Touring
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Emily Lichter has managed the band Lake Street Dive for more than a decade, since “they were playing for tips” in small clubs on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. While the retro-pop group is not a household name, their fortunes have changed quite a bit: Later this year, they’re slated to play New York’s legendary Madison Square Garden for the first time, where capacity ranges from 12,000 to 18,000, depending on the configuration of a show.
“Our joke is they’re the biggest band that no one’s ever heard of,” Lichter says.
Sure enough, some onlookers have expressed surprise that the band has the oomph to headline the World’s Most Famous Arena. “Someone asked me who Lake Street was supporting at MSG,” adds Leigh Millhauser, the band’s agent at Wasserman Music. “And I said: Themselves.”
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Every year, a new crop of artists tries to level up their live act and make the leap to arenas. Going for it can be fraught — even for those who are confident they can pull it off. “I’ve heard all the horror stories about people who make the arena jump too soon,” says Ed Harris, manager of Cigarettes After Sex, the tranquil rock band who will also play MSG for the first time later this year. “You’ve got to be very careful.”
“You can’t have a weak stomach,” agrees Andrew Friedman, who manages Wallows, playing their first MSG show in August. The process can involve “a lot more sleepless nights, and more calls to the band’s agents and promoter than they would probably love,” Friedman continues.
Managers and agents often speak about the live side of the music business as if they are basketball coaches stressing the importance of fundamentals in post-game interviews. Be “methodical” and “consistent;” rely on “hard work” and “elbow grease.” Nearly everyone offers up a variation of the same phrase: “Don’t skip steps.” (Olivia Rodrigo used a version of this rationale to explain why she didn’t jump straight to arenas after the runaway success of her first album.)
“You’re trying to sell out every show and you’re trying to not go backwards,” says Robby Fraser, a partner at WME Music. “A way to not go backwards is not jump ahead too fast.”
Those who don’t adhere to those rules — who try to fill an arena without the highly enthusiastic fan base needed to support the move — may see their live opportunities suffer down the line. “Festival bookers want to know you’re worth X tickets,” explains Kirk Harding, co-owner of the label and management company Bad Habit. “If you’re out here saying you’re worth 10,000 tickets, and 5,000 people show up, you’re not as hot as you’re telling them. You might not get that festival slot you want, which is huge.”
On top of that, “the artists’ egos get bruised” when ticket counts come up short, according to Duffy McSwiggin, svp at Wasserman Music. Acts can become the butt of jokes, as screenshots showing large patches of empty seats or bottom-of-the-barrel ticket prices circulate on social media. Plus logistically, “there’s damage control we have to do,” McSwiggin continues. “That might be rescaling the house, closing the top and moving people down — that takes a lot of people hours.”
To avoid ending up in this position, agents say they pore over data from past shows, trying to determine the extent of the demand for a performance in any given market. Streaming numbers offer one measure of an artist’s appeal, but they are less useful for gauging whether a listen will support an artist financially, whether that means buying a ticket or merchandise.
“Somebody can have 4 million monthly listeners on Spotify, but they might not even fill out a 500-capacity club,” Fraser says. “Those are people that at one point click a button. But that doesn’t really equate to your faithful fans.”
Instead of scrutinizing streams, Millhauser is “obsessed with all the data surrounding previous market plays:” For example, “did the tickets blow out at the on-sale or slowly trickle to sell-out;” “what zip codes did the fans come from;” “was it a Tuesday night show or a Friday night show last time?”
Managers have their own rules of the road. “When you can put up two Radio City shows” — capacity over 5,700 — “and sell them out quickly, that is a clear indicator that you’re worth Madison Square Garden,” says Drew Simmons, a partner at Foundations Artist Management. (A rep for MSG did not respond to requests for comment.)
After Lake Street Dive performed two nights at Radio City in 2022, the band’s team performed “a zip code audit,” Lichter says, and found that just 31 people attended both nights. “Add up all those tickets, and you’re like, ‘we sold around 10,000 tickets,’” she explains. “That’s kind of an MSG.”
For Mt. Joy, who are making their MSG debut in September, the equation was different. “Last year we did two Central Parks,” says Jack Gallagher, the band’s manager. Like Radio City, Central Park Summerstage can fit more than 5,000 people.
However, “arenas are way harder to sell than a field,” according to Gallagher — with a field, “people don’t have to coordinate with their friends and figure out where they’re going to sit, and seats are cheap.” While “it’s definitely still a risk to put up a venue that’s not much bigger than two Central Parks,” he continues, “we just went for it.” (Ali Hedrick, a partner and agent at Arrival Artists, points out that the band has played more than 30 times in the state of New York since 2017; New York City and Chicago are two of the group’s strongholds.)
Wallows also took an alternate route to MSG. “We know that the audience wanted to be close to the band and on the floor,” Friedman says, “and those balconies at Radio City, they’re far away.” Instead, Wallows elected to perform four shows at Terminal 5, a 3,000-capacity venue. “Now do we go back and do Radio City?” Friedman asks. “That starts to feel like a lateral move. You can either play it safe, or you can take a swing.”
Some artists have gusts of wind at their back which might speed their path to arenas. Many bands didn’t tour during COVID, but once the world began to open up somewhat, Mt. Joy “did 33 drive-in shows” — outdoor performances with social distance measures in place — “during the pandemic,” according to Hedrick. “So when other artists went away, they kept touring and played in front of a lot of people. That was one thing that made them stand out from the crowd” when life returned fully to normal.
It’s not surprising that TikTok virality can also give a band a lift. Before COVID, Cigarettes After Sex typically played 3,000- to 5,000-capacity venues. Then during the pandemic, a new audience started to find the band’s music on TikTok. “That injected steroids into everything,” Harris says. “The fan base got a lot younger and a lot more enthusiastic.” Last year, the band played Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, which fits more people in some scenarios than MSG, even if it’s less iconic.
One of Harding’s longtime management clients is The Neighbourhood, who spent much of their career steadily growing their live business. “Touring was leading the way; it wasn’t streaming super heavy,” Harding says.
During COVID, songs from The Neighbourhood became the soundtrack of choice for millions of TikTok videos, leading to a hefty increase in streaming. “Should they reassemble and come back from hiatus, they’ll do an MSG now if they want to — when you have explosive moments, you can maybe miss a step,” Harding says.
But “if you’re not having those, you’re just slowly building,” he continues. “You quietly, diligently take the steps until people are like, ‘Wait, they’re worth that many tickets? I had no idea.’”
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) has unveiled programming for its third annual conference. NIVA ‘24 will take place in New Orleans from June 3-5 with speakers from Eventbrite, National Independent Talent Organization, Wasserman, Live Music Society, Spotify, Meta and hundreds of independent venues and promoters from across the country.
This year’s speakers will include IAG’s Marsha Vlasic, United Talent Agency’s Nick Nuciforo, Grammy Award-winning Rebirth Brass Band, Eventbrite co-founder/CEO Julia Hartz, Bandsintown’s Fabrice Sergent, NPR Tiny Desk Contest winner Tank and the Bangas and George Porter, Jr., founding member of the band Meters.
The 2024 edition will also spotlight NIVA’s New Orleans venues including Generations Hall, Tipitina’s, Republic NOLA and d.b.a.
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“The nation’s independent live entertainment community has finally found a home to focus on the preservation and elevation of our industry at the annual NIVA Conference in New Orleans,” said Jamie Loeb, chair of NIVA’s conference programming committee and senior of marketing at Nederlander Concerts, in a statemenet. “Agents, bookers, venue owners and operators, promoters, and festivals will come together to showcase the vibrant voices and experiences of the live entertainment ecosystem. This year, we gather to celebrate our past successes and to chart a collective path towards a more dynamic and inclusive future for independent stages nationwide.”
The wide range of panel topics will include community programming, marketing, performing rights organizations, sponsorships, comedy booking, ticketing, breaking emerging talent, safety, and food and beverage. This year, the National Independent Venue Foundation (NIVF), in collaboration with NIVA, will offer a certified harassment training workshop, delivered in partnership with Calling All Crows and Spotify Plus 1.
NIVA ‘24 will also feature an opening night party presented by Lyte on Sunday (June 2), NIVA Gras presented by Eventbrite on Monday (June 3) and NIVA Night in NOLA featuring a Live Music Society lounge at d.b.a. on Tuesday (June 4).
The conference will also include an operations networking session presented by Protect Group on Monday, a booking networking session presented by VenuePilot on Tuesday and a working lounge presented by Live Music Society for the duration of the conference. Programming will conclude with a happy hour each day presented by Etix on Monday, Prekindle on Tuesday, and Live Music Society with D Tour and Midtopia on Wednesday (June 5).
A full list of panels, speakers and more information on the conference can be found here.
Justin Timberlake isn’t being selfish with sneak peeks from his upcoming Forget Tomorrow World Tour. As the pop star gears up to hit the road again, he took a moment to share a carousel of photos from his recent rehearsals with followers via Instagram on Wednesday (April 17). The photos find the “Mirrors” singer standing […]
When Phish takes the stage at Sphere on Thursday to begin its four-night run at the cutting-edge new Las Vegas venue, it’ll do so armed with a bespoke production in keeping with its long history of head-turning concert innovation — which is why co-creative director Abigail Rosen Holmes‘ sentiment on the eve of the shows initially seems counterintuitive.
“We’re pushing a lot of technical boundaries, and we’re doing a lot of things that are somewhat new … but never done for its own sake, all done very specifically to achieve what we want to do creatively,” the live music veteran says of her work with Phish, which follows U2 as the second musical act to play Sphere since it opened last fall. “You should just walk in and think that it was amazing, and you had a great time. If you’re sitting there thinking about what it took for us to build it, then that’s probably not right.”
What Holmes wants fans to focus on is Phish “just being the band playing the best Phish music they can.” Phish has an extensive history of intricately produced “gags” — deploying a fleet of clones, turning Madison Square Garden into an underwater world replete with drone-powered whales and dolphins, or even doing a Broadway-caliber staging of its song cycle about the fantasy world of Gamehendge, to name a few — but Holmes says that since she first began conceptualizing the Sphere shows with the band and its frontman Trey Anastasio last July, they’ve eschewed such a creative direction.
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“We’re going to use all of the opportunities of this building — the audio, the visuals — and do it while supporting Phish truly playing music the way Phish plays music,” she says. “That became really the guiding star for everything that we thought about creatively. How do we create visuals and use all the technology of this space — and not impede Phish being able to play anything they want any way they want on the night?”
It’s a marked contrast from U2, which kept its show more or less the same for each of the 40 nights it played Sphere, and designed impressive song-specific visuals for several key tracks. That Phish will mix up its show for each gig on a four-night run — not repeating a single song — is a given; what that looks like in a venue with Sphere’s epic visual capabilities is less familiar territory.
Abigail Holmes
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Still, in Holmes and the Montreal-based multimedia studio Moment Factory, whose Sphere team is led by the show’s co-creative director Jean-Baptiste Hardoin, Phish has secured a creative crew that’s up to the paradoxical task of orchestrating an advanced, immersive sensory experience to accompany a band whose musical signature is improvisation. Holmes started working with Phish in 2016, when she collaborated with lighting director Chris Kuroda on designs for the band’s touring show, and she conceptualized the live production for Anastasio’s 2019 side project Ghosts of the Forest; her career dates back to lighting work on Talking Heads‘ Stop Making Sense, and extends far beyond her concert résumé — she’s also worked with Janet Jackson and Roger Waters, among others — to architectural and installation projects, including a stint at Walt Disney Imagineering. “I feel like people often reach out to me for projects that don’t fall neatly into any really easy category,” she says, adding with a laugh, “People call me for their weird stuff.”
In Moment Factory, Phish united Holmes with kindred interdisciplinary spirits. The firm has worked with Phish several times dating back to 2015, including on its 2018 and 2021 Halloween gags and on its 2022 Earth Day show at Madison Square Garden — the one where the band turned the venue into an arena-sized aquarium. Like Holmes, Moment Factory’s work extends beyond its music clients — who include Billie Eilish and Halsey — and into airports, malls and more. But even so, Moment Factory producer Daniel Jean explains, “The challenge with Phish [at Sphere] was the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced […] to make sure that we create a show that is flexible and can react in real-time.” As Hardoin puts it, the team has been “trying to design the unpredictable.”
While Holmes and Moment Factory are tight-lipped about specific creative elements of the show, which they began workshopping in earnest last October, they share some broad strokes. Each night will have a loose theme, Holmes says, not unlike those that governed each concert in Phish’s 13-show Madison Square Garden “Baker’s Dozen” run in 2017. That choice “provided a little bit of a framework for a jumping-off point for ideas for the visuals,” she says, though she emphasizes it’s “not rigid in the song choice, it’s not rigid in the visuals.”
Those visuals will be twofold. Kuroda, the band’s longtime lighting designer, known for improvising his work along with the band’s jams, will continue that role at Sphere, utilizing a new version of his intricate rig designed specially for the venue. “The amazing rig that he has on tour was not a good fit into this building,” Holmes says. “It sits in front of the screen, it takes a lot of motors that would be in front of the screen. We realized pretty early on that that would have to change. I’m extremely excited to watch the new rig that’s designed for him in here. It plays a role in tandem with the screens instead of existing on its own.”
Moment Factory contributed to the set design that ensured Kuroda’s lighting rig and Sphere’s screen could live in harmony. And furthermore, Sphere has provided an opportunity for the company to expand its early 2000s roots in multimedia to staggering proportions. “We’re basically VJ’ing on a 16,000-by-16,000-pixel ratio for Sphere,” Jean says.
Phish
Rene Huemer
The exact nature of those visuals remain under wraps until Phish takes the stage on Thursday night, but the creative process Holmes and Moment Factory describe sounds groundbreaking. In a nutshell, the Moment Factory team has created visuals and worked with Holmes to create a playback interface — not unlike the custom programming Kuroda has implemented over the years for his lighting rig — that will allow for real-time manipulation of the visuals that follow Phish’s musical impulses.
“It was a matter of, OK, how can we evolve this universe for eight to 20 minutes, with different parameters, wheter it’s the colors, whether it’s the saturation, whatever,” Hardoin says. “[Holmes] has a very good understanding of the music of the band. She’s able to modulate [the visuals] live, as lighting designers do.”
At the shows, Holmes will be executing the visuals, which will integrate generative content and use existing technologies in new ways, like Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, a platform that allows creatives in fields like gaming, television and live events to blend live-action video and CG. (“That’s been pushed very far past what’s been done in other places,” Holmes says of Unreal.)
For months, Holmes and her team have used the vast trove of Phish concert recordings to simulate how the Sphere visuals “might evolve during a jam … being quite careful to use multiple versions, because they’re going to be radically different,” she says. “The visuals go in real-time to support [the band] and follow them musically, not the other way around.”
Phish’s penchant for newness is, in Holmes’ estimation, what will define the band’s Sphere run — and it explains why the booking appealed to the band in the first place. While the band capped off its 40th anniversary year in 2023 with a New Year’s Eve production of its Gamehendge saga, comprised of some of its oldest material, Phish has a new studio album out this summer (Evolve, due July 12) and continues to introduce fresh material while rethinking its live presentation.
“When we think about this show, it’s today — it’s not referencing the past,” Holmes says. “This is a piece of them taking a huge risk and experimenting and trying something new, because that’s what they like to do.”
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
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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.”