Two Madonna fans, Michael Fellows and Jonathan Hadden, are suing the pop star for starting her New York concert late, claiming that they “had to get up early to go to work” the next morning. Fellows and Hadden bought tickets to a 13 December show at Barclays Center as part of Madonna’s Celebration tour. The show was advertised to start at 8.30pm, yet the 65-year-old musician took the stage after 10.30pm, according to the lawsuit. The concert was held on a Wednesday, the late finish on the weeknight show affected Fellows' and Hadden's ability to “take care of their family responsibilities the next day”, NBC New York reports.

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis recently said she would love to go see Coldplay "at 1 p.m." since at their usual gig time she's already tucked in. Billboard wonders if the idea od matinee rock concerts is even possible. "Most of our margin is on drinks. It’s hard to sell drinks at 1 p.m.” - says Peter Shapiro, owner of Relix magazine, as well as the Brooklyn Bowl venues in New York, Las Vegas and Nashville and a number of other clubs. The majority of ticket revenue and service fees go to the band and ticketing agencies, the headliners take home most of the night’s haul, leaving the venue to live off ancillary revenue, most of which comes from the bar. Shapiro says there is another crucial element keeping shows after dark - mystique. “You can see a show in the afternoon, but at the end of the arc of the day it works going to a show in darkness. It’s the arc of the day, the moon… rock n’ roll lives at night. It’s in the DNA of rock n’ roll

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis shared her seemingly unusual bedtime habits with 'TODAY Show' hosts - the Hollywood star revealed she's tucked in at 7PM and wakes up around 4.30 AM. Curtis is also “challenging musicians to do concerts during the day,” since the usual schedules are way to late for her. “Why are there no matinees? For instance, I love Coldplay. I would love to go see Coldplay. The problem is, I’m not gonna go see Coldplay if they start their show at nine o’clock and there’s an opening act. I want to hear Coldplay at 1PM. I think if we filled a stadium with people who want to see matinee of Colplay, I think we would start a trend.” Billboard reports...

Concerts giant Live Nation generated revenues of $16.7 billion in 2022, with the concerts business being its primary revenue driver, generating $13.5 billion in 2022. The company also says that it "invested $9.6 billion in putting on artists’ shows in 2022" and claims to be "the largest contributor to artist income".

Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour is the highest-grossing concert tour of all time - it has grossed $817.9 million across 278 shows so far, more than any other tour in Billboard Boxscore history (Ed Sheeran’s The Divide Tour made $776.4 million). Billboard has another fascinating statistic - dating back to reports for Elton John’s Ice on Fire Tour (1986), and including his share of co-headline runs with Eric Clapton, James Taylor, Tina Turner, and Billy Joel, John has grossed $1.863 billion and sold 19.9 million tickets over 1,573 reported shows. That’s the highest career gross and attendance for a solo artist in Billboard Boxscore history, having passed Bruce Springsteen and Madonna while on this tour.

"Many of the year’s most viral moments on TikTok were derived from live shows this year: Rosalía elaborately chewing gum during her song Bizcochito, Healy relentlessly touching his crotch, Gaga belting a power ballad while wearing an Edward Scissorhands-style claw and standing on a flaming stage. Perhaps these moments are reverse-engineered to go viral?" - Guardian asks about the nature of live shows. Tobias Rylander, who designed the 1975’s At Their Very Best tour, affirms the question - he says he’s always trying to put together “a show that reads well on social media”. LeRoy Bennett says that he and Lady Gaga were “absolutely” thinking about social media when designing her latest tour Chromatica Ball. Lorde and Rosalia had similar approach with their latest tours.

Music theorist Adam Neely takes a left turn in his latest video talking about musical gear. His band Sungazer had built a custom in-ear monitor system in order to avoid troubles with bad sound engineers. What also changed is the way they play. The Wednesday Night Titans drummer had told them - "You play like you can hear yourself".

"First, many artists could not tour this year due to a variety of factors, including inflation, high gas costs, supply-chain shortages, overbooked music venues, and poor mental health... Second, a much smaller number of artists this year... found that touring for the industry’s top one-percent is almost too viable, in that the shadowy corporations who run the live-music business... were able to gouge consumers for hundreds (if not thousands) of extra dollars above the original face value of tickets" - Uproxx looks back to "a weird and often bad year".

Hundreds of Bad Bunny fans with tickets purchased through Ticketmaster for his sold-out concert in Mexico City Friday night were denied entry to the venue, the 80,000+ capacity Estadio Azteca, when security claimed that numerous people had fake, duplicated tickets, or canceled tickets. Ticketmaster apologized to ticket-holders, claiming an “unprecedented” number of false tickets overwhelmed their systems, legitimate ticket-holders were denied entry, and that refunds would be provided to ticket-holders if their electronic records showed they were unable to enter the stadium.  Ticketmaster’s system reported tickets that were duplicated or falsified, and to “guarantee the safety” of attendees, all of those tickets were canceled. Images from the concert on social media depicted large swaths of empty seats at the sold-out show. Vulture reports on the issue. Recently, Ticketmaster had to cancel the public on-sale date for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems” and an insufficient number of remaining tickets.

"Gig-going has become kind of… chaotic recently. Audience members heckling artists with crude comments, people playing games on their phones mid-performance for TikTok clout, fans bombarding artists with objects (yes, literal objects) – unhinged behaviour at live shows seems to have become commonplace. Expected, even. So what gives?" - Vice tries to find some answers.