Country music again takes centre stage in the UK this weekend with the return of Country to Country (C2C), as the genre’s remarkable international growth shows no sign of plateauing.

Lainey Wilson, Dierks Bentley and Cody Johnson headline the 2025 edition of Europe’s biggest country festival, which returns to London’s The O2, OVO Hydro Glasgow and Belfast’s SSE Arena from 14-16 March.

Created by AEG Europe and SJM Presents in collaboration with the Country Music Association (CMA), the event launched in London in 2013 and has expanded to other markets including Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia.

“It’s such an incredible brand and is the market leader,” The O2’s GM and VP Steve Sayer tells IQ. “Each year the programming gets bigger and better and it’s one of our favourite events of the year. The bill is as big as it’s ever been and as in previous years, you’re going to see programming right across the O2 site.

“From our perspective, we’ve seen country music really take off in the UK in the last few years, in no small part, because of the success of C2C. It’s an important genre in our programming strategy and country music is only going to grow over the coming years.”

“Brands are completely ingrained in what we do. The artists are as engaged as the fans are”

The CMA hosted a presentation at The O2 today (14 March) entitled Brand Power of Country Music in the UK, which explored the rise in country consumption and the consumer loyalty of country music fans. The panel was attended by leading UK and US promoters, agencies, record labels and management companies.

It noted that in 2024, country streams surpassed 1 billion for first time in the UK in Q3, while five of the top 15 tracks of last year were country songs. Since Q4 2022, country music streams in the UK have grown 159%.

UTA agent Sean Hendrie spoke about opening mindsets of brands to country and it being “an untapped genre” which has now gone mainstream, with brands involved in country space now including Urban Outfitters, Victoria’s Secret, Primark, Louis Vuitton, Shein and Levi’s.

“Brands are completely ingrained in what we do,” added AEG Presents UK promoter and C2C booker Rachel Lloyd. “The artists are as engaged as the fans are.”

Furthermore, the audience for Bauer’s Absolute Country Radio was up 50% year on year, while Global’s Smooth Country reported a 650% rise in female listeners aged 15-24.

“C2C has laid a lot of the foundations for what we’re now doing at Hyde Park”

Almost 30 country acts will visit the UK for headline tours in 2025, including Brothers Osborne, Kip Moore, HARDY, Alana Springsteen, Darius Rucker, Kane Brown, Old Dominion, Dasha, Tyler Childers and Brett Young, as well as Post Malone and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour.

In addition, there are now more than a dozen country festivals on the UK calendar such as Highways, Red Rooster, The Long Road, Towerfest and Maverick. Meanwhile, Morgan Wallen became the first country headliner of AEG’s BST Hyde Park last week.

“C2C has laid a lot of the foundations for what we’re now doing at Hyde Park,” said AEG’s European festivals’ chief Jim King.

Following Wallen’s success, fellow country star Zach Bryan has gone on to sell 130,000 tickets for his two nights at the London concert series this summer.

“It’s tremendous to be a part of that, and a part of the country music journey in the park,” added King, who said he expected country to become even more ingrained at BST in 2016.

“It’s not just about the programming,” stressed King, “we’re fully committed to this genre, not just at BST but at other events we’ll be running in the future.”

“Year after year, the passion grows, the audiences get bigger and the atmosphere more unforgettable”

Last weekend saw AEG and Semmel Concerts stage the German edition of C2C, attracting 9,000 fans to Uber Eats Music Hall in Berlin from 7-9 March.

The site-wide festival featured 51 international artists, including the likes of Dylan Gossett, Dasha, Lainey Wilson, Tucker Wetmore, Chase Matthew, Tanner Adell, Nate Smith, Shaboozey, Chayce Beckham and Avery Anna, attracting coverage in several media media outlets for the first time.

“The impressive growth of the country genre in Germany was more than evident at the festival in Berlin,” says Semmel’s Sina Hall. “The enthusiasm of the fans shows how much country music has now arrived in the mainstream – and with growing momentum.

“Year after year, the passion grows, the audiences get bigger and the atmosphere more unforgettable. This festival has proven once again that country is not just a niche in Germany, but a movement that is constantly growing.”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Semmel Concerts and RCI Global have expanded the Hans Zimmer Live tour with additional shows in Australia and Asia.

Tickets for the Australian leg went on presale on 11 February and all 50,000 tickets were sold out within 24 hours. The five-date arena tour will kick off on 24 April at Brisbane Entertainment Centre, visiting Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney for two nights, and Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne for two.

Hans Zimmer Live will then travel to Asia for five dates in May: Asia World-Expo in (Hong Kong), Inspire Arena (Seoul, South Korea), Pia Arena MM (Yokohama-Shi, Japan), IG Arena (Nagoya, Japan) and Etihad Arena (Abu Dhabi).

The multiple Academy Award and Grammy-winning Zimmer, his 19-piece band and the orchestra will perform a selection of the composer’s scores from some of cinema’s biggest films.

Zimmer says these performances are the last opportunity for fans to see this particular tour

The newly arranged concert suites include music from Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight, Interstellar, The Lion King, The Last Samurai and Dune, for which Zimmer received his second Academy Award.

Zimmer says these performances are the last opportunity for fans to see this particular tour before he begins working on his brand-new live production Hans Zimmer Live – The Next Level, which will comprise 50 shows between October 2025 and April 2026.

“It’s a new tour, a new show, a new concept,” Semmel Concerts’ Oliver Rosenwald told IQ last year. “It will not be even similar to that what you have seen or experienced before, and I’m 100% sure that everybody will love it. I really hope we will surprise and delight our customers with this one.”

Earlier this year, Zimmer extended his record-breaking North American tour with five additional dates in Austin, Nashville, Columbus (OH), Brooklyn and Baltimore.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Tickets to German singer Roland Kaiser’s ever-popular ‘Kaisermania’ concerts sold out around 90 minutes after the pre-sale began.

The 2025 shows will again be held at the annual Film Nights on the banks of the Elbe in Dresden, with the 72-year-old headlining four sold-out shows for almost 50,000 fans.

The 21st annual instalment, promoted by Semmel Concerts, will take place on 25 and 26 July and 8 and 9 August. The final night will be televised live on German TV.

The 72-year-old headlining four sold-out shows for almost 50,000 fans.

Kaiser, one of Germany’s most successful artists, celebrated his 50th anniversary in the business this year and achieved several milestones.

The Schlager singer sold out 20 concerts including stadium shows in Leipzig, Cologne, Rostock and Hanover. Along with the sold-out 20th anniversary of Kaisermania, he drew more than 400,000 visitors to his 2024 shows.

Kaiser will hit the road again next year with an arena tour and a series of open-air summer concerts in Germany.

Between 25 April and 6 June 2025, he will perform 23 dates at arenas in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, marking his first major arena tour since his 70th birthday.

Kaiser will then deliver 11 dates on his open-air venue tour of Germany between 27 June to 3 August 2025.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Semmel Concerts’ Oliver Rosenwald has given IQ a glimpse into the world of Hans Zimmer ahead of the Oscar-winning film score composer’s latest European tour.

Zimmer will grace arenas across the continent in 2025 and 2026 with Hans Zimmer Live – The Next Level, which promises a completely new show featuring “groundbreaking electronic soundscapes and a spectacular light production”.

Although project manager Rosenwald remains tight-lipped on the finer details, he is convinced fans will not be disappointed.

“It’s a new tour, a new show, a new concept,” he tells IQ. “It will not be even similar to that what you have seen or experienced before, and I’m 100% sure that everybody will love it. I really hope we will surprise and delight our customers with this one.”

The Next Level will commence in Zimmer’s native Germany at Oberhausen’s Rudolf-Weber Arena on 12 October next year, going on to visit Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, the UK and Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Spain and the UK and Ireland.

“Hans is a super pro and a wonderful human, and he loves to be on tour and to make music”

In 2026, it will also head to Scandinavia, Poland and Spain before wrapping up at Portugal at Lisbon’s MEO Arena on March 31. Rosenwald reports that ticket sales have got off to a strong start.

“Our on-sale went very well: after 48 hours, we added second shows at The O2 in London and in Dublin at the 3Arena. We sold 25,000 tickets in three or four days for La Defense Arena in Paris that indoor stadium, which  I was not expecting. I’m pretty sure that we will add more shows to these two tour legs within the coming weeks.”

CTS Eventim-backed Semmel is co-producing the tour with Los Angeles-based RCI Global, which was founded by Zimmer and Steven Kofsky, while the UK dates are presented alongside Harvey Goldsmith and Kilimanjaro Live. This month marks a decade since the launch of Zimmer’s maiden live show at Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo in London.

“For Semmel Concerts, it’s just wonderful,” says Rosenwald. “We started as local promoter for the tour in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in 2017, then we produced The World of Hans Zimmer together with him and RCI, and it kept moving forward.

“Hans is a super pro and a wonderful human, and he loves to be on tour and to make music. For me, it’s just a great honour. Sometimes I wake up and can’t believe I get to do this kind of work with such a cool artist.”

“The first 17 shows in the US went on sale with a very interesting model – a TikTok presale – and we sold over 80% of the tickets in 48 hours”

Indeed, the relationship has developed to the extent that the German firm is partnering on Zimmer’s current tour of North America.

“We are super-happy that we can do a tour with him in the US and have the next one in Europe already on sale,” says Rosenwald, speaking to IQ from America. “It’s interesting and also a little bit challenging in parts for a European company to tour a US-based artist through the US with Concerts West, even if Semmel Concerts is part of Eventimlive. It’s a quite interesting combination, but it’s a wonderful opportunity and all the shows are almost sold out.

“We went on sale only four or five months before the tour, so I was a little bit nervous because in Europe we normally have six or eight months, or even a year, to sell it, which was our experience in the past with Hans Zimmer Live. But the first 17 shows in the US went on sale with a very interesting model – a TikTok presale – which was pretty cool, and we sold over 80% of the tickets in 48 hours and added another three shows.”

The North American leg, which concludes at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on 12 October, has been an eye-opening experience for the Semmel team.

“Everything is a little bit different in Europe,” smiles Rosenwald, who reveals hopes of expanding the tour to Asia and Latin America. “But here in the US, we have new situations: with unions, with trucking; there is a different kind of mentality when meeting each other. We have part of our European production crew with us working together with the US-based crew.”

“We decided to bring our Ukrainian orchestra to the US because Hans loves them so much”

He continues: “We decided to bring our Ukrainian orchestra to the US because Hans loves them so much, and it was a tricky process to get these visa and work permits done, time-wise. We started that process as soon as we confirmed the tour in January 2024, but some visas were only approved a few days before people had to leave for the US. That was a little bit challenging, but we got there. We had a very good visa agency and they did a marvellous job.”

More than 300,000 tickets were sold for Zimmer’s 2024 European run, The World of Hans Zimmer Tour – A New Dimension, which marked a new chapter in the concert series as the composer participated as the show’s curator and musical director, rather than performing live on stage himself. Previously, his acclaimed 2023 European tour played to almost 400,000 fans in the spring and was completely sold out.

“It’s not a situation where there’s a big orchestra and the composer is doing his thing; it’s more like a rock show sometimes,” reflects Rosenwald. “It’s the genius behind the music of Dune, or James Bond, or The Lion King, and you would think his normal environment is the studio. But then you see him on the stage and you realise that is also his natural environment. That somehow makes it unique.”

Revisit IQ‘s 2022 feature on Hans Zimmer Live here.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Dozens of people were injured when two gondolas on a ferris wheel caught fire at Germany’s Highfield festival.

The incident took place at around 9pm on Saturday (17 August) – the second night of the Leipzig event – during a set by rapper Ski Aggu.

Police say that 65 people were treated in connection with the fire, with 16 taken to hospital for further medical treatment. Four of the casualties suffered burns and another was hurt in a fall, but none of the injuries were life-threatening.

Initial reports suggested material located under the ferris wheel caught fire before spreading to an empty gondola, which subsequently spread to a second.

Police say the investigation into the cause has now been completed.

“There is currently no indication that the fire was caused intentionally,” says a statement from Saxony Police. “A technical defect in the ride can also be ruled out as the cause of the fire based on the current state of the investigation. The investigations, particularly into negligent misconduct, are still ongoing.”

“We would like to thank everyone present for impressively showing how solidarity works, even in a difficult situation”

The scene around the ferris wheel was cordoned off, with organisers announcing at 10pm that the festival would resume with an amended timetable. Acts over the course of the weekend included Rise Against, CRO, The Kooks, Peter Fox, Provinz and Martimoto.

A joint venture by promoters FKP Scorpio and Semmel Concerts, the 35,000-cap festival was held at Störmthaler Lake between 16-18 August.

“We would like to thank everyone present for impressively showing how solidarity works, even in a difficult situation,” says Stephan Thanscheidt, FKP MD and head of festival bookings. “When the first gondola of the ferris wheel caught fire, first responders from the security service and the festival crew, emergency services, police and fire brigade ensured that all occupants were evacuated as quickly as possible and that the fire was brought under control in just a few minutes. We wish the injured a speedy recovery.

“Our thanks also go to all our guests, whose exemplary behaviour made the rescue work much easier, and to our amazing artists, who despite everything made Highfield a great music festival and peacefully stood up for diversity and solidarity through music.”

A Ferris wheel caught fire and injured a number of people at the Highfield music festival near Leipzig in eastern Germany pic.twitter.com/VO1zVPBKFP

— Reuters (@Reuters) August 18, 2024

In an Instagram post, Ski Aggu says he was advised by festival staff to continue his performance to avoid causing panic.

“I was only told in my ear that I should not cancel the show under any circumstances but should first remain in dialogue with you so that there is no mass panic,” he says. “For me, the priority was that the situation did not escalate further, which fortunately also worked. Thank you for staying so calm and possibly preventing worse. The decisive factor for this was above all the work of the rescue workers, who reacted so quickly and thus prevented the situation from worsening.”

Leipzig district administrator Henry Graichen and mayor Daniel Strobel thanked the emergency services “for their quick and courageous intervention”, as well as praising promoters’ “professional handling of this challenging situation”.

“Since the Highfield Festival took place for the first time at Störmthaler Lake in 2010, a relationship of trust has developed between the actors involved, which enabled rapid action in this specific exceptional situation,” they say. “The operation will soon be evaluated in detail in order to draw possible conclusions for the security concept of future festivals.”

Highfield, which will return on 15-17 August next year, has already announced its K.I.Z as its first 2025 headliner. Festival passes go on sale today from €169.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Historically one of the most robust live music markets in the world, Germany is not immune to the challenges facing the industry in 2024. IQ talks to those on the front line in a territory where pressures of rising costs has never been more keenly felt.

Germany remains the third-biggest live market in the world, after only the US and Japan. Its turnover is huge – more than €6bn annually from 300,000 events, with over 115m tickets sold [source: BDKV]. It contains markets within markets – Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt: all distinct, all mighty – and a massive infrastructure of diversified promoters, modern venues, and household-name festivals.

This is the kind of territory where Taylor Swift finds the time for seven shows of her Eras Tour, and where Adele is dropping in for ten concerts in a bespoke 80,000-capacity Munich stadium across August – a plan the singer herself, who hasn’t played in Europe in eight years, calls “a bit random but still fabulous”.

On a genre-by-genre basis, there are successes all around. Country is booming, schlager remains strong, and Germany’s domestic artists, not least its locally grown hip-hop acts, are now good for multiple nights in arenas. Nine German promoters – counting Live Nation, which appeared as a combined group – ranked in Pollstar’s global Top 100 by ticket sales in 2023.

“All the traffic that was backed up after Covid is really just done now, and we’re looking at fresh new touring and fresh new on-sales in the market,” says Semmel Concerts head of international booking Sina Hall.

“There’s a lot of good things happening and a lot of very healthy sales going on right now”

“People are definitely out, and they want adventure and to experience live and all the different aspects of it, whether that is an exhibition or a musical or a show. There’s a lot of good things happening and a lot of very healthy sales going on right now.”

But while the pandemic seems to have engendered a rolling wave of demand for big-name live entertainment, its fallout, and that of other local and regional complications, is still being felt in numerous ways.

Germany was the only G7 economy to shrink last year, in the teeth of a painful energy crisis, sluggish productivity, low public investment, and an aging population. For the live business, the sector-specific challenges are crowding in, too, chief among them the soaring costs troubling the business.

“I think the market in Germany has all different aspects,” says DEAG CEO Detlef Kornett. “It is good, and it is tough at the same time. When you look at the big brand names out there touring on their own, from AC/DC to Adele, they can ask for almost any price and do experiments never seen before. On the flipside, I think it is tough for small- and medium-sized bands, because costs have increased so much that touring or individual shows become a challenge.”

Most promoters, while broadly upbeat, also draw a distinction between touring and festivals – the former essentially thriving, the latter particularly exposed to mounting labour, production, energy, and talent costs.

“Artists are looking at getting more money out of touring, and the competition between promoters is getting harder and harder”

Are promoters sending out frantic distress signals? Not necessarily – the engine is still firing, the tickets are still selling, Germany is still a muscular market. But in a world that has had some unpredictable shocks in the past few years, there are clouds in the sky even on sunny days.

“I think the market’s become quite tight,” says Wizard Live managing director Oliver Hoppe. “I think the artists are looking at getting more money out of touring, and the competition between promoters is getting harder and harder. Everybody has increased costs; people have less money in their pocket. I’m not complaining, we’re doing quite good. But it’s just a lot of variables that you have to factor in. It feels a lot more like work than it did before the pandemic, I guess.”

Promoters
Germany houses some of Europe’s strongest and most industrious promoters, and these days, they move in packs.

Of the local corporates, CTS Eventim holds weighty stakes in some of Germany’s biggest players, including Semmel Concerts, FKP Scorpio, DreamHaus, Peter Rieger Konzertagentur, and heavyweight regional promoters including ARGO Konzerte, Dirk Becker Entertainment, and Promoters Group Munich – to add to venues such as the Lanxess Arena in Cologne and the Waldbühne in Berlin.

DEAG likewise has promoters and festival properties the length and breadth of the country, from Frankfurt’s Wizard Promotions and Munich’s Global Concerts to I-Motion in Mülheim-Kärlich, whose electronic festivals include Nature One in Kastellaun, Mayday in Dortmund, and Ruhr-in-Love in Oberhausen.

Live Nation GSA launched in 2016 under the father-and-son leadership of Marek and André Lieberberg, since adding a majority stake in Goodlive to the group.

Elsewhere, there remain independents, including Berlin’s MCT Agentur, which bridges everything from clubs to Rammstein and Robbie Williams shows; Hamburg’s Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion, busy with Taylor Swift and its annual Stadtpark shows; and Berlin’s Landstreicher Booking, with its great strength in domestic artists.

“This whole industry is in flux and has become a lot more complicated”

But the landscape has changed, and in more ways than simply the push towards consolidation. Traditionally, Germany had a very specific way of doing things, involving national and local promoters, and while that setup remains in place, in a globalised world some of those market-specific conventions are gradually being chipped away.

“It has become very complex,” says Kornett. “The German market always had a unique structure of touring companies and local promoters, but the lines are blurring. More and more, tours go direct without really involving a local promoter, and then there are the local promoters that develop into production and touring companies. This whole industry is in flux and has become a lot more complicated, but we intend to take advantage of that development.”

The discombobulated days of the immediate post-pandemic period, when promoters’ instincts didn’t seem to match the new rhythms of the market, have settled down now, but German shows still require a lot of marketing.

“We’re getting better at predicting how people are going to react and how certain things are going to do,” says Hall. “But if I compare our on-sales, for example, to the UK or the US, it feels like we still have a very long on-sale period. It feels like in the other markets, it’s got very, very short notice, like sometimes our big tours have been pushed out like two or three months in advance. And I feel Germany still needs that long on-sale phase.”

Semmel’s business is nonetheless moving forward on numerous fronts, its domestic roster including stadium shows for Herbert Grönemeyer and outdoor concerts for Roland Kaiser, as well as the acquisition of 1,800-capacity Metronom Theater in Oberhausen and the launch, with industry veteran Ralf Kokemüller, of new shows and musicals company Limelight Live Entertainment.

“A lot of smaller and medium artists are facing lower demand and massively higher touring costs”

Live Nation is also seeing heavy traffic. In addition to tours by Billie Eilish, Janet Jackson, Metallica, and Justin Timberlake this year (not forgetting those Adele shows with Austrian co-promoter Klaus Leutgeb), Live Nation presides over Lollapalooza Berlin, Munich’s Superbloom, HipHop Open in Stuttgart, the outgoing MELT in Gräfenhainichen, and versions of the Deutschrap-specific Heroes festival in Hanover, Allgäu, Freiburg, and Geiselwind.

At FKP, this year is a big one on all fronts, as it expands its remit from one of “music-focused promoter to cultural organiser,” in the words of CEO Stephan Thanscheidt, having added exhibitions, family entertainment, comedy, and spoken word to its music portfolio. But the music remains strong.

“2024 surely is a special year for us,” says Thanscheidt. “We’re going strong with seven stadium shows from Taylor Swift and a concert series at the prestigious tech fair IFA in Berlin. Our summer festivals, headlined by Ed Sheeran and other legends, can also be considered top-class, resulting in high demand despite challenging times: Southside has just sold out and Hurricane is very close to its capacity as well.”

But as Thanscheidt is well aware, promoters can’t afford to just be about the big stuff, and there are plenty of challenges further down.

“Promoting the biggest names in the industry is a privilege but far from being the entirety of our work,” he says. “A lot of smaller and medium artists are facing lower demand and massively higher touring costs. Venues are also negatively affected by the explosion of costs in recent years. If we want to keep Germany among the biggest music markets worldwide, policymakers must take further steps to protect and foster the ever more important live sector.”

“Urban artists in Germany are doing a few things that are quite groundbreaking in the live business”

Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion is taking on the Taylor Swift shows in Hamburg, as well as its own 30-show Stadtpark series, this time featuring The Smile, Alice Cooper, Gossip, Sean Paul and others. But in other respects, managing director Ben Mitha believes we can expect a slightly quieter summer than in 2023 – partly due to the Euro football tournament and, less directly, the tour-dampening effect of the Olympics in France – and anticipates a notably busy autumn.

“The football starts middle of June and runs till middle of July, so you’re pretty much missing a full month,” says Mitha. “And also, once the tournament has started, public attention will be leaning very strongly towards it, so I think it’s better to stay away from that period with your bigger outdoor shows.”

Wizard Live celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, with a busy slate of shows by AC/DC, Toto, Bruce Dickinson, Scorpions, Judas Priest, and others. The company recently divided its operation into four divisions: shows and touring, marketing, brand & music connector, and artist development.

Managing director Oliver Hoppe says the business has changed in numerous ways, from weighing the importance of streaming for emerging acts to cutting through with cash-poor, choice-rich gig-goers. Meanwhile, he notes, artists require different things of their promoters. He points to Germany’s healthy, rule-breaking domestic urban sector as an example of the business in flux.

“Urban artists in Germany are doing a few things that are quite groundbreaking in the live business,” says Hoppe. “Some of them are even moving away from having a promoter at all and just saying, ‘Okay, we have so-and-so many followers, we know that if we press a button, we can instantly sell out. There’s literally no risk in putting on the shows, so what do we actually need a promoter for?’”

The opportunity for promoters, suggests Hoppe, is to market their expertise in new, modular ways. “Some artists need more help in marketing; some just need somebody to take care of logistics for them, like a production team would; some need help with legal or ticketing. It depends on where the artist is in their cycle. But I think the full package is not going to be relevant to everyone in the market, moving forward.”

“I think we are very fortunate that we are an independent. We are like a speedboat – we can make individual trips”

Max Wentzler of Berlin-based independent Z|Art also questions the popular conception that smaller shows necessarily struggle for an audience, putting the blame at the door of rigid promoting strategies.

“We have artists selling 100 tickets, 1,000 tickets, 5,000 tickets, and they are all doing well,” he says, pointing to a roster that includes Brakence, Bleachers, Lola Young, Olivia Dean, Ben Howard, and Jalen Ngonda.

“If you apply one way of working to so many artists, which is what I would say the big ticket-company-driven promoters do, then it’s difficult to innovatively come up with strategies for how and where to promote different artists. But that’s where I think we are very fortunate that we are an independent. We are like a speedboat – we can make individual trips. And the others are like the Royal Caribbean, which takes five days to turn around.”

Another promoter questioning the status quo is veteran event producer and talent booker Marc Kirchheim, who has made a career out of corporate and private events, from televised shows at the Brandenburg Gate with acts that include Bon Jovi, to last October’s show with Robbie Williams at Messe Essen for 10,000 employees of German multinational energy firm RWE. He believes too many international artists and their agents have priced themselves out of such shows, and is keen to engage.

“The German market is not only the tours, the ticketed shows, it is also a lot of corporate, private and public events,” says Kirchheim. “But after the pandemic, prices have exploded worldwide, and the big acts are demanding fees that no longer correspond to reality.”

The big tourers and their management should give more consideration to the corporate and private sector, even if their agents aren’t enthused, he suggests. “Corporate and private events are always valuable for international star acts,” he says. “When there are no record sales, just small payments from Spotify and co and indoor tour productions, they require new sources of income. But with the fees that have been asked for since Covid, the international top acts are no longer affordable.”

Festivals
For a bluntly revealing insight into the challenges facing European festivals, look no further than the announcement in late-May by Goodlive’s MELT festival that this year’s event will be the last, after a run that began in 1997.

“Despite our commitment and efforts in recent years, we recognise that the original MELT no longer fits into the German festival market and cannot withstand the developments of recent years without radically altering the festival concept,” said Goodlive director Florian Czok.

“The challenge, not only for Goodlive but all German festivals, is that we can’t raise the ticket price every year – we simply can’t do it”

Even amid a backdrop of well-founded fears for the wider festival business, the reaction among German promoters made it clear that, whatever we might think a doomed festival looks like, MELT – which takes its final bow in July at the Ferropolis open-air museum, near Gräfenhainichen, Saxony-Anhalt, with Sampha, James Blake, Sugababes, DJ Koze, and Romy on the bill – wasn’t it.

“For ages, MELT festival was like the go-to hipster, trendy, buzz-act festival in Germany – it was really like one of the GOAT festivals out there,” says Ben Mitha. “It’s such a lighthouse in the festival landscape, and now it has to close its doors forever. It’s quite shocking, and I hear from a bunch of festivals out there that they are really struggling this year.”

There’s no mystery to the problems festivals face this year, in Germany or anywhere else – costs have soared on all sides, big-hitting talent has been hard to nail down, and the market can’t support price rises that genuinely reflect the mounting cost of staging big events.

“Costs are rising, year-on-year, by at least 10% to 15%,” says Goodlive’s Fruzsina Szép. “The challenge, not only for Goodlive but all German festivals, is that we can’t raise the ticket price every year – we simply can’t do it.

“We all thought costs would go down after Covid, but they keep increasing. And sponsorship income is not rising by 10% to 15% every year. I think sometimes, as festival owners, people think there is always more juice in the lemon, but the lemon is totally dry.”

Germany boasts a giant festival scene that includes rock monoliths such as Wacken Open Air, Rock am Ring, and Rock im Park; electronic institutions such as Time Warp, Mayday, Love Family Park, and Nature One; and indie all-rounders including Lollapalooza Berlin and twin FKP festivals Hurricane and Southside; not to mention vigorous newcomers such as Munich’s Superbloom and small-but-beautiful indie darlings such as Appletree Garden in Diepholz and Watt En Schlick in Varel.

“We have seen cost increases up to 50% across all areas of live culture, mainly due to higher prices for energy, resources, and personnel”

Tricky conditions aside, the market is, in many respects, still a strong one. How optimistic are the big brands?

“My answer can only be two-fold,” says Thanscheidt, whose German festivals include M’era Luna in Hildesheim, Highfield in Großpösna, Elbjazz in Hamburg, and Deichbrand in Cuxhaven. “Of course, our team can’t wait for the festival summer, and given our lineups and commercial success, we’re sure to have set the right course for the immediate future.

“At the same time, we have seen cost increases up to 50% across all areas of live culture, mainly due to higher prices for energy, resources, and personnel. Anyone who compares this dynamic with actual ticket prices immediately realises that we cannot and do not want to pass on the enormous additional costs to our guests.

“Our size as a group currently allows us to produce in such a way that attending a festival remains as affordable as possible. Not excluding anyone from live culture for financial reasons is the most important challenge of our time, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult due to the small margins and high risk of our industry.”

DEAG’s Kornett is reasonably confident about demand, the group having recently announced sales of 4.9m tickets for its 2024 festivals across Europe, up 38% year-on-year. But he is concerned about the impact of increasingly unpredictable weather events on the summer months, which he regards as all but inevitable in 2024.

“Germany has been hit really hard by adverse weather, and it’s a matter of when, not if, there will be adverse impacts of the weather in Germany this year. It has become a common phenomenon,” he says, though on DEAG’s account, he strikes a positive note particularly for DEAG festivals.

“For festivals, the market has been relatively good,” says Kornett. “It has been harder to get a decent bill together, get the right acts for a given festival – it is a matter of acts being available and on the road. But there’s a massive amount of festivals in the summer months, and the consumer wouldn’t go if they didn’t like it.”

“A lot of the festivals, especially the big ones, seem to have been in a bit of an identity crisis, post-pandemic”

Some suggest that the complications and cancellations of the Covid years have left festivals struggling for direction. “A lot of the festivals, especially the big ones, seem to have been in a bit of an identity crisis, post-pandemic,” says Wentzler at Z|Art.

And as tastes shift, there is a strong case to be made for new concepts. Goodlive’s Superbloom, launched in 2022 under the stewardship of then-former (and recently returned) Lollapalooza Berlin festival director Szép, is a recent market entrant that has been widely embraced as offering something fresh.

The imperative, Szép suggests, is to create new and compelling propositions for a changing audience that might not be attracted to traditional festivals. While she stresses that the event is not aimed exclusively at women – Calvin Harris, Sam Smith, Burna Boy, and The Chainsmokers are on the bill – there is clear evidence that Superbloom is filling a new niche. Last year, it sold 50,000 tickets, and this year, three months out from its September slot, it was more than halfway there and selling faster than in 2023.

“With Superbloom, we have somehow created a live brand that people want, especially young women,” she says. “Last year, almost 70% of our audience was female, and when we communicate with our fans, we hardly receive any aggressive or negative feedback. They say they felt super-safe, and they really appreciated our programmes about awareness and inclusion. I never would have thought that this philosophy that was important for me would make such a huge impact already, in two years.”

Evidently, festival success stories aren’t defined by their genre. Stuttgart’s jazzopen celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, with headliners including Sam Smith, Sting, and Lenny Kravitz, plus jazz legends such as Lee Ritenour, Billy Cobham, and Marcus Miller in four venues across ten days, selling 55,000 tickets and bringing in another 10,000 for its open stages.

“About 30% of our €7m annual budget comes from sponsorship by brands”

“While unfortunately a number of European independent festivals cannot survive anymore, jazzopen is on a good track,” says promoter and director Jürgen Schlensog of Opus Live.

“Of course, we are faced with increasing price levels for artists and production costs. However, we have been able to build a strong sponsorship pyramid in the last ten years. About 30% of our €7m annual budget comes from sponsorship by brands such as Mastercard, Mercedes-Benz, Allianz, and more. We are cashless and climate-neutral, and we are proud to be independent and ready for the future.”

And a very different German festival with a clear appeal to its chosen market is Superstruct’s Wacken. The 34-year-old metal institution was plagued by bad weather in 2023 and still, days later, sold out 85,000 tickets for this year’s event in just four-and-a-half hours.

“We are more than grateful and humbled for your trust,” the festival’s promoters wrote in an open letter to fans. “Especially after the difficult start of the festival this summer… we really appreciate that the community stands by us and sticks together.” Other festivals will no doubt be hoping for the same.

Venues
Inevitably, the story of larger German venues is one of a balancing act between healthy demand and punishing increases in costs. Looking through the first lens, the rise and rise of mass live entertainment, especially at the volume end of the scale, is hard to deny.

“The market is constantly evolving and is highlighting new genres that can fill a venue of our capacity”

“The market is constantly evolving and is highlighting new genres that can fill a venue of our capacity,” says Ole Hertel, Anschutz Entertainment Group vice president and managing director, who runs Berlin’s freshly rebranded 17,000-capacity Uber Arena.

“A decade ago, gaming moved into the live event business, then K-Pop took over. Lately, we have international comedians touring German arenas, darts are played before 10,000 people, podcasters are selling out single shows, and German hip-hop acts are selling out consecutive shows – unthinkable a decade ago.”

But with big buildings, of course, come huge costs. The 20,000-capacity Lanxess Arena in Cologne is one of the cornerstones of the German circuit and reliably ranks as the best-attended arena in the country. The arena’s CEO Stefan Löcher reports a strong year so far, with the men’s handball final and 15 sold-out Cologne Carnival events of its own in the immediate rear-view mirror, and incoming shows including Justin Timberlake and Thirty Seconds to Mars.

“The year 2024 feels great so far,” says Löcher. “After the pandemic years and the numerous delayed tour starts due to the energy crisis, it feels like pre-Covid times since last year.

“But I think the entire industry is noticing the increased costs, especially in the tour business. And of course, with a venue of our size, we also have a huge new burden when it comes to energy costs. That’s why it’s important for us to become more efficient in all areas in good time. Of course, that won’t happen overnight.”

“German arenas are increasingly focusing on sustainability”

A new venue in Munich, greenlit in 2022 by the city council but not yet constructed, proposes to be Germany’s first climate-neutral arena, with all its energy generated and supplied onsite via solar panels, geo-thermal energy, and district heating.

Arena managing director Lorenz Schmid reports that the project is moving forward, its plans having been presented to the planning and design advisory committee in the nearby town of Freising in early June.

“The Design Advisory Committee is an official part of the approval process and plays a central role in ensuring urban planning and architectural quality,” says Schmid. “They praised the current planning and gave their approval to continue with these plans. This is a big step and another milestone for us.”

The Munich Arena is only the most notable exponent of a sector-wide trend towards green upgrades and energy initiatives.

“German arenas are increasingly focusing on sustainability, including the implementation of energy-efficient technologies, waste-reduction programmes, and sustainable sourcing of materials,” says Steve Schwenkglenks, VP and MD of Barclays Arena in Hamburg, which is in the process of switching to LED lighting and last year established its own in-house reusable cup-washing facility.

“These efforts are aimed at reducing the environmental impact and appealing to a more eco-conscious audience,” he says.

The Uber Arena, formerly the Mercedes-Benz Arena, is in the midst of its own LED transition programme, which currently stands at 90% complete. Also in the works are an application for AGF’s A Greener Arena certification, the installation of an EV charging station in July, a contract with an outside company to recycle the venue’s paper towels, and the return of bees to the arena roof after a two-year hiatus.

“Long term, we have to evaluate how we source our energy consumption to run a sustainable business”

And while such measures are clearly important, AEG’s Hertel acknowledges that major work remains to be done on the fundamental question of how to power arenas.

“Short term, we constantly look for ways to save energy in our day-to-day operation,” he says. “Long term, we have to evaluate how we source our energy consumption to run a sustainable business.”

In Düsseldorf, the D.LIVE group operates the Merkur Spiel-Arena (in fact a stadium, with a capacity of 52,500), the Mitsubishi Electric Halle (7,500), and PSD Bank Dome (13,500 or 11,000 seated, with the option to reconfigure to 5,500).

Acts and events playing across D.LIVE’s venues this year include Coldplay, Niall Horan, Disney On Ice, Ne-Yo, Bryan Adams, and Troye Sivan, and plans are afoot for the D.LIVE Open Air Park – a space for up to 80,000 spectators that will be up and running from summer 2025. “Over the last [few] years, we invested more than €30m in all our venues,” says Daniela Stork, D.LIVE executive director of booking, ticketing and special events.

“Among other things, we converted the lighting in all venues to LED. In the Merkur Spiel-Arena, we also integrated new full-colour upper- and lower-tier lighting. We have redesigned the VIP areas in the Merkur Spiel-Arena and the PSD Bank Dome, and we have renovated the backstage areas in the PSD Bank Dome and the Mitsubishi Electric Halle so that not only our guests but also the acts and production teams feel at home with us.”

There’s more to the German venue scene than just arenas and stadiums, of course, though it is apparent that the success of the larger rooms means there is less money in the market at other levels – especially the lowest ones. As in all Europe’s thriving cities, German clubs are under threat from landlords, developers, and energy bills, but they are also struggling to get a share of consumers’ entertainment budgets.

“Five years ago, if you put on a show that was not the hottest show in town, 100 or 250 people would still find their way to the show by accident,” says Hoppe. “And that is completely gone. Now, you either have really strong sales, or you have really bad sales, especially in that segment.

“First of all, people don’t have that kind of money anymore. Second of all, people that do have that kind of money have invested in premium shows that now cost 50% more than they did before. Also, I think people like their couch. And those are all the little bricks in the wall we have to navigate in our business at the moment.”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Historically bolstered by cowboy western movies and the likes of US servicemen stationed around the world, country music has been something of a niche international genre. But now, with a multigenerational audience and impressive growth figures around the planet, country music is everywhere, with acts appearing on mainstream festival stages and selling out arenas. IQ reports.

With the likes of Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey set to release country music albums this year, countless million new fans will be switching on to the genre, further elevating its success both at home in the United States and around the world.

Statistics show that country music was the second most popular genre in the US last year, behind only pop and rock, while it also showed year-on-year sales and streaming growth of more than 20% in 2023, according to American publication Newsweek.

And that growth curve is being replicated internationally where promoters are exploiting newfound interest in the genre to organise concerts and festivals for a loyal fanbase, which is expanding rapidly with an eager – and younger – set of converts.
Underlining that progress, the streaming of country music in the UK has grown by 380% in the past five years, and one in every 100 tracks streamed there is reportedly a country song.

“The UK is one of the strongest international markets for country music, and it has been building steadily for many years, but most recently, we’ve seen an explosion in the genre with ticket sales doubling and tripling and several artists selling out UK arena shows in minutes, such as Morgan Wallen, Shania Twain, and Chris Stapleton, all of whom we work with,” says Anna-Sophie Mertens, VP touring for Live Nation UK.

“Morgan Wallen played his first European show last December at The O2 [arena], which sold out in minutes, and we are already able to bring him back to headline Hyde Park six months later; this simply underlines how fast country music is growing and the size of the audience it can now reach.”

“I’m not a promoter. But I do know the country music industry”

The growth of the country genre in the UK has been helped by radio presenter Baylen Leonard, originally from Bristol, Tennessee – the birthplace of country music – but who has been living in London for the last 24 years.

While working at the BBC, Leonard recalls he always wanted to broadcast country music. “If it was a bank holiday and everybody else was away, they’d let me do a country show, which helped them cotton on to the fact that country music was a thing, so I started doing that more on Radio 2 with Bob Harris and then moved into commercial radio when Absolute and Bauer launched their commercial radio country station,” he says.

“I’d also always wanted to do a festival, and somewhere along the way, I was linked up with U-Live and met [general manager] Dawn Jones, who I now do the Long Road Festival with. Dawn and U-Live are very robust and know what they are doing, because I’m not a promoter. But I do know the country music industry, so we trust each other and do our thing.”

Having launched the first event in 2018, Leonard reports that debut attracted about 12,000 fans. “In terms of looking at a heat map, the audience comes from all over the UK, and that was one of the reasons we located it in the Midlands so it was easily accessible, because lots of people come from Scotland and the likes of London, Bristol, and Birmingham. There are also a chunk of people that will fly over from Europe.”

Non-English-speaking markets
Another European operation expanding its presence in the country scene is TAKK ab Entertainment, which formed in July last year when it brought together three generations of promoters – Swiss business pioneer André Béchir, TAKK Productions founder Sebastien Vuignier, and IQ new boss Théo Quiblier.

“We strongly believe in the genre, and we put a lot of effort into convincing artists and entourages to include Switzerland in future tours”

“André promoted all the major country artists back in the years, including Johnny Cash, Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, The Chicks, Willie Nelson, and many more,” states Vuignier. “He was also doing a country music festival at the 12,000-cap Hallenstadion every year in the 1980s. This created a strong country music fanbase in Switzerland, which we can still count on today.

“We strongly believe in the genre, and we put a lot of effort into convincing artists and entourages to include Switzerland in future tours. Thanks to a strong fanbase, we are able to reach really good figures, and we recently had sold out shows with Luke Combs and Brad Paisley, for instance.”

Across the border in Germany, Wizard Promotions is another long-term specialist. Speaking to IQ from Nashville, Wizard managing director Oliver Hoppe says that country music has been the company’s second-biggest genre, after rock, for many years.

“It’s interesting in Europe, where now you have Live Nation coming in strong, and AEG is building good things, but we’ve been doing country for a long time – we promoted Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks back in the day, and we did Brad Paisley’s first show in Germany,” says Hoppe.

“Back in 2014, the Country Music Association [CMA] decided it was going to put a bigger focus on Europe, and that’s ramped things up, but we’ve been working with country acts long before that. At the moment, the market is quite strong, and most acts come back to Germany and do better figures each time.”

“The constant stream of American artists coming and playing for the theatre-capacity audience is something new, and it’s happening throughout the year”

Further north, Live Nation Norway’s Vegard Storaas is also following a long tradition of country music promoters. “Our company founder, Rune Lem, had a poster of Garth Brooks from 1994 when he sold out Spectrum in a matter of minutes, so country has had a strong foothold here for a long time.

“There are nearly 5 million people in the US claiming Norwegian ancestry, which is almost equal to Norway’s own population. When people came back to Norway from the States, it created some sort of cultural bond between the two countries, and the music came with them. I think there are similar situations in Ireland.”

Detailing the recent local growth in the genre, Storaas says, “Before Covid, there were maybe two to four acts visiting us each year and going into the semi-big venues. You had Brad Paisley coming every once in a while, or Garth Brooks, or Shania Twain doing her thing. But the constant stream of American artists coming and playing for the theatre-capacity audience is something new, and it’s happening throughout the year. We also have a domestic group of artists, but they have their own musical direction, which is different from Nashville – they’re somewhere between country and Bruce Springsteen.”

Having specialised in the country genre for the past five or six years, Storaas says he’s witnessed a sea change. “After Covid, the willingness of American artists to invest in coming to Norway really changed – it’s gone from two or three per year to 20-30, including neighbouring genres like bluegrass and Americana.”

He points to Luke Combs as the potential catalyst. “For his world tour, he sold out, upgraded, and again sold out all his rooms in Europe,” reports Storaas. “That showed Nashville that there’s a big market here, and the reason Americans are just coming to Norway is because they can now see on their streaming charts that sometimes Norway ranks number five, behind the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. That’s a really strong fanbase for a small population.”

“The big record labels look at trends and see that Gen Z is pushing up the streaming numbers for country artists”

That support is backed up by Norway’s P10 Country radio station being one of the most listened to in the nation. “The big record labels look at trends and see that Gen Z is pushing up the streaming numbers for country artists, so I think more acts will be encouraged to record country music tracks,” adds Storaas.

Changing attitudes
There’s also been a noticeable difference in the way that American-based country acts are viewing the rest of the world when it comes to career planning.

“We’re finding that more younger acts are visiting here from very early on in their careers because they want to grow internationally as much as they want to grow in the US market,” comments Sina Hall at Semmel Concerts in Germany. “So sometimes our country shows start out in the small caps, and then we go up all the way to the arenas, depending on what artist is coming along.”

That pattern is also acknowledged by agents Sarah Casey and Beth Morton in UTA’s London-based HQ, who have been working hard to develop business internationally for the company’s country music clients.

“We are working with artists earlier than ever to develop international strategies for them,” confirms Morton. “It used to be that US artists would develop over there and then think about touring [internationally], whereas more of the clients that we’re working with now are considering international at the same time as they start thinking about the US. For example, Oliver Antony wanted to start his tour in Europe: we started in Scandinavia and finished in Ireland, and his shows blew out in minutes, especially in the UK. Dylan Gossett is another really good example. He kicked off his global tour in Europe, and again, those shows sold out in a matter of hours.”

“It can be tricky with American country acts because their international touring periods tend to be very short”

Morton cites UTA client Megan Maroney as one of the rising stars to watch. “She came over to do a UK tour last August, and we just put a September tour on sale for her. She’s very keen to go into markets that aren’t just the UK, so she’s going into Scandinavia, we’re opening up Switzerland, as well as Netherlands and Germany.

“What’s brilliant about her is that her management have been really focused on trying to build out Europe, the UK, and Australia from quite an early stage. Her hit, Tennessee Orange, was such a huge viral moment for her that she could have been booked every weekend throughout the US, but her management were keen to carve out time to come to Europe and Australia, too.”

That trend is embraced by Mertens at Live Nation. “Artists are developing international careers early at club- and small-theatre-level, and they love the experience and reception they get from their UK fans and [therefore] commit to international for many years to come. This has led to some US country artists selling more tickets in London than they do in the US, as they are so well received over here.”

She continues, “Australia, Canada, and the UK are leading the charge, followed by the Netherlands, Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark), and Germany all now being part of most country artists’ touring schedules. This is sometimes extended into Belgium, France, and Spain for the right acts, and artists can easily have a two- to three-week window across Europe for touring these days.”

Semmel’s Hall hopes that period of commitment for fans of country music will be further extended as the genre becomes more popular. “It can be tricky with American country acts because their international touring periods tend to be very short, meaning we cannot have them playing as extensively as we would with other international talent. But country stars coming to Europe was once a rare event, whereas now they seem to be a lot more enthusiastic, so it’s moving in the right direction,” she says.

“The US is very single-driven because of country radio. But here in Germany, if people like an artist, they will listen to their entire catalogue”

Hall also details differences in the way that fans in Germany and fans in America consume music. “The US is very single-driven because of country radio. But here in Germany, if people like an artist, they will listen to their entire catalogue.” That, she says, has led to some interesting moments for those acts who ask their fans for song requests. “People hold up signs [for] all kinds of stuff, where artists are like, ‘Oh, my God, no one ever has requested this song before. How do you guys know this one?’ And then they are astonished when everybody can sing along.

“So artists are learning how respectful and tuned in people are to their storytelling and lyrics here in Europe, whereas at home in America, where it’s single-driven, it can be all about getting your own momentum and fighting for it. It’s quite a nice change of scenery to come over here and have such a respectful and appreciative audience.”

Fellow German promoter Hoppe, with whom Semmel has co-promoted a number of country acts, observes, “The cycle of breaking country acts in the United States is much more streamlined because if they are picked up by country radio, it can really accelerate. In Germany, as with most places internationally, we don’t have that media, so the way acts build their fanbase is by playing in the market. That’s why we encourage acts to come to Germany early in their careers to begin that build.

“What we’ve found with some acts is that they are capable of going to London to play to maybe 3,000 people, and then when they see that the German show might be in a 1,500-cap venue, they decide it’s not financially worth it. But if they do it and build up sensibly, then it does pay off in the end.”

“At WME, we’ve seen our volume of international country touring activity increase by 50% over the past few years”

Agent Shannon Saunders at WME in Nashville confirms that enquiries for her clients are picking up from overseas. “Interest in country music touring is certainly growing outside of North America,” she says. “At WME, we’ve seen our volume of international country touring activity increase by 50% over the past few years. Not only are we seeing substantial increases in ticket sales for these artists on headline touring, but we are also receiving more interest than ever from contemporary festivals to include these acts on their lineups.

“The UK and Australia have traditionally been the strongest non-NA markets for the country genre; however, we are seeing some exciting new growth in South Africa, Switzerland, and across Scandinavia. I suspect these trends will continue further into mainland Europe and into South America over the next few years.”

Summing up the evolution of the genre, veteran agent Neil Warnock at UTA says, “Considering the state of play 17 odd years ago, working with the likes of Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton, we’re now seeing a tsunami of interest in country music around the world. The perception change has been like night and day.

“By having such a great relationship with our Nashville office, we’ve developed something of a fraternity between Europe and America, but it has taken a long time to get to where we are.”

Warnock adds, “What’s most encouraging to me, is seeing the young artists and young managers more involved in developing acts outside of Nashville, having the trust in agents and promoters here, and ultimately seeing the value in Europe and the rest of the world. Country is really a catch-all for so many genres and styles, so we’re going to see more crossover of artists into other areas, where they’ll only continue to be accepted in more mainstream spaces going forward.”

“We made the strategic decision to work in the genre. We felt there was the potential for it to break out of a niche and move into the more mainstream market”

Strategic growth
Hall explains that Semmel first became involved in country music in 2018. “That’s when we made the strategic decision to work in the genre,” she says. “We felt there was the potential for it to break out of a niche and move into the more mainstream market. But to do that it would need a strategic approach, especially when it comes to marketing and communication.”

As a result, Semmel founded its Sound of Nashville brand for anything in the country or Americana field. “It was based on the idea that we needed to start out with small club shows, which usually don’t have a lot of marketing budget. So we’d kind of bundle them a little bit to get the most out of the budgets,” continues Hall.

“Funnily enough, right after we decided to do that strategic approach with Sound of Nashville, AEG approached us about the C2C festival in Berlin, and that obviously made total sense with our setup. We launched the first C2C in 2019, with Keith Urban, which sold out right away. Then we came back with an extra day for a three-day festival in 2020, which was one of the final events before the lockdowns came along.”

While the ban on live events was brutal, Semmel pushed ahead with its Sound of Nashville planning. “We did a lot of editorial content and reached out to artists to keep building those relationships. We did a couple of livestreamed shows, but we also took the Berlin C2C footage from 2020 and turned that into a three-hour stream that we broadcast on the date that C2C 2021 was supposed to happen. So there was a lot of activity on our side during the pandemic to keep the spark going.”

And that investment in the concept is paying dividends. “When we started out in 2018, we looked at all the data that we had access to, and the demographics told us that the average age for anything country music-related was 55 years and up. But if I pull that data now, we’re looking at an average age of 35, which is significantly younger in a very short time.”

“The big development is that we are now seeing far more headline touring playing in bigger buildings”

WME’s Saunders also believes the genre grew during the coronavirus crisis. “The heart of country music has always been with the songwriting. We saw significant growth in country music streaming during the pandemic, as consumers were drawn to music that reflects the human experience in such an authentic and universal way,” says Saunders. “This streaming growth has not slowed down. And now, with the return of the touring business, the live shows hold up.”

The genre’s continuing expansion is in no small part down to the hard work of the Country Music Association and its board, of which both Sina Hill and Anna-Sophie Mertens are directors.

“I joined the CMA board in 2020, becoming a vocal ambassador and advocate for what has traditionally been a niche genre outside of the US,” says Mertens, who has been a fan of the genre for most of her life, courtesy of her parents’ record collection.
Mertens developed and launched Live Nation UK’s first country event Highways in 2023, in partnership with the Royal Albert Hall. “The inaugural event featured Kip Moore, Morgan Wade, Jackson Dean’s UK debut, and Stephen Wilson Jr. whilst also hosting additional events such as Highways Songwriters Round, Country for Kids, Late Night Special, Official After Show Party with media partners Absolute Radio Country, and a month-long exhibition of the Nashville Portraits by Jim McGuire,” she tells IQ.

That debut last year was such a success that the 2024 edition of Highways has been extended to two days and nights of programming at the Royal Albert Hall. But Mertens acknowledges that events like CMC Rocks in Australia and the travelling C2C extravaganza in Europe paved the way for her and others to follow.

“The big development is that we are now seeing far more headline touring playing in bigger buildings, and with audiences growing, we are making compelling offers to get acts over for hard ticket tours,” says Mertens. “New events like Highways offer a different and very exciting offering to artists and fans alike.”

“The landscape, especially when it comes to festivals, seems to be getting busier”

Agent Morton concurs. “The landscape, especially when it comes to festivals, seems to be getting busier,” she observes. “In the UK, there’s also the likes of Black Deer, which is an Americana and country-leaning festival, and there are new properties in Australia as well. Frontier, who promote CMC Rocks, launched Ridin’ Hearts last year in Sydney and Melbourne, for example, and and Semmel Concerts in Germany are launching the Sound of Nashville event this year.”

Indeed, Semmel will promote 20-30 Sound of Nashville-branded events throughout Germany this year. But that’s hopefully just the tip of the iceberg.

“As country music grows in more countries, hopefully the international timeframes will expand so that Nashville is not just cramming in Europe, UK, and Australia within a three-week time period,” says Hall. “At the moment, that’s all you get when you’re international. But I think we will see more touring as acts realise they need that to really break the market… It takes more than one show in Berlin to break the entire German market.

“You need to be aware that because of country’s range, it will attract different fans. There is not necessarily just one country fan who consumes everything, so you have to market artists differently if it’s Zach Bryan or Luke Combs or Kacey Musgraves,” opines Hall. “Knowing those nuances and being tuned into what’s happening in Nashville, what the labels are doing, and the feedback we’re getting from our community are absolutely essential to do the right marketing.”

A global genre
At Frontier Touring, COO Susan Heymann says, “CMC Rocks has been building the profile of country music in Australia since 2008. Our business has been focused on bringing international country artists to Australia and building the local scene through the large audiences that the international acts draw for the festival.”

“An artist can make more money playing a state fair or rodeo a couple of hours from where they live as they’ll make spending two weeks touring internationally”

She recalls, “When we started in the genre, there were only a handful of international acts who considered Australia or New Zealand as a market worth putting the time into.” But she doesn’t blame them. “An artist can make more money playing a state fair or rodeo a couple of hours from where they live as they’ll make spending two weeks touring internationally.”

Nonetheless, the metrics are changing. “There are now a lot more artists who see this as a market worth investing in. We’re now at a point where we’re selling out the festival every year, we feature 16-20 internationals on the bill, we’ve started building a sister event called Ridin’ Hearts, and we’re touring international country artists year-round, outside of the festivals,” says Heymann.

While the rollout of more events in markets where strongholds of fans have been consuming country music for years is a welcome development, Morton believes brand-new markets could be on the horizon.

“It’s pretty early stages, but I am hearing about a potential country music festival starting in the Middle East, either the end of this year or beginning of next,” she reveals. “More and more promoters in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and France are getting involved, while Live Nation are particularly keen to get into this space. But with artists like Megan Moroney and Dylan Gossett, we’ve had all the major promoters come to us wanting to work with them.”

And she is also witnessing more mainstream avenues open up. “We had Brittney Spencer open for Bruce Springsteen at BST Hyde Park last summer. That was an amazing look for her. The War and Treaty are our clients, and they’re performing at Love Supreme this summer, which is a jazz festival. So we’re definitely seeing more mainstream festivals try and get into this, as well as mainstream media starting to cover the genre as well. Dylan Gossett got one of his first plays on radio in the UK on Radio 1, and for a tastemaker like Jack Saunders to be playing a country artist like Dylan on Radio 1, I think is brilliant for the genre.”

“The C2C team has driven the growth of UK country touring out of the festival, and we promote a large number of tours each year, from clubs to arenas and beyond”

AEG Presents promoter Rachel Lloyd works closely with SJM Concerts in promoting C2C in London, Glasgow, and Belfast. She has been working in country music since 2017 but says she has been really focussed on the genre since returning to AEG Presents in 2021.

“The C2C team has driven the growth of UK country touring out of the festival, and we promote a large number of tours each year, from clubs to arenas and beyond,” says Lloyd. “It’s a great model. To be able to introduce new artists at the festival, put them in front of excited fans and the media, and then bring them back for headline touring, hopefully over and over. Ashley McBryde is a great illustration of this, she worked her way up from the [C2C] Spotlight Stage and now does incredibly solid numbers over here.

“The wave of artists that first came over [for C2C] all reported back the same thing – that UK audiences are some of the best in the world. That tempted more and more to follow, and the exponential growth of the fanbase over here pushed US teams to take it seriously.”

While C2C currently plays to audiences in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and the Netherlands, at TAKK, Vuignier is hopeful the juggernaut will one day expand its routing to Switzerland. “We have been trying hard to get C2C over to Zurich, but at the moment, the festival is only running over two weekends. However, we are closely and constantly talking to all parties involved, and we are trying to get the C2C acts to play mid-week shows in Zurich, in between both weekends.”

He continues, “Drake Milligan, who sells out 5,000-cap venues in the US, played the 500-capacity Mascotte around C2C and enjoyed it a lot. This was his very first headline show in Europe, and he played for almost two hours instead of the 90 minutes planned, because the audience was so hot.”

“There is generally a lot more crossover with country music these days. Country is now cool!”

In the UK, Jack Dowling at SJM Concerts has been working in partnership with AEG’s Lloyd for two years. “Chris York was the original pioneer of C2C from our company over a decade ago and deserves a huge amount of credit for where the genre is in the UK,” he states, adding, “C2C Presents is a combination of SJM and AEG; we promote a lot of tours outside of the festival under that banner in the UK.

“We are seeing a lot more US-based acts looking to build their business in the UK from the off – they are coming in at grassroots venues, circa 250 capacities. The genre really has exploded here in the last few years, and people have seen it’s a market to invest in early.”

And Dowling is one of the many execs who is excited by what is being referred to as ‘the Beyoncé effect.’ He tells IQ, “I think this is really helping to get the youth into the market. They hear these songs and do a bit of digging into what else is out there. Similarly, people are listening to great acts like Hozier, then they find Zach Bryan because of it. There is generally a lot more crossover with country music these days. Country is now cool!”

That’s hardly news to Baylen Leonard and his team at the Long Road Festival. But his plans for future editions of the festival are simple. “While we want to grow, it’s step by step, slow and steady, because we want to maintain what the festival is, without losing sight of our values,” he says. “If you grow too big, you can lose that special atmosphere. And I think that’s one of the things people really like about the Long Road.”

Looking to the future, Mertens comments, “I am particularly excited for artists such as Lainey Wilson, Tyler Childers, Jordan Davis, and Brett Young who are all doing phenomenal business in the UK. Both Lainey and Tyler are having an incredible career moment, and both will no doubt be headlining arenas in the not-so-distant future.”

On Beyoncé’s new country album, Cowboy Carter, Mertens adds, “I hope it will help see some of the more mainstream outlets – radio, TV, all genre playlisting in streaming – dive deeper into the genre and embrace it, giving current country acts a chance. Add in Shania Twain also playing Hyde Park and landing the coveted legends slot at Glastonbury 2024, another huge moment for the genre.”

“The market is definitely increasing in size. And I think this is just the beginning”

At Frontier in Australia, Heymann notes, “Mainstream artists having country albums may not resonate with the core country fans, but the appeal of country music is so much broader than what the core fans want, so it can only help build that audience and introduce indie and pop fans to new artists and music they might not otherwise explore.”

Wizard boss Hoppe says, “The new Beyoncé album will definitely have an impact, but I see it as more of a stepping stone to help develop the market even more.”

Considering Lana Del Rey’s forthcoming album, too, AEG’s Lloyd echoes Hoppe’s sentiment. “They are such mega artists that they need to be treated like outliers to the conversation generally,” she says. “But by the sheer statistics of their reach, they will make people take notice, so if they use their platforms to highlight other artists or musicians firmly in the genre, they will create new fans.

“What would be great is to see them, or any other artist who claims the genre, invite country or Americana artists as supports on tour. That would be huge for so many emerging artists and really put the spectrum of country music directly in front of people. I’m a firm believer that there is a country sound for everyone, so I hope all this will encourage fans to do some digging.”

Saunders at WME is also embracing the Beyoncé effect. “Ultimately, this helps to widen the lane for what it means to be a country artist, creating more opportunities for all,” says Saunders. “The country music genre is more sonically diverse than ever before. I welcome any creators who want to collaborate and push boundaries to create great music for everyone to enjoy.”

In Norway, Storaas predicts busy times ahead. “The market is definitely increasing in size. And I think this is just the beginning,” he says. “Maybe 15 years ago, indie was the number-one genre; ten years ago, it was EDM; five years ago, it was rap. So maybe country could now be number one for a couple of years.”

Live Nation colleague Mertens concludes, “We are certainly seeing younger fans at concerts, especially in the 18-35 age bracket, which is super exciting. At Megan Moroney’s first London show, for instance, we saw an overwhelming amount of young fans, mainly female, and what was even more interesting was seeing fans wear t-shirts of acts such as Imagine Dragons, Troye Sivan, and others. It blew me away as I wasn’t quite expecting that association, which made me very excited for the future.”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Semmel Concerts has agreed a deal with industry veteran Ralf Kokemüller to launch Limelight Live Entertainment with a remit to bring “well-known and innovative musical and show formats to the stage” as well as “developing new ideas by creative people.”

The new company will operate from Mannheim with Kokemüller as managing partner. He was managing director at BB-Promotion for over 25 years, before becoming co-CEO of Mehr-BB-Entertainment.

Among other productions, Kokemüller was responsible for the shows Ballet Revolution from Cuba, the Cats theatre tent tour, and the revue Berlin Berlin.

“I know that he still has many fantastic ideas for the European touring business with great shows in his quiver”

Dieter Semmelmann, managing partner of Semmel Concerts, is delighted to be working with Kokemüller. “We have known each other for decades and I know that he still has many fantastic ideas for the European touring business with great shows in his quiver,” says Semmelmann. “It will be all the more exciting to realise all of this together with Ralf and his new team.”

Kokemüller comments, “In order to build a leading position as a tour operator of high-quality musicals and shows in the next few years, I am pleased to have a strong partner at my side in Dieter and Semmel Concerts Entertainment, which already plays an important role in this genre and shares my philosophy. Together we will achieve many synergies and build a large portfolio in the next few years. The passion for first-class stage shows, inspiring the audience and the fun of teamwork are our common motivation.”

In 1995, Kokemüller joined BB Promotion where he worked closely with founder Michael Brenner. In a position responsible for scouting and booking, Kokemüller was involved with such international successes as Stomp, Tanguera, and Yamato. After Brenner’s death in 2011, Kokemüller served as the group’s CEO.

In 2015, after co-producing the original production in London’s West End, Kokemüller produced the original German-language production of Bodyguard. that same year, he introduced Ambassador Theater Group (ATG) as new shareholders to the BB Group, and in 2018 he orchestrated the acquisition of Mehr!Entertainment Group by ATG, and the subsequent merger with BB Group.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Semmel Concerts has acquired the Metronom Theater in Oberhausen, a 1,800-capacity venue in northwest Germany that has been closed since 2020.

The German promoter hopes to reopen the venue before the end of the year, after making “extensive” investments in its technology and equipment.

The CTS Eventim-backed firm, which also operates the Arena Berlin, will appoint a new team to manage the theatre, led by director of operations Timo Hoppen.

The Metronom Theater was previously owned by Stage Entertainment, the leading producer of musicals in Europe.

Stage bought the venue, formerly known as TheatrO CentrO, in 2005 and extensively modernised it. It became the venue for many popular musicals before it closed in March 2020.

“We will bring people from all over North Rhine-Westphalia and delight them with great national and international productions”

“Oberhausen has a great tradition as a cultural location,” says Dieter Semmelmann, managing partner, Semmel Concerts. “This makes the task of bringing the theater back to life after a four-year slumber all the more exciting. With changing musicals and shows from our dynamically growing touring business, we will bring people from all over North Rhine-Westphalia and beyond to Oberhausen and delight them with great national and international productions. We would like to thank Stage Entertainment for their partnership in handing over the theater and look forward to making the Metronom Theater a new hotspot for live entertainment in the Ruhr area.”

Daniel Schranz, mayor of the city of Oberhausen: “The restart of the Metronom Theater is very good news for the people of Oberhausen and for our guests. The entry of Semmel Concerts strengthens Oberhausen and our Neue Mitte as a center for culture and entertainment in the entire region. I would like to thank Stage Entertainment for the long-standing and good cooperation. The new owner Semmel Concerts also has a lot of experience in live entertainment and will certainly soon expand the cultural offerings in our city with his programme.”

Semmel recently announced that award-winning film composer Hans Zimmer would perform in North America for the first time in seven years.

The smash-hit Hans Zimmer Live tour will visit North America this autumn, following a sold-out European run that shifted more than 300,000 tickets.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Organisers of Rammstein and AC/DC’s forthcoming tour dates in Dresden, Germany, have played down rumours that the gigs will need to be relocated.

Rammstein are due to play four outdoor shows at the 80,000-cap Dresden Rinne from 15-16 & 18-19 May, with AC/DC set to follow for two nights on 16 & 19 June.

But a Facebook post by the Free Voters/Free Citizens faction of Dresden City Council last week sparked fears that the gigs were in jeopardy over noise concerns.

“We have learned that the concerts by AC/DC and Rammstein planned… in the summer will allegedly have to contend with considerable requirements from the Dresden city administration,” said the statement. “A cancellation and relocation to Leipzig should be on the cards.”

While the city of Dresden acknowledged “challenges” regarding the venue, it insisted “nothing is in the balance”.

“The rumours that planned concerts in the Dresden flood channel will be cancelled or relocated to other locations are false,” said a press release.

“The city’s press release reveals that the information we received from a trustworthy source is accurate”

Responding on social media, the Free Voters say: “The city’s press release reveals that the information we received from a trustworthy source is accurate. After the concerts were publicly announced and tickets were sold, the city government noted: ‘The venue has challenges.’ Typically, ‘challenges’ are clarified before an event.

“What ‘challenges’ these are, we remain silent about. As far as we know, it’s about ‘noise pollution’. We will request access to the files as soon as possible.”

Rammstein promoter Rodney Aust of Bernd Aust Kultur Management tells Bild the concerts will go ahead.

“We are in daily contact with the city of Dresden about this,” explains Aust. “We want the concerts, the city [does] too. They will take place in Dresden.

“Due to the Christmas floods and the problems surrounding the Christmas circus, the event area is now viewed a little more sensitively. That’s exactly what we all do together. We are planning normally, the traffic light is green.”

Semmel Concerts, promoter of the AC/DC gigs, is similarly confident the dates will proceed.

“We have no reason to believe that the two AC/DC concerts in Dresden cannot take place as planned,” it assures Berliner Zeitung. “On the contrary: the band is looking forward to their Dresden fans.”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.