Touring
Page: 3
Sphere rules Billboard’s Top Venues (15,001+ capacity) chart for 2024, with a monstrous gross of $420.5 million from 1.3 million tickets sold. Not only does that secure the top spot among venues in its capacity range, but it’s also the highest gross for any venue of any size this year. Beyond the scope of the year-end charts, it’s the biggest annual gross for any venue in Boxscore history.
Sphere is the first venue to register a year-end gross of more than $300 million and $400 million. Only four artists ever grossed more than Sphere’s total in one year-end period: The Rolling Stones in 2006, Ed Sheeran in 2018, Beyonce in 2023, and, based on overall finals for The Eras Tour, Taylor Swift in 2023 and 2024.
The Las Vegas room attracts residency acts just like The Colosseum at Caesars Palace or Dolby Live, pushing high ticket prices for stadium artists in a more intimate setting. But unlike those theaters’ four-digit capacity, which ultimately keeps total grosses within the stratosphere, Sphere is a full-sized arena, selling 15,000-17,000 tickets per show. With a floor-to-ceiling wrapround LED screen, 4D physical effects and immersive audio, it’s a high-ticket attraction for once-in-a-career productions.
U2 launched Sphere’s calendar in September 2023, kicking off with a 17-show run that brought in $109.8 million from 281,000 tickets sold. Two more legs followed on U2: UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere, ultimately closing in March with $244.5 million and 663,000 tickets. That makes it the fourth highest-grossing residency in Boxscore history, despite running for just six months with 40 shows. Billy Joel’s Madison Square Garden tenure, above it at No. 3 on the all-time tally, played for 10 years with 104 shows.
Phish followed with a long weekend of shows from April 18-21, bringing in $13.4 million and selling 66,700 tickets.
Dead & Company was next, with a seasonal residency, playing 30 shows between May 16 and Aug. 10. Ultimately, it earned a spot in the top 10 of the all-time residency list, with $131.8 million and 477,000 tickets. That’s a bigger gross than any of Dead & Co.’s annual tours, dating back to its 2015 inception.
Sphere’s current residents are the Eagles, in the middle of an ongoing stint that is scheduled well into 2025. The band’s first eight shows scored $42.2 million and sold 131,000 tickets.
The Top Venues chart is not the only place where Sphere shines on Billboard’s year-end report. U2 lands at No. 7 on the Top Tours list, exclusively from its Vegas shows. Bono’s boys are joined by Dead & Company on Top Rock Tours, with both acts in the top 10 — U2 at No. 4 and Dead & Company at No. 8. On Top Boxscores, which measures individual shows, or a run of shows at the same venue, U2 blocks out the top three with its Sphere legs.
In all, including shows by U2 and the Eagles that fit into the 2023 and 2025 Boxscore tracking periods, and an additional non-music event, Sphere’s 83 reported shows have brought in $452.3 million and played to 1.4 million fans.
Coldplay has broken world records on the Music of the Spheres World Tour, even with almost 50 more shows still scheduled for next year. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the global trek has sold more tickets than any tour in history since its launch in March 2022, at 10.3 million — so far.
The Music of the Spheres World Tour has been a global event, selling out stadiums on five continents. Half of the tour’s 175 concerts have been in Europe, where it sold 5.2 million tickets over 87 shows. It has added 1.8 million in South America, 1.6 million in North America, 884,000 in Asia and 848,000 in Australia.
Not only has Coldplay performed around the world, but demand has also been neatly spread. Among the tour’s top 10 marks, all five continents are represented, from São Paulo, Brazil, to Gothenburg, Sweden, to Singapore.
The tour’s biggest report so far was a run of 10 shows from Oct. 25 – Nov. 8, 2022, at Buenos Aires’ Estadio Unico Ciudad de la Plata. Those dates sold 627,000 tickets, marking the best-selling engagement in Boxscore history.
In more than half of the stops on the Music of the Spheres World Tour — 39 of 64 — Coldplay has sold over 100,000 tickets. In 51 of those cities, the band played multiple shows. Notably, 10 of the 13 cities where it played just one night are in the United States, while just eight of its top 10 markets are primarily non-English-speaking locations.
Watch the clip below to see Coldplay traverse the globe on its way to record-setting ticket sales.
The Music of the Spheres World Tour has sold more than 3 million tickets and grossed more than $300 million in each of the three years since it kicked off. In the 2024 chart year, marked by shows from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024, Coldplay brought in $400.9 million and sold 3.02 million tickets, earning the top spot on Billboard’s year-end Top Tours (ranked by gross) and Top Ticket Sales (ranked by attendance) charts. It’s the band’s second straight year at No. 1 on the latter tally.
Dating back almost 40 years, all Boxscore charts are based on figures reported to Billboard. Data is reported from a variety of official industry sources, from artist managers and agents to promoters and venue executives. Reporting is voluntary, and some artists, venues, and promoters opt to withhold data from representation on the charts. Though overall two-year totals for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour were published by The New York Times — $2.08 billion, making it the highest-grossing tour in history, and nearly 10.2 million tickets — they were not submitted to Billboard Boxscore for chart eligibility, excluding the tour from 2024 year-end charts.
Since its launch, the Music of the Spheres World Tour has grossed $1.14 billion. That separates it by more than $900 million from The Eras Tour, despite Coldplay outselling Swift’s run by more than 150,000 tickets. Both treks have played a similar number of shows (149 for Swift; 175 for Coldplay, so far) and charted familiar routes around five continents.
Evenly distributed across its three-year run, The Music of the Spheres World Tour has averaged a $110.46 ticket price. The tipping point was in Asia, where 16 shows averaged $146.43, while the other end of the spectrum is the tour’s first leg of 11 shows in central America ($77.74).
Coldplay’s 2025 calendar has 48 scheduled concerts, ranging from Toronto to Hong Kong, and Navi Mumbai to London, where the tour will presumably wrap with 10 shows at Wembley Stadium. Already the best-selling tour in history, The Music of the Spheres World Tour will undoubtably extend its lead next year, approaching a total count of 13 million tickets.
Dating back to Coldplay’s first Boxscore report at Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver on Feb. 8, 2001 ($11,000; 900 tickets), the band has earned more than $2 billion and sold 21.1 million tickets.
The Rolling Stones haven’t had a hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for two decades, but they continue to perform well on Billboard’s Top Tours chart. This year, the band, led by 80-year-old Mick Jagger, came in at No. 6 on the list of tours reported to Billboard Boxscore from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024, with $235 million in ticket sales. Perhaps more impressive, the group brought in that much money for playing just 18 concerts, less than any other act in the top 10. Its secret? Charging a lot for tickets.
By comparison, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, which edged out the Stones to come in at No. 5, grossed $235.5 million from 39 shows with an average ticket price of $147.25. Coldplay, which came in at No. 1 with $400.9 million, played 51 shows. Luis Miguel played 128 shows — the most of anyone in the top 10 — and grossed $290.4 million to come in at No. 4. With an average ticket price of $277.16, the Stones made an average of $13.1 million a show. Miguel played to more people — 2 million instead of 848,000 — but his tickets sold for an average of just over $143.37 and he made $2.3 million a show.
Since top acts typically sell out most dates, three major factors influence tour grosses: number of performances, size of venues and ticket prices. And 2024 was the year that price mattered more than ever. This year’s top 100 tours took in $9.1 billion, a 21.6% increase in revenue over the previous year. But those shows were seen by an audience of 69.8 million, an increase of 10.7% — only half as much. At a time when many promoters use dynamic pricing to maximize revenue without leaving seats empty, more pricing power meant more money.
Some of these increases come from changes in the way the chart is calculated. Last year, Billboard shortened its Boxscore reporting period from 12 months to 11 in order to make some one-time changes to eligibility for the Billboard Music Awards. This 2024 chart is once again based on a 12-month reporting period, so apples-to-apples comparisons are difficult. But the change is still easy to see. If one annualizes last year’s 11-month reporting period, attendance for the top 100 tours would be up about 4% and revenue would be up nearly 14%.
One more caveat: For the second year in a row, the Top Tours chart does not include figures for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. Final figures were published by The New York Times on Dec. 9, but a show-by-show breakdown has yet to be submitted to Billboard Boxscore for chart eligibility. Given the tour’s two-year $2 billion gross, its 2024 sum would have pushed ticket sales totals for the year’s top 100 tours over $10 billion for the first time.
ROAD WARRIORS
A look at the top 10 tours shows the power of pricing. Overall the average ticket price for the top 100 tours was $132.30, up from $119.64 last year. The top touring act of the year, Coldplay, brought in $400 million from stadium shows in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. (Coldplay, promoted by Live Nation, was No. 2 last year with $342 million from 37 shows.) And it did so with an average ticket price of $132.79, the second-lowest among the top 10 acts.
P!nk, whose shows were promoted by Live Nation and the independent Marshall Arts, is No. 2, taking in $387 million from 73 concerts with an average ticket price of $139.47; she played more shows but to fewer people in total. (Last year, P!nk was No. 6 with $226 million from 37 shows.) Zach Bryan is No. 3 with $321.3 million from a 64-show tour promoted by AEG Presents. Bryan charged an average of $196.38.
The top ticket price in the top 10 was $367.13, for U2’s 38 shows at Sphere in Las Vegas, which took in $231.1 million, good for No. 7. Madonna came in at No. 8 with $225.4 million. Bad Bunny is No. 9 with $211.4 million and the second-highest average ticket price: $280.67. Metallica rounds out the top 10 with $175.2 million and a fan-friendly average price of $116.80.
One question the touring business has to deal with is, how high is too high? The $132.30 average ticket price for the top 100 tours is up 9.1% from 2023, when it had risen 10.5% from 2022. That’s an increase of 20.6% in two years. For most of the decade before the pandemic, ticket prices rose about 2% or 3% a year, close to the pace of inflation.
What happened? Over the past five years, the concert business has completely changed its view on pricing. Until around 2000, most promoters seemed to price tickets by calculating the cost of a show, adding a reasonable profit margin and then charging enough to reach that number. That changed over the following decade with the rise of resale sites like StubHub — and the accompanying realization that fans were willing to pay far more for tickets than promoters thought, especially for the best seats. To raise revenue, promoters and ticketing companies started using the same kinds of variable pricing and dynamic pricing strategies as hotels and airlines — in some cases opaquely. The idea, as in those businesses, is to maximize overall revenue without leaving empty seats. Over the past few years, companies like Live Nation’s Ticketmaster and AEG’s AXS have invested millions in software to price seats dynamically, in real time, according to demand.
A common reaction is that this puts concert tickets out of reach for many consumers. But a substantial part of the increase in average prices comes from the skyrocketing price of the best tickets. Also, dynamic pricing should adjust downward the price of unsold tickets to ensure that they, too, get sold.
It’s also worth noting that concertgoers have had sticker shock for decades. In 1969, according to an article in Rolling Stone, Jagger was asked at a press conference at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel if the Stones were gouging their fans by charging up to $8.50 a ticket at the Los Angeles Forum. “Is that a lot?” Jagger replied. “You’ll have to tell me.”
Adjusted for inflation, that $8.50 would have buying power of $67.34 today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and the price of Stones tickets is up more than four times that. Then again, the average Stones fan has much more money, as well as a sense that the band can’t keep touring forever.
FESTIVAL FUNK
As ticket prices increase, business is becoming harder for festival organizers, who have to pay more for compelling headliners. Festivals that used to make competitive offers for top-tier talent have seen their buying power diminished as more artists realize they have the pricing power to earn more revenue from traditional shows.
Only a few festivals report ticket sales revenue to Billboard Boxscore. But most promoters or festival ticketing experts agree that festival ticket sales declined in 2023 and 2024 for both flagships like Coachella and Bonnaroo, as well as smaller and independent events.
Artists that play festivals generally agree to increasingly rigid radius clauses that restrict how close to the event they can perform and when they can promote their nearby shows. They agreed to those deals because festivals could pay headliners $3 million to $5 million for a 90-minute set — more than the $1.5 million to $2.5 million most could make for an arena show. That was before average ticket prices rose so much.
This does not bode well for the long-term future of festivals, at least the way they currently operate. But festivals only represent a fraction of the business of Live Nation and AEG, the global concert promotion giants. Live Nation promotes Coldplay, Miguel and Madonna, among others. AEG handles Swift, Bryan and George Strait, the No. 24 touring act. On June 15, Strait performed the stadium concert with the highest attendance in Billboard Boxscore history at Texas A&M University’s Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, in front of 110,000 fans.
≈
Music Business Year In Review
Mariah Carey is still out of commission as she battles a tough case of the flu, with the superstar announcing Friday (Dec. 13) that she needs to cancel two more shows on her holiday tour as she recovers. In a message posted to X and Instagram Stories the morning of her slotted performance in New […]
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.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
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.
Trending on Billboard
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.”
Trending on Billboard
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.
Trending on Billboard
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.
Trending on Billboard
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.”