Live Music Industry News

The Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix has announced that T-Pain, mgk and Zedd will headline this year’s race, which will take place from November 20-23.

Sofi Tukker, Jess Glynne, Cimafunk, Balu Brigada, Cassian and more will also perform on the T-Mobile Stage, which will be located near the Las Vegas Sphere.

T-Mobile Zone at Sphere ticket-holders will be able to enjoy a festival-like atmosphere, with the pass including the musical line-up, race-day activations and premium views from Turn 5G and the chicane spanning turns seven through nine.

The events industry, at its core, is a performance. Not just on stage, but behind the scenes. And like any great performance, it’s never a solo act. It’s a messy, complex dance of a hundred moving parts.

No single memorable concert or festival happens because one company just “sold” something. It happens because people build things together.

Live Nation continued its expansion in the Pacific Rim with the acquisition of New Zealand-based festival producer Team Event, creators of Electric Avenue, the nation’s largest two-day music festival.

Based in Christchurch, Team Event has been operating locally for 15 years and has developed a portfolio of events that includes Rhythm & Vines, the regional Greenstone Summer Concert Tour across New Zealand, and Spilt Milk in Australia.

2025 Country Music Hall of Fame electee Kenny Chesney will make a return to Farm Aid in 2025, headlining the annual music and food festival at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Saturday, Sept. 20.

Chesney, an eight-time Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year award winner, Chesney is one of the top touring country artists in the business today and for 2025 will be making his forth appearance at Farm Aid.

Bandsintown Taps Hustle&Co. for PR Representation Bandsintown, the leading music discovery and live event platform, has joined the client roster of public relations agency Hustle&Co. Founded in 2007, Bandsintown connects artists and venues with fans by helping

Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams is bringing a honky-tonk to New York’s East Village with a new bar and venue at 169 Avenue A she’s calling, naturally, Lucinda’s.

True to a Nashville-style honky-tonk, the space will feature live country music on Friday nights, live-band karaoke on Saturdays, and weekly bluegrass picking nights and songwriter open mics.

Williams teamed up with Laura McCarthy, proprietor of former venues such as Brownies and Lakeside Lounge, among others, on the venture, which occupies the same space as Brownies before its closure over 20 years ago.

Concertgoers and members of Congress agree: The concert ticket industry is broken, and fans pay the price. Secondary resellers routinely snap up tickets, fleecing fans and hurting artists. But it need not be this way. State legislatures have the power and responsibility to pass laws that bring resale prices down by encouraging ticket affordability and accessibility.   

NASHVILLE, TN (CelebrityAccess) – Activated Events, the leading independent live events company known for curating unforgettable experiences, is proud to announce the hiring of Chris Crawford as General Manager. A seasoned leader with more than two decades of experience in live event production, artist relations, and large-scale festival operations, Crawford will oversee the strategic execution and operational excellence of the company’s expanding portfolio of festivals, including Boots in the Park, Coastal Country Jam, Party in the Park, Taco Fest and The Smoke Show.

The UK government has published a Plan For Change that aims to simplify the licensing of bars, clubs and music venues. It includes ramping up the ‘agent of change’ principle, which was added to planning guidelines in 2018, but the industry says those guidelines have been too open to interpretation

Soundside Music Festival organizers have announced that this year’s upcoming event has been canceled, citing “circumstances beyond our control.”

The event was slated to take place in Bridgeport, CT at Seaside Park on September 27-28. The Killers, Weezer, Hozier and Vampire Weekend were set to headline the two-day festival, which also touted performances from Djo, Japanese Breakfast, the Backseat Lovers, Remi Wolf, Alex Warren, the Last Dinner Party and more.

Beyoncé did not let her “Cowboy Carter” tour ride off into the sunset without allowing Destiny’s Child to ride again, too. The crowd for the closing show of the tour in Las Vegas erupted when Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland stepped out on stage alongside Beyoncé near the end of the night for a medley that included a couple of the beloved girl group’s greatest hits.

The trio had not reunited since a similar group cameo when Beyoncé headlined Coachella in 2018 (pictured above). The members of Destiny’s Child went separate ways after a blockbuster run that ended with a final tour in 2005, and they’ve only come back together for a handful of quick reunions over the last 20 years.

Fans of the Grateful Dead and its offshoot Dead & Company will have multiple ways to access the latter group’s upcoming weekend of 60th-anniversary-commemorating shows at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, as it turns out. On top of the already revealed plan to livestream the final night to Imax screens, it’s now been revealed that all three concerts will be livestreamed in their entirety for home viewing, via the Nugs.net platform.

PartyNextDoor is launching a playable concert experience in “Fortnite” Friday, marking the latest musical artist to team with the online gaming platform.

Premiering Aug. 1 at 1 p.m. EST, the limited-time event “set on a custom island designed to match [PartyNextDoor’s] creative vision” was developed in partnership with Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Immersive Music Studios and Drake’s OVO Sound, PartyNextDoor’s label.

1250 seats at London’s Royal Albert Hall are owned by third parties who control access to those seats, although the venue can exclude the seat owners from a set number of shows per year. The Hall was sued for doing that too often, but a judge has declined to rule against the venue’s management

\\Live Nation Entertainment and Corporación Interamericana de Entretenimiento announced that Live Nation will expand its stake in Latin promoter OCESA through the acquisition of an additional 24% of the company.

The deal will increase Live Nation’s total ownership of OCESA to 75%, with CIE retaining the remaining 25%. The put/call agreement for the remaining stake has been pushed to 2032.As part of the transaction, Alejandro Soberón, Founder, Executive Chairman, and CEO of Grupo CIE, will continue as CEO of OCESA through 2032, according to Live Nation.

Can two wrongs make a right? That appears to be the defense of the ticket scalping operation Key Investment Group.

"KIG maintains it does not use bots and does not exceed posted ticket limits; instead, employees operate multiple legitimate accounts “the same way countless resellers and even ordinary fans do."

"The reseller contends Ticketmaster is aware of — and profits from — this practice, syncing the firm’s accounts and paying weekly resale proceeds. Because the primary platform allegedly permits or even facilitates such activity, KIG argues, there is no “security measure” being circumvented as required for a BOTS Act violation."

This is going to get interesting, especially considering KIG is suing both the Federal Trade Commission as well as its commissioners, including commissioner Mark Meador, a former lobbyist for the astroturf "consumer rights group" Fan Fairness Coalition, which represented the scalping industry.

https://lnkd.in/epaHufBZ

The FTC in the US has started to crackdown on ticket scalpers that it reckons have violated the BOTS Act, which prohibits certain practices for sourcing tickets for resale. But one targeted scalping company says its ticket sourcing practices are not only lawful but also authorised by Ticketmaster

CelebrityAccess has learned that Rob Segal, Partner and President of the Partnership division at the influential Canadian entertainment firm The Feldman Agency (TFA), has exited the company.

While TFA has not formally announced Segal’s departure and has yet to respond to requests for comment, Segal’s LinkedIn profile indicates that his tenure at the agency ended in June. He has since launched Segal Entertainment, a new Toronto-based venture and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In addition, Jean-Paul Mouradian, TFA’s Vice President of Partnerships, along with the agency’s entire partnerships department, also appear to have left the company. TFA declined to comment to a separate request for clarification regarding those departures.

LW Theatres has launched LW Tickets, a new ticketing services business for producers and partners across the live entertainment industry.

LW Tickets is a wholly owned subsidiary of LW Theatres, and will provide ticketing services for six London venues. These include the London Palladium, Theatre Royal Drury Lane and more.

The business has also launched with a number of partners that fall outside of the LW Theatres portfolio.

Live Nation Urban has used influencers to promote its tours and festivals for a long time. Now it’s trying to build a business out of that network of creators. It has teamed up with influencer-partnerships firm Breakr for the Live Nation Urban Creator Network, which it says is “a curated collective of thousands of top Black creators… backed by Breakr’s broader database of 75,000+ creators and 55 million data points”. The intention is to offer this network to brands.