Troye Sivan to join Charli XCX at Primavera Sound
Charli XCX has announced she will reunite with Troye Sivan for her Primavera Sound Barcelona headline slot next year.
The 5 June performance will be the only European stop on their Charli XCX & Troye Sivan Present: SWEAT tour and follows their sold-out 22-date tour of North America last autumn, which saw the British and Australian artists play to almost 300,000 fans. Both acts performed separately at Primavera this year.
Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter will also headline the 5-7 June 2025 festival at Parc Del Fòrum.
Elsewhere in Spain, Madrid’s Mad Cool has released the first wave of acts for the 2025 edition, led by Olivia Rodrigo, Kings of Leon, Noah Kahan and Gracie Abrams.
Alanis Morissette, Weezer, Benson Boone, Justice, Iggy Pop, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Arde Bogotá, Residente, Glass Animals and St. Vincent are also on the bill. The festival will return to Iberdrola Music between 10–12 July.
Brazil’s The Town has lined up Green Day, Sex Pistols, Bruce Dickinson, Iggy Pop, Initial Capital, Pitty, CPM 22 and Supla & Innocents for 2025.
Organised by Rock in Rio founder Roberto Medina, the 100,000-cap festival will return to São Paulo between 6–7 and 12–14 September.
Portugal’s Nos Alive has announced an additional six acts: Barry Can’t Swim, Dead Poet Society, Finneas, Foster The People, Parov Stelar, Mother Mother and Sammy Virji.
They will perform at the Lisbon festival between 10–12 July and alongside previously announced acts such as Olivia Rodrigo, Kings of Leon, Amyl and The Sniffers, Artemas, Benson Boone, CMAT, girl in red and Glass Animals.
Poland’s Orange Warsaw has announced its first headliner, Charli XCX, who will deliver the final set of the festival.
The Alter Art-promoted event will return to Służewiec Horse Racing Track in Warsaw between 30–31 May.
The US is set to gain another new music festival called Starbase
France’s We Love Green has also secured Charli XCX for a headlining set alongside other acts including Air, Laylow, Gesaffelstein, Amelie Lens, Parcels, FKA Twigs and Bicep.
The festival will once again take place at Bois de Vincennes Park in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, between 6–8 June.
Across Europe, Austria’s Lido Sounds has confirmed Justice, Parcels and PaulWetz for the 2025 instalment, set to take place between 27–29 June on the banks of the Danube in Linz, Vienna.
City Splash – billed as the world’s biggest independent one-day celebration of Caribbean and African culture – will take over London’s Brockwell Park on the 26 May bank holiday.
Set to perform at the event is Jamaican roots reggae singer Tarrus Riley, queen of dancehall Spice, one of Jamaica’s brightest stars Valiant, the voice behind one of Dancehall’s biggest anthems ‘Drift’; Teejay and Afrobeats music collective The Compozers.
Live Nation-owned C3 Presents plans to launch a new rock festival in the US called Boardwalk Rock Festival.
The two-day event will take place between 17–18 May 2025 in Ocean City, Maryland, with some of the biggest names in rock history alongside contemporary favourites.
Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Nickelback, and Shinedown will headline the inaugural edition, with Bush, Chevelle, Three Days Grace and Flyleaf appearing further down the bill.
The US is also set to gain another new music festival called Starbase, launched by GRAMMY-nominated electronic music duo SLANDER in partnership with Insomniac.
The two-day event will take place between 25–26 April at Lake Perris in Southern California with more than 35 events.
A Hundred Drums, AU5, Before Dawn, Body Ocean, Bommer, Charles D, Codd Dubz, Control Freak, Copycatt, Dimension, Fairlane, FrostTop, Ivory, Kill the Noise, Lunice, Mha Iri, Moody Good B2B Chee, Nikademis and Pauline Herr are set to perform at the inaugural edition.
Meanwhile, St. Louis natives Nelly & Metro Boomin will launch a festival in their hometown next year featuring a mix of country and hip-hop music.
The festival announcement comes after St. Louis was notably snubbed from Nelly’s upcoming Where the Party At World Tour.
Details of the inaugural Smokin’ Hayride Festival are yet to be announced.
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Spilt Milk swaps 2024 flagship for ‘House Parties’
Australia’s Spilt Milk is launching a series of House Party events in place of its cancelled 2024 flagship festival.
The 30,000-capacity multi-city flagship was axed earlier this year, with organisers saying, “We couldn’t get you the Spilt Milk you deserve this year”.
In its place, organisers will deliver a series of more intimate events in November, with a mix of international and domestic stars including Glass Animals, Troye Sivan, G Flip, Artemas and Sycco.
The House Party series will take over Perth’s Kings Park & Botanic Garden on 17 November before heading east to Broadwater Parklands at the Gold Coast on 23 November and then to Newcastle Entertainment Centre on 24 November.
“We’ve moved all the furniture around to make extra room, but tix will still be pretty limited so sign up to presale if you’re keen,” said organisers in a statement.
“We’ve moved all the furniture around to make extra room, but tix will still be pretty limited so sign up to presale if you’re keen”
Despite being regular stops on the usual Spilt Milk tour, Canberra and Ballarat aren’t due to host House Parties.
Spilt Milk started in Canberra in 2016, expanding to the Gold Coast and Ballarat in 2019 and Perth in 2023. Across its run, the festival hosted artists including Dom Dolla, Vince Staples, Lorde, Cub Sport, RL Grime, Peking Duk, Khalid, Juice WRLD, Steve Lacy, and Post Malone.
Spilt Milk is just one casualty in Australia’s beleaguered festival sector, which has been left in disarray following a flurry of cancellations.
In perhaps the most severe blow for the sector, Byron Bay Bluesfest organiser Peter Noble announced that the 2025 edition of the long-running festival would be the last – though yesterday he added that “it doesn’t have to be”.
Prior to that, Adelaide’s Harvest Rock pulled the plug on its 2024 edition, following in the footsteps of other high-profile casualties such as Splendour in the Grass, Groovin The Moo, Coastal Jam, Summerground, Vintage Vibes, Tent Pole: A Musical Jamboree and ValleyWays.
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Small screen: BIG stars!
Around five years ago, Dan Steinberg received a call from his trusted friend TJ Markwalter at The Gersh Agency asking him to put on some shows by the then little-known (at least in the adult offline world) YouTube star Miranda Sings.
“He said: ‘Don’t ask what it is. Don’t even look at the video. Just put it on sale and trust me,’” recalls Steinberg, who runs US-based promoter Emporium Presents. “In the midst of confirming the shows, my marketing director sent me a link to her YouTube channel. I immediately called TJ and I was like: ‘Seriously? Is this a joke?’ He said: ‘I told you not to look at it. Just watch the ticket sales.’”
Sure enough, the show sold out instantly, prompting Steinberg to travel to Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival to watch Miranda Sings perform a matinee concert in front of 2,000 screaming pre-teen girls in person. “It was the loudest show I’ve ever been at,” he remembers. “I quickly decided two things: ‘One, I never need to be front of house for one of these shows again. And two, we really need to get into this space.’”
“‘Don’t ask what it is. Don’t even look at the video. Just put it on sale and trust me'”
Half a decade later, tours by comedy YouTube stars and new media artists now make up between 15–18% of Emporium’s revenue, with the company’s expansion into the non-traditional entertainment sector mirroring one of the fastest-growing areas of the touring business as more and more vloggers, musicians and social media personalities break out of the online realm and into the live arena.
“We’re still living in rock’n’roll and country tours, but YouTube and multimedia sensations are definitely becoming a larger part of our business, and I don’t see that stopping anytime soon,” says Steinberg, pointing to the global reach of Miranda Sings, whose one-woman show – a satirical mix of off-key singing, comedy, lecturing and lame magic, performed by classically trained singer and actress Colleen Ballinger – continues to pack out venues around the world.
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