The initial schedule for the 2025 edition of VenuesNow Conference has been released, featuring three days of programming built for leaders across all venue types and sizes. Sessions will cover booking trends, premium experiences, revenue generation, tech innovations, sustainability and more. 

The eighth annual VenuesNow Conference will take place Sept. 9-11 at Resorts World Las Vegas. Presented by Lockton and Oracle, the event marks the debut in the entertainment capital of the world and the first time VNC has expanded to three days. Past events have been hosted in Austin, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Phoenix, New York and Seattle.

Atomic Music Group announced the addition of veteran talent executive Bill Hutchison to its team of music agents. According to AMG, Hutchison joins the agency with his full roster of clients, including Peter Case, The Plimsouls, Peter Holsapple, Stan Ridgway, and The Silos, among others.

Today we have a fascinating conversation with Randy Nichols, artist manager and CEO of Force Media Management. Randy’s been at the forefront of attempting to figure out the ticketing strategy math, especially the scalper side of the equation. We hear about his dive into the cold hard data, scalper chat rooms, and that time he sent someone undercover to the Ticket Scalpers Convention. We also talk about the allure of the “super fan” and why that is… baloney. Also we get into merch, and the general state of live music today.

” Business is very good.” That’s AEG Presents France managing director Arnaud Meersseman’s assessment of the live biz in the country after the major promoter carried its momentum from a record 2024 into an even stronger 2025, and there’s room for growth next year.

The reason Meersseman can already make a prediction like that is due to a “shift in temporality” since COVID, he says. “The bigger acts book way in advance be it on festivals like Rock En Seine, for instance, where all our headlines have either been offered or already confirmed their slots, while this year’s festival hasn’t even taken place yet. This is quite unique and has never happened before. Some of the larger stadium acts are holding dates across all of next year, we’ve already had requests for 2027. We’ve entered a new world post- COVID. It gives us visibility, and allows us to map out our trajectory in the long term,” he explains.

Atomic Music Group announced the addition of veteran talent executive Bill Hutchison to its team of music agents.

According to AMG, Hutchison joins the agency with his full roster of clients, including Peter Case, The Plimsouls, Peter Holsapple, Stan Ridgway, and The Silos, among others.

Hutchison joins Atomic Music Group from Mongrel Music, an independent talent agency he founded in 2023. His resume also includes a role as President of the indie label and artist management company, Bandloop, and Hutchison Management & Booking, a company he founded and oversaw for more than 3 decades.

TikTok users in the Middle East and North Africa can now save tracks from TikTok straight to their music libraries on streaming service Anghami.

The platform has become the latest to sign up to TikTok’s ‘Add to Music App’ feature, which lets TikTok users save the songs they discover on the social app directly to their preferred music streaming service.

The ‘Add to Music App’ feature is rolling out now for users across the MENA region, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other markets.

Where do new DJs breakthrough in 2025?

It’s a pretty rough landscape. In January 2025, the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) released figures that “showed a 32.7% decline in the total activity of the UK’s nightclub sector since March 2020,” it said. That’s 405 UK venues lost in less than five years.

The reasons are many. Rising rent and energy costs, a COVID hangover still being nursed all these years later and changing customer demographics all tell a part of the story. But while a myriad of factors continue to shutter venues across the UK, it’s easy to forget that these spaces are more than bricks and mortar. Venues create genres and birth superstars. But perhaps more importantly than that, venues are hubs for community.

The Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster could take a dramatic turn with the revelation of a previously undisclosed “kickback” scheme involving venue giant Oak View Group (OVG) and a major ticketing provider.

The kickback arrangement has come to light as part of the DOJ’s investigation into bid-rigging allegations against OVG CEO Tim Leiweke.

The Co-Founder and now former Chief Executive Officer of venue developer Oak View Group (OVG) is being indicted by the Department of Justice for allegedly rigging the bidding process for an arena at the University of Texas.

Electronic music festival Tomorrowland will go ahead as planned, despite the main stage being destroyed by a massive fire on Wednesday — just one day before festivities were set to begin.

In a statement shared on Instagram, organizers of the festival in Belgium wrote, “Due to a serious incident and fire on the Tomorrowland Mainstage, our beloved Mainstage has been severely damaged.” They also confirmed there were no fatal injuries.

The United Theatre in Westerly, Rhode Island, is partnering with Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe to launch Bluebird at The United, an exclusive concert series debuting November 8, 2025, as part of the theatre’s Nashville North initiative.

Modeled after the original Bluebird Cafe—where stars like Garth Brooks and Taylor Swift launched their careers—this quarterly series will feature three top Nashville singer-songwriters in a night of acoustic performance and storytelling.

The July 5 "Back to the Beginning" show raised more than $200 million for three charities, surpassing the amount raised by FireAid and Farm Aid combined.

Bruce Springsteen’s latest tour was his biggest ever, grossing over $700m (£522m/€603m) and selling almost five million tickets.

According to data from Billboard Boxscore, the Springsteen and E Street Band 2023-25 Tour grossed $729.7m and sold 4.9 million tickets across 129 shows. The tour began in May 2023 in Manchester and concluded earlier this month in Milan.

LIVE (Live Music Industry Venues & Entertainment), a body that represents 15 live music industry organisations in the UK, has appointed eight new trustees to its board for the recently launched LIVE Trust.

The new figures join founding trustees James Ainscough from the Royal Albert Hall, BBC 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq (who is also current LIVE chair), and Kirsty McShannon, founder and chief executive of Azorra.

Throughout their 31-year career, Intocable has inspired generations of Latin acts with iconic hits like “¿Y Todo para Qué?” and “Fuerte No Soy,” and with a successful run this year, the band is ready to help young musicians in another way. The two-time Grammy winners announced today that they will donate $1 from every ticket sold during their North American “Antología Tour” to the Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation, supporting programs that promote music education through grants and scholarships and assisting young artists in the Latin music space.

The donation will be collected from at least 18 U.S. shows, and the popular Tejano band is scheduled to perform in venues such as Anaheim’s Honda Center, San Diego Civic Theatre, Paramount Theatre in Denver and Ovens Auditorium in Charlotte.

Reservoir Media (NASDAQ: RSVR) has announced an investment in Lightroom, which says it specializes in creating “IP-led immersive entertainment experiences. New York City-headquartered Reservoir formally disclosed its stake in London-based Lightroom today. Founded in 2022 and billed as a JV between 59 Studio as well as London Theatre Company, Lightroom also counts as an investor Access Industries owner Len Blavatnik.

Paul McCartney fans are frustrated by presale tickets going for more than $1,500 a pop, with minimum-priced tickets reportedly over $800. On Tuesday, Paul McCartney fans who registered for the presale for his September 29 concert at Palm Desert’s Acrisure Arena were taken aback at exorbitant prices—if they were even lucky enough to make it to the ticket portal. Prices ranged from $800 to nearly $1,700 per ticket, and presale tickets were sold out within an hour, while some fans noted waiting in the queue for 90 minutes.

In July and August 2022, concert promoter Platinum Events was set to stage a world tour by Sidhu Moosewala, who was gunned down in May that year. In 2026, it will mount another global trek featuring the Punjabi hip-hop superstar, albeit in hologram form. ‘Signed To God The Hologram Experience’ was announced via Moosewala’s official Instagram account, which is operated by his family. 

Though dates and venues have not been revealed, the website for the tour states that every show will feature “3D holographic projections synced with his original vocals, cinematic visuals, and stage effects”. It also mentions Punjab, Toronto, London and Los Angeles as tour stops. 

Rock legend Robert Plant is set to release a new album, Saving Grace, which he’ll support by embarking on a US tour with his band of the same name. The announcement arrives with the first single, a cover of Low’s “Everybody’s Song.” Listen to it below.

Set for release on September 26th via Nonesuch Records, Saving Grace first started taking shape back during the pandemic in Plant’s home country of England. That’s where he connected with the Saving Grace band – vocalist Suzi Dian, drummer Oli Jefferson, guitarist Tony Kelsey, banjo and string player Matt Worley, and cellist Barney Morse-Brown. They’ve been working together over the past six years, building a chemistry and comradery that blossomed into this new album.

The calamitous weather of recent years has taken many lives, caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage and is changing the climate and economies of countries all over the globe. But the Steve Miller Band’s 2025 North American tour may be the first to be canceled due to the ongoing trend of climate change-inducted weather disasters, rather than any single event.

The band has canceled all 31 scheduled dates of its American tour, which was slated to begin Aug. 15 in Bethel, NY and traverse the entire country before concluding in Anaheim, Calif. on Nov. 8.

A ticketing enterprise labelled ‘Company B’ agreed to pay millions of dollars to Oak View Group (OVG) in exchange for the latter’s commitment to “advocate” for the unnamed business as the exclusive ticketing service provider for OVG360-managed venues.

The allegations have been detailed as a ‘statement of facts’ regarding the alleged ‘failure to disclose [a] ticket incentive arrangement’ in a document detailing OVG’s non-prosecution agreement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ).

Anheuser-Busch InBev has apologized for a Cannes Grand Prix-winning campaign that boasted of having avoided paying for music rights.
The world’s largest beer producer, Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), has been facing criticism for a Budweiser campaign that bragged about avoiding paying for music rights. The “One Second Ads” campaign, which ran on TikTok in Brazil, used brief clips from famous hits—including those from The Beatles, Queen, and Beyoncé—without licensing them.