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Coldplay go on touring hiatus over eco-concerns

Coldplay have put a temporary hold on their touring career, and will not tour their next album at all, due to concerns over live music’s environmental impact, frontman Chris Martin has said.

Speaking to BBC News, Martin says: “We’re not touring this album. We’re taking time over the next year or two, to work out how our tour can not only be sustainable, [but] how can it be actively beneficial.”

The double album Everyday Life, the band’s eighth studio effort, will be released on Parlophone tomorrow (22 November).

“All of us have to work out the best way of doing our job,” Martin continues, telling the BBC Coldplay want their future tours to “have a positive impact”.

The UK act are currently in Amman, the capital of Jordan, preparing to play two shows that will be streamed live on YouTube. The two concerts, to be staged tomorrow at sunrise and sunset, respectively, will mirror the two halves of Everyday Life.

Coldplay’s last world tour was the A Head Full of Dreams trek, which encompassed 122 shows across four continents in 2016–2017.

“All of us have to work out the best way of doing our job”

The tour was the third highest-grossing of 2016, taking in US$241 million from 60 shows, and held the same spot the following year, earning another $238m from 54 shows.

“Our next tour will be the best possible version of a tour like that [A Head Full of Dreams], environmentally,” adds Martin. “We would be disappointed if it’s not carbon neutral.

“The hardest thing is the flying side of things. But, for example, our dream is to have a show with no single-use plastic, [and[ to have it largely solar powered.

“We’ve done a lot of big tours at this point. How do we turn it around so it’s not so much taking as giving?”

To ensure their next UK and Ireland dates carbon neutral, the 1975 recently pledged to plant a tree for every ticket sold for the home leg of the People tour.

The environmental impact of touring and how to mitigate it will be among the topics discussed as the next Green Events and Innovation (GEI) conference next March.

 


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Coldplay: A Head Full of Dreams sells 300k tickets in one night

Mat Whitecross’s new Coldplay film, A Head Full of Dreams, sold more than 300,000 tickets for a global gross of over US$3.5m for Wednesday’s one-night-only cinema screening.

Charting the band’s 20-plus-year journey towards stadium-filling superstardom, Coldplay: A Head Full of Dreams combines live footage from the recent A Head Full of Dreams stadium tour – the third highest-grossing of all time – with archive material captured over the past three decades.

The film was shown at 2,650 cinemas globally on 14 November, reaching the number-one spot on the Dutch film chart, No2 in the UK, Australia and Italy and No5 in the US.

“It was fantastic to launch the documentary with the one-night-only cinema release,” comments Coldplay manager Dave Holmes. “We saw Coldplay fans from every corner of the globe heading to cinemas to experience the film together, and the feedback has been incredibly positive.

“We saw Coldplay fans from every corner of the globe heading to cinemas to experience the film together”

It’s been great working alongside Trafalgar on such a well-received global event.”

Trafalgar CEO Marc Allenby adds: “It’s been an exciting 2018 for Trafalgar Releasing and we are so pleased to see A Head Full of Dreams achieve such a fantastic record-breaking box office. Collaborating closely with Warner Music, Parlophone and Dave Holmes Management, we were able to talk directly to fans of Coldplay around the world, who came out to support the film’s release in cinemas.”

Trafalgar’s next release is Burn The Stage: the Movie, the first film from K-pop sensations BTS, which plays from yesterday (15 November), with coordinated encores over the weekend.

 


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Coldplay add 12 arenas to 2016 world tour

Coldplay have added 12 North American arena dates to this summer’s A Head Full of Dreams world tour.

The Super Bowl 50 headliners, who are currently playing to sold-out stadia in South America, will stop at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas; the Gila River Arena in Phoenix, Arizona; the Scottrade Center in St Louis, Missouri; the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado; the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky; the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio; the First Niagara Center in Buffalo, New York; the Palace of Auburn Hills in Detroit, Michigan; the CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis; and the Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City when they tour the US this summer.

Canadian R&B singer Alessia Cara will support Coldplay on all US shows, and will also appear as a special guest on some European dates.

Coldplay’s last A Head Full of Dreams tour announcement, in support of their seventh studio album of the same name, was the addition of 10 US arena dates.

“We’ve always played a lot of markets in America, so we try to hit as many markets as we can,” the band’s manager, Dave Holmes, tells Billboard. “This ‘stadium on the weekends and arenas during the week’ model enables us to try to play to as much of our fan base as possible.”

The tour, also the band’s seventh, will head from Latin America to Europe then onto North America. No Asian dates have yet been announced.