Through a rich and diverse line-up, including art installations, performances, debates, and workshops, the programme shines a light on some of the most important topics of our time.

Tickets for Travis Scott’s debut India show in New Delhi in October sold out in a few minutes, prompting promoter BookMyShow to add another date. Now the organiser has shared a few details of where the demand came from. Fans from more than 500 cities bought tickets, with Gen-Z – specifically those under 25 – comprising two-thirds of the attendees looking to have a “FE!N” time.

XP, the ticket resale marketplace founded by former Grubhub exec Michael Saunders, has raised $6.2 million in funding led by Blockchange, with participation from L1D, Reflexive, and others.

Why it matters:

As per its press release, XP currently offers more than 50 million tickets to major concerts, sporting events and shows nationwide.

XP claims the funding will accelerate its "mission to build the most fulfilling ticketing experience for fans, which starts with transparent, fair-market pricing, and a platform centered around fan identity."

It intends to harness AI and blockchain technology to invest in identity-driven features that will enhance personalization and create smarter, more trustworthy interactions.

A Canadian entertainment company The Feldman Agency (TFA), headquartered in Toronto, Canada, announced a series of internal promotions of longtime team members to senior roles at the agency.

Joel Baskin – Senior Vice President
A longtime team member of TFA for more than 14 years, Joel Baskin has played a key role in building a roster that includes global icons Avril Lavigne and Shania Twain, country stars Josh Ross and Owen Riegling, rock sensations The Beaches and Three Days Grace, and entertainment brands like Letterkenny and Shoresy.

During the past 45 years the 9:30 Club has hosted more than 11,000 artists and nearly 8 million fans. The beloved Washington, D.C. venue – which recently picked up its 15th Pollstar Nightclub of the Year Award – is celebrating its anniversary with a special photo exhibit and by releasing a limited edition expanded reissue of the long sold-out coffee table book “9:30 – A Time and a Place.”

Veteran photographer Jim Saah has been capturing shows at the 9:30 Club since October 17th, 1982 and when The Atlantis, a near replica of the original 9:30 Club, opened in 2023, he was there for nearly all of the 44-show run of underplays that launched with the Foo Fighters.

Last year, a UK parliamentary report on grassroots music venues recommended a ‘fan-led review’ of live and electronic music, modelled along the lines of a similar initiative for football. At the time, the British government knocked the idea on the head, saying it wanted to focus on an already-announced ticketing consultation instead.

However, now the Culture, Media and Sport Committee that made the original recommendation has announced plans to launch the fan-led review after all. It will be chaired by politician Lord Brennan, who you may remember from his days as Kevin Brennan MP – trying to launch a streaming-reform bill and also doing some policy work on AI and music.

The live music industry will “remain an attractive market with a solid growth outlook” in the next decade, according to Goldman Sachs’ Music in the Air 2025 report.

In the 91-page research paper, released yesterday (June 3), the investment bank and research firm lowered its global music market forecasts but stressed that it still sees healthy growth for the industry in the years ahead.

The report drops the global music market’s (across recorded music, publishing, and live) 2025-2030 CAGR forecasts to +6.8% (+7.5% prior) and introduces its 2031-2035 CAGR forecast of +4.8%.

Phish have tacked on a run of late summer dates to their 2025 US tour. The newly announced shows in September include two nights at Coca-Cola Amphitheater in Birmingham, AL; a pair of gigs at Ameris Bank Amphitheatre in  Alpharetta, GA; and three concerts at Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, VA.

Seat Unique is set to host the Official Premium Afterparty at Co-op Live in Manchester following headline shows from Drake, Chris Brown and Mary J. Blige.

The premium ticketing platform will take over the venue’s Hideaway lounge in July, where guests can enjoy a private dance floor, live DJ sets and luxury drinks, in partnership with Armand de Brignac and Moët Hennessy.

Coldplay has topped Billboard’s Boxscore chart once again, touring across Hong Kong and South Korea in April. The British band played four shows at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Stadium and six at Goyang Stadium in South Korea, raking in a total of $67.4m (£54m/€59m) and selling 502,000 tickets. The performances formed part of their Music of the Spheres World Tour, which launched back in 2022.

With 180,000 in attendance across four performances, and a $43.2m total, Kendrick Lamar and SZA were second.

After six years of working at famed Minneapolis venue First Avenue, Sonia Grover, Nate Kranz and the rest of the staff got phone calls one November morning in 2004 telling them to come get their stuff — the nightclub was closing. The legendary venue, best known as Prince’s stomping grounds and the site of his 1984 Purple Rain film, would be shuttering its doors for good. 

“We were just kind of told the doors are going to lock, so if you have anything in the building, get your s— and get it out of here,” says Kranz, who serves as First Avenue’s GM. 

 Creative Artists Agency (CAA) has announced the hiring of industry veteran and former UTA partner Brent Weinstein, who joins the agency as part of its senior leadership team. At CAA, Weinstein will oversee multiple aspects of the agency’s business, including Digital Media, Podcasts, Games, Talent Business Ventures, and Speakers. He will also contribute his expertise to the agency’s M&A and investment activities.

Never ask Halsey to be just one thing at a time, whether it’s on record or in person. The singer’s current outing, dubbed the “For My Last Trick” Tour, is one of this year’s most impressive pop road shows — a must-see for veteran tour-watchers, even if you don’t think you care about Halsey (although you should), just for its high level of creative ambition and innovation. But ask any two fans what the overriding nature of the show is, and you might get two distinctly different answers.

The 2025 Event and Venue Marketing Conference (EVMC) hosted the 10th anniversary of the EVMC Awards at Atlanta’s iconic Fox Theatre, celebrating the accomplishments of leading venue and event marketing professionals.

This year’s EVMC Award winners include:

Most Creative Artist Welcome: Notes to Noah – Scotiabank Arena

Grassroots Campaign of the Year: AJR Love’s Ice Cream – Van Andel Arena

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has given the green light for Viagogo to reacquire certain StubHub trademarks and domain names outside of the UK and Europe from Digital Fuel Capital.

Viagogo was given the go-ahead in 2021 to complete its takeover of fellow ticket resale platform StubHub by the UK CMA after the latter agreed to sell its international business to the Digital venture capital group. Viagogo had initially agreed to purchase StubHub for around $4bn (£2.9m/€3.5bn) from eBay in early 2020.

Live entertainment discovery platform and technology company Fever has acquired fellow discovery platform and independent ticketing business, Dice.

The move was announced after Fever secured more than $100m (£74m/€88m) in funding, headed up by private equity firm L Catterton and Point72 Private Investments. The cash injection is the result of an equity funding process including existing investors.

Fever said the capital will be used to support the company’s continued growth in music and sports, as demonstrated by its acquisition of Dice.

Paul Piticco has a new, trans-Tasman title with Live Nation.

With the announcement Wednesday, June 4th of the concerts giant’s ambitious new venue in Western Australia, another piece of news that was simply waiting to be spotted: Piticco is now director of touring and venue development, Live Nation Australasia. 

Born in Miami, and raised between the Magic City and Spain, Hans Schafer’s life soundtrack blends everything from Sublime’s sun-soaked rock to the romantic ballads of José José. Immersed in the business of music from an early age — his stepfather is Jesús López, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Latin America and Iberian Peninsula, and his mother was a label manager at BMG Latin — Schafer developed a global outlook on the industry overall. That perspective would become his edge, helping him rise as a key architect in Latin music’s expansion across international markets.

TicketManager has acquired Ovations, a corporate ticketing solutions and hospitality platform that serves Fortune 500 companies across a number of industries.

The move follows Valeas Capital acquiring a majority stake in TicketManager, which was announced last week.

The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) says that U.S. performing rights are broken and is demanding change. The comments came in a new letter filed with the Copyright Office which is investigating U.S. Performing Rights Organizations (PROs).

The investigation of ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and other PROs is at the behest of Congress and organizations representing venues and songwriters. “The current PRO system is broken,” writes NIVA, ”and it’s hurting independent venues, promoters, and the very artists we exist to support.”

WME is once again kicking off CMA Fest Week with Losers Live, a free, three-night outdoor concert series at Losers Bar & Grill in Midtown. Featuring an exciting mix of country icons, chart-toppers and rising stars, the event will run Monday, June 2 through Wednesday, June 4, with doors opening at 5 PM each night.

The 2025 series begins on Monday, June 2, with platinum-selling country mainstay s taking the stage to get the week started. The show also includes Travis Denning, Matt Stell, Dillon Carmichael, Payton Smith, Mae Estes, Frank Ray, CeCe, Will Jones and Payton Howie. On Tuesday, June 3, the hits keep coming with a powerhouse lineup of country favorites, including Lee Brice, Craig Morgan, Mark Wills, Timmy McKeever, Kaitlin Butts, Meghan Patrick, Logan Crosby, Myles Morgan, Bottomland and multi-genre, Grammy Award winner Colbie Caillat.

It’s time to party like we’re extras in She’s the Man. That’s what the All-American Rejects want us to do, anyway, with their current tour giving the middle finger to big venues that charge a lawsuit-inducing amount of ticket fees. The band is embarking on what they call the House Party Tour, crowdsourcing stops directly from fans and playing in backyards, bowling alleys, and any other spaces that will have them. Front man Tyson Ritter, the voice behind aughts-era bangers such as “Dirty Little Secret” and “Gives You Hell,” isn’t doing this for the money. Just look at the videos from the gigs and you’ll understand why. “We took $50,000 out of our own pockets, booked a bus, put the crew salary on, and started this wild sort of ride,” he says. “I recently read something about people financing festival tickets, the complete inaccessibility of the concert experience in 2025, and how it’s juxtaposed against these wild and weird economic times. It blows my mind that our shows can still work.”

Seated founders David McKay and John Griffin have re-acquired the ticketing platform from Sofar Sounds after four years.