Live Music Industry News

The show will go on for Farm Aid 40 in Minneapolis after a tentative deal was reached between the University of Minnesota and members of Teamsters Local 320. 

Farm Aid, a concert that has helped farmers for decades, will be held at Huntington Bank Stadium next weekend, as previously scheduled. However, a strike that began earlier this week involving service members for the university system put the event in jeopardy. That's because production crew workers for Farm Aid are also union members and weren't going to work to stand in solidarity with the service workers, who clean buildings, do ground maintenance, make food, drive trucks and more. 

Late Friday night, a post on the Teamsters 320 Facebook page included a statement announcing the strike's end following the agreement. Farm Aid also posted to social media, confirming the show will go on. 

Bad Bunny has elaborated on why he didn’t include the United States in his 2025-26 tour dates, explaining that part of the reason was out of concern over ICE raids.

The musician opened up to I-D about his decision to leave the U.S. off the itinerary of his upcoming Debi Tirar Mas Fotos World Tour, explaining that he did so for fear that ICE “could be outside [my concert].”

“There were many reasons why I didn’t show up in the US, and none of them were out of hate—I’ve performed there many times,” he said. “All of [the shows] have been successful. All of them have been magnificent. I’ve enjoyed connecting with Latinos who have been living in the US. But specifically, for a residency here in Puerto Rico, when we are an unincorporated territory of the US…

TempleLive has been operating entertainment venues in historic former Masonic temples across the U.S. for the past few years. That tenure appears to be at an end.

Radiohead has enlisted fan data and marketing firm Openstage to handle the registration and code-unlocking process for its upcoming tour.

The Openstage platform is designed to give artists greater control over the fan data collected. It seeks to do this by centralising all data and fan engagement into one platform, which enables artists to recognise each fan’s contributions and form stronger connections.

“They are in full control of the fan experience. They have decided what fan data is being collected,” said Openstage co-founder, Rob Sealy.

Adam Gardner is a guitarist with the long-running rock band Guster and a co-founder of Reverb, a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to creating a more sustainable music industry — click here for more information on the organization.

I’m writing this from the road, in the back of my tour bus, during the middle of Guster’s tour. Every night, I walk out in front of a room full of fans, feel that familiar jolt of adrenaline, and ask myself the same quiet question, how did all these people get here? Did they fly, drive, carpool, or bike across town?

English rock group Only The Poets are set to become the first band to charge £1 for tickets to a gig at O2 Academy Brixton in February.

The band will play the London venue on February 2, just a couple of days after the release of their debut album ‘And I’d Do It Again’.

Only The Poets will charge £1 for tickets, which is the same price they charged for their early gigs seven years ago. The move is to make the show as accessible as possible.

The Eagles have added 2026 shows to the band’s residency at Sphere in Las Vegas: Friday, January 23; Saturday, January 24; Friday, January 30; and Saturday, January 31. The general on-sale for the new shows will begin Friday, September 19 at 10 a.m. PT.

The Sphere residency will now total 48 shows, which began on Sept. 20, 2024. Tickets start at $175 and reflect all-in pricing, meaning the ticket price listed is inclusive of taxes and fees. 

Venu Holding Corporation, the owner and operator of a growing chain of upscale music venues, has announced a new partnership with digital ticketing and live event e-commerce platform Tixr.

Under the agreement, Tixr will become the official ticketing and integrated commerce partner for four of Venu’s concert halls, including The Hall at Bourbon Brothers in Gainesville, Georgia, and the Phil Long Music Hall in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Ahead of a possible trial date in March, Live Nation says it is preparing for the possibility of having to cede its exclusive ticketing contracts with venues. 

The Department of Justice has brought suit against Live Nation alleging that the company, which also owns Ticketmaster, uses its position as the largest concert promoter, ticket seller and venue operator in the U.S. to undermine competition. As part of this, the suit alleges that the company is illegally pushing venues into exclusive ticketing contracts, and retaliating against those who choose to work with another ticketing operator. 

Secondary-ticketing firm StubHub has refiled its S1 prospectus for its upcoming IPO again. What’s new are financials updated to the end of June 2025. The company says that its revenues were $827.9m in the first half of this year, representing growth of 3% year-on-year.

Those revenues are StubHub’s cut of the $4.38bn of ‘gross merchandise sales’ (GMS – the amount paid by buyers for tickets sold on its platform) in the first six months of 2025. That was up 11%. However, we analysed the financials with reference to StubHub’s refiling of the S1 earlier last month to calculate its Q2 figures. That quarter, its revenues were down 2.9% year-on-year, even though its GMS grew by 7.8%.

A group of festival organisers and grassroots venues have launched a “pioneering, gamechanging music collective” to counter what they say is the slow collapse of the UK’s alternative live circuit.

Blaming soaring costs and corporate dominance for pushing dozens of smaller events to close, the not-for-profit festival will bring together independent festivals, venues and collectives to share resources, cut costs and pool audiences

With just a month to go before the gates were due to open, organizers for America’s River Roots Festival in Cincinnati announced the cancellation of ticketed performances at the event for 2025.

Headliners who had been previously announced for the festival included Weezer, Maren Morris, Mt. Joy and Janelle Monáe. A slate of regional and rising artists are still scheduled to perform across the five day event, including Chapel Hart, the Harvey Mason Trio, Jon Lampley, Over the Rhine, and the Netherton Varner Band, among others.

Ariana Grande has added nine dates to the North American leg of her 2026 “Eternal Sunshine” tour.

The newly added shows are scattered across the United States and Canada, with extra dates in cities including Oakland (Oakland Arena, June 10), Los Angeles (Kia Forum Arena, June 20), Austin (Moody Center, June 27), Sunrise (Amerant Bank Arena, July 3), Atlanta (State Farm Arena, July 9), Brooklyn (Barclays Center, July 19), Boston (TD Garden, July 25), Montreal (Bell Centre, July 31) and Chicago (United Center, August 6).

Does Entertainment and ENDIT announced that they have jointly assumed ownership of the famed Denver concert venue Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox and have named Knitting Factory Entertainment as its primary talent buyer.

The new ownership comes with a round of upgrades for the venue, including enhanced sound, state-of-the-art lighting, and improved production capabilities on stage and throughout the 465-capacity space. Production upgrades also include the addition of seven HD and 360° cameras for live-streaming or recording shows, with multi-track audio recording and post-production editing capabilities.

Two days after her four big wins at the 2025 MTV VMAs, Lady Gaga has announced a second North American leg of her “Mayhem Ball” tour. The new dates, which follow jaunts in Europe, Australia and Japan, launch on Valentine’s Day, 2026 (February 14), with two nights at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, AZ, and continue across the continent, with return engagements at New York’s Madison Square Garden and Los Angeles’ Forum.

StubHub Holdings, the secondary ticketing marketplace, just threw its hat back in the ring to list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after postponing its initial public offering (IPO) plans earlier this year. According to a September 8 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company is now eyeing a valuation of around $9 billion.

In the filing, StubHub reported that it plans to offer just over 34 million shares of Class A stock for an estimated price of between $22 and $25 per share. If approved, the company will join the NYSE under the ticker symbol “STUB.”

We reported last week on Radiohead’s efforts to shut scalpers out of the ticketing for their winter tour. Now one of the band’s key partners has revealed itself. Fan-data and marketing firm Openstage is working with Radiohead on the registration and code-unlocking process for the 20-concert tour.

CEO Rob Sealy revealed the company’s involvement in a LinkedIn post. “They are in full control of the fan experience. They have decided what fan data is being collected,” he wrote. “They will retain control of the fan data. They can see who their real fans are. They will decide which fans get ticket access.”

Organizers of the Event Safety Summit have announced the cancellation of the 2025 edition of the conference.

The event was scheduled for November 11–13 in Charlotte, North Carolina, with the theme “Solidarity in Safety,” focusing on fostering a culture of safety across the live events industry, from planning through execution.

In announcing the decision, the Event Safety Alliance (ESA) cited challenging economic conditions.

Radiohead announced plans for 20 concerts in five European cities in November and December yesterday. The ticketing strategy is interesting, given some of the recent challenges around prominent pre-sales.

Fans must register their details before the tickets go on sale – a process that opens tomorrow (5 September). Then, by 10 September fans will be emailed about whether they have received an ‘unlock code’ or not. That code doesn’t guarantee them a ticket, but next Friday (12 September) it will get them into the ticketing platform to buy up to four tickets for one (only one) of the shows on a first-come first-served basis.

Big news from the world of live music bookings this afternoon: US-based Arrival Artists and UK-based ATC Live are merging to form a new agency: Roam.

It will have offices in London, New York, LA, Chicago, Paris and Glasgow and will represent more than 800 artists. The company claims to be the largest independent booking agency globally, and the fifth largest overall.

(That would be behind Wasserman Music, CAA, UTA and WME, if you’re wondering.)

Radiohead have announced a run of 20 shows to take place in five cities across Europe. The band will play four shows each in Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen and Berlin.

In a message to fans, Radiohead’s Philip Selway said:

“Last year, we got together to rehearse, just for the hell of it. After a seven year pause, it felt really good to play the songs again and reconnect with a musical identity that has become lodged deep inside all five of us. It also made us want to play some shows together, so we hope you can make it to one of the upcoming dates. For now, it will just be these ones but who knows where this will all lead.”