburb of Toronto. It’s not that far away. Where I come from, it would be like as Anaheim is to L.A.
If you look at that old building, everyone looks past it. We saw a jewel. We did this in Baltimore where we took an old arena and no one got what we were doing there [at first]. There, we invested about a quarter of a billion. Here, we’re putting in about $300 million. But what we saw was the economy, the energy level, the kids and youth, they’re in Hamilton.
Why build in Hamilton though, and not Toronto directly?
Well, I didn’t want to take on Maple Leafs Sports, because that’s my home. I still have a very good relationship with everybody over there. We’re gonna grow our company with those people, so I’m not coming into their marketplace and competing with them. But what I knew running Air Canada Centre, now Scotiabank Arena, is they’ve got a calendar issue. They’ve got too much going on. There has to be another play. What I love about Hamilton is if there are conflicts [in Toronto], we can have the dates available at that building. But it’s also the ability to go play two nights in Scotiabank and two nights in Hamilton.
There’s lot of opportunity in Canada in general, including a national stadium. You need a national stadium.
What does a national stadium look like? What would that look like? Can you make a comparison?
Wembley Stadium in London. That’s really the inspiration and the concept. Everyone always talks about the NFL coming to Toronto. I say, you don’t understand. They are never coming here until you have a stadium first. You’ve got to find a stadium solution.
Also, I think this is actually one of the greatest soccer markets in the world. You could do 10 international games every year here during the summertime with all the big teams. The national team is also getting good and they need a place that ultimately becomes their home for the qualifications. I think Toronto FC is going to have some big games as well. They have the ability of putting some games into a big stadium. You’ve also got Live Nation building a temporary stadium in order to do concerts [in Toronto] because they’re going to do 20 a year.
So now, combine all of that into a national stadium and then add the opportunity to do NFL football. That’s a huge opportunity.
Are you talking about this theoretically, or is this something that you’re planning to do?
It’s a dream. It’s a really expensive dream. But it is a dream.
Is your strategy different from what you’re doing in the United States and in the rest of the world?
Here’s one thing I learned in Canada. I came up here thinking about open competition. We don’t want to be controlled by U.S. media and U.S. banks. And I came here thinking, well, they’re very open to entrepreneurial spirits. And then I remember the first time I walked down Lawrence Street, I think it was, and the banks were all right next to each other. I think they all talk to each other every day. And then I realized, well, wait a minute. There’s only three media companies here and they own everything. It was a learning lesson.
Michael Bloomberg always used to tell me if you want to see economic development, go out and ultimately be the first one in with a vision and then watch how many people will follow you. So, we privatized all 300 million dollars in Hamilton. That’s an amazing commitment on behalf of our partners and the company. And Live Nation, which is interesting that now they’re jumping into the facility business.
You’re partnering with Live Nation on the Hamilton arena. How does that relationship work?
Carefully. As you may know, we got dragged into the lawsuit [with Live Nation and Ticketmaster].
I get the debate on Ticketmaster and Live Nation. But guess what? They approved that merger. So now to sit there and say, you’re a monopoly. You should have dealt with it then. But you approved it. So you can’t now go back and say, we made a mistake.
When we started our company, AEG wasn’t going to do anything with us. There was still some tension [after Leiweke left the company]. They wouldn’t do our conferences. They wouldn’t do our publication [Pollstar or VenuesNow, which OVG owns]. They didn’t want to book our buildings. They wouldn’t talk to us. So if you looked at where we were as a company, it was like, hey, I don’t have a choice if I am going to survive and make a go of this company. Me and Irving Azoff, we personally put our own money into growing this damn thing. Now, I have to find somebody [to book shows] because I need content. My buildings can’t work if I don’t have content.
And so then [the authorities] come back and say, well, why didn’t you be a promoter? I barely had enough money to meet payroll. Me and Irving put $10-15 million into the company and started it up. We were doing the dog paddle.
Now you come along and you want to whack me? And the question I have is, shouldn’t we be like the gold statue winners for entrepreneurial spirit? All I’ve done is given people choices now on food and beverage companies, or facility management companies, or facility development companies. And I’m competing with all these other people. You let AEG and SMG merge. And I’m the dumb schmuck that took them on. I’m the one that went and competed with them. And by the way, I kicked their butt.
Now you penalize me? I didn’t go buy other companies out and try to eliminate competition. If you look at everything we’ve done – privatize the building in New York, privatize the building in Seattle, privatize the building in Austin – isn’t that what we’re supposed to be, entrepreneurial spirit? Shouldn’t we encourage that instead of condemning that?
But it’s like, well, anyone that’s partners with Live Nation, we’re going to get. Why? If you’ve got a problem with them, go talk to them. But at the end of the day, you’re going to penalize me, because I’m working with the only company that would return my phone calls? That’s the mindset now. And I just think it’s wrong.
Now, everybody has an opinion, and theirs counts. And so we will fight through that. But I think we’ve had a four-year stint, at least in our country, where there has been almost ruthlessness towards companies. And to me, this private-public partnership in Hamilton, where we’re putting up all the money and taking all the risk and the city ultimately gives us a long-term lease, I think that’s a good thing. But you’ve got to have entrepreneurs who are willing to take risk.
And so I think we’ve got to get back – in the U.S., but I’d say this applies to Canada, too – to encouraging competition, but celebrating entrepreneurs, and trying to encourage privatization of certain aspects of risk. I think governments should be focused on security, and education, and health, and wellness, and services. That means the private sector has to go figure out a way to build arenas. I don’t think the taxpayers should have to pay for arenas. But it means you better then find people who want to take the risk to develop them. We’ve spent $5 billion as a company. $5 billion. I think that’s a good thing. And by the way, we’re not a monopoly. We have lots of competitors.
Coming back to the arena in Hamilton, what are your hopes for the future of concerts and entertainment in the city?
If you think about arenas, they’re a point of destination that brings the entire community together. And as we’re proving again with Taylor, music moves people. It’s the one thing that unites us and always brings us together. If the arena can be a symbol of rejuvenation and renovation in Hamilton and we can get people pumped up, other developers are going to jump in and other projects are going to get built. There’s a chain effect, and that’s fantastic.
This story was originally published by Billboard Canada.
Gene Simmons spent decades traveling the world as the fire-breathing bass player for KISS, taking with him the large road crews required for massive — and expensive — productions on some of music’s biggest stages. Since KISS’s final show in December 2023, Simmons has been traveling considerably lighter as the frontman for the Gene Simmons Band, playing KISS favorites, some rarely heard Simmons solo tunes and familiar classics by the likes of Van Halen and Motorhead.
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Simmons says he has stripped down the tour to the essential elements — the musicians — and pockets more money from a Gene Simmons Band show than he netted as a member of KISS. “The local promoters provide the back line, and we just get up there and play,” Simmons tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast. That’s a sharp contrast to the complex — and expensive — production required to take KISS on the road.
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As a solo artist playing festivals and theaters, Simmons has “no managers, no private jets, no 20 tractor trailers, no 60-man crew, no huge shows — and the pyro alone for every [KISS] show is ten grand, sometimes 50 [thousand dollars] if you go outdoors,” he explains. “Enormous, enormous costs for doing that.”
Simmons is “proud” to have performed those massive productions, but the Gene Simmons Band tour isn’t trying to replicate the KISS stage show. “It’s almost as if you decided to rent some amps in a garage and plug in,” he says, “and then everybody from the neighborhood comes in … It’s very informal and a lot of fun.”
Outside of the four band members, the band takes two additional people on the road, says guitarist Brent Woods, who manages the travel and concert production details: an assistant who helps with business duties and Simmons’ security, and one crew member for the musicians. As for equipment, Woods says the band — which also includes guitarist Zach Throne and drummer Brian Tichy — takes only its guitars and pedal boards, and Tichy may take his own snare drum on the upcoming tour. Otherwise, everything is rented. “It does save a lot of money,” says Woods. “And then in turn, everybody benefits, right? The band included. Everybody makes more money.”
The stripped-down traveling arrangement wouldn’t work with a larger group of people, Woods admits. Nor would it work if Simmons wasn’t comfortable riding in a splitter van and going without rock star trappings. “But Gene’s so easygoing,” says Woods. “He’s just so relaxed and he’s low maintenance. He doesn’t need a lot. He’s not the quintessential rock star that has to have a certain room or a suite that’s on this floor far away from the elevator. He just is not that way.”
Simmons readily admits he didn’t pioneer this approach to touring. “It used to be done by black musicians on the Chitlin’ Circuit, what used to be the black clubs, because they couldn’t play white clubs,” he said. Rock pioneer Chuck Berry took it a step further, touring only with his guitar and arriving in each city with a local band that had learned and rehearsed his songs. (Bruce Springsteen once played in Berry’s backing band for a concert in 1973.) “Now, I don’t do that,” said Simmons. “I take my band with me, but Berry would show up and would, you know, he’d tell the guys, ‘Study the records, learn these songs, I’m going to show up,’ and no rehearsal, nothing.”
To Woods, the Gene Simmons Band’s do-it-yourself touring approach is simply a longer version of the “weekend warrior” touring artist. “Bands go out Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and they play two, three shows. It’s the same thing. They’re flying to the destination, the back line’s there for them.”
Extending the weekend warrior approach into longer tours requires the knowledge Woods gained from decades as a traveling musician for decades, first as a member of the group Wildside and more recently as a member of Sebastian Bach’s band. “I’ve learned since the 90s,” he says, “when I started going out and touring. And you kind of learn by a lot of mistakes and your own mistakes and other people’s mistakes, and you finally figure it out.” Woods’ time on the road has also allowed him to built a network of professionals he can call to work at his shows in different cities. “It’s hard for younger bands to do that because they don’t know a lot of people,” he says.
Listen to the entire interview with Gene Simmons in the embedded Spotify playlist or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand.
If you didn’t get a chance to catch Charli xcx and Troye Sivan‘s SWEAT tour in person, you can still “feel the rush” and soak up the Brat Summer vibes at home. The superstar duo’s tour is making its way to virtual reality, Billboard can exclusively reveal, thanks to iHeartMedia and Meta and produced alongside OBB Media.
Charli xcx & Troye Sivan Present SWEAT in VR will be available exclusively on Meta Quest devices starting Dec. 27 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. The show was filmed during one of Charli and Troye’s performances at the KIA Forum in Los Angeles in October.
“The LA shows were incredible because of the energy in the crowd — it was especially good on night 2,” Sivan tells Billboard exclusively. “Having friends and family in the audience made it more special, too. It felt like a celebration with everyone I love and admire right there in the room.”
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He continues: “The SWEAT tour was one of the best experiences of my life, and I wanted to immortalize it in a way that felt as immersive and special as it was for me. iHeart, Meta and OBB have been able to make this come to life in VR and it’s the perfect medium to capture the intimacy, the energy, and the joy of those nights so that people at home could truly feel like they were there, or relive it.”
“Performing with Troye every night on the SWEAT tour was truly iconic and I’m so excited for fans to now be able to experience it at home,” Charli xcx added in a release announcing the news.
The 22-date nationwide tour wrapped in October and featured both artists taking turns performing high-energy hits, including Charli’s Brat hits like “360,” “Von Dutch” and “Girl, So Confusing,” as well as Troye’s fan-favorite jams including “My My My,” “Rush” and “One of Your Girls.” The concert, which is available for free in Meta Horizon Worlds Music Valley, will give fans a front-row seat to all the fun with 180-degree views of the show.
“She brings such an insane energy to the stage, and those performances felt like pure magic,” Sivan shares of his onstage partner. “I can’t wait for fans to relive or experience those moments for the first time.”
Charli xcx & Troye Sivan Present SWEAT in VR is executive produced by iHeartMedia’s John Sykes, president of entertainment enterprises, and Bart Peters, senior vice president of production and development; as well as Michael D. Ratner, Scott Ratner, Anthony Anchelowitz, Simone Spira and Kfir Goldberg for OBB Pictures, the Film & TV division of OBB Media; with Glenn Stickley, co-executive producing for OBB Media.
“Charli xcx, Troye Sivan and their teams have built something electric and singular with this show,” Ratner said of the SWEAT tour. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to partner with Meta and iHeartMedia to share this experience with fans around the world.”
Sykes agreed, saying in a statement: “Partnering with Charli xcx and Troye Sivan and with Meta gives us a unique opportunity to offer our millions of listeners the chance to experience two of the most talented artists in music performing on the most exciting new visual platform today.”
Sarah Malkin, director of Metaverse Entertainment at Meta, added, “The SWEAT Tour is the latest in a long lineup of incredible performances that we’ve brought to Music Valley. “Connecting fans to their favorite artists in a totally unique way through virtual reality extends the joy and excitement of concerts to even more people – and we couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with iHeart, Charli xcx and Troye Sivan to do that with this show.”
After the show, fans can catch free concerts from more artists in Music Valley, or experience the thousands of apps available in the Meta Horizon Store. Meta Quest 3S retails for $299, and features 128GB of storage, but you can upgrade to the 256GB device for $399.99. Meta Quest 3S is available at major retailers such as Amazon, Target, Walmart, Best Buy and Meta.com.
A full 10 years ago, global audiences got to know Andrew Hozier-Byrne — the Irish singer-songwriter known to most simply as Hozier — with his smash “Take Me to Church.” Written and released while he was still an independent artist playing Dublin open mics, the howling alt-folk ballad decried religious institutional hypocrisy and turned into enough of a surprise hit to get licensed to Columbia Records. It became omnipresent and climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100; Hozier, in turn, became one of 2014’s biggest breakout stars.
But over the next decade, he never matched its crossover success. That is, until this year: with “Too Sweet,” a slinky pop-soul ode to responsible decadence that once again made Hozier’s haunting wail unavoidable across multiple radio formats. The song (from his now ironically titled Unheard EP) became a runaway prerelease success in snippet form on TikTok, then on streaming services once the full song dropped in March, and then on the Hot 100 in April as it debuted at No. 5 and eventually did “Church” one better by topping the chart three weeks later, as well as the Pop Airplay and Rock & Alternative Airplay lists. For most artists who have gone 10 years without a major pop hit, its success would have been an absolute godsend — a comeback-marking, career-defining moment of validation.
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For Hozier? Eh, it was a nice bonus.
Which isn’t to say that he’s not thankful for the song’s streaming virality or for its subsequent pop radio crossover — the unassuming (and strikingly modest) artist projects only gratitude and humility when talking about his 2024 wins. It’s just that… well, the song’s chart takeover hasn’t really changed his career much yet.
“Ten years into your career, you know there’s going to be busy cycles, you know there’s going to be quiet cycles,” Hozier explains with a shrug.
This year obviously wasn’t one of the latter. He’s speaking to Billboard from Perth, Australia, on election night in America — which, with his jet-lagged sleep schedule, means he woke up in the “dark cloud” of Donald Trump’s electoral map takeover. “It feels like the world is controlled by gray-haired old men,” he says, then adds with a bit of mordant humor: “But in a few years… we can’t dodge coffins forever, you know?”
He has just had some rare time off — about three weeks, during which he recharged with friends and family in the countryside of Wicklow, Ireland, that he calls home — and is now between his two dates in Perth, part of a 12-show run Down Under that will take his total gigs for 2024 into the triple digits.Still, he says that when it comes to “Too Sweet,” 2024 hardly compares with his first turn in the pop spotlight. “When it was ‘Take Me to Church,’ that was the first song that I ever put out. So I was learning everything about everything all at once, also while trying to keep pace with this train that was moving,” he explains. “That was my whole life, was catching up with that song.”
Hozier photographed September 19, 2024 at Black Rabbit Rose in Los Angeles.
Austin Hargrave
“Too Sweet,” on the other hand? “It kind of just put wind in the sails of a ship that was already sort of moving,” he says, still sounding unsure of how to best quantify the effect. “It was just like this thing that happened, and it’s been like a cherry on the cake.”
And while Hozier has never seemed one to puff up his own wins, this time his entire team also appears to view the boost from his recent striking success in relatively low-key terms. Caroline Downey, his longtime manager, sums up the impact of “Too Sweet” even more succinctly than the artist himself.
“It was just lovely,” she says. “A lovely surprise.”
Most artists with a single major hit follow a similar trajectory. Hozier, for the last decade, has not.
For one thing, though his lone visit to the Hot 100 in the 2010s was with “Take Me to Church,” he found greater success on other charts. He established a home base on Adult Alternative Airplay, where he scored six top five hits before the end of the decade — including a second No. 1 after “Take Me to Church” with 2018’s Mavis Staples-featuring “Nina Cried Power” — and he topped the Billboard 200 in 2019 with Wasteland, Baby!, which features the latter track.
More importantly, though, he developed a major live following. Hozier has spent his entire career as a road warrior, gradually leveling up in terms of venue size — and earning lifelong fans with his live combination of low-key charisma and soaring singalongs, elevated by his piercing baritone — but making sure not to skip steps, or markets. “I’ve been doing this 25 years, and I don’t know if there’s another artist at the agency that’s played as many markets as Andrew has played,” says WME senior partner/global co-head of music Kirk Sommer, who oversees his North American touring. “He’s just completely and utterly dedicated to his craft and plays each show as if it’s his last. And he’s really put in the work.”
On his 2023 tour in support of new album Unreal Unearth — his third top three entry on the Billboard 200 in as many tries — Hozier started to really see the fruits of that labor with some of his highest-profile venue plays to date, including his first headlining show at New York’s Madison Square Garden. While he has maintained his Adult Alternative audience from the prior decade, he also picked up a new, younger one on TikTok during the global coronavirus shutdown; they fell for the rock star’s modest Irish countryside lifestyle as much as his poetic lyrics and spirit-lifting anthems.
“The fans seem to really enjoy that… I guess, like, domestic, sort of silly side of me?” he offers, somewhat incredulously. “During the pandemic, we’d do these kind of live readings on Instagram — I’d maybe read a few poems, or we’d do these Instagram Lives, play a few songs. I think maybe there’s a sort of lasting relationship that [makes it feel] like there’s an element of domesticity to me? And that’s why people are like, ‘Hey, talk to us about the bees that you’re keeping in your garden.’ ”
Hozier photographed September 19, 2024 at Black Rabbit Rose in Los Angeles.
Austin Hargrave
While Hozier grew to an arena-level headliner and a TikTok sensation, his mainstream profile remained relatively low. Pop crossover was not a priority of his — “I was always wary of attempting to write hits for the sake of writing hits,” he says — and he has never been much of a critics’ darling or a Grammy favorite. (“Take Me to Church” scored a song of the year nod, but he hasn’t been nominated since; “Too Sweet” was snubbed for the 2025 awards.) Consequently, his sustained level of success escaped the notice of some less-plugged-in fans and media.
“We did have one interview he was doing at [a festival] where the interviewer said — I think [Hozier] nearly choked on his coffee — ‘Where have you been for 10 years?’ ” Downey recalls. “You’re going, “He’s about to close the festival tonight. He’s kind of been around…’ ”
Even before “Too Sweet,” though, Hozier’s rising success was increasingly evident — and his influence on a new generation of rootsy, big-voiced singer-songwriters equally hard to miss. In late 2023, he appeared on a new version of Noah Kahan’s Stick Season opener “Northern Attitude” — which not only returned Hozier to the Hot 100’s top 40 (at No. 37) for the first time since 2014, but contextualized him as a key influence on Kahan’s brand of alt-folk and as one of the artists who had laid the groundwork for the latter’s crossover success. And just days before the release of “Too Sweet,” Lollapalooza announced that Hozier would headline the August festival — his highest-profile bill-topping appearance to that point.
“I was like, ‘Well, how is this gonna go?’ ” Sommer says of checking out his client’s ultimately successful headliner turn in Chicago. “How’s it gonna go? There are gonna be people for as far as the eye can see!”
Meanwhile, Hozier was (perhaps unwittingly) developing an increasingly devoted corner of his fan base. The affection held for him in the lesbian community has already been a source of internet incredulity for years — “Why Do Lesbians Love Hozier?” blog explorations date back to the turn of the 2020s — though the conversation went overground this year when Lucy Dacus told The New York Times: “Lesbians love Hozier.” (Hozier, an outspoken LGBTQ+ ally, calls his support in the community “really, really wonderful, really sweet… there’s a lot of humor in it, too, and a lot of self-awareness.”)
Because Hozier’s career momentum was already trending in a positive direction, the success of “Too Sweet” can be interpreted as not just an effect, but also a cause of his recent revival. “The song, I think, is very special — it really connected with people on a lot of levels — so that is a part of [its success],” says Erika Alfredson, head of marketing at Columbia. “But it’s also a little bit of the market [being more open to him] and also a lot of the work that Andrew has done. And I think it very well could have happened with another song of his. This just happened to be the one.”
This helps explain why Hozier and his team are reserved about the impact “Too Sweet” has had on his career. Before the song’s March release, his 2024 tour dates (announced in January) had already sold out — even with its ambitious 100-plus-date routing that included three nights at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., and an unprecedented four nights at New York’s Forest Hills Stadium.
All of this adds up to “Too Sweet,” one of 2024’s biggest hits by just about any metric, essentially amounting to a nonessential luxury for Hozier. While the song’s success — which it achieved much quicker than the slow-burning smash that was “Take Me to Church” — has bowled over Hozier and his team, they’re hard-pressed to cite significant doors the song has opened for the already massive star.
Hozier does point to recent appearances on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and at the iHeart Radio Festival as two particular opportunities that “Too Sweet” may have made possible. But anyway, he says, his calendar was so packed this year that it might have been difficult for him to take advantage of more than that: “Because the tour schedule was already in place when that song blew up, [you’re still] fulfilling everything that you were planning on doing anyway. Your routing is done. So even when you get those invites, it can be a challenge.”
“Does it change [anything]?” Downey wonders aloud when reflecting on the song’s impact. “I guess it just reminds people that he’s there.”
Since it has worked so well for him so far, could Hozier just follow this career path indefinitely — plugging away as a live favorite, coming back with one gigantic pop smash every 10 years and then returning to business as usual?
“I mean, it’d be fun to be 44 and have a No. 1 hit! It’d be fun to be 54, to be 64… Can you guarantee me the No. 1 when I’m in my 80s?” he asks excitedly in response to the idea. “I’m going to be doing whatever I can to stay alive, man. I’m going to be hiring people to be doing all the weird blood transfusions, [to] hook me up to whatever machine.”
Regardless of whether he can still top the Hot 100 when he’s of retirement age, the plan from day one — which his team has enacted brilliantly over the past decade — was to have Hozier achieve the kind of long-term career stability where he could still be performing at a high level as a sexagenarian.
“ ‘We see you as a Bruce Springsteen — we see you as an artist who’ll still be releasing albums long after I’m gone,’ ” Downey remembers telling Hozier very early in his career. “He’s 34 years of age. We want to see him still working like U2 and Bruce Springsteen and a whole lot of other acts at 64. And the only way that I feel that he can do that is by pacing it. And actually not making decisions based on money and making decisions that are right for his long-term career, not his short-term.”
Hozier photographed September 19, 2024 at Black Rabbit Rose in Los Angeles.
Austin Hargrave
And while “Too Sweet” might not have had much calculable immediate career impact for 2024 Hozier, it might very well move him closer to that long-term goal. Sommer has noted how Hozier’s social media and streaming stats have spiked since his “Too Sweet” success: between 1 million and 2 million new followers each on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, as well as an additional 30 million followers on Spotify. Those numbers indicated increased fan demand that could turbo-charge Hozier’s already-scorching live success.
“All those [2024] shows sold out instantly,” Sommer emphasizes. “So how much demand was there? How many people were unable to buy tickets at the time? And we really didn’t get carried away anywhere. We didn’t try to exhaust demand anywhere. So I would say that there was still pent-up demand after the March on-sale. And now we have this song…”
All of this has led Sommer to a conclusion that might stun any remaining listeners unaware of Hozier’s recent level-up — and maybe even a few who are: “I’m incredibly confident [that] he’s a stadium-level headliner.”
That may seem like a big leap for Hozier, who has never played a full arena tour in the United States — but Sommer doesn’t see it that way. “A lot of these amphitheaters are bigger than a lot of these indoor buildings,” he says. “You look at the [four nights at] Forest Hills… what’s that, 60,000 tickets? And it could’ve been more? We chose to play some select arenas in places just because we felt that it might be a better fan experience, and [Hozier is] very mindful of the fan experience. So by no means would this be skipping steps in any way.”
Downey says that the current live plan for Hozier (following his Dec. 21 appearance as musical guest on Saturday Night Live, his first since 2014) is to go back on the road next year, “kind of maybe May to October,” including some major festival headlining gigs, with dates to be announced soon. His own upcoming dates aren’t likely to be stadiums, but Downey agrees those are in his future. “I think that stadiums will definitely be on album four,” she says. “And I do think he’s ready… the slow burn, with the 10 years of him touring, has been from starting him small and gradually building and building and building, that he is perfectly comfortable now in arenas, and he’s perfectly comfortable playing to 40, 50,000 people in a field. So a stadium would be just the next step, I think. With ease.”
Hozier allows himself another rare moment of being pumped about his success when discussing this recent run of momentum — capped, if not created, by “Too Sweet” — and “the ambitious feeling of opportunity” that comes with following it up with all eyes once again upon him. “I can do whatever I want. I can do something totally different, I can respond to [“Too Sweet”] with something else, or something different… it’s nice,” he says. “It just feels like the sky is open, and ‘Off you go.’ ”
This story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.
European artists, managers, independent labels and venue operators are calling on policymakers to overhaul “outdated and discriminatory” tax measures that they say are being “unfairly” applied to thousands of musicians touring Europe.
The campaign is being led by the European Music Managers Alliance (EMMA), which represents more than 3,000 managers and 10,000 artists. The organization is petitioning the European Parliament to revise current tax laws that require many touring musicians to pay a “withholding tax” charge when they perform in certain EU markets.
Withholding tax is typically deducted as a percentage of a touring artist’s gross payment on a per show basis to cover taxes owed in the country of earning. However, inconsistencies in the way that the tax is applied mean that European artists are often being unfairly penalized compared to those from other international markets, specifically acts from the United States, say artist managers.
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Unlike most European artists touring Europe, U.S. acts performing on the continent do not have to pay withholding tax until they earn over a certain threshold, typically set at around $20,000 per year, due to international treaties in place between the U.S. and majority of EU nations.
This exemption allows U.S. artists to maximize their touring income while reducing the ability of European artists to compete in their own home market, says an open letter from EMMA to the European Parliament, also signed by European independent labels body IMPALA and the International Federation of Musicians. Other trade groups backing the campaign include Paris-based artist organization IAO, the European Music Exporters Exchange (EMEE) and live music associations Live DMA and Liveurope.
Small and mid-sized European touring acts are also being disproportionally punished due to irregularities in how withholding tax is charged in different European markets, they argue.
At present, the amount of withholding tax an artist pays is based upon the gross payment an artist receives for a festival performance, concert or tour in most European markets, rather than net profit, meaning that costs are not taken into account. As a result, many small and medium-sized touring acts who make only a minor profit from European treks, or return home having made a net loss, often overpay the amount of tax they owe.
“Reclaiming these overpayments is frequently an arduous and sometimes impossible task,” says the letter to members of European Parliament.
Meanwhile, withholding tax rates vary wildly between EU member states with Italy applying the highest tax rate at 30%, Spain charging up to 24% and Germany fixing the tax rate at 15.8%. The lowest rates can be found in Eastern Europe, Luxembourg and Malta who all apply a 10% withholding tax charge. In contrast, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland and the Netherlands do not collect withholding tax from foreign artists on short-term visits.
Outside of the EU, similar tax clauses exist for foreign artists touring the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom and Australia, but they only apply if the tour is profitable.
To address the many inconsistencies around withholding tax in Europe, music groups want policymakers to standardize how the tax is applied within the EU, thereby reducing the costly administrative and financial burden for emerging and mid-level touring artists.
One proposed solution is applying the $20,000 minimum threshold for U.S. acts to all European artists performing live shows in the 27-member EU bloc.
A more radical recommendation is that all 27 EU member states, including the major touring markets of France, Germany and Spain, follow the examples of Denmark, Hungary, Ireland and the Netherlands and stop collecting withholding tax from foreign artists altogether.
In instances where withholding tax is still applied, European music trade groups want to see expenses and costs deducted before the charge is calculated.
“The cost burdens shouldered by European artists when they want to perform live shows have increased enormously over recent years. To the point where touring across Europe has become financially precarious, especially for small and mid-sized artists who are building an audience,” said Jess Partridge, executive director of EMMA in a statement.
“An already impossible situation is being compounded by the unfair and discriminatory way in which withholding taxes are collected,” said Partridge, calling an overhaul of the current tax regime “imperative” if European artists are to be “given parity with their U.S. counterparts.”
Per Kviman, founder of Swedish management company Versity Music and chair of EMMA added: “If we want European artists to compete on a global stage, then it is vital the European Parliament acts on this issue.”
Kaskade is set to open Decca Live, a new 1,000-capacity venue located at 323 E Bay Street in downtown Jacksonville, Fla., that organizers say will create a cutting-edge, immersive experience for fans of both underground and mainstream music acts.
Launched by longtime Jacksonville promoter Eric Fuller of BLNK CNVS, the new venue features a steel megastructure as the main stage, a 360-degree mezzanine wrapping around the dance floor and a rooftop bar with stunning views of the St. Johns River and Jacksonville skyline. The architectural design was led by JAA Architecture, with interior design by Moyano Productions and production and stage design by Collyns Design Inc.
Decca Live is spread over three floors, including a second-floor mezzanine level and a rooftop level with its own bar, entrances and exits.
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“We can open the rooftop bar through the venue or we can separate the space where the ground floor and the mezzanine are focused on concerts and the rooftop maintains a cocktail, loungy vibe where fans can go upstairs get some peace and quiet if they want to,” says Fuller.
Kaskade will perform the first public concert at Decca Live on Jan. 31, 2025. Fuller built the venue from the ground up and sees it as a major cultural hub and economic milestone for the Northern Florida city, filling a long-standing void in the city’s music scene.
“We’re going to book a little bit of everything — EDM, rock and even country music. We want it to be a room for everyone,” Fuller said. “The idea is to be an open room and serve as a beacon in the state where the room is always available to talented promoters.”
Through BLNK CNVS, Fuller already serves as the largest independent promoter of Miami Music Week, hosting more than 35 events with more than 40,000 tickets sold last year. His partners in Decca Live include Jacksonville native Shawn Rouf and Evan Rajta. While BLNK CNVS will handle much of the in-house buying, Decca Live is an open building available to all promoters. Ticketing will be handled by Eventbrite.
“Jacksonville as a city is at a tipping point,” says Rajta in a statement to Billboard. “The city is starving for new ideas and entertainment and that is exactly what we are creating with Decca Live. Our goal is simple: build a world class venue that will be here for decades to come.”
Fuller is a graduate of Jacksonville’s University of North Florida and formerly served as COO at companies including Life In Color, Advanced Concert Productions, Club Space Miami and Celine Orlando.
“Florida is a great state for touring and this room sounds incredible,” says Fuller. “We’ve put everything we have into this project and we’re excited to now share it with the rest of the world.”
Check out concept art for Decca Live below.
On Sunday night (Dec. 8), Taylor Swift played the last of 149 shows on The Eras Tour. As reported earlier Monday, the record-setting trek grossed more than $2 billion and sold over 10 million tickets: $2,077,618,725 and 10,168,008, respectively, to be exact.
The news was first reported by The New York Times.
Without qualification, The Eras Tour is the highest-grossing tour of all time, by artists of any genre, and from any era in music history. If compared to data officially reported to Billboard Boxscore, it is the biggest tour ever by an unthinkable distance of more than $900 million, blasting past Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour (2022-ongoing) – the only other tour to gross more than $1 billion – by a margin of almost two-to-one.
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Even before The Eras Tour was announced, Swift was one of the most successful touring acts of her generation. Dating back to her first reported solo headline show at Sovereign Performing Arts Center in Reading, Pa. (April 6, 2007), she has grossed $3 billion across her career, when adding The Eras Tour’s sum to officially reported data for her prior tours to Billboard Boxscore.
Previously, her biggest tour – according to Billboard Boxscore – came when Swift brought in $345.7 million and sold 2.9 million tickets on 2018’s Reputation Stadium Tour, marking a 38% leap from the earnings on 2015’s The 1989 World Tour. The Eras Tour multiplies her prior best more than six times over.
The Eras Tour kicked off in Glendale, Ariz. on March 17, 2023. If the tour hadn’t already made a seismic impact just via its announcement, the actual performances sent Swift from superstardom to the stratosphere. The friendship bracelets, the surprise songs and all of Swift’s eras took over, sparking major economic booms in every city she visited and hysteria among Swifties around the world.
By August 9, 2023, Swift had released her re-recording of Speak Now (July 7), announced the re-recording for 1989 and wrapped the tour’s first U.S. leg. Quickly after, she played her first shows ever in Mexico with four nights at the capital’s Estadio GNP Seguros (then known as Foro Sol), followed by nine shows in South America.
In February 2024, Swift took her talents to Asia and Australia, but not before she won her record-setting fourth Grammy for album of the year for Midnights and announced her next new studio album during an acceptance speech. That one – The Tortured Poets Department, released April 19 – arrived while on break from tour, and once again, set a new career-peak with a debut week of 2.61 million equivalent album units earned in the U.S., according to Luminate, and the entire top 14 on the Hot 100. On the current, Dec. 14-dated edition of the Billboard 200, the set returns for a 16th week at No. 1 on the back of a physical release of the album’s deluxe Anthology version, sold exclusively at Target.
In May, Swift took on Europe, with 48 shows across the continent. While Tortured Poets spent most of the summer atop the Billboard 200, The Eras Tour continued its blistering pace, including eight nights at London’s Wembley Stadium.
Finally, Swift returned to North America for three shows each in Miami, New Orleans, and Indianapolis, plus six in Toronto and one last weekend in Vancouver.
Last April on a cool night in Dubrovnik, Croatia, Mumford & Sons played to a packed ballroom not far from the Mediterranean. It was the band’s first time performing in the country, but only those who got the invite knew the concert was even happening: The show was a private event put on for employees of a major tech company, which also footed the bill.
Corporate performances like these occupy a small but flourishing niche of the live events industry, with companies of all sizes lining up to book current superstars, legacy acts and emerging artists to play their conferences, retreats, holiday parties and more. These shows come with paydays ranging from merch trades to millions of dollars, with most big-name artists rarely receiving less than $50,000 per show. There can also be strings attached, as artists who play these shows work within corporate structures where expectations can be different from the standard festival appearance.
“I’ve been involved with a Snoop Dogg private show before and the client was like, ‘He can’t smoke weed,’” says corporate event producer and talent buyer Elana Leaf. “It was like, ‘He’s going to smoke weed. That’s just the way it is.’”
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This past year has been a strong one for corporate events, with this area of the industry not only finally back in full swing following the pandemic but reaching new heights. Beyoncé set a new precedent for these types of performances in January 2023 when she reportedly received $24 million to play the opening of a luxury resort in Dubai. This past July, the wedding of the son of Indian tech billionaire Mukesh Ambani, which made headlines for its opulence, included a performance by Rihanna. Sources with knowledge of this sector say that upon seeing these big performances and paychecks, more artists have been requesting to play corporate shows.
Based in Los Angeles, Leaf has been producing corporate concerts for events for nearly 15 years, working with companies ranging from family offices to international conglomerates to the city of Miami Beach. Regardless of size, though, the process of finding the right artist for each event is the same.
“To start, you have to have a dialogue with the client about who’s coming to the event,” says Leaf. “Age is important, economic level is important. Before you start suggesting artists, you’ve got to know who they’ll be playing for.”
Once the guest list is hashed out, Leaf and her client create a list of artists they think will fit the desired vibe. Leaf once produced a Super Bowl party for a media company at a private residence in Malibu, so it made perfect sense when she and the client booked The Beach Boys to sing “Surfin’ Safari” and other beachy hits while the crowd gazed out at the Pacific.
But the client isn’t necessarily always after a huge star. “A lot of companies come to us and ask if we can activate their entire conference, convention or event,” says Channing Moreland, co-founder of the app EVA, which registers emerging artists (along with speakers, celebrities and more) and corporate clients in search of entertainment and uses technology to match them for events. “Maybe there’s a place to have that closing night headlining show, but we also see [local and emerging artists playing] registration areas, general sessions, interactive experiences. There are so many opportunities to engage.”
Of course, not all artists are inclined to play corporate shows. “Some might think it’s selling out, or some might think they’re not going to be taken care of in the same way on-site at a private show as they would be by a promoter,” says Leaf. As such, she says good professional relationships and enticing, often creative offers are even more important in this area of the industry, as agents must be able to assure their client that the gig will be comfortable, worthwhile and valuable (or at the very least neutral) to their brand. (Most of the big talent agencies have departments focused solely on private shows like these.)
Naturally, money is a crucial part of the conversation, although the rate a company can offer isn’t always related to its size. “The good agents know that even though I’m coming in with a major tech company, that doesn’t necessarily equate to having the dollars,” says Leaf. “Sometimes smaller companies that really want to move the needle for their brand profile will come in with bigger cash offers, along with really creative ways to sweeten the pot.”
“Sweetening the pot” may involve flying the artist and their entourage to the show on the company’s private jet, or providing luxury accommodations and other perks. Sometimes an artist is simply eager to travel to an exotic destination where they might not otherwise tour. Or a company might make a donation to an artist’s charity of choice — an especially attractive option for corporations that can use this as a charitable giving tax write-off.
For one corporate client, Leaf was able to get their artist of choice involved by offering the artist the opportunity for their newly launched liquor brand to be the featured liquor at the event itself. “That’s what got them through the door,” she says.
But no matter the size of the artist, getting the gig (and the paycheck) can also involve agreeing to unusual requests. These can include morality clauses in which an artist must agree to omit curse words that may be in their lyrics. “You sometimes have to tell the artist they need to perform radio edits, which can be a challenging conversation,” says Leaf, who also recalls certain clients asking for approval of what an artist wears onstage. (Though “as a buyer, I will not push that,” she says. “Artists need to be artists, and what they wear is part of their art.”)
However, rising artists who are often more eager for exposure and a cash infusion may be more amenable to such requests.
“We know that you can’t just have someone get up on stage and start asking for tips, or cussing, or going through the buffet line,” says EVA co-founder Makenzie Stokel. “You need people that know this isn’t their party, but they’re going to make five or 10 times more than what they’d make at a bar gig.”
For Moody Jones, who DJs corporate events around the world and is also GM of dance music at EMPIRE, these gigs often have completely different goals than his regular club sets. “Your role is to get people’s heads nodding, and that’s as much as it goes,” he says. At a recent event he played for YouTube, “The mandate was, ‘We need an artist who doesn’t need the spotlight on them,’” he recalls. “It was a team-building event, so the last thing they wanted was for people to only be paying attention to the music. No one should be Shazam-ing anything.”
For most artists — and certainly the biggest ones — all the details about what they will and will not do are hashed out in the contract. “With the big agencies, once you’re contracted, the creative and business terms are set in stone not only to protect the artist but so there’s no ambiguity with my client,” says Leaf. Thus, every element — from what a company wants an artist to say (or not say) while onstage to whether or not they’ll take photos with execs in front of the company logo, to backstage meet and greets and providing signed merchandise — is determined ahead of time.
Leaf says these discussions often focus on if and how an artist will interact with a company’s product, whether that’s a cell phone, branded decor clothing item or other object. “It’s not always easy or appropriate-feeling to ask the artist to pick up a mobile device and carry it around,” says Leaf. “You have to work with the production company and the brand to figure out ways to seamlessly integrate the product. A lot of times you have agents and managers who are like, ‘They’re absolutely not going to touch the product.’” But given the rise of influencers, Leaf says brands have gotten “significantly more strategic” with devising product interactions that feel natural.
Generally, a company doesn’t ask for sign-off on an artist’s setlist, although negotiations can be more nuanced when dealing with legacy acts. “People want to hear the hits,” says Leaf. “They don’t necessarily want to hear new music, but sometimes it’s hard to say they can’t play new stuff they’re working on.” She says in situations like these, it’s necessary to have conversations with the client and artist to settle on a mix of music everyone feels good about.
Generally, say Stokel and Moreland of EVA, there’s been an uptick in corporate show requests following the pandemic as “companies are wanting more unique in-person engagements for people to really connect… Companies are asking, ‘How can we get them up and moving? How can we have a hit songwriter tell a story that feels like a keynote and is tied to music and drives emotion?” They say the return on investment on events is higher for companies when they offer more engaging programming.
After connecting over their love of live music as students at Nashville’s Belmont University, Moreland and Stokel created EVA to cater to rising artists. They found that companies often wanted local talent to make events feel authentic but didn’t know where to look. And the artists they knew were interested in making money from corporate gigs to help them pay for studio time, touring and life expenses.
They launched the app in 2019, quickly booking corporate events for ESPN, BMW and Arby’s. EVA has since grown to 10 employees and launched in Nashville, Austin, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, New Orleans, Charlotte and New York. Notably, the company provides artists with the backend requirements necessary to play a corporate show. “These entertainers don’t carry $5 million in insurance, and to work with Amazon you have to have a certain level of COI,” says Moreland. “There has to be tax management, invoicing, payment processing, contracting and it has to be done at a certain level. That’s really what we unlocked.”
For some artists, the appeal of playing these shows also comes down to networking. Jones of EMPIRE recently played a robotics conference, an offer that gave him the chance to perform for “a room filled with people who are so ambitious and whose brains work in ways I’ve never thought of,” he says. Such gigs “might not do much for my status,” he continues, “but the people I meet there might open up my mind.” Generally, corporate events also carry less pressure, as the artist isn’t responsible for selling tickets or drawing an audience. “Like, I’m not bringing any more people to a robotics event,” Jones adds.
Not every act is built for these kinds of shows. “I think what stops a lot of artists from playing corporate gigs is ego because you’re not the center of attention,” Jones continues. “Or they just don’t have the confidence for it, because playing a sober event where everyone can see one another takes a different stage presence from being in a dark club with my sunglasses on smoking a vape and taking shots.”
The artists who do thrive in this world, however, can really hustle while also meeting interesting people and making a lot of money.
“Pitbull is a corporate juggernaut,” says Leaf. “He’s known to do great corporates and he just crushes across demographics.” She says Lionel Richie, Sheryl Crow and Dave Matthews Band are also active in this space given that their music is so broadly appealing. Other times, companies want to create prestige by booking the hottest niche artist of the moment. At events like SXSW or CES, where attendees have many options for how to spend their time, Leaf says companies “want to book a cool artist, because you want to be the cool party.”
But ultimately the end goal is the same, regardless of who’s playing.
“You want guests to walk away with an experience that’s special and doesn’t feel corny,” says Leaf. “Obviously the audience knows the artist was paid to be there, but you want it to feel authentic and like the artist wanted to be there — paid or not.”
LONDON — ASM Global and the Music Venues Trust (MVT) are expanding their partnership and support to grassroots music venues and scenes in the U.K.
Starting in December, ASM Global, the venues and live entertainment giant, will strengthen its ties with the MVT through a number of new initiatives to help raise awareness and funds for the grassroots music scene where future stars start their live journeys.
Part of the new initiative will encourage music fans to learn more about the work the MVT does for the independent and emerging music scene, as well as opportunities to donate directly to the MVT both inside of the venues, or during the ticket onsale process.
In the U.K., ASM Global operates a number of large arenas, including London’s OVO Arena Wembley, the AO Arena in Manchester, Leeds’ First Direct Arena, the Utilita Arena in Newcastle and more.
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The two companies have collaborated previously across a number of topics, including training opportunities across health and safety, mental health and wellbeing and marketing. In 2023, Enter Shikari pledged £1 from every ticket sold on their U.K. arena tour to the MVT’s Lifelife fund, which included a show at the OVO Wembley. Next year, Katy Perry’s Lifetimes tour will hit the AO Arena in Manchester, with £1 from every ticket being donated to the MVT to distribute amongst their members.
This is the latest step by the entertainment and live industry to help tackle the growing problem of venue and nightclub closure. In 2023, the MVT reported that the number of grassroots music venues declined from 960 to 835, a fall of 13% and resulted in a loss of as many as 30,000 shows and 4,000 jobs.
Last month the British Government called upon the live music industry to introduce a voluntary levy on all tickets sold for stadium and arena concerts in the market to help support smaller venues. “We believe this would be the quickest and most effective mechanism for a small portion of revenues from the biggest shows to be invested in a sustainable grassroots sector,” the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said in a report on Nov. 14.
Some artists have taken it upon themselves to lead the conversation. In September, Coldplay announced that they would be donating 10% of all proceeds from their 10-night run at Wembley Stadium next August to the MVT and grassroots scene. Tickets for Sam Fender’s current run at arenas in the U.K. and Ireland – including ASM’s First Direct Arena in Leeds – include a similar £1 donation to the MVT.
Speaking to Billboard in September, Mark Davyd, CEO of the MVT, said that their door is very open to any artist or company on this topic. “I want this to become the new normal – I don’t think that’s stupidly ambitious. There are lots and lots of examples of industries – all properly functioning industries – to reinvest to get future gains. As soon as you start talking about it as an investment program into research and development, I don’t think companies should be resistant to that but should be thinking, ‘that makes perfect sense.’”