Touring
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Carly Pearce is headed out on a tour that will see the country star on her largest international outing yet.
Pearce, who is booked by CAA, will start in Windsor, Ontario, on Oct. 3 and wind through North America, Europe and the U.K. before returning to the U.S. to end the tour in Nashville on May 16 more than 40 dates later. Openers on the Conundrum Wines-sponsored tour will be Karley Scott Collins, Matt Lange, Wade Bowen and Carter Faith on selected dates.
Pearce will hit a number of markets in Europe that she has never played before, including Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Munich and the U.K.’s Bristol and Birmingham. Additionally, a number of dates that have already gone on sale are upgrading because of ticket demand. Pearce has added a second night at London’s O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire after the first night sold out, while her shows in both Glasgow and Belfast have been moved to bigger venues to accommodate demand.
Carly Pearce
Courtesy Photo
“Fans in the U.K. and Europe have always been such big supporters of artists, not just the songs on the radio,” Pearce tells Billboard. “They have a deep appreciation for songwriting and the true special moments that make me ‘me.’ I’m excited to see my fan growth and can’t wait to have what I know will be an unforgettable tour.”
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Pearce will be playing all her hits, as well as dipping into her fourth full-length album, hummingbird, which came out earlier this summer. “I’m just so excited to bring this album to life,” she says. “These songs have been such a big part of my healing process and they deserve to be celebrated.”
The album’s latest single, “Truck on Fire,” debuted at No. 55 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated Aug. 10. The album’s first single, the moving ballad “We Don’t Fight Anymore,” featuring Chris Stapleton, reached No. 9 on Country Airplay, making it her fifth top 10 hit, including her three No. 1s: “Every Little Thing,” “I Hope You’re Happy Now,” featuring Lee Brice, and “Never Wanted to Be That Girl,” featuring Ashley McBryde.
Tickets for the North American dates go on sale Aug. 6 through the Official Carly Pearce Fan Club presale, with general tickets available starting Aug. 9.
Three months after Aerosmith rescheduled the remaining dates of their Peace Out farewell tour, the group has officially announced their retirement from touring amid Steven Tyler‘s ongoing vocal cord injury. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The rock band took to social media on Friday (Aug. 2) […]
All the Lambily wants for Christmas is Mariah Carey — and they’re getting it again. The Queen of Christmas announced on Friday (Aug. 2) that her annual Christmas Time tour is coming back for 2024, but with a little extra to celebrate. “It’s not time yet, but I have exciting news‼️” the five-time Grammy winner […]
This fall, Charli XCX & Troye Sivan Present: Sweat will bring the British and Australian pop stars to arenas across the U.S. and Canada. It’s the first time that either of them will headline North American arenas, but following their respective recent releases and subsequent solo shows – let alone the growing force behind the fall shows’ sales – they need not sweat it.
The tour, which kicks off Sept. 14 in Detroit and went on sale in April, has already sold out more than 90% of its tickets, according to Brian Greenbaum, Sivan’s agent at CAA.
Greenbaum says the tour dates in Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco sold out immediately, while high demand pushed a second show in Los Angeles. He notes that tickets across the tour were 67% sold after the first weekend of availability, and 70% by the end of May.
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The Sweat announcement and on-sale were planted after Sivan’s latest album cycle (for the October 2023 release of Something to Give Each Other) had mainly run its course, but before Charli’s Brat rollout kicked into high gear (June 7 release date). That off-cycle and on-cycle rollout was by design, giving ample time to sell arena tickets by artists who were not historically arena acts.
But even with strong opening sales, the team behind Sweat knew they’d get “a second bite at the apple,” said Greenbaum. Since the on-sale, Sivan made his arena debut abroad, and Charli executed an entire album campaign. Rather than the typical drop-off, momentum has carried Sweat through the (Brat) summer, with Greenbaum noting that North American sales rose to 80% by mid-June and beyond 90% by the end of July.
Sivan’s third studio LP, Something to Give Each Other, earned him his first two Grammy nominations and became his first album to land multiple songs on the Billboard Hot 100.
That success set up the European leg of the Something to Give Each Other Tour, leveling him up to arenas in Europe on his own before coming Stateside with Charli. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, he played 15 shows across the continent in May and June, grossing $5.7 million from 108,000 tickets sold, averaging $379,000 and 7,227 tickets per show.
Those figures mark a 225% increase over Sivan’s last European jaunt. In Amsterdam, he went from selling 6,000 tickets at AFAS Live on The Bloom Tour in 2019, to 13,500 at the Ziggo Dome in June. In Berlin, he leapt from 3,333 tickets at Tempodrom to 8,884 tickets at Velodrom. In London, his audience ballooned from 5,133 tickets at Eventim Apollo to 11,254 at OVO Arena Wembley.
In the eight European markets where Sivan returned, attendance grew by no less than double, and earnings multiplied by at least three. Assuming similar growth in the U.S., where he played more shows and commanded bigger grosses on The Bloom Tour, he is well set up for arenas in North America, especially teamed up with a similarly buzzy pop star.
In June, Charli XCX played a string of club and festival dates in North and South America. In contrast to Sivan’s international arena tour, she chose to tease their fall tour with underplays that lived in the more intimate, visceral world of Brat. Her handful of headline shows sold out, ranging from 850 tickets in Sao Paulo to 5,000 in Los Angeles.
The numbers on Charli’s live shows were intentionally smaller than Sivan’s, but the energy and word-of-mouth around them matched the intensity of the album. Not only did it debut to career-peak commercial returns (No. 3 on the Billboard 200) and universal acclaim, it has penetrated the cultural consciousness. Amid a string of music videos, remixes and viral dance challenges, Brat has infiltrated the 2024 U.S. election cycle via a swirl of memes and momentum behind Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris (“kamala IS brat,” Charli virally tweeted last month).
It’s perfect timing, then, for Sivan and Charli to join forces on Sweat. In her own words, in Billboard’s July cover story, it finally made sense due to the dance-leaning nature of both of their albums – the first No. 1 for each of them on Top Dance/Electronic Albums. They’ve built toward arena status over their decade-plus careers, each building cult-pop success from one album to another.
Beginning her career with a smattering of hits with Iggy Azalea and Icona Pop and songwriting credits alongside Selena Gomez and Shawn Mendes, Charli continued to accrue acclaim for her solo projects, growing her base from 965 tickets per show on 2014’s Girl Power North America Tour, to 1,439 on 2019’s Charli Live Tour, and then to almost 4,000 tickets on 2022’s Crash the Live Tour. Sivan’s recent European leg grew his base two-to-one, while The Bloom Tour expanded his reach worldwide, with more than 60 shows on five continents.
With more than a month left before Sweat begins, sales are expected to creep closer toward a continental sell-out. Just this week, Brat track “360” jumped from No. 78 to No. 55 on the Hot 100, while “Apple” debuted, becoming the album’s third track to chart. A new remix looms, hinting at more gas in the tank in the remaining weeks before opening night.
Both Sivan and Charli will tour on their own again after Sweat wraps, with each artist playing hometown shows in Oceania and the U.K., respectively. By the end of the year, their combined ticket sales could approach 500,000 in 2024.
Jhené Aiko is making her return to Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on Wednesday night (July 31), two weeks after ending the first leg of her tour in Atlanta and more than four years since the COVID-prompted cancellation of her breakout arena tour in support of her critically acclaimed album Chilombo.
Released on March 6, 2020, just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Grammy-nominated platinum album is finally being performed for Aiko’s growing female fanbase on her Magic Hour Tour, which kicked off last month at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit. The “Sativa” singer, 36, is joined on the tour by supporting acts Coi Leray, Tink, Umi and Kiana Ledé.
Magic Hour’s live production showcases the music of Chilombo, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart when it was released in 2020, and tells the story of Aiko’s musical journey and spiritual growth, explains agent Caroline Yim at WME, told through an astral array of visual elements and video production, styled to match Aiko’s own signature psychedelia.
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“Jhene’s process has never been ‘drop an album, do a tour,’” explained Yim, who noted that Aiko maintained a close connection with her fanbase during the pandemic, adding, “People are yearning for the music, and the beauty of not rushing a tour was that the music she did put out got to live and breathe over several years.”
Yim added, “Magic Hour is Jhene’s life story. It’s the things that she has gone through, the things that she has felt and a message to others to feel good about yourself and love yourself. That’s why it’s so pure and authentic; it’s not just dealing with heartbreak and those type of relationships, but also family dynamics and friendships and loss and grief. And that resonates with her fans in a very intimate and emotional way.”
Aiko’s life certainly has changed since the release of Chilombo — in November, Aiko gave birth to her son Noah Hasani with rapper Big Sean. A longtime advocate for restorative healing, Aiko launched her own wellness company The ARK in 2022, following up on her success experimenting with crystal bowls as both a musical source and an energy center. Every track on Chilombo includes the use of quartz crystal sound bowls, which she has performed with for nearly two decades.
Aiko’s ARK and ALLEL brands have grown to now include jewelry, her Jhenetics makeup line and audio companions for meditation and sleep. Aiko’s entrepreneurial efforts have pushed her team to prioritize high-impact performances since the pandemic ended, booking high-profile performances at Coachella for both 2022 and 2024, as well as Las Vegas’ Lovers and Friends festival in 2023 and Day N Vegas in 2022.
“The timing really worked with doing a few shows at the end of last year to set up for everything that was going to go on in 2024,” explained Yim, adding, “It’s become this community of women and girls coming out to grow together and sing their hearts out.”
Consumers are strained by everything from high food prices to soaring rents and mortgage costs — but aren’t giving up live music.
Two years after the concert industry roared back to life in the wake of the COVID pandemic, Live Nation had another recording-setting second quarter. Revenue grew 7% to more than $6 billion while adjusted operating income (AOI) climbed 21% to $716 million. North America was particularly strong, as fan attendance climbed 17% and amphitheater attendance rose about 40%.
That followed a record first quarter in which Live Nation had revenue of $3.8 billion, up 21%, and AOI of $367 million. A notable hiccup during the second quarter was an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in May, although that hasn’t impacted operations and will take years to move through the courts.
During Tuesday’s earnings call, CEO Michael Rapino and president/CFO Joe Berchtold gave analysts and investors their thoughts on recent tour cancellations, expectations for the second half of 2024 and next year, and Live Nation’s long-term growth rate.
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Cancellations are “in line” with historical trends
Some recent high-profile tour cancellations and weaker-than-expected festival sales have some people wondering if the live music business bit off more than it could chew. Coachella ticket sales were slower than usual, as were those of JazzFest, Beach Life, Welcome to Rockville and Governors Ball. Live Nation had two high-profile tour cancellations in recent months: The Black Keys and Jennifer Lopez.
But Live Nation, the world’s largest promoter, isn’t seeing anything out of the ordinary, said Berchtold. Cancellation rates “historically run kind of 4%-5% of shows [and] about a percent and a half of fans,” he said, and this year’s cancellations are “[a]bsolutely in line with historical trends. I think most of the reports that we’ve seen have been efforts to take one or two data points out of a very large number of tours and shows, and we’re just not seeing anything unusual there.”
“Continued growth” in the second half of the 2024 and into 2025
Berchtold said Live Nation expects to see “continued growth” in fan attendance in the second half of the year. Year-to-date ticket sales to 2024 concerts are 118 million, according to Tuesday’s earnings release, higher than 2023. Sales for arenas, amphitheaters, theater and club shows are up double digits.
As for 2025, Live Nation expects more stadium shows than it had two years ago. This year, a slowdown in stadium shows was partly caused by the Paris Olympics causing “most of France to shut down” for a month, said Rapino. Amphitheater shows provide better margins and high per-fan spending, but more stadium shows means a surge in ticket sales in late 2024 from tour on-sales, and higher gross transaction values. “One stadium show is triple the band count and triple the average ticket price of an amphitheater show,” said Berchtold.
Pushing 10% growth over the long term
After surging in 2022 and 2023 from post-pandemic pent-up demand, Live Nation is settling into a steady, long-term growth rate of 9%-10% annually. The necessary trends are in place, said Rapino: the globalization of the market, the supply of artists, consumer demand, the fan experience and favorable economic factors. Just don’t expect the post-pandemic growth to continue. “We never predicted that the industry was going to grow at 30% a year going forward,” said Rapino.
Zach Bryan rules Billboard’s June Boxscore report with 10 shows from The Quittin’ Time Tour. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Bryan grossed $68.9 million and sold 340,000 tickets in June.
It’s the first monthly win for Bryan, after scaling as high as No. 2 in March, seated behind Bad Bunny. He clocked two more top 10 placements in April (No. 10) and May (No. 4) before hitting the summit. Following Morgan Wallen (April 2023), he is only the second country artist to top the list.
The Quittin’ Time Tour has earned $184 million and sold 929,000 tickets since launching on March 5, current through the end of June. Barely past its halfway point, the trek has already quadrupled the gross of Bryan’s Burn Burn Burn Tour from last year, which itself had quadrupled 2022’s The American Run Tour. In two years, he has multiplied his average per-show gross by more than 14, up from $292,000 in ’22, to $4.3 million.
Coldplay is June’s runner-up, logging its third month at No. 2, in addition to its three months at No. 1. During the month, the British rockers grossed $68 million and sold 576,000 tickets.
The band’s consistency – six months in the top two, plus eight more elsewhere in the top 10 – has paid off: the Music of the Spheres Tour has grossed $875.8 million and sold 8.2 million tickets since launching in March 2022.
Both the tour’s gross and attendance are the second biggest in Boxscore history. Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour (2018-23) grossed $939.1 million, and Ed Sheeran’s The Divide Tour (2017-19) sold 8.9 million tickets. With more dates scheduled, Coldplay is likely to overtake both by the end of the summer.
The major asterisk for these all-time highs is that Taylor Swift has not reported figures for The Eras Tour. Billboard estimated more than $900 million in the bank and over four million tickets sold by last November. Since then, she’s performed in Asia, Australia and Europe, with a return to North America scheduled for the fall, meaning that she is likely far beyond $1 billion and nearing Sheeran’s attendance total to boot.
While Bryan leads Coldplay on Top Tours, they reverse fortunes on Top Boxscores, with the latter’s three shows at Groupama Stadium in Lyon, France, ($22.6 million, 165,000 tickets) beating the former’s double-header at Mile High Stadium in Denver ($20.5 million, 110,000 tickets). The Lyon venue rules Top Stadiums.
Both acts litter the rest of Top Boxscores, with Coldplay appearing four times in the top half, and Bryan totaling six entries. That’s each artist’s entire slate of shows from June, dominating the chart in stadiums – Coldplay in Europe and Bryan in the U.S.
In a first, the entire top 10 artists – Bryan, Coldplay, P!nk, Dead & Company, Aventura, Justin Timberlake, Kenny Chesney, Chris Brown, Green Day and Luke Combs – boast grosses of $30 million or more. Nine tours had done it in August and September 2022, and again in June and July 2023.
Further, the entire Top Tours chart is stronger than ever. German singer Roland Kaiser rounds out the list at No. 30, via $11.5 million from nine shows. That’s higher than the bottom of the list has ever been, outpacing the $10.8 million from Marco Antonio Solis last September. June marks the second month since the charts launched in 2019 that all 30 ranked tours reported grosses of $10 million or more.
June’s top 30 artists mix veteran artists such as Dead & Company, Billy Joel and Luis Miguel with fresh faces including Bryan, Feid and Noah Kahan. Classic pop groups make their mark, as Girls Aloud’s 2024 reunion lands at No. 14 with $19.1 million and Take That’s U.K. tour continues at No. 26 with $13 million.
The top-grossing venue of June is Las Vegas’ Sphere. The room hosted 10 shows across four weekends with artist-in-residency Dead & Company. The supergroup brought in $50.2 million and sold 162,000 tickets, enough to land at No. 4 on Top Tours and sprinkle Top Boxscores at Nos. 4, 5 and 8.
Up 38% from May, it’s Sphere’s second consecutive month at No. 1, with its one-of-a-kind concert experience driving high ticket prices. Madison Square Garden out-sold Sphere by more than 80,000 tickets and grossed about $12 million less, with the latter nearly doubling MSG’s average ticket ($309 vs. $156).
The lower-capacity venue charts are dominated by Glasgow (OVO Hydro), Atlanta (Fox Theatre) and Las Vegas (Dolby Live and Encore Theater at Wynn Las Vegas). Historically blocked by larger venues on the 5,000-capacity-and-under ranking, Encore Theater scores its first month at No. 1 on the new chart that breaks out venues with a cap of 2,500 or less.
Live Nation continued on its post-pandemic growth trajectory with another record-setting second quarter. Revenue grew 7% to a record $6.02 billion, and adjusted operating income (AOI) improved 21% to $716 million due to a 61% gain in the concerts segment’s AOI, the company announced Tuesday (July 30).
Despite occasional news about canceled tours and festivals, Live Nation’s results suggest fan demand is strong enough to meet the supply of artists on tour. Cancellation rates for North American concerts are tracking lower than they were in 2023, according to the company, and Live Nation hosted 39 million fans globally in the quarter, up 5% from the prior-year quarter. As tours shifted from stadiums to smaller venues, the total number of concerts increased 23.2% in North America and rose 19.9% overall.
Through the first six months of 2024, total revenue grew 12% to $9.8 billion and AOI improved 19% to $1.08 billion. The number of events grew 16.9% to 25,881, while the number of fans at Live Nation concerts and festivals rose 10.4% to 61.8 million.
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“We continue to see strong demand globally, with a growing variety of shows attracting both casual and diehard fans who are buying tickets at all price points, which speaks to the unique experience only live concerts can provide,” CEO Michael Rapino said in a statement.
With fewer stadium shows than the prior year, Live Nation is leaning on arenas and high-margin amphitheaters in 2024. Arena attendance was up by double digits globally, theater and club attendance rose 15% and amphitheater attendance was up about 40%. Amphitheaters in particular are good for Live Nation’s bottom line. Almost a third of Live Nation’s amphitheaters have been updated since 2022 — including with new bar designs and upgraded VIP boxes — and have produced an aggregate return of over 30%, according to the company.
In the ticketing division, revenue was up 3% to $731 million and AOI was flat at $293 million, and the quarter ranked among the company’s top five in terms of transacted and reported ticket sales. Ticketmaster sold 78 million fee-bearing tickets in the quarter, about the same as the prior-year quarter. Fee-bearing gross transaction value was even at $8.4 billion.
Sponsorships and advertising revenue grew 3% to $312 million and AOI rose 10% to $223 million. Live Nation secured a multi-year, multi-festival partnership with Coca-Cola and an extension with video streaming service Hulu to be the official streaming destination for Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits.
The latest numbers show the extent to which Live Nation has grown since the touring business returned from pandemic-era shutdowns in 2020 and 2021. Second-quarter revenue was 36% greater than the $4.43 billion the company saw in the second quarter of 2022, and AOI was 49% above Live Nation’s $480 million of AOI in the same period in 2022. What’s more, the business is considerably larger than it was before the pandemic. Second-quarter revenue and AOI were up 90.8% and 124.4%, respectively, from the same quarter in 2019.
Topline results for Q2:
Total revenue of $6.02 billion, up 7%, driven by an 8% increase in concert revenue.
Adjusted operating income of $716.2 million, up 21%, driven by a 61% increase in concerts AOI.
Total attendance rose 4.9% to 38.9 million.
The number of concerts rose 19.9% to 14,678.
Live Nation’s top two in-house attorneys will not be allowed to access “highly confidential” documents produced by competitors like AEG Presents and SeatGeek in the antitrust lawsuit filed against the touring giant by the Department of Justice, though it will be granted access to less sensitive “confidential” documents under strict conditions limiting how the information is used and shared, according to a protective court order signed Monday (July 29) in the Southern District of New York.
A federal judge overseeing the case agreed to establish the two-tiered system for dealing with non-public documents the DOJ subpoenaed from Live Nation competitors as part of its ongoing investigation. For the last six weeks, DOJ antitrust lead trial counsel Bonny Sweeney has been in talks with Live Nation, which is accused of operating its ticketing and concert promotion businesses as a monopoly, about restricting access for the company’s in-house lawyers — executive vp of corporate and regulatory affairs Dan Wall and senior vp of litigation Kimberly Tobias — to confidential information handed over by competitors. Attorneys for Live Nation have argued that granting Wall and Tobias access to confidential information is vital in helping the company prepare its defense.
“Mr. Wall and Ms. Tobias are litigation counsel in good standing and officers of the court,” Live Nation outside counsel Alfred C. Pfeiffer wrote in a letter to New York federal judge Arun Subramanian. “Both have been bound by numerous protective orders and never been accused of violating those orders. Their access to confidential information in no way puts such information at risk.”
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Government lawyers counter that even if Wall and Tobias “pledge not to use any information they receive other than for this case, they can’t unsee what they have seen,” Subramanian wrote in a July 23 court order trying to resolve the confidentiality access question. Two days after that, attorneys for SeatGeek, AEG and ASM Global filed letters asking Subramanian to prevent Wall and Tobias from viewing any sensitive documents produced by the companies.
The files SeatGeek produced for the government “include documents that a company would never want to fall into the hands of any competitor,” SeatGeek attorney William Kalema wrote to the court.
“SeatGeek hears on at least a weekly basis from venues that are reluctant even to meet with SeatGeek for fear of retaliation from Defendants,” the letter continued. “If the market were to learn that venues’ contracts and other communications with Ticketmaster’s competitors were made available to Defendants’ senior management, SeatGeek’s ability to market its product would be hindered even further.”
Attorneys for AEG said they had produced “hundreds of thousands of documents” for the DOJ, including the company’s “most sensitive and competitively significant materials.” AEG attorney Justin Bernick took particular issue with Wall over past statements Wall has made in the media and on Live Nation’s blog, arguing that Wall has often acted as the company’s spokesperson rather than its lawyer.
After a brief hearing, Subramanian ruled that Wall and Tobias would not be allowed to view documents marked as highly confidential — meaning those involving trade secrets, customer lists, current or future financial and strategic information, private contract terms, personnel files, planning documents, and anything deemed sensitive by the courts — and that those documents can only be viewed by Live Nation’s outside attorneys. Wall and Tobias can, however, view confidential information — defined as previously non-public financial information, material related to ownership of non-public companies, business plans and marketing campaign documents related to product development.
In order to view confidential court files, Wall and Tobias must agree not to participate or advise Live Nation on “competitive decision-making” or litigation against AEG or SeatGeek — except for litigation tied to the DOJ lawsuit — for two years after the final confidential documents are reviewed.
The “highly confidential” and “confidential” designations will be determined by those producing the documents, Subramanian wrote in the earlier July 23 opinion, noting that “if it turns out that vast swaths of the record are improperly designated highly confidential, the Court will step in” and require “a page-by-page review of documents by the producing party on a tight timeframe or appropriate modifications to the protective order.”
Billboard has reached out to Live Nation for comment on this story. The trial for USA v. Live Nation Entertainment is scheduled to begin March 2, 2026.
All audio, lighting, video and stage production on the main stage at this year’s Lollapalooza will be entirely powered by a hybrid battery system, the festival announced Monday (July 29).
According to organizers, that makes Lollapalooza the first major U.S. music festival to have a main stage run entirely on a hybrid battery system. Typically, diesel generators power the stages at large-scale events.
Lollapalooza’s hybrid-powered stage will deploy over 1.5 MWh of battery storage capacity. A representative for the festival tells Billboard that the batteries are reusable and will be charged using diesel generators that run on biodiesel fuel (typically made from renewable sources like vegetable oil, animal fat or recycled cooking grease and used as a cleaner-burning alternative to petroleum-based diesel fuel). That’s similar to systems that power hybrid vehicles.
The batteries, manufactured by Swedish industrial tools and equipment company Atlas Copco, will be deployed by CES Power, which provides temporary event power generation, power distribution, and HVAC for festivals, film and broadcast, major events, and industrial projects. The system is being deployed via a partnership between Live Nation’s sustainability initiative Green Nation, T-Mobile and CES Power.
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“We have set a goal to build a more sustainable future for music festivals, which requires taking bold steps to find solutions that can reinvent how we operate and in turn, build industry trust in new technology so that major live events can see a path towards becoming more energy efficient,” Jake Perry, director of operations and sustainability at C3 Presents, which produces Lollapalooza, said in a statement.
“Solutions like the ones Lollapalooza are pioneering not only contribute toward our global Green Nation goal of cutting our emissions in half by 2030, but they provide local benefits as well through reduced noise and air pollution which creates a better experience overall for the artists, fans and crew,” added Lucy August-Perna, head of global sustainability at Live Nation. “We look forward to sharing the results and learnings from Lollapalooza with our network of over 200+ festivals around the world who are committed to raising the bar for more sustainable live events.”
Major events have historically been reticent to incorporate hybrid battery power due to concerns about its reliability, but such batteries are becoming more popular on the live scene as the technology advances. This past May, California’s Mill Valley Music Festival became the first U.S. festival to be powered by 100% renewable energy through the use of batteries.
This isn’t the first time Lollapalooza has experimented with green energy on its main stage. Last August, Billie Eilish‘s headlining set at the festival was partially run on a solar-powered battery system via an initiative with environmental nonprofit Reverb.
Lollapalooza 2024’s headliners include Meghan Thee Stallion, Hozier, SZA, Stray Kids, The Killers, Future and Metro Boomin, Blink 182, Melanie Martinez, and Skrillex.