festival creator Jeff Shuman has resigned from Live Nation, abruptly ending a successful three-year run for the 40-year-old in which he launched six music festival brands and battled with rival promoter (also Shu) Mann’s former partner Goldenvoice has launched a race to conquer the hot post-pandemic small festival market.
During Live Nation’s relatively short run, Schumann created a lineup of nostalgic one-day mini-music festivals for the company, such as the nu-metal and hard rock-focused Sick New World; the R&B-focused Lovers and Friends Music Festival and Fool in Love Music Festival; and “Once Upon a Time in Los Angeles” which focuses on gangster rap.
The events are part of Live Nation’s highly successful push into smaller festivals at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, generating tens of millions of dollars in sales for Live Nation. Schumann briefly became the company’s most successful concert promoter, often beating AEG’s Goldenvoice to Los Angeles turf.
(Neither Live Nation nor Schumann responded to messages seeking comment for this article.)
But Schumann has frequently clashed with company officials and faced several costly cancellations in recent months, including a May Valentine’s and Friends Festival in Las Vegas that was shut down due to dangerous winds. The cost of the cancellation, combined with lower-than-expected ticket sales for Fool in Love and Bésame Mucho, a Latin music festival scheduled for December at Dodger Stadium, ultimately led to Schumann’s exit.
“He’s a complicated man,” said a Live Nation executive who declined to speak publicly. “He was very private, basically a ghost, and you never saw or heard from him unless he threw a grenade in the room. He wasn’t afraid to pick a fight with anyone, and ultimately didn’t have many allies. .
Schumann will book dozens, sometimes hundreds, of artists for his genre-specific mini-festivals, curating nostalgia-filled lineups with artists like Usher or System of a Down. Featuring My Chemical Romance and Paramore, the inaugural When We Were Young festival in 2022 focused on late 2000s emo, punk and alternative music, with 68 bands performing in front of more than 60,000 fans in one day. The single-day event was initially scheduled for October 22, 2022, then repeated on October 23, 2022, and then again on October 29, 2022.
Tickets for “When We Were Young” ranged from $225 to $325 and generated more than $50 million in ticket sales over three days, far exceeding expectations. But festival businesses are extremely vulnerable to severe weather, and a few hours of dangerous wind, rain or high temperatures can cause event cancellations. These cancellations can trigger customer chargebacks, artist cancellation fees, and expensive lawsuits that can quickly eat into profits, even if they are partially covered by event cancellation insurance.
Since joining Live Nation, Schumann has had several weather cancellations, including the expensive cancellation of the 2024 Valentine’s Day.
As ticket prices rise, Schumann’s event sales also slow – the 2024 “When We Were Young” festival themed “My Chemical Romance” sold out on its first day on October 19, but 10 There are still plenty of tickets available for sale on the 19th. GA tickets for this year’s festival start at $336 (plus fees), GA+ tickets are $521 (plus fees), and VIP tickets are $618. This is an increase from 2023, when GA tickets were $249.99 (including fees), GA+ tickets were $419.99, and VIP tickets were $519.99.
It’s unclear where Schumann will go next, but it’s likely he won’t return to Goldenvoice. . Shuman’s exit from Goldenvoice was reportedly due to a series of financial disagreements that led to a feud between the two parties, sparking a rivalry when he left for Live Nation.
“The fact that he quit AEG and Live Nation means he doesn’t have a lot of options,” said a source who has worked at both companies. “There were other companies that put on music festivals, but Jeff had a budget of $8 to $12 million for each of his festivals, and it was hard for him to find people who could write those kinds of checks.”
