Touring
Neumos in Seattle, in a Pandemic: It Can Cost a Venue $60,000 a Month to Be Closed
As co-owner of Seattle’s popular independent venue Neumos in Capitol Hill, Steven Severin has been a staple in the Seattle music industry for more than 20 years. Roughly 10 years ago, he helped create the Seattle Nightlife and Music Association to bring together the area’s live event insiders, and for the past 16 years has helped run Neumos with its sister club Barboza and the accompanying Runaway bar. As part of Billboard’s efforts to best cover the coronavirus pandemic and its impacts on the music industry, we will be speaking with Severin every two weeks to chronicle his experience throughout the crisis. (Read the last installment here and see the full series here.) {“nid”:”9430226″,”type”:”post”,”title”:”Indie Venues and...
Rod Stewart Reschedules Australian ‘Hits’ Tour to 2022
Rod Stewart’s tour Down Under has been pushed back to 2022 due to the health crisis. The veteran British artist was slated to bring his The Hits! 2020 Tour to Australia this October and November for a run of open-air and arena shows, produced by Live Nation, plus four A Day On the Green winery dates, produced by Roundhouse Entertainment in conjunction with Live Nation. Sorry to say that The Australia and New Zealand tour of The Hits!, originally scheduled for October and November of 2020, will be rescheduled. BUT I'll be there in 2022, March and April, and it’s going to be GREEEAAAAT! Hold on to your tickets! pic.twitter.com/qMqLA2evd2 — Sir Rod Stewart (@rodstewart) August 6, 2020 Due to ongoing travel restrictions, border closures and ongoing limitations on mass gatherings in ...
Brett Kissel Hosts Pop-Up ‘Boat-In Concert’ In Canada
Country singer Brett Kissel performed Canada’s first “boat-in” concert Sunday (Aug. 2) on Lake Windermere in British Columbia, attracting 3,000 fans for the pop-up performance. Fans watched from canoes, kayaks, motor boats an inner tubes as the Canadian country singer from Flat Lake, Alberta open his dock side set with his 2017 hit single “We Were That Song.” Kissel continues to raise money for charities and rally Canadian communities through his special concerts during the COVID-19 pandemic, performing for 10,000 fans at a series of drive-in concerts in Edmonton and more than 6,000 fans in Saskatchewan. Kissel performed a 90-minute set from a private dock, running through his catalog of songs including debut American single and No. 1 Canadian country hit R...
For International Artists, US Entry in the Pandemic Comes With New Hurdles
In March, Colombian superstar Carlos Vives was in the midst of filming season 2 of Telemundo’s singing competition series La Voz in Miami when COVID-19 sent most of the U.S. into lockdown. With production on hold, Vives returned to his home country to wait things out. Now, a full four months later, he is back on set. But returning to the U.S. was no easy task. “Colombia’s international borders were shut down,” says Vives’ business manager, Claudia Arcay, who notes that all commercial flights to and from Colombia were suspended, except for humanitarian and repatriation flights. “However, we had a work contract with Telemundo that we had to fulfill.” {“nid”:”9425791″,”type”:”post”,”title”:”What Do Virtual Festivals Pay A...
Live Nation Gets Financial Breathing Room With Changes to Credit Agreement
Live Nation has secured financial breathing room by securing favorable changes to its debt covenants ahead of its second-quarter earnings release on Aug. 5. Although covenants are standard requirements meant to protect the lender from a default, and manageable under normal circumstances, they can be impossible to achieve when a pandemic has crippled many types of businesses, especially live entertainment. The latest example of music companies shoring up debt and credit to weather COVID-19, Live Nation’s covenant revisions provide “additional financial flexibility,” CEO Michael Rapino said in a July 31 press release. That’s an understatement. The new covenants represent pandemic-era mathematical formulas that are critical for a company greatly affected by government safety measures. Music v...
Congress Introduces Another Bill to Save Independent Music Venues
The ENCORES Act would provide relief in the form of tax credits on ticket refunds. A new bill in the House Representatives aims to keep struggling independent music venues afloat during the ongoing pandemic. Introduced Thursday by Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Mike Kelly (R-PA), the Entertainments New Credit Opportunity for Relief & Economic Sustainability (ENCORES) Act would allow venues to recoup some of the losses they have experienced from issuing ticket refunds for canceled events by providing a tax credit for 50% of the value of those refunded tickets. To qualify under the proposed legislation, venues must be in the business of promoting, producing or managing live concerts, comedy shows, sporting events and live theatrical productions and have 500 or fewer employees. They must ...
Neumos in Seattle, in a Pandemic: ‘We Employ a Lot of People … I Paid 10,000 People Last Year’
Steven Severin, co-owner of Neumos in Seattle, says indie clubs contribute $35 billion to the music industry and that needs to be recognized with government funding during the crisis. As co-owner of Seattle’s popular independent venue Neumos in Capitol Hill, Steven Severin has been a staple in the Seattle music industry for more than 20 years. Roughly 10 years ago, he helped create the Seattle Nightlife and Music Association to bring together the area’s live event insiders, and for the past 16 years has helped run Neumos with its sister club Barboza and the accompanying Runaway bar. As part of Billboard’s efforts to best cover the coronavirus pandemic and its impacts on the music industry, we will be speaking with Severin every two weeks to chronicle his experience throughou...
Canceled Virgin Fest Sues WME, Demands Agency Return $6M Artist Deposits
Virgin Fest is suing talent agency William Morris Endeavor Entertainment for failing to return artist deposits paid in advance of the now-canceled June 6-7 event in Los Angeles. The deposits totaled $6 million for performers Lizzo, Ellie Goulding, Kali Uchis and others to reserve their availability for the inaugural festival in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park, which was scrapped in May due to the coronavirus pandemic. The contract Virgin Fest signed with WME included a force majeure provision that outlined that the money would have to be returned in the if any “act beyond the reasonable control of the producer, which makes the performance impossible, unfeasible or unsafe,” according to court documents filed Friday and reviewed by Billboard. The concert promoters say that the...
Mitch Slater, Concert Promotion Pioneer, Dies at 59
The Delsener/Slater Presents co-founder was a longtime associate of concert business consolidator Robert Sillerman. Mitch Slater, an industry pioneer who helped shape the modern concert promotion business, died on Tuesday after an extended illness. He was 59. “Our bond was as strong as it gets,” Slater’s older brother, former Capitol Records CEO Andrew Slater, tells Billboard. “When he started out in music, I said, ‘If you could be half as good in business as you are as a brother, you’ll be a great success.’ And he far exceeded that mark.” In 1988, Slater partnered with Ron Delsener to form Delsener/Slater Presents, which became one of the most successful independent concert promotion companies in the U.S. “As brilliant as Ronnie was, Mitch brought some real business acumen to it,” s...
Tones And I, Benee, Hayden James & More Top Yours & Owls 2021 Festival
BRISBANE — The end of the pandemic is still a long way off, but the summer festivals season is already starting to take shape Down Under. Tones And I, Benee, Cosmo’s Midnight and DMA’S lead the bill for the Yours & Owls 2021 fest, due to take place Jan. 23-24 in Stuart Park, Wollongong, about 90 minutes drive south of Sydney. Lime Cordiale, whose new album 14 Steps To A Better You, is the best-seller on Australia’s albums chart this week, is also booked for the show, alongside PNAU, Hockey Dad and many more. Yours & Owls is the festival template of the future or, more specifically, until a vaccine is widely available. With rigid quarantine restrictions placed on any visitors to these parts, international acts won’t be playing Australian stages anytime ...
England to Allow Indoor Concerts Starting Next Month
Social distancing will be required as the country enters phase 4 of a five-stage reopening plan. Audiences who adhere to social distancing can return to indoor theaters, music and performance venues beginning Aug. 1, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Friday (July 17). The policy represents the fourth phase in the country’s five-stage reopening plan for live events. In the lead up to the August start date, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will conduct pilots of performances with socially-distanced audiences — including the London Symphony Orchestra at St. Luke’s London — using the findings there to inform final guidance for venues. The announcement notes that “audiences, performers and venues will be expected to maintain social distancing at all tim...
AEG Partners With Resorts World for New Las Vegas Theater: Exclusive
The 5,000-capacity Theatre at Resorts World Las Vegas will be used for concerts, residencies, conventions and sporting events. While all the world’s stages have been dark now for more than four months as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Las Vegas is plotting a course for the future. Come summer 2021, the city will welcome The Theatre at Resorts World Las Vegas, the first new-from-the-ground-up casino-resort in more than a decade. The Theatre is a joint development between Resorts World Las Vegas and AEG Presents — exclusively programmed and operated by Concerts West, a division of AEG Presents. Scott Sibella, president of Resorts World Las Vegas, and John Meglen, president and co-CEO of Concerts West, tell Billboard in an exclusive interview that The Theatre and its programming ...
