Live music market
Stored observations only · assembled 2026-09-24 · tape close 2026-09-02 (stale)
Alpha Vantage · end-of-day closes, not real time · read 2026-09-24 10:13 UTC
Listed companies with reported live-music exposure. Not an index, not a recommendation, and not a measure of live music alone: only Live Nation is close to a pure-play, and the others report material revenue from sport, theatre, media or other events. Methodology
The read
August 2026Admissions prices are trailing consumer prices by 0.8 points.
- Admissions
- +2.6%
- All items
- +3.4%
- Spread
- -0.8 pp
Rebased January 2011 = 100, admissions stand at 101.5 against all items at August 2026.
Today’s development
Pollstar
Legends Global Transforms Premium Lounge At AO Arena Manchester
· aggregated headline, not Live Index reporting · opens news.pollstar.com in a new tab
Latest Live Index signal
United States venue supply
Announced capacity is not supply
Event dated 2026-08-25 · 1 source record · rotating selection
The current development is an outside report, credited to its publisher. The Live Index record beside it is curated work, not today’s news.
Admissions prices vs. consumer prices
CPI-U · 12-month changeU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), series CUSR0000SS62031 · August 2026 · retrieved 2026-09-23
Twelve-month change computed from the stored monthly index levels for admissions and for all items.
Underlying recordPerforming arts payrolls
monthly level · July 2026U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics (CES), national, series CES7071110001 · retrieved 2026-09-23
Underlying recordFestival price composition
20 observations- Under $50
- 204
- $50 to $99
- 255
- $100 to $149
- 408
- $150 and above
- 153
4.7 hours of work at the May 2025 median hourly wage · Range $30 (Vero Beach Blues Festival, Vero Beach, FL) to $249.50 (Head Trip, Indio, CA).
Live Index festival pass observations, read from official festival ticketing pages · 20 verified observations
Underlying recordLargest listed operator
NYSE: LYVShare price
$179.59
+13.87 (+8.37%) over 1y
Market data · Alpha Vantage · end-of-day closes, not real time · close 2026-09-02 · 22 days old · read 2026-09-03 01:38 UTC. Market prices are not Live Index measurements and are not company filings.
Reported operating figures
- Revenue
- $7.7B+9%
- Operating income
- $522M+7%
- Adjusted operating income
- $817M+2%
- Concerts fan count
- 49M+10%
Q2 2026
Q2 2026
Q2 2026
Q2 2026
Company-reported figures, reproduced from primary filings and not recomputed here. The company reports 159M fans at promoted events in FY 2025.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR) · filed 2026-07 · retrieved 2026-08-27
Company-reported figures describe one company's activity. They are not a measure of the U.S. live-music market, and no market share is derived from them here.
What changed
Newest first- 2026-09-23DataJuly 2026 level stored at 147,100 jobs
- 2026-09-23DataAugust 2026 observation stored at +2.6% on the year
- 2026-08-25State changeAustin: a 4,000-capacity venue enters the announced-supply column
- 2026-08-25State changeBonnaroo: the 2027 edition will not be held
- 2026-08-25RecordAnnounced capacity is not supply
- 2026-08-24Register182 entities and 172 relationships last verified
Venue and touring state
verified 2026-08-24- Entities
- 182
- Venues
- 94
- Relationships
- 172
- United Heritage Hall, Austin, Texas — Austin: a 4,000-capacity venue enters the announced-supply column
- Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, Manchester, Tennessee — Bonnaroo: the 2027 edition will not be held
Counts describe the Live Index register, not the national stock of venues. Each row carries the document it was verified against.
Billboard Hot 100 — U.S. top 10
Latest week held · Aug. 29, 2026- 1Choosin' TexasElla Langley
- 2BostonStella Lefty
- 3I Knew It, I Knew YouTaylor Swift
- 4Been By NowMorgan Wallen
- 5Hate That I Made You Love MeAriana Grande
- 6I Can't Love You AnymoreElla Langley & Morgan Wallen
- 7So Easy (To Fall In Love)Olivia Dean
- 8DraculaTame Impala & JENNIE
- 9Man I NeedOlivia Dean
- 10Be HerElla Langley
Billboard · Billboard Hot 100 · chart dated Aug. 29, 2026 · retrieved 2026-08-27
Chart facts only, reproduced from the published ranking as a culture signal beside the economic series. Live Index does not compile this chart. Previous-week ranks were not captured on this read, so no movement is shown.
The week below is the latest one Live Index holds; it is 3 chart weeks behind the published chart. No chart week is stored in the database yet, so the last verified week compiled into the build is shown.
Full chart and historyChart at BillboardCurrent observation
The price comparison at the top of this screen is the twelve months to August 2026: +2.6% for admission to movies, theaters and concerts against +3.4% for all items, a difference of 0.8 percentage points. The BLS category is broader than concert tickets and is carried here as a price-pressure proxy, not as a ticket index.
Employment in performing arts stands at 147,100 payroll jobs in July 2026, 111.4% of the February 2020 level.
Across 20 verified festival passes, the median advertised general admission is $102.50 a day — 4.7 hours at the May 2025 median hourly wage for the workforce that stages these events.
Admissions price pressurePerforming arts employmentFestival pass observations
Written out from the same figures the screen already carries, with the qualifications the headline read has no room for.
How to read this
Every figure on this screen is an observation stored by Live Index, printed with the agency or document that published it, the period it describes and the date it was retrieved. Nothing is modelled, smoothed, forecast or filled in. Where a series is not held, the panel says so rather than showing a placeholder. The pulse series are U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U, CES and OEWS levels, with twelve-month change computed from them; none of these series measures live music alone, and each indicator page states what it covers.
Independent research publication
Independent research on the economics of live music.
Live Index publishes sourced national data, original analysis, historical research and documented methodology on ticket prices, affordability, live-event employment, venues, touring, festivals, industry structure and the economic impact of live music. Every figure is published with its source, its observation period and the date it was retrieved. The publication was founded and is edited by Omar Afra.
Published federal indicatorslatest stored observations
Admissions prices
+2.6%
Admissions prices, 12-month change
August 2026
Series and methodPerforming arts employment
147,100
Payroll jobs · 111.4% of February 2020
July 2026
Series and methodPromoter workforce pay
$21.64
Median hourly wage, NAICS 711300
May 2025
Series and method
Price history
Full recordHistorical concert ticket prices
Sourced admission prices from 1965 to 2023, each shown as it was charged and restated in August 2026 dollars using the consumer price index. Every figure carries the publication it came from.
- The Beatles, 1965
- $4.50
- $47.70 today
- Taylor Swift, 2023
- $49.00
- $54.38 today
Latest research
All research- 01Who Owns Bonnaroo? A Controlling Interest, a Farm, and an Undisclosed Cap TableResearch · Sep 12, 2026Omar Afra
- 02Who Owns Lollapalooza? The Producer Is Controlled; the Brand Is Not DisclosedResearch · Sep 12, 2026Omar Afra
- 03Who Owns Austin City Limits Music Festival? C3 Owns It; Live Nation Controls C3Research · Sep 12, 2026Omar Afra
- 04Who Owns AXS? AEG's Ticketing Division, and the Clients It Is NotResearch · Sep 12, 2026Omar Afra
- 05Who Owns Forest Hills Stadium? A Tennis Club, a Licence, and a Concert BusinessResearch · Sep 12, 2026Omar Afra
Representation Index
Open the registerWho represents American live music
A standing register of publicly verifiable artist–booking-agency relationships. Each row names one artist, one agency and the representation scope, and carries the evidence behind it: the source document, its publisher, the date it was published and the date Live Index last verified it. Agency and artist profiles publish only once they clear the register's evidence thresholds; nothing is inferred from reputation or roster rumour.
137 relationships · 133 artists · 5 agencies · 121 first-party backed · last verified Aug 20, 2026
What it is not
Record counts describe the Live Index sample, not agency roster sizes or market share. Relationships change without announcement, so every row is dated and superseded records are kept rather than overwritten.
Live Index Tour Builder
Free tour routing and show economics for bands, agents, managers, talent buyers and independent venues. Build an itinerary, model what each date pays under a flat guarantee or a versus deal, read the break-even attendance, and see where the routing breaks. The arithmetic is deterministic and stated, the tour stays in your browser, and no distance or drive time is estimated for you.
What it is not
It is a planning instrument, not a data product. Nothing entered into it is stored by Live Index, and no figure it produces is a Live Index observation.
Industry register
Open the registerWho owns and operates live music
Companies, promoters, venues, festivals, ticketing providers and the cities and foundations that own a large share of American concert capacity. Ownership, operation, lease, booking, promotion and ticketing are recorded as separate relationships, each with the document it was read from and the date it was last checked. A relationship that ended is dated and kept rather than deleted.
182 entities · 172 relationships · 93 published records · 138 publishers cited · last verified Aug 24, 2026
What it is not
The register counts documented relationships, not market share. It cannot say what proportion of American concerts any company controls, and no page here claims to.
What Live Index tracks
All topicsLive Nation and Ticketmaster
A maintained index of the work on promotion, primary ticketing, venue control and consolidation.
Ticket prices and affordability
What a ticket costs, what it costs relative to wages, and how fees and resale change the figure.
Live-event employment
Federal payroll and wage series for the people employed to produce live events.
Venues and cultural infrastructure
The rooms a city has, the capacities they cover, and what is lost when a band of the ladder disappears.
Touring economics
Routing, guarantees and the economics of moving a show between markets.
Festival economics and economic impact
Festival cost structures and the impact claims made on their behalf.
Industry structure and consolidation
Ownership, vertical integration and market concentration across ticketing, promotion and venues.
Founder and editor
Omar Afra
Live Index was founded by Omar Afra, a Houston publisher and live-event producer. He published Free Press Houston, an independent Houston paper, and produced Free Press Summer Fest and later Day for Night, festivals that brought large-scale music and art programming to the city. That work put the practical economics of live events at close range: what tickets cost, what rooms and sites cost to operate, what crews are paid, and how much of a city's cultural infrastructure rests on organisations running thin margins. He now researches live-music economics full time — ticket affordability, venue economics, festival economics, cultural infrastructure and the independent systems that sustain them — and edits what Live Index publishes. His author page is maintained as a sourced dossier, with a citation behind each claim and disagreements between sources preserved rather than smoothed over.
Markets InsiderSyndicated launch press release
Industry Veteran Omar Afra Launches Live Index, a New Live Music Data and Analysis PlatformCarried as a press release, not reported by that newsroom. Coverage record
Attribution
Every research document names its authors and their contribution roles, and links to the same canonical author record used in our structured data.
Methodology and sources
A figure that cannot be checked is not evidence.
National indicators are stored exactly as the statistical agencies publish them, with the source agency, series identifier, source URL, observation period and retrieval date carried onto the page. Any calculation Live Index performs on top of them is arithmetic that a reader can reproduce from the same stored levels.
Original research states its sources, its limits and its revisions. Corrections are dated and kept permanently so that previously cited figures remain traceable.