Touring
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They took you back to “1999” and flung you forward to “2099.” Now, Charli XCX and Troye Sivan want to make you sweat in the present tense.
On Wednesday (April 17), the pop star duo announced their co-headlining arena tour, Charli XCX & Troye Sivan Present: Sweat, set to kick off this fall. The 21-date excursion will start at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Mich., on Sept. 14, with the pair heading through Toronto, New York City, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Dallas and plenty more stops, before wrapping up with a final show at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle on Oct. 23.
Sharing the stage with special guest Shygirl, Charli and Sivan will transform arenas into raves throughout the Sweat tour, with a press release adding that the show will be “not only a celebration of their individual successes, but it is also a testament to their commitment to inclusivity and diversity within the music industry.” Fans can sign up for the advance presale until April 25 at the tour’s official website.
The news comes on the heels of Charli announcing the official dates for her own international arena tour in support of her forthcoming album Brat (due out June 7 via Atlantic), with shows set to start on June 1 in Barcelona. Sivan, meanwhile, will embark on his long-awaited European tour supporting his 2023 LP Something to Give Each Other starting in May.
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In an interview with Billboard in March, Charli teased that fans can expect her new album to sound “aggresive and confrontational,” while also remaining “conversational and personal.” Speaking about the writing, she said, “I’m over the idea of metaphor and flowery lyricism and not saying exactly what I think, the way I would say it to a friend in a text message. This record is all the things I would talk about with my friends, said exactly how I would say them.”
Artist presale for Charli XCX & Troye Sivan Present: Sweat begins Thursday, April 25, at 10 a.m. local time, with the general on-sale beginning Friday, April 26, at 10 a.m local time on Live Nation’s website. Check out the official dates for the tour below:
Troye Sivan and Charli XCX
Courtesy Photo
Mexican star Ana Bárbara is set to celebrate her three decades in music with a 30-plus dates tour that will kick off Aug. 2 in Reno, Nev. Called the Reina Grupera Tour 2024, produced by Reventon Promotions and EDIM Talent in a joint effort, the stint will make stops in Houston, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlanta and other major cities across the United States before wrapping up in Chicago on Nov. 16.
“To be able to celebrate my 30th anniversary with the real protagonists, my fans, is special because I can be an artist, composer, singer, but if I don’t have them, then I might as well just celebrate at home,” she tells Billboard. “Those who were there at the very beginning have passed this musical taste to their children, to new generations, so it is a family celebration because Ana Bárbara’s music has always been very familiar, I feel very excited.”
Known as the Grupera Queen (La Reina Grupera), last year, Bárbara became the first regional Mexican songwriter to ever receive a BMI Icon Award, the highest honor presented by the society of composers and publishers. Born Altagracia Ugalde Motta in San Luis Potosí, she is one of the most consequential female artists in regional Mexican music, which has for many years been dominated by men.
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Since launching her career in the ’90s, she’s racked up 16 hits on the Regional Mexican Airplay chart and 12 on Hot Latin Songs. Earlier this year, Bárbara was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at Premio Lo Nuestro, where she dedicated her award to Mexican women and Mexican music.
“The idea for this production is to have a great impact because it takes us back to this era where the woman with boots and sombrero was not the common denominator, but from day one I felt very proud of my roots and that pride is what is going to be projected in the production along with the music,” she said.
Tickets will be available for general sale on April 19 at 10 a.m. local time via reventonpromotions.com and anabarbara.com. See Ana Bárbara’s Reina Grupera Tour 2024 dates below:
Aug. 2 — Reno, Nev. — Silver Legacy Resort- Grand Exposition Hall
Aug. 3 — Santa Rosa, Calif. — Luther Burbank Center
Aug. 9 — Seattle — Moore Theatre
Aug.10 – Portland, Ore. — Newmark Theatre
Aug. 17 — Santa Barbara, Calif. — Arlington Theatre
Aug. 18 — San Jose, Calif. — San Jose Performing Arts
Aug. 23 — Bakersfield, Calif. — Fox Theatre
Aug. 24 — Oxnard, Calif. — Oxnard California Performing Arts
Aug. 30 — Anaheim, Calif. — City National Grove
Aug. 31 — Fresno, Calif. — Saroyan Theatre
Sept. 6 — Tucson, Ariz. — Linda Ronstadt Hall
Sept. 7 — Mesa, Ariz. — Mesa Arts Center
Sept.12 — Yuma, Ariz. — Quechan Casino Resort
Sept. 13 — Cabazon, Calif. — Morongo Casino
Sept. 14 — Las Vegas — The Pearl Theatre
Sept. 27 — Houston — Arena Theatre
Sept. 28 — McAllen, Texas — McAllen Performing Center
Oct. 4 — Hadden Township, N.J. — The Ritz Theatre Company
Oct. 5 — New York — United Palace
Oct. 6 — Boston — Lynn Auditorium
Oct. 11 — Charlotte, N.C. — Ovens Theater
Oct. 12 — Atlanta — Center Stage Theatre
Oct. 13 — Raleigh, N.C. — Raleigh Memorial Auditorium
Oct. 18 — San Antonio — Majestic Theatre
Oct. 19 — Austin, Texas — Paramount Theatre
Oct. 24 — Wichita, Kan. — Orpheum Theatre
Oct. 25 — Albuquerque, N.M. — Kiva Auditorium
Oct. 26 — El Paso, Texas — The Plaza Theatre
Nov. 1 — Los Angeles — Youtube Theater
Nov. 2 — San Diego — The Magnolia Theatre
Nov. 8 — San Juan, Puerto Rico — Coca Cola Music Hall
Nov. 9 — Orlando, Fla. — House of Blues
Nov. 15 — Minneapolis — Orpheum Theatre
Nov. 16 — Chicago — Rosemont Theatre
Future and Metro Boomin are looking to heat up the summer, as the rapper-producer duo will be hitting the road in support of their pair of albums.
Live Nation announced the We Trust You Tour on Tuesday (April 16), and the arena trek is slated to kick off in Kansas City, Mo., at the T-Mobile Center on July 30. Openers and supporting acts have not yet been announced.
Metro Boomin and Future’s 27-date North American tour will be making stops in Detroit, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Boston, Philly, Houston, Toronto, Las Vegas, Seattle and more before wrapping up north of the border on Sept. 9 in Vancouver, B.C., at Rogers Arena.
Tickets will be available to Cash App card customers starting on Wednesday (April 17), while the general public will get their chance on Friday (April 19) on the Live Nation website at 10 a.m. local venue time.
VIP packages are also available for those interested in a package that will include a photo-op in front of the stage, access to a VIP lounge, a VIP gift item and more perks.
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Future and Metro sprinted out of the gates with their We Don’t Trust You album in March, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 251,000 total album-equivalent units in the week ending March 28, per Luminate.
Album standout “Like That” featuring Kendrick Lamar’s atomic bomb on the rap game is spending a third week atop the Billboard Hot 100. The fiery track soared to No. 1 on the Hot 100 and is the first rap song to spend its first three weeks at the summit since Drake’s “Nice for What.”
“HIP HOP IS ALIVE AND WELL #WEDONTTRUSTYOU,” Metro wrote on social media after learning “Like That” had notched him his first No. 1 hit as a billed artist. (He previously reached the summit as a co-producer and co-writer on Migos’ “Bad & Boujee” and The Weeknd’s “Heartless.”)
The duo could be making yet another splash on the charts as Pluto and Young Metro returned to give fans 25 more tracks packaged as another album, fittingly titled We Still Don’t Trust You.
Find all of the We Trust You Tour dates below.
July 30 – Kansas City, Mo. @ T-Mobile CenterJuly 31 – Saint Paul, Minn. @ Xcel Energy CenterAug. 2 – Milwaukee, Wis. @ Fiserv ForumAug. 3 – Chicago, Ill. @ Lollapalooza Aug. 4 – Detroit, Mich. @ Little Caesars ArenaAug. 6 – Nashville, Tenn. @ Bridgestone ArenaAug. 8 – Atlanta, Ga. @ State Farm ArenaAug. 10 – Columbus, Ohio @ Schottenstein CenterAug. 11 – Toronto, Ontario @ Scotiabank ArenaAug. 13 – Boston, Mass. @ TD GardenAug. 14 – Philadelphia, Pa. @ Wells Fargo CenterAug. 15 – Brooklyn, N.Y. @ Barclays CenterAug. 17 – Washington, D.C. @ Capital One ArenaAug. 20 – New Orleans, La. @ Smoothie King CenterAug. 22 – Houston, Texas @ Toyota CenterAug. 23 – San Antonio, Texas @ Frost Bank CenterAug. 24 – Dallas, Texas @ American Airlines CenterAug. 25 – Tulsa, Okla. @ BOK CenterAug. 27 – Denver, Colo. @ Ball ArenaAug. 28 – Salt Lake City, Utah @ Delta CenterAug. 30 – Las Vegas, Nev. @ T-Mobile ArenaAug. 31 – Inglewood, Calif. @ Intuit DomeSept. 3 – Sacramento, Calif. @ Golden 1 CenterSept. 4 – Oakland, Calif. @ Oakland ArenaSept. 6 – Seattle, Wash. @ Climate Pledge ArenaSept. 7 – Portland, Ore. @ Moda CenterSept. 9 – Vancouver, B.C. @ Rogers Arena
Online ticket resale platform StubHub is considering going public as soon as this summer if it can secure a valuation of more than $16 billion, according to media reports. The Information first reported on Friday (April 12) that StubHub is aiming for a valuation of $16.5 billion, or the valuation it received in 2021 during […]
After months of public handwringing over slow ticket sales, the annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival opens Friday (April 12) near Palm Springs with an anticipated attendance of nearly 200,000 fans over two weekends, sources tell Billboard, selling approximately 80% of the 250,000 tickets available for purchase this year.
How the shortfall will impact the festival’s bottom line is unclear, but the sources close to the festival say the dip in sales, down 14%-17% over last year, is not as bad as many had predicted. The first weekend of the festival has historically sold out of tickets in a few hours, but this year, it took nearly a month for tickets to the first weekend to sell out.
Coachella remains the most-attended and highest-grossing annual festival in North America, beating out Austin City Limits — which is also spread out over two weekends with an attendance capped at 75,000 people per weekend — and Electric Daisy Carnival at the Las Vegas Speedway, which saw attendance max out at more than 130,000 in 2022.
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Coachella is also the largest media platform in the festival space, drawing in a massive viewership thanks to its partnership with YouTube and the hundreds of media credentials it assigns to major news outlets who provide nonstop coverage. In January, Gwen Stefani’s manager Irving Azoff told Billboard that one of the reasons No Doubt decided to stage their 2024 reunion performance at Coachella was due to the attention the festival attracted globally.
But Coachella’s size and cachet doesn’t make it immune to the challenges facing much of the festival industry. A number of popular festivals set for the second quarter of 2024 — New Orleans’ JazzFest, which runs from April 25 to May 5, along with L.A.’s Beach Life festival in early May and Daytona Beach’s famed Welcome to Rockville festival May 9-12 — have not sold out of tickets, for example. Other popular events later in the year, like Governors Ball in New York (June 7-9), Electric Forest (June 20-23) and Lollapalooza (Aug 1-4), which used to sell out days after going on sale, haven’t sold out either.
There’s little agreement on why sales have slowed. Ticket brokers used to buy up thousands of tickets to flip for profit on sites like StubHub, but sales volume for events like Coachella or Lollapalooza have dropped significantly in recent years as the markup potential has dwindled away.
Booking agents from major agencies representing A-list talent have begun arguing that festivals need to create more lucrative financial incentives to attract better headliners, while many independent agents link the decline to price increases that have made tickets unaffordable.
Ticket prices for Coachella increased $50 from 2022, when three-day GA passes cost $449, to $499 in 2024, an increase of about 11%. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, three-day GA passes were priced at $429.
Booking agent JJ Cassiere, co-founder of independent booking agency 33rd and West, says festival fans are more sensitive to price increases than they have been in the past, especially younger fans who are seeing their spending power eaten away by inflation.
“I’m very concerned about the fans who are finding themselves priced out of the market,” Cassiere tells Billboard, noting that even a $20 price increase can be a make-or-break hike for some fans.
Other agents blame the dip in sales on headliner talent, arguing that the 2024 festival headliner pool — which, for Coachella, includes Lana Del Rey, Tyler the Creator, Doja Cat and No Doubt — doesn’t generate the same enthusiasm that touring artists like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé did in 2023.
The festival’s lineup is a sign “that Coachella and nearly all other festival bookers had limited options when it came to talent,” says one booking agent who has worked with the festival for over a decade and asked to speak anonymously for this article. “The number of artists wanting to tour around festivals this year is very small.”
For much of the 2010s, festivals were able to pay headlining artists as much as 50% more than artists would make headlining their own arena tours — after all, festivals often charged more for tickets, drew much larger crowds and covered much of an artist’s production costs. That began to change in 2016 and 2017, explains agent Jared Arfa with IAG, as ticketing companies like Ticketmaster and AEG AXS began focusing on the amount of money that scalpers were making selling tickets at large markups. To help close the gap and capture that revenue for artists, Arfa says, Ticketmaster and others began using programs like dynamic pricing and platinum to strategically increase the price of higher-demand tickets — such as front-row seats — and significantly increase how much artists were making at their own concerts.
The result has been a huge increase in price, with the top 10 tours of 2023 earning an average of $5.7 million per show compared to 2017, when the top 10 tours were averaging $3.6 million per show — a 58% increase in only six years.
“The issue for every festival now is that dynamic pricing is so good and prevalent that any artist big enough to headline a festival is more motivated to just headline their own shows,” one agent tells Billboard, noting that a headlining slot at Coachella in 2024 is less of a financial decision and more about artists “who are on their way up and need to make a statement.”
“In the future,” the agent continues, “festivals need to adjust to accommodate this changing reality, by either paying headliners more or booking stronger undercards — but that’s not easy.”
While headliners are important, Peter Shapiro with Brooklyn Bowl and Day Glo Ventures says spending more on talent isn’t always a viable long-term solution and notes that the best investments festival producers can make are in their festival community and overall experience.
“People attend festivals because they enjoy an outdoor experience with other fans in a setting that feels comfortable,” Shapiro says. “That won’t change and the more organizers can invest in improving that experience, the more it will pay off in the years ahead.”
LONDON — From New Order to The Smiths, Oasis to The 1975, Buzzcocks to Take That, the list of famous music acts that have come out of Manchester, England, is long and illustrious. This month, another significant chapter in the northern U.K. city’s celebrated music scene begins with the opening of the 23,500-capacity Co-op Live — the United Kingdom’s biggest and most sustainable entertainment arena.
“We want this venue to be recognized as the next generation in arena facilities that sets the benchmark moving forward. The noise about this building, once it has opened, I think will reverberate a long way,” says GM Gary Roden as he sits in a temporary temporary office trailer next to the venue, shortly after taking Billboard on a behind-the-scenes tour.
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Due to open its doors April 23 with the first of two consecutive shows by British comedian Peter Kay, Co-op Live is the first major project outside the United States from Oak View Group (OVG), the Denver-headquartered global management and development giant co-founded in 2015 by Tim Leiweke and Irving Azoff, which operates more than 400 buildings globally.
In the last 16 months, OVG has built and opened seven new arenas, including the Climate Change Arena in Seattle, UBS Arena in New York and Acrisure Arena in Palm Springs, Calif. Arenas are also under development in Brazil, Nigeria, Canada and Wales. OVG COO Francesca Bodie (who is Leiweke’s daughter) says that starting the company’s international expansion in the United Kingdom was a “natural and deliberate step” to take due to the country’s status as “one of the greatest cultural destinations in the world.”
Bodie tells Billboard that Manchester was picked because of its “phenomenal musical heritage and community,” as well as OVG finding the “perfect” location to build a new facility in the city’s Eastlands district, next to Etihad Stadium — the 53,400-capacity home ground of Premier League and UEFA Champions League holder Manchester City football club. “We have built a great foundation in the U.S. and are now focused on projects further afield where we can deliver state-of-the-art venues in places that are in desperate need of something new,” she says.
Manchester City’s parent company, the City Football Group (which is majority-owned by Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates), is an equal joint-venture partner and investor with OVG in Co-op Live, which cost £365 million ($462 million) to build and was designed by Populous, the global design firm behind the Madison Square Garden-owned Las Vegas’ Sphere. Construction was handled by local firm BAM Construction, while the naming rights were awarded to Manchester-based Co-op Group in a 15-year sponsorship deal reported to be worth just under £100 million ($127 million).
Also listed among Co-op Live’s investors is multi-Grammy-winning pop star Harry Styles, who grew up in the small Cheshire village of Holmes Chapel, around 30 miles outside of Manchester, and advised on aspects of the venue’s design.
“To have an artist of that scale investing in our building and be advising us along the way is a very fortunate position to be in,” says Roden. “Tim Leiweke and his team spoke to him at the start of the process about what does an artist need from a building. ‘What matters to you?’ And quite rightly, what artists care about most is their fans and the fan experience.”
Rendering of your view if you have tickets behind stage left.
Courtesy of Oak View Group
To that end, every aspect of Co-op Live has been designed with the audience and performer in mind, says OVG. That means a complete advertising blackout inside its “immersive bowl” interior during shows, comfortable tiered seating that OVG says brings fans 23 meters (75 feet) closer to the stage than arenas of a similar size (complete with beverage holders on every seat), first-class acoustic and audio-visual technology and the largest floor space of any U.K. indoor venue (30,677 square feet in standard-end stage mode and 35,520 square feet when center stage is in the round), capable of holding up to 9,200 people.
The venue also boasts 32 bars and restaurants, including multiple luxury VIP lounges and premium dining options, as well as its own private nightclub. The first thing that general admission ticket holders will see upon entering Co-op Live is “The Street” — a huge indoor food and drinks market with a bar that is 22 meters long (72 feet) that has been designed as the “heartbeat” of the building.
“Everything has been built around this idea of: ‘How do we give the fan the best experience they’ve ever had coming to an indoor arena?’ ” says Roden. He confidently states that the legacy issues for many music fans visiting arena-size venues “where you find your seat, have a terrible warm beer, eat a burger that tastes like cardboard and queue for 30 minutes for the toilet” won’t apply at Co-op Live.
Sustainability is another key consideration in the building’s design, with Co-op Live set to be the United Kingdom’s first and only 100% electric arena, powered by a combination of renewably sourced electricity and a football pitch-size field of on-site solar panels. Meanwhile, the venue’s rectangular flat roof will harvest Manchester’s famous abundance of rainfall, which will then be used to water its plants and flush its toilets.
Air-source heat pumps, reuseable cups, food sourced from nearby vendors and a pledge of zero waste to landfill are among the other environmental initiatives OVG hopes will make Co-op Live the most sustainable arena in Europe. That commitment extends beyond the building’s walls with a neighboring mile-long pedestrian path upgraded with lighting installations and busking spots for musicians to encourage local visitors to walk to the venue rather than drive. Surrounding Co-op Live, a “biodiversity ring” of lush greenery has been planted to provide a natural habitat for wildlife and attract bees.
“The Street” — an indoor food and drink market with a long (72 feet) bar.
Courtesy of Oak View Group
OVG says Co-op Live will bring in between 750,000 and 1 million new ticket sales each year, creating more than 1,000 jobs and contributing £1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) to the local economy over the next 20 years. But not everyone is happy about its arrival.
During the planning process, ASM Global, owners of Manchester’s existing AO Arena — a busy venue located in the heart of the city, which opened in 1995 and regularly features in Billboard‘s year-end Top 10 Venues list, grossing $76.1 million in 2023 from 102 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore — strongly opposed OVG’s plans to build the rival facility. It argued that Greater Manchester, which has a 2.8 million population across the city and its surrounding towns and boroughs, is not big enough to support two separate 20,000-plus-size arenas.
In the past year, AO Arena has undergone a major £50 million ($63 million) upgrade, increasing its overall capacity from 21,000 to 23,000, expanding its standing floor space by 100% and opening new VIP bars and restaurants, ahead of Co-op Live’s opening. (The United Kingdom’s leading venue is London’s 20,000-capacity The O2, which took in $219.5 million last year, making it the world’s second-highest-grossing arena behind Madison Square Garden, according to Billboard Boxscore figures).
“We wouldn’t have put a spade in the ground if we didn’t believe the Manchester market could take two arenas,” says Roden. “The goal is not for us to bring in the same number of shows that were already coming to Manchester. Our goal is to bring in more shows to the city and have international artists stay here longer.”
Bookings indicate the strategy is working with multiple show residencies at Co-op Live scheduled for the Eagles (five nights), Take That (seven nights), Liam Gallagher (four nights), Olivia Rodrigo (two nights) and Nicki Minaj (two nights) in 2024. Other upcoming shows include Kid Cudi, Slipknot, The Black Keys, Eric Clapton, Pet Shop Boys, Jonas Brothers, Pearl Jam, Justin Timberlake, Noah Kahan and Megan Thee Stallion. In November, MTV’s Europe Music Awards (EMAs) will be held at the venue, marking the first time the event has been held in Manchester.
“The moment when we hear that first chord come out from an amp and we hear the fans reacting to that is going to be something to behold and I can’t wait for people to experience it,” says Roden, looking ahead to opening week. “We feel we’ve created a world class facility that showcases Manchester not only to the U.K. and European market but globally as well.”
“In many ways, Co-op Live embodies what OVG is all about,” adds Bodie. “Creating venues that set new industry standards and develop amazing experiences for fans and artists alike.”
As music and media company 88rising gets set for another showcase at Coachella this weekend, founder Sean Miyashiro has only one regret: He should have told festival founder Paul Tollett to make the company’s name bigger on the lineup poster.
“I would have told him to [feature] us more prominently,” says Miyashiro, who curated a special 88rising Futures showcase for this year’s Coachella — adding that Tollett told him last year’s 88rising set “blew up the [streaming] numbers for YouTube, especially in Asia. Indonesia and The Philippines were really big — viewership form there that they have never experienced before.”
Miyashiro expects this year’s 88rising takeover will make a similarly big impression. Taking place at the Mojave stage just after 5 p.m., the label’s third consecutive Coachella set will feature performances from genre-defying quartet ATARASHII GAKKO!; male supergroup Number_i; Awich, popularly known as the queen of Japanese hip-hop Awich; and pop sensation YOASOBI. Both ATARASHII GAKKO! and YOASOBI will perform their own individual sets, though the former act tells Billboard to expect additional magic from the 88rising showcase.
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88rising Futures
Courtesy Photo
“The 88rising set is where the magic of collaboration happens!” ATARASHII GAKKO! says via email, adding that it intends to debut new tracks from its forthcoming album during the performance. “The collaborations with YOASOBI and Awich are something special that can only happen on the 88 stage. We cannot wait to show everyone the vibrant AG! energy. We hope it will be an unforgettable experience for everyone in the crowd!”
While the showcase will represent talent from several Asian countries including Japan, China and Korea, it will also feature several surprise acts from additional countries as the music company continues to act as a “bridge between East and West, West and East,” explains Miyashiro.
Sean Miyashiro
Nick Sutjongdro
“When we started, I don’t think that we tangibly knew how to [be that bridge], but, over time, there are these platforms that we’ve been able to create or partner with like Coachella [that are] really meaningful,” Miyashiro says, adding that while these artists are blowing up around the world, it can be hard to break through the noise and make their way onto the lineup of an American festival like Coachella.
“When I ask some of these artist [to come perform],” he adds, “they cry. Even their managers cry.”
For Miyashiro, developing artists and helping them break through is a major part of the company’s mission. “That is what we started the company for,” he says, “and a lot of that is coming true.”
While the 88rising set during Coachella’s first weekend is expected to be filled with special guests, the second weekend lineup will also have an element of surprise — even for Miyashiro. With some artists having to fly back home, he continues, “frankly speaking, we’re still figuring out what we’re trying to do,” he says with a laugh. “But we’re figuring it out pretty quickly.”
With the latest 88rising set at Coachella just days away, Miyashiro says he’s already looking ahead to 2025, with the company already working on developing a stage musical. “This [year] is going to be the last 88rising does something like a showcase. Next time it is going to be like a movie,” says Miyashiro. “In 2025, we’re going to need the main stage.”
Olivia Rodrigo is officially done spilling her guts in North America — for now. After closing out the first leg of her Guts World Tour with four nights at Madison Square Garden, the 21-year-old pop star made sure to thank her fans and crew for making it special with a post on Instagram Thursday (April […]
When he first started his own agency, Andrew Kelsey worked out of a tiny, windowless office in San Francisco’s Mission District. He had no experience as an agent, but he did have a passion for underground electronic music and an ambition to get bookings for artists who were making it.
Twenty years later, Kelsey has a staff of 18, offices in San Francisco and Brooklyn — both of which boast natural lighting — and a roster of more than 140 house, techno and indie electronic artists whose “underground” sound has, over the last two decades, become the prevailing style of commercial electronic music in the United States.
Kelsey’s agency, the independently owned and operated Liaison Artists, now books 5,000 shows a year, including at major festivals like EDC Las Vegas, Ultra Music Festival and Coachella, where this weekend, Liaison artists Carlita, Folamour, The Blessed Madonna, Bicep, ANOTR, Eli & Fur, Ame and Innelea are all slated to play.
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“I thought it was going to be big,” Kelsey tells Billboard over Zoom, “but not this big.”
As tastes have shifted toward the style of music Liaison has always championed, the agency has grown in tandem. The company doubled in size just before the pandemic, then doubled again when live shows returned. The staff now includes eight agents, including Kelsey and his partner, Mariesa Stephens, who joined the agency in 2008 after meeting Kelsey through the Bay Area nightlife world.
Following the pandemic, veteran agents Emma Hoser and Meryl Luzzi joined the team, bringing in clients including house titan Jamie Jones, techno pioneers Adam Beyer and Nicole Moudaber and artists from the revered Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep labels. Beyond the agents, Liaison employes four accountants and several coordinators who, Kelsey says, “make the machine run.”
There was no machine to speak of when Kelsey moved to San Francisco in 1998. He arrived with one bag from his native Buffalo, N.Y., where he’d booked clubs while earning a criminal justice degree and interning at the courthouse. (“I just had a moment of like, ‘this is miserable,’” he now says of the experience. ”) In San Francisco, he found a thriving electronic music culture and knew he had to be a part of it.
But with minimal experience, there was no clear “in.” Eventually, Kelsey hustled his way into an internship at Urb Magazine, a job for which he’d “bomb the city with materials” like CDs, posters and show flyers. This led to a four-year run doing distribution at Om Records, where – after observing the label’s in-house booking agent – he decided he wanted to be an agent, too.
When his boss at Om told him no, Kelsey “quit on the spot and started an agency with no experience,” he says. He made inroads by seeking out the music he liked and persuading a few artists that, with his “absolute dedication to working hard and just making it succeed,” he could represent them. Liaison officially launched in 2004, with Kelsey signing his first big artist, Claude VonStroke, in 2006.
Around that time, Kelsey spent a summer traveling to festivals throughout Europe, then did a five-month stint in Berlin, where he was converted to the religion of techno. (He also opened a Liaison office in Berlin from 2007-2009.) The experience in Europe “just changed my life,” he says. “It was another epiphany of wanting to bring that music to the U.S.”
At that time in the United States, the house and techno scene mainly existed at warehouse parties and smaller clubs in cities like New York and Los Angeles. Then-nascent festivals like EDC Las Vegas and Ultra Music Festival in Miami were booking the genres, but Kelsey says most festival stages for this music were “1,000 capacity with no production, in the mud, on the side, just a complete afterthought. There wasn’t even any hospitality onstage, just a couple of warm beers in a dirty cooler.”
Then everything changed. The EDM boom of the early to mid-2010s brought electronic music to mainstream consciousness in the United States, where it became a major economic force. When the boom’s bombastic “mainstage” sound cooled off, it was replaced in popularity by house, techno and the many subgenres that exist under these two styles. That’s when things shifted for Liaison.
“I’d say in 2015, it really started moving,” says Kelsey. Suddenly, artists who’d previously been playing 500 capacity clubs were getting booked for much larger stages. San Diego’s CRSSD Festival launched in 2014 to service the sound, and Coachella launched its club-style Yuma Stage in 2013, with that space growing from 1,500 to 7,000 capacity over the last 11 years. Anjunadeep showcases used to max out at 500 people; now they happen at Colorado’s 10,000-capacity Red Rocks Amphitheater.
Andrew Kelsey and Mariesa Stephens
Krescent Carasso
Chicago’s ARC Music Festival, which features house and techno exclusively, launched in 2021, with longtime Liaison client Honey Dijon headlining in 2022. This weekend the artist (who won a 2023 Grammy for her work on Beyoncé’s dance-oriented Renaissance) will also play Coachella’s new Quasar Stage, which will host three to four extended dance sets.
“I remember watching the festival change, with [Coachella co-founder] Paul [Tollett] and company putting underground dance music artists on [the festival’s massive] Sahara stage, which was kind of the next organic step for this music,” says Kelsey. “I feel like all the major promoters have been in lockstep… We used to do 200 capacity shows together and all grew together with this music.”
With this growth has come revenue, and competition. In the earlier days, Stephens says a $40,000 fee for a bigger name underground artist “was often the ceiling.” These artists were usually relegated to 2,000 capacity rooms and smaller side stages at major festivals.
Now, “the entire game has changed,” Stephens continues. “Underground artists are selling out Madison Square Garden and 25,000 cap stadiums” and playing festival headlining sets for tens of thousands of people. She says “artist fees have certainly followed suit.”
Naturally, major agencies have expanded their rosters to include these formerly niche sounds.
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t deeply competitive,” Stephens says. “For many years, the majors were less of a concern for us, but there has been a major shift recently where the music Liaison has been nurturing since our inception has become wildly popular, and things did change.”
While some of Liaison’s artists “did leave in search of greener pastures,” she continues, “they were few and far between, and most of our core artists have been very loyal to us.” (With Liaison specializing in North and South America, all of its artists have different agencies in Europe and the rest of the world which Liaison works in partnership with.)
Kelsey says it’s Liaison’s authenticity and its passion for, commitment to and knowledge of this type of music that inspires artists to stay.
“Liaison embodies the perfect blend of underground authenticity and mainstream appeal,” says Dominik Ceylan, managing partner of Temporary Secretary, a German artist management group with clients, including Dixon and Ame, who are represented by Liaison in North America. “If you’re passionate about music and see your booking agency as an integral part of an ecosystem dedicated to nurturing artists and helping them thrive, Liaison is your go-to partner.”
Currently, the agency is particularly focused on developing artists’ brands, with Dixon’s Transmoderna and Bicep’s Chroma – both of which feature custom multimedia experiences — giving Liaison the chance to “bring an artist’s vision to life in a very 360-degree way,” says Stephens. As one of the few Black agents in electronic music, she’s also particularly excited about developing Francis Mercier’s Deep Root Records family of artists. “Going to parties filled with black and brown faces [is] deeply inspirational for me,” she says
Both Stephens and Kelsey agree that the market for the music they specialize in only seems to be growing, with its name at this point only used for lack of a better word.
“There’s really,” Kelsey says, “not much underground about it.”
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