Paul Tollett

Paul Tollett is president and CEO of Goldenvoice, the Los Angeles concert-promotion company he has led since buying it with a partner in 1991. He co-founded the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 1999 and has run it, alongside its country-music sibling Stagecoach and a widening slate of genre-specific festivals, ever since. Goldenvoice has operated as an AEG Presents subsidiary since AEG acquired it in 2001, and Tollett's title and remit are restated annually in Pollstar's Impact 50 series.

Coachella's 2026 edition sold out both weekends within three days of the lineup announcement, according to Pollstar, and Goldenvoice had already sold out advance passes for 2027 before any lineup was announced — evidence, reported by trade press, of the durability of demand Tollett's programming has built over more than two decades.

Tollett's authority sits specifically in festival curation and company leadership rather than in AEG's broader touring or venue businesses; Live Index records his remit as it is stated by Goldenvoice and AEG rather than extending it to functions he does not run.

Coachella functions as an industry bellwether: its booking choices, pricing and sellout pace are read across the festival business as signals for the health of the wider market. As the person who sets that programme, Tollett's decisions carry weight beyond a single event's box office.

His expansion of Goldenvoice into single-genre festivals — Stagecoach for country, Cruel World for post-punk and darkwave, Just Like Heaven and Portola for electronic and alternative audiences — has also served as a template other promoters have followed in fragmenting festival demand by genre rather than staging one general-audience event.