ILMC 37 debrief: Five top takeaways for 2025
The International Live Music Conference (ILMC) returned to London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel last week for its 37th edition, with conversations set to shape how the industry operates over the next year.
The sell-out event, attended by over 1,600 professionals, sparked discussions on topics like headliner booking strategies, festival innovations, emerging markets, venue versatility, balancing wellness on the road, and much more.
While the conversations were wide-ranging, here are five of IQ‘s top takeaways from the week…
How can the business support the grassroots level?
From the kickoff of ILMC, the gap between the ends of the industry was a hot topic.
“We’re seeing the massive disparity between the top end of the business and the lower end of the business needing much more support,” said CAA’s Maria May during The Open Forum. “I feel like there’s a real need for innovation.”
During his opening message, UK culture minister Chris Bryant shared that championing the grassroots scene remained a priority for the national government and stressed its importance to the wider music ecosystem.
“You only get the Paul McCartneys and the Elton Johns, if you also have the people right at the start of their career coming on in every single generation,” he said. “There’s nothing more special than seeing somebody in a tiny venue who then goes on to be an enormous success. We want to make sure that we’ve got that mixture of massive venues and small venues where you can have the intimacy of the experience.”
“We’ve seen an appetite for ticket sales as strong as it’s ever been”
The demand for music is apparent across the board, said DF Concerts’ Geoff Ellis.
“We’ve seen an appetite for ticket sales as strong as it’s ever been [at King Tut’s] and lots of sold-out shows, even in January with just local bands,” he noted. “So that appetite is there for grassroots artists, but also for the big artists as well.”
Panellists on Grassroots Touring: Early-stage strategies opened the conversation on how we keep artists on the road across different markets and, while all acknowledging challenges, spoke about some grounds for optimism.
Fans’ festival desires are evolving: can organisers keep up?
During Festival Focus: Survive & Thrive, panellists dug into how to overcome the myriad issues that are impacting festivals: rising artist fees, steep production costs, severe weather impacts, intense market competition, and a potential headliner drought.
Curating strong branding was a core message from the session, with AEG Present’s Jim King – who promotes festivals such as All Points East, BST Hyde Park and Lido – arguing that there is space for single- and multi-day festivals, so long as there’s a distinguishable identity.
“They’re two different things and they’re both relevant but they should be marketed differently,” he said. “You’re trying to create a different environment, and I think it’s important to achieve that.”
Slam Dunk’s Ben Ray echoed this, citing that their pop-punk/emo brand keeps attendees coming back: “Being a specialist festival, people that are really into that music attend year after year. They will go to Slam Dunk a lot older than they would do a camping festival.”
“We have made a conscious decision to contemporise our lineups”
Camping sites have had to modernise to keep audiences in the fields, with Rock am Ring’s Jana Posth confirming that “expectations for camping are a lot higher now, it has to be more than a tent and some grass.”
A key challenge to the market cited by panellists was the “festivalisation” of concerts, which have built up infrastructure and entertainment to bulk out the traditional show experience.
Rock am Ring’s Jana Posth used Adele’s blockbuster residency in Munich as an example: “It wasn’t just a concert – you could spend the whole day there like you would with a festival. People obviously really like this in-between of festival and concert.”
Despite many A-list acts turning toward headlining shows, young stars are helping fill the gap of festival bill-toppers.
“It’s been tough but we managed to secure a really strong lineup of young artists this year [including Chappell Roan and Charli XCX] and I’m really happy to see them reaching this level already,” said Sziget’s Virag Csiszar.
King added to this: “We’ve got our youngest-ever BST lineup this year and I struggle to think of a time that there were so many young headliners – Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, Noah Kahan. We have made a conscious decision to contemporise our lineups.”
“Infrastructure continues to be a challenge”
New, versatile venues will transform the global touring circuit
The development of new venues across markets like Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America was a notable dialogue during ILMC.
BookMyShow’s Ashish Hemrajani spoke about how India’s market could balloon in the next five years and highlighted how a new arena in Mumbai could help alleviate the country’s indoor infrastructure shortcomings.
“Infrastructure continues to be a challenge, and we’re trying to solve that as you build more routing around Middle East and Southeast Asia, because the timing works. It’s the same time of the year, from October to March, April, when you can tour in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. I think anchoring around those markets is a good segue to actually building volume into that market.”
Live Nation is investing in several projects worldwide, working with Oak View Group on an arena in Lagos, Nigeria and with DF Entertainment on operating the historic Luna Park in Buenos Aires, Argentina with DF Entertainment.
Tom Lynch of Live Nation EMEA spoke about The Dome project in Johannesburg, South Africa, citing how the city’s sizable population was a draw. The entertainment firm’s first permanent venue in Africa, The Dome will offer various configurations to best serve its performers and audiences.
“Johannesburg’s somewhere we see a huge future”
“It’s a huge market with a massive population,” said Lynch. “It’s an emerging market, not without its challenges to build new venues, to open venues, etc, but we’re seeing international artists starting to play there… Johannesburg’s somewhere we see a huge future.”
In the Middle East, changing trends in consumer behaviour are prompting new solutions for organisers to stay tapped into demand.
“Because of a shift in working culture compared to a decade ago, there are less people leaving in the summer as you’re expected to work all year, so we’re focusing on building more indoor venues and showcasing more Arabic content during the summer so that families will have something to do even during a normally quiet off-season,” said Paul Pacifico, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s Music Commission.
For venues of all sizes, versatility is now of utmost importance.
“We can configure [the] venue for the amount of people that we expect,” said Ignacio Taier of Argentina-based Grupo Quality. “Therefore we can make sure the fan experience is at its best, and the artist also is performing to a full venue, even if that venue is not really full. We can host general admission ticket shows like parties or [club events to] fully seated shows.”
How will health and wellness disrupt industry standards?
To drink or not to drink? The question has plagued many live music attendees, with discussions about how to supplement slipping bar revenues at venues becoming a focus over the week.
In the Open Forum, CAA’s Maria May raised that young adults across the board are reducing their drinking, and asked whether venues in the UK – where binge drinking has reduced greatly – need to change their business models.
“You’ve just got to adapt constantly because the market doesn’t stand still”
“Clearly everybody needs to innovate and adapt. We’re always needing to do that as business,” offered DF’s Ellis. “You’ve just got to adapt constantly because the market doesn’t stand still.
“Electronic music isn’t dead, but nightclubs have to adapt their model because, as we said, people aren’t coming in and drinking. Not everybody wants to be out until 3am anymore,” he added.
Late nights are a core component of touring acts and crews, who are constantly on the road to make it to their next destination. In Wellness vs The Industry, panellists spoke about the mental and physical toll that touring takes on those working on and off the stage.
The question for the future is: how will the industry change alongside a growing work/life balance alongside a decrease in alcohol consumption for fans and workers alike?
Coldplay may have the answer. In a session dedicated to their record-breaking Music of the Spheres world tour, production manager Chris Kansy said the band and team prioritise the wellbeing of their crew.
“The level of respect that they give to everybody on their team, and the amount of care and emotional work that they do in regard to making sure everything is fine, I just couldn’t be more happy to work for Coldplay. I respect them greatly, and I respect management greatly, and their vision for the band, so having this kind of job is incredibly rewarding.”
“The power of the network starts to bring everybody up”
Superstruct reveals its secret to success
To close out Wednesday’s programme, Superstruct Entertainment co-founder and chairman James Barton shared how the firm scaled to become the world’s second-largest festival promoter in just six years, emphasising the value of partnership and collaborative networks.
“The core philosophy of the business is that it’s about the festivals. It’s about the owners of the festivals. It’s not about us. That’s why we haven’t done an interview. We do our best never to talk about ownership, we talk about partnership. It’s about the brands, and it’s about the people behind the brands.”
“When you get enough scale, and enough good people in the room, you can share information, data and good practices. So then the power of the network starts to bring everybody up.”
Despite their sizable portfolio of festivals — the company owns and operates over 80 across Europe and Australia — Barton’s message stresses collaboration over control as a means of success.
The London-based festival firm helps facilitate operations for events including Wacken Open Air, Parookaville, Tinderbox, Sónar, Øya, Arenal Sound, Kendal Calling and Boardmasters.
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