Live Music Industry News

Top 10 European Venues by Tour Dates:

TivoliVredenburg – Utrecht, Netherlands – 1,628 bookings
EartH – London, UK – 680 bookings
Manchester Academy – Manchester, UK – 483 bookings
O2 Institute Birmingham – Birmingham, UK – 468 bookings
O2 Academy Islington – London, UK – 462 bookings
Huxleys Neue Welt – Berlin, Germany – 441 bookings
New Cross Inn – London, UK – 438 bookings
Hotel Cecil – Copenhagen, Denmark – 384 bookings
Sala Apolo – Barcelona, Spain – 362 bookings
Melkweg – Amsterdam, Netherlands – 358 bookings

After undergoing a comprehensive renovation, Marquee NY, the Manhattan nightclub Marquee NY announced an all-star lineup for the Fall 2025 season. The club, which is operated by Tao Hospitality Group, underwent a complete refurb with an expanded dance floor, new visual technology, upgraded LED systems and a new style aesthetic.

The club saw its official re-opening this past weekend with performances from Diplo on Friday, followed Steve Aoki on Saturday and Zedd on Sunday. The club’s October lineup includes Robin Schulz, Alan Walker, Kölsch, Dimitri Vegas, Francis Mercier, Kaskade, Max Styler, and more.

Paul McCartney is officially back.

The Beatles legend kicked off his 2025 North American tour as the latest leg of his “Get Back” run on Friday Night night (Sept. 26th) at the relatively intimate Santa Barbara Bowl in Santa Barbara, California. The 4,562-capacity venue was sold out and a phone-free event. It served as the launch of his first US tour since 2022.

Apple Music recently celebrated its tenth anniversary by opening a new studios complex in Los Angeles. Doja Cat dropped in last week for the studios’ first ‘livestreamed album release party’ in support of her new album ‘Vie’.

Apple gave the studio in which the event was held a 1980s nightclub-themed makeover, with Doja Cat singing along to tracks from the new album as they were played, and telling fans about the album – as well as some advice to “don’t worry about what people say about you on the internet”.

Dolly Parton has announced that she’s postponing her Las Vegas concerts at Caesars Palace scheduled for December, revealing that she’s dealing with health issues and that her doctors advised her that she needs “a few procedures.”

With touring costs rising and venues closing, many acts are only playing big city dates. But as the Beatles and Led Zep showed in the past, more scenic routes can pay off

On Thursday night, the City Parks Foundation 2025 Dinner & Dance Party Benefit, this year honoring Grammy-and-Oscar-winning drummer, filmmaker, author, DJ and producer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, raised nearly $1 million in donations. All funds raised will support City Parks Foundation’s free arts, sports, environmental education, and community building programs produced each year in New York City public parks across all five boroughs.

Liverpool FC issued 1,114 lifetime bans and closed 45,000 fake accounts in a clampdown on ticket touting last season.

Almost half of the bans come after the Premier League club discovered the use of mass manipulation of software.

It marks a substantial increase on the 75 lifetime bans that were dealt during the 2023-24 season.

Goldenvoice's Stacy Vee tells why the festival books acts from outside the country genre, from Journey to Counting Crows to Teddy Swims, alongside young country hotshots like Ella Langley, Riley Green and Bailey Zimmerman.

Outback Presents – the leading independent, full-service promoter of live entertainment in North America – announces Jackie Naparlo as Senior Vice President of Entertainment Strategy and Development. The 2025 Billboard Women in Music Executive honoree will be charged with leading company-wide initiatives in growth, new revenue generation, and operational efficiencies that support Outback’s expansion across comedy, music, festivals, and beyond.

The 18th edition of the Green Events and Innovations Conference (GEI18) is returning to the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London on Tuesday, 24 February 2026. 

With a core focus on event sustainability, the GEI brings together the “brightest minds” to “tackle the most poignant and pressing topics relating to event sustainability, climate change, and social action,” says the event.

The conference hosts a number of talks, panels, discussions, and case studies from both music and sporting events.

My Chemical Romance have extended “The Black Parade Tour” with a new run of dates in 2026 that include stops in the US, the UK, and Europe.

The newly announced leg of US concerts take place beginning in August 2026 and consist of stadium shows in New York City, Washington, DC, Nashville, Detroit, Minneapolis, Denver, San Diego, Phoenix, and San Antonio, before culminating with three nights at the Hollywood Bowl in October. MCR will be joined by a rotating cast of opening acts, including Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse, Iggy Pop, Sleater-Kinney, The Breeders, BABYMETAL, Jimmy Eat World, and The Mars Volta.

Germany has unveiled a new industry-backed Live Music Fund to shore up its grassroots ecosystem from the start of next year.

The fund will go live on 1 January 2026 and is designed to channel money back into clubs, small venues, emerging artists and independent promoters across the country. The initiative – which follows the creation of the UK’s LIVE Trust – was officially launched during a panel at Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival.

Dan Monsell, Festival Director and Booker at Pitchfork London, talks us through the pros and cons of running a multi-venue festival in 2025.

Yusuf / Cat Stevens has announced that his North American “Cat on the Road to Findout” Book Tour will be postponed due to unspecified visa issues.

“Sadly, my ‘Cat on the Road to Findout’ Book Tour in the U.S. looks like it won’t go ahead as scheduled in October,” the singer/author wrote in a statement.

“Waiting months for visa approvals, we held out as long as we could. However, at this point, the production logistics necessary for my show cannot be arranged in time. I am really upset! Not least for my fans who have bought tickets and made travel plans to see me perform.

Bad Bunny is slated to perform during the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show, taking place on Feb. 8, 2026 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA.

“What I’m feeling goes beyond myself,” said Bad Bunny in a statement. “It’s for those who came before me and ran countless yards so I could come in and score a touchdown… this is for my people, my culture, and our history. Ve y dile a tu abuela, que seremos el HALFTIME SHOW DEL SUPER BOWL.”

Zach Bryan made history on Saturday night as the first artist ever to play at Michigan Stadium, for an audience of 112,408 — setting the record for the largest ticketed concert audience in U.S. history, according to AEG Presents, the show’s promoter.

With special guest John Mayer and support from Ryan Bingham and the Texas Gentlemen and Joshua Slone, the largest ticketed show in U.S. history also set a merchandise sales record in the amount of $5 million. 

Pet Shop Boys and The Prodigy helped the Isle of Wight music festival increase its profits last year, generating a £2.6m dividend for its parent company, a division of the events industry’s biggest player, Live Nation.

In a year when many smaller music festivals lost money or were cancelled amid wet weather and soaring costs, the summer showpiece on the island, a ferry ride across the Solent from England’s southern coast, managed to prosper.

Despite a 4.5% decline in attendance to just under 144,000, the 2024 festival made a profit of £3.4m. That was an increase from £2.8m the year before, when Pulp and The Chemical Brothers headlined the Friday and Saturday night lineups.

Grammy-winning producer-songwriter Jack Antonoff slammed Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino’s recent claim that concert tickets are “underpriced,” calling the perspective “a sick way of looking at it.”

In a social media post, Antonoff highlighted a segment of Rapino’s comments at the CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Game Plan conference last week in which he said,

“Music has been underappreciated,” Rapino said, especially compared to sports. “In sports, I joke it’s like a badge of honor to spend 70 grand for a Knicks courtside [seat]. They beat me up if we charge $800 for Beyoncé.”

Indian artist management and entertainment company Represent has partnered with BookMyShow to allow fans to purchase merch when they buy tickets for their favourite acts — starting with Canadian-Punjabi pop star AP Dhillon’s upcoming nationwide tour. 

Of course, bundling merch — or even CDs and vinyls — with tickets is not new, but it’s not common practice in India. What’s interesting is that Represent decided to start doing it after it found that merch for their acts didn’t move as well at live shows as it did online. 

Venu Holding Corporation (VENU), a developer, owner, and operator of upscale live music venues and premium hospitality destinations, today announced it will host the official groundbreaking ceremony for The Sunset Amphitheater at El Paso powered by NFL Hall of Famer, Troy Aikman’s EIGHT Elite Light Beer, on Wednesday, November 19, 2025. The invite-only ceremony will be a celebratory milestone marking El Paso’s official welcome of this premium landmark entertainment destination.

Dua Lipa has denied a “deliberately inflammatory” MailOnline report claiming that she fired one of her live agents after he attempted to prevent Kneecap from performing at Glastonbury.

Her agency, William Morris Endeavour, called the story “categorically false” and clarified that the agent, David Levy, stopped working with the British-Albanian pop star in 2019.

Levy was an alleged signatory of a leaked letter urging Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis to drop the pro-Palestine Irish rap trio Kneecap from the bill for this year’s festival.

Brag, a joint venture between Live Nation Middle East and UAE-based events company Brag, is set to manage three venues as part of a new partnership with Expo City Dubai.

Brag will manage Jubilee Park, Al Forsan Park and Dubai Millennium Amphitheatre at Expo City Dubai, the legacy city of Expo 2020 Dubai.

The Brag-managed venues will join Live Nation’s global network to host year-round programming, including major concerts and immersive shows.

Coachella 2026 has entirely sold out both weekends of the festival, just a week after revealing the lineup for next year’s event.

In a post on socials, organizers for the festival revealed that Coachella passes were snatched up after announcing the slate of performers last Monday night. “She’s gone, dance on. See you in April,” they wrote on Instagram. Although general admission and VIP tickets are out of stock, potential attendees can join several waitlists to see if anything becomes available in the coming months.