Live Music Industry News

The LIVE Awards 2025 took place in association with Skiddle at The Troxy, in East London, Dec.10. Here are the winners.

Attended by over 500 guests including promoters, venues, agents, festivals, artist managers and more, the event was hosted by comedian Tom Ward and saw awards collected by individuals and companies from across the live music community.

Chosen by a panel of industry experts and covering all sectors of live music, The LIVE Awards recognises and celebrates individuals and organisations who have made a significant impact during the last year, with 15 awards in total handed out throughout the evening, culminating in the presentation of The LIVEtime Achievement Award to Stuart Galbraith, Founder & CEO of Kilimanjaro Live.

Galbraith, a 2022 Pollstar Impact International honoree, has been a key player in the growth of UK live music over the last four decades.

StubHub’s recent financial disclosures are shining new light on a long-standing frustration among small and mid-tier ticket sellers—delayed payouts. While StubHub officially states that payments to sellers are remitted five to eight business days after an event takes place, the on-the-ground reality seems more complicated. Numerous independent sellers have taken to social media to complain about chasing StubHub support for weeks or months to receive money owed after completed transactions.

During a recent earnings call, StubHub Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Connie James addressed the company’s cash flow mode, offering some insight into how this delay benefits the platform financially. “Our marketplace model has inherent favorable cash flow characteristics,” James told investors. “We collect cash from buyers at the time of purchase, but remit payments to sellers at a later date—often after the event occurs.”

The ABBA Voyage show has contributed £2.06billion to the UK economy, a new report has revealed.

The ambitious virtual show, which features CGI reincarnations (or ‘ABBA-tars’) of the Swedish pop band, began in 2022 at the purpose-built ABBA Arena in east London. It is currently taking bookings until June 2026.

Pollstar is proud to present the 25 Most Popular Touring Artists of the Millennium, led by Coldplay, U2, Ed Sheeran, Dave Matthews Band and Taylor Swift. Based on worldwide ticket sales reported to Pollstar from 2001 through the end of 2025, the 25 headlining acts collectively sold more than 340 million tickets over the past 25 years, generating grosses exceeding $35.7 billion. Reflecting pure ticket sales, the list showcases the most popular artists on the planet—those seen by more people than any others (full chart below).

Coldplay came in at No. 1 with over 24.8 million tickets sold at 731 concerts since 2001. That year, the band toured in support of their debut, 2000’s Parachutes, and now, seven tours later, their “Music of the Spheres World Tour” sold a gargantuan 13.1 million tickets since launching in 2022. It holds the record for the best-attended tour of all time and has the second highest gross of any tour on record with $1.52 billion reported during its multi-year run, and it hasn’t officially wrapped yet.

PickleJar Entertainment Group has expanded its flagship country radio program PickleJar Up All Night across more than 80 local radio network affiliates.

Hosted from Nashville by Katie Cook and Scott Gaines, the show is available weeknights from 7 p.m.–midnight or from midnight-6 a.m. ET, and blends emerging artist discovery, fan-driven interaction, exclusive interviews, and authentic Nashville storytelling into a nightly destination for country music culture. The affiliate distribution agreement accelerates PickleJar’s media footprint while aligning affiliate broadcasters with scalable, recurring revenue streams that tie venue technology and content syndication together for the first time in broadcast radi

The 20,000-capacity venue will feed revenue back into smaller venues to ‘nurture the next generation of breakthrough artists’

4848 Festival laid out its 2026 lineup including Greensky Bluegrass, The Revivalists and STS9. Completing the All Good Presents Trifesta, the three-day event goes down July 16 – 18 at West Virginia’s Snowshoe Mountain Resort.

The lineup also features The Infamous Stringdusters, Moon Taxi, Daniel Donato, Lotus, Big Something, Grateful Shred, Elephant Revival, Davisson Brothers Band, Chalk Dinosaur, Polyrhythmics, Adryon de Leon, Kanika Moore, Improvement Movement, Magoo, Fletcher’s Grove, Hot Like Mars, Pressing Strings, Valley Flower and Wicked Sycamore.

Few lawsuits have the potential to reshape an entire industry. But Live Nation, long the dominant force in live entertainment, now faces a cascade of legal challenges that could do just that. For companies in the live entertainment and production sector, or those relying on mass arbitration clauses, exclusivity provisions, or vertically integrated platforms, the outcome could reconfigure the legal framework that has governed their operations for decades.

Is December a time for British politicians to start winding down their parliamentary business? Not for the the UK’s Business and Trade Committee, it isn’t.

The committee has launched an inquiry into ‘Competition and Market Functioning in the UK Live Music Industry’ this week, following on from oral evidence sessions that it held in February and June this year.

Announced yesterday (4 December) the inquiry is giving interested parties two weeks to submit written evidence on “characteristics, features and trends within the UK live music industry that may adversely impact market competition or market functioning”.

That 18 December deadline is accompanied by a call for evidence with specific questions that the committee is hoping to address. You don’t have to be a reading-between-the-lines guru to spot that Live Nation and Ticketmaster appear to be front of mind for the commitee.

Morgan Pitt has been named Director Of Booking for Geodis Park and the Wicks Family Field at Joe Davis Stadium, home of the Nashville Soccer Club.

Most recently, Pitt served as Senior Concerts Booking Manager for Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, helping secure performances from Ed Sheeran, Marcus Mumford, Mitski, Bob Weir, Goose, Sierra Ferrell, and others. Prior to joining the Ryman team, she gained experience in multiple roles across the sports and entertainment industry including time with the Boston Red Sox, the Madison Square Garden Company (MSG), and NBC News.

After a run of more than 35 years, the prominent independent boutique agency Skyline Artists announced it is shutting its doors for good. “We knew after the pandemic that it was time to wind things down,” said Skyline founder and president Bruce Houghton. “But I wanted to do it the right way and that took time.”

Early in Skyline’s history acts like Foghat, The Outlaws, Johnny Winter and Rick Danko helped to put the agency on the map. Later, the agency represented an eclectic roster of long-term clients ranging from George Winston to Solomon Burke and The Von Trapps to Merl Saunders

Americana was also a successful niche for Skyline ranging from legacy artists like Roger McGuinn and Tom Rush to the more contemporary including Darlingside and Gangstagrass.

Many artists including Pure Prairie League, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Firefall, Orleans and The Machine had been with Houghton for more than two decades.

Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival has unveiled the lineup for its 2026 festival, returning to Manchester, Tennessee on June 11-14, 2026. With more than 10 stages over the four-day festival, the festival will feature over 90 performers.

Thursday’s opening night features headliner Skrillex, and will also see performances by Four Tet, Vince Staples and Spiritual Cramp. The Strokes will headline Friday night, which also includes Griz, Turnstile, Jessie Murph, Mt. Joy, Yungblud and many more. Saturday will feature Teddy Swims, The Neighbourhood, Wyatt Flores, Waylon Wyatt, The Runarounds and more before headliner RÜFÜS DU SOL. Noah Kahan will close out Sunday night after performances from Role Model, Kesha, Audrey Hobert, Aly & AJ and Japanese Breakfast, among others.

Earlier this year the US Copyright Office undertook an inquiry into why there are so many songwriter performing rights organizations in the US. One of the Congress members who prompted that inquiry now wants the FTC to investigate if two of the smaller PROs are employing illegal deceptive practices

SeatGeek has become a pilot partner of Google’s new agentic artificial intelligence (AI) search experience.

The collaboration makes SeatGeek one of the first ticketers whose event listings can be fully understood and acted on by Google’s autonomous features.

This is claimed to give fans more ways to discover and book events.

Two concert charts in two days, and Coldplay tops them both. Fresh from being declared the most popular touring artist of the millennium so far by Pollstar, now Coldplay head the annual Boxscore charts published by Billboard – for the second year in a row.

This is measuring global gross ticket sales for the period between the start of October 2024 and the end of September 2025. Coldplay’s ‘Music of the Spheres’ tour grossed $464.9m over the 12 months, ahead of the $407.6m for Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter Tour’.

Kendrick Lamar and SZA, The Weeknd and Shakira all broke the $300m mark too – a first for these rankings.

Coldplay are the top touring act of the last 25 years according to a new chart.

Released by Pollstar, the ‘25 Most Popular Touring Artists of the Millennium’ found that the British band have sold nearly 25 million tickets since 2001. Coldplay also hold the record for the most tickets sold on a single tour for ‘The Music of the Spheres World Tour’, with 13.1 million tickets since launching in 2022.

The tour also holds the record for the best-attended tour of all time, and has the second highest gross of any tour on record with a reported $1.52bn (£1.1bn/€1.3bn).

Conway Entertainment Group Live (CEG Live) has launched its consulting services, headquartered in Nashville. CEG Live will specialize in driving the growth, development, and success of entertainment venues through a combination of live event management and venue consulting services. CEG Live provides venue booking, tailored strategies and direct support to venues.

The company will be led by Tony Conway, with additional day-to-day operations assistance from Blake McDaniel, Scott Welch, Sherry May and Brandon Mauldin.

An investor-rights law firm is investigating Live Nation’s leadership for potential breaches of fiduciary duty and asks shareholders to contact them. Halper Sadeh, an investor-rights law firm, has announced its investigation into Live Nation’s leadership for potential breaches of fiduciary duty. To that end, it is inviting Live Nation shareholders to contact the firm to discuss possible legal options.

Sabrina Carpenter showed up with gusto on Saturday at Variety‘s annual Hitmakers event, accepting her Hitmaker of the Year honor in front of a star- and executive-studded audience and quipping about the very action-packed year that brought her to this summit.

The pop superstar, who has seen her career explode in recent years, gave the Hollywood crowd some words of wisdom from an artist who started writing songs at the age of 10.

TEG Touring’s UK operations are set to wind down by June next year, following the sale of its UK venue portfolio last month.

The newly formed Propaganda Independent Venues re-acquired Tramshed, as well as The Globe in Cardiff, XOYO and Camden Assembly in London, and XOYO Birmingham.

Propaganda’s Dan Ickowitz-Seidler and Richard Buck originally set up Tramshed some 10 years ago.

Meta on Thursday announced it is launching a new, centralized support hub for Facebook and Instagram, acknowledging that getting help hasn’t always been as easy as it should be. The space will bring together all the support features users of both networks need to report account issues or recover one they’ve lost access to.

“Getting help with your account should be simple and accessible,” the company explained, adding that it’s aware “support hasn’t always met expectations.” The update is rolling out globally to users of both social media platforms on iOS and Android.

The International Live Music Conference (ILMC) has announced an expansive agenda for its 38th edition, set for 24-27 February at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel.

From global deals, AI, and free speech to country, K-pop, and new markets, the programme for the world’s largest gathering of live music executives is bigger and broader than ever before.

Asia Live will make its debut, with three dedicated panels shining a light on the dynamic region, while Middle East Live returns to highlight one of the world’s fastest growing regions. The latter is supported by Theory Eleven Entertainment, Blu Blood Middle East, and PRG, and will feature three panels on topics like venue development, cultural growth, and regional touring.

As previously announced, CAA’s Rob Light is set to make his debut appearance at ILMC as he sits down for the Hot Seat Interview, unpacking his storied career in the industry.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday granted a full and unconditional pardon to music industry executive and Oak View Group co-founder Tim Leiweke.

Leiweke faced a single federal felony charge of restraining trade after he was accused by the Justice Department in July of orchestrating a bid-rigging scheme to build and operate an arena at the University of Texas’ Moody Center in Austin.

Prosecutors alleged that Leiweke conspired with the CEO of Legends Hospitality to rig the bidding process to ensure that Oak View Group would become the only qualified bidder.