Touring
Travis Scott Bringing ‘Road to Utopia’ Residency to Zouk Nightclub in Las Vegas
Travis Scott will return to the stage Sept. 17 with the first of seven appearances at Zouk Nightclub inside Resorts World Las Vegas. Described by representatives as a multi-year partnership, an additional date of Oct. 15 is also on sale. A statement from Resorts World describes “Road to Utopia” as a “mind-bending, first-of-its-kind nightclub residency experience,” taking advantage of the venue’s technological prowess. The lighting system, known as Mothership, produces a kaleidoscope of visuals as it moves to the music, floating above the dance floor. Advanced sound from an L-Acoustics-driven system powers the audio. The experience changes nightly to meet the headlining artist’s specifications. “Travis plans to utilize all of this to his advantage,” says Ronn Nicolli, chief marketing office...
Mark Vaughan to Lead Live Nation’s Promoter Team For Australia and NZ
Mark Vaughan lands at Live Nation, where he leads the promoter team for Australia and New Zealand as vice president – talent and artist development. With effect from Monday (Aug. 1), Vaughan works alongside LN’s existing promoter team to continue to “best serve artists as they hit the road,” reads a statement welcoming the new recruit. The Australian concerts veteran has spent much of his career in Europe, where he served as partner/promoter at Norway’s All Things Live, said to be the largest independent concert promoter in the Nordics. At the Oslo-based live music specialist, he worked with such artists as Rammstein, Justin Bieber, Twenty-One Pilots, Kendrick Lamar, Green Day, Shawn Mendes, Lorde and others. “For a long time I have been closely following the live market in Australia and N...
Lollapalooza Expands to India in 2023, Marking Festival’s Asia Debut
MUMBAI — Lollapalooza is traveling to India, a price sensitive live music market where the appetite for international music of all genres has grown considerably in the streaming era. The multi-genre festival will be staged in Mumbai on Jan. 28-29, 2023, marking its debut in Asia. BookMyShow, India’s largest ticketing platform, is promoting and co-producing Lollapalooza India, along with global producers Perry Farrell, WME and C3 Presents, which is owned by Live Nation. The festival’s Mumbai installment, which will take place at an as-yet unannounced venue “in the center of the city,” will feature around 45 acts playing 20 hours of music across four stages to an audience of 60,000 fans each day. The line-up will comprise 60% international artists and 40% local acts, the promoters tell Billb...
Chris Stapleton, Sheryl Crow to Join Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid on Return to Raleigh; Neil Young Bows Out Again Due to Pandemic
Willie Nelson’s annual Farm Aid festival, taking place Sept. 24 in Raleigh, N.C. and focusing on climate resilient agriculture, will feature Chris Stapleton and Sheryl Crow, along with Farm Aid board members Nelson, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews and Margo Price. Additional acts at the Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek will include Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Allison Russell, Charley Crockett, Brittney Spencer and Particle Kid. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Absent from the festival stage for the second consecutive year will be Farm Aid board member Neil Young, who recently responded to a fan’s letter on his website, stating: “I will not be at Farmaid this year. I am not ready ...
Colleen Ironside, One of ‘Most Respected’ Promoters in Asia, Has Died
Colleen Ironside, the live music professional who, with her force-of-nature personality, set the groundwork for a pan-Asian touring network and produced scores of tours in the region for Live Nation and other companies, has died. Ironside cut her teeth in the music industry as a booking agent for the Harbour Premier Agency in Sydney, Australia. She went out on her own, establishing and running APA Booking Agency, which booked INXS, Ratcat, James Reyne, Jenny Morris and Wendy Matthews for Australia, New Zealand and Asia. In 1994, a promotion for Ironside with Frontier Touring, which gave her the reins on regional tours for such acts as Pearl Jam, REM, Tom Jones and Hootie and the Blowfish. In 1999 she set up her business, Live Limited, which would tour acts through Asia including Cold...
Pearl Jam Cancel Remaining 3 Dates on European Tour Due to Eddie Vedder’s Vocal Issues
Pearl Jam were forced to cut their summer European tour short this week due to ongoing vocal issues affecting singer Eddie Vedder. After canceling a show in Vienna last week, the band revealed that the remaining scheduled trio of dates on the run — including a July 22 show in Prague and a planned two-night stand in Amsterdam at the Ziggo Dome on July 24-25 — will also be called off on the advice of Vedder’s doctors. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “We were hopeful that Ed would make a recovery in time to perform tomorrow. He has seen a doctor in Prague and is continuing the treatments for his vocal cords, but unfortunately, there is still no voice available,” they tweeted on July 21. They followed up a short time later to announced that despite...
Swedish House Mafia Cancels More Shows
Swedish House Mafia has canceled five more shows on its upcoming 2022 Paradise Again arena tour on Friday (July 22). The newly canceled shows include July 31 at the Amway Center in Orlando, Aug. 2 at Madison Square Garden in New York, Aug. 9 at TD Garden in Boston, Aug. 11 at Verizon Arena Washington D.C. and Aug. 17 in Detroit at Little Caesars Arena. Many arena acts are facing sluggish ticket sales, especially at the arena level where a number of first-time tours are playing to half-empty houses. Festivals too have struggled amid a wave of oversaturation and reduced consumer spending. Editor’s note: This story is in the process of being updated. [flexi-common-toolbar] [flexi-form class=”flexi_form_style” title=”Submit to Flexi” name=”my_form” ajax=R...
Top Bruce Springsteen Ticket Prices Fueled Rage, But the Average Cost Wasn’t So High
Bruce Springsteen fans had a rough introduction to the world of dynamic ticket pricing Wednesday (July 20), as many logged into Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan platform to buy tickets for his upcoming tour with the E Street Band and experienced sticker shock at the cost of the best seats. Those prices – which climbed into the thousands of dollars, as widely reported – represented about 1 percent of the tickets listed on the Ticketmaster Verified Fan sale, but they became a sore point for fans who felt that they no longer had a shot at great seats after years of loyalty to the Boss. By selling high-priced platinum tickets, Ticketmaster argues, the company can prevent the best seats from being bought and resold by scalpers. That money can instead go to Springsteen. However, this only works when ...
Swedish House Mafia Cancels More Shows Due to Poor Ticket Sales
Swedish House Mafia has canceled five more shows on its upcoming 2022 Paradise Again arena tour on Friday (July 22) after months of anemic sales, despite promoter Live Nation’s best efforts to move tickets at discounted rates. The newly canceled shows include July 31 at the Amway Center in Orlando, Aug. 2 at Madison Square Garden in New York, Aug. 9 at TD Garden in Boston, Aug. 11 at Verizon Arena Washington D.C. and Aug. 17 in Detroit at Little Caesars Arena. The tour’s poor ticket sales and struggles to generate interest have been widely known in the live music business, and many arena acts are facing sluggish ticket sales, especially at the arena level where a number of first-time tours are playing to half-empty houses. Festivals too have struggled amid a wave of oversaturation and redu...
U2 to Perform First Concerts at MSG Sphere in Las Vegas
U2 will be the first group to perform at the MSG Sphere at The Venetian in Las Vegas when the $1.8 billion arena opens next year, multiple sources tell Billboard. The performances will be the first dates of a multi-show residency by the band at the high-tech arena, which is being built by Madison Square Garden Entertainment chairman James Dolan near the Venetian off the Las Vegas Strip. Officials with MSGE describe the MSG Sphere at The Venetian as the next generation of live entertainment, offering fans a multi-sensory experience of sound and light inside the largest spherical structure ever created. For concerts, the MSG Sphere at The Venetian can hold 20,000 standing spectators or 17,500 seated guests, with 23 VIP suites. The Sphere will include 160,000 square feet of video vi...
Australia’s Splendour in the Grass Cancels Day 1 Due to ‘Significant Weather System’
BRISBANE, Australia — After two editions were wiped out by the pandemic, the first day Splendour in the Grass 2022 was sunk by Mother Nature. Inclement weather turned the site into a quagmire on the eve of this year’s show, held July 22-24 in Byron Bay, the picturesque beach town at the most easterly point of Australia. By midday on Friday (July 22), the grounds were deemed to be unmanageable. “In the interest of patrol safety and in consultation with all relevant emergency services,” reads a statement from Splendour organizers, “we have decided to err on the side of caution and cancel all performances on the main stages today only.” The reason: a “significant weather system” currently sitting off the country’s east coast which “may reach land later today, bringing more rainfall.” Statemen...
Pantera’s 2023 Reunion Tour to Include Zakk Wylde and Anthrax Drummer Charlie Benante
Guitarist Zakk Wylde and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante will join Phil Anselmo and Rex Brown this summer to tour as Pantera, headlining a number of major festivals across North America and Europe and staging some of their own headline concerts, a source close to the group tells Billboard. The lineup has been given a green light by the estates of the band’s founders, Vincent “Vinnie Paul” Abbott and “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, as well as Brown, who last year said Wylde wouldn’t tour with a reunited Pantera if that were to happen. It’s unclear what changed his mind. Wylde has long been the consensus fill-in for “Dimebag” Darrell due to his relationship with the Abbott brothers and his success and stature in hard rock and heavy metal. Wylde is lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne and the founder o...
