concert

The Bernabéu was facing a financial disaster after the concert fiasco. So he has converted to tennis

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The Bernabéu will convert its retractable grass into clay courts for training at the Mutua Madrid Open 2026. The move is possible thanks to the engineering of the stadium renovation, which has invested more than 1.3 billion euros, and the gap in events left by Real Madrid’s calendar. It is also the latest expression of an ambition that has been colliding with neighbors and noise limits for years. What’s going to happen? From April 23 to 30, the Santiago Bernabéu will stop being a soccer field and become several clay courts. The best tennis players on the circuit (among others, Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek) will train at the Real Madrid stadium during the first week of competition of the Mutua Madrid Open 2026, which begins on April 20 at the Caja Mágica. The Bernabéu will be a minute’s drive from the players’ hotel. The information, advanced by The New York Timesmarks the arrival at the stadium of a sport that Florentino Pérez has been fooling around with for years. How to do it. All this is possible thanks to retractable pitch system installed during the remodeling of the stadium, completed at the end of 2023. The field is divided into six trays measuring 107 by 11.67 meters, each weighing approximately 1,500 tons, which are moved by 24 transport carts and stored in the hypogeum: a 30-meter-deep underground greenhouse equipped with growth lamps and air conditioning systems that keep the grass in optimal condition. The entire process takes approximately six hours. Once the grass is stored, the concrete base is free to install any other surface, such as clay for tennis. It is the same mechanism that allowed us to host the first NFL game in Spain last November. 1.1 billion does not pay for itself. The conversion into a multifunctional stadium is not Florentino’s whim, although he tries to sell us that it has always been a personal dream, as we explain below. The renovation of the Bernabéu has cost, after chaining up to three loans, around 1,100 million euros. Football is not enough. Real Madrid plays around twenty home games per season, which leaves the stadium empty more than three hundred days a year. The strategy is to fill those days with events that generate additional income, following the model already practiced by facilities such as SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles or Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. The club surpassed €1.2 billion in annual revenue in 2023-24 in part thanks to this diversification. AND as we counted at the timethe large Spanish stadiums are looking for new sources of income: Athletic is studying options with San Mamés, Betis is working on Villamarín, Barcelona has just invested 1,450 million in the Camp Nou. They all look for the same thing: that the business does not depend on those 19 or 20 game nights a year. Dreaming since 2019. In the general assembly of Real Madrid that yearthe club president explained that injuries had frustrated several attempts to organize an exhibition match between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer at the Bernabéu. Pérez had been thinking about the idea for some time. Federer retired in 2022, Nadal in 2024, and the match never came. But the link with tennis remains intact: Nadal has declared on several occasions his desire to preside over the club one dayand Alcaraz, number one in the world, is a declared Madrid fan. The first team players frequently appear in the boxes of the Caja Mágica during the tournament. That the Bernabéu now hosts the training of the circuit’s great figures is, at least, the modest and executable version of that effort by Florentino Pérez that was never fulfilled. Previous setbacksand how to solve them. The plan to turn the Bernabéu into an events machine has had a serious setback: the concerts. Since the inauguration of the stadium as a music venue in April 2024, the residents of Chamartín complaints about noise levels accumulated which sometimes exceeded 85 decibels, when the municipal ordinance establishes a maximum of 53. The City Council processed sanctions for a total of 2.6 million euros between April and December 2024. In September 2024, Real Madrid suspended the concerts scheduled until early 2025, and the complaint by the Association of People Injured by the Bernabéu is still ongoing. The situation ended up expelling artists like AitanaLola Índigo or Dellafuente from the stadium. On the other hand, tennis training does not generate this problem: a group of tennis players training in a stadium without 80,000 attendees in the surrounding streets is, acoustically, an activity of another category. For the club, it is also a way to demonstrate that diversification is possible without raising eyebrows. In Xataka | Shakira is not convinced by any stadium in Madrid to close her world tour. So he’s going to build his own

the concert industry is unleashed

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Shakira will close her world tour in Spain with a temporary stadium built specifically for her by Live Nation and which will be called Shakira Stadium. It is not the first time it has happened (Adele did it in Munich in 2024) but the phenomenon speaks of something deeper: the live industry has entered a phase in which mainstream artists do not adapt to existing venues. Rather, the enclosures adapt to them. When he said it. Was in the RTVE program ‘Al cielo con ella’broadcast on March 15: will close its world tour in Spain with this exclusive stadium. The artist stated that “it was going to be something from another world, a production that I think has not been seen before in Spain.” Without revealing dates or location, he confirmed that there will be more than two nights of concerts, a kind of residency. Among the possible locations there are means that They point out the Iberdrola Music in Villaverde, the same space where Mad Cool is celebrated. Continuing success. Shakira is right now one of the main Latin artists in the world. His Women No Longer Cry World Tour has collected 421.6 million dollars and sold 3.3 million tickets in almost a hundred concerts: it is the highest-grossing Latin tour in history, surpassing the Luis Miguel Tour 2023-24 that held the previous record. The tour started in February 2025 in Rio de Janeiro and has toured Latin America, the United States and Canada. The leg on the other side of the Atlantic, stopping in the Middle East, India and Egypt before reaching Spain, will close the tour. Come on, the Shakira Stadium is more than justified. The precedent: Adele. In August 2024, Adele performed ten times at the Adele Arenaa temporary enclosure built on the grounds of the Messe München in thirty days. It took 700 workers to build it and it had a capacity for 80,000 people. Total attendance was around 730,000 spectators. A 220-meter LED screen crowned an infrastructure whose total cost was estimated about 130 million dollars. The advantages. What characterizes This type of stage on conventional stadiums is the scale: a conventional touring stage is 60 meters wide, Adele’s was 220. “The fact of not having to tour the show means that the scale can be much larger,” explained production director Malcolm Birkett. Significantly, Adele’s promoter was also Live Nation. The stadium also included Adele World: a perimeter ring with an amusement park, a replica of a London pub and additional performances. It is likely that Shakira will set up comparable facilities. The “staging” of the live. To understand why something like the Shakira Stadium happens, you have to follow the music industry over the last fifteen years. When the streaming revenue from the sale of physical formats sank, live streaming emerged as the economic core of the business. Today, that process is completely consolidated: the global live music market has an annual growth rate of 8.78%. Live Nation alone reported $23 billion in revenue in 2024, and 151 million attendees at its events. In Spain, the Association of Music Promoters billed only with tickets 725.6 million euros in 2024, 25.32% more than the previous year. This growth has a very specific architecture. As we told at the time1% of artists generate 60% of revenue from live performances. The average ticket price of the top 100 tours rose more than 20% between 2022 and 2024. The market is growing, but is concentrated. Dynamic prices, VIP packages and Ticketmaster commissions have turned big concerts into luxury goods. The barrier to entry is increasingly higher for the public, and the losers are also the artists who do not have the capacity to fill stadiums. The logic of the own stadium. And so we have things like the Shakira Stadium. When the artist doesn’t need to move the stage between cities, he can build something that would be impossible to fit into a traveling tour. The investment is enormous, but the concentration of the public in a single point for several nights allows it to be amortized. And it’s worth keeping in mind, too, that Live Nation, whose business practices are being investigated It is the only company in the business with the capacity to execute it on this scale. In Xataka | We Spaniards have stopped watching TV, going to the cinema and reading books: the only thing that interests us is going to concerts

Mariah Carey has unleashed a schism at a concert in Singapore

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Although she no longer appears on the front page of the news as she did in the nineties, Mariah Carey continues to attract the world’s attention, especially as Christmas approaches. However, a concert recent event in Singapore sparked some controversy among the public: can you listen to ‘Fantasy’ without getting up to move your hips or is it materially impossible? Mariah moment. Mariah Carey’s favorite dates are approaching. Christmas is inaugurated by the diva as soon as Halloween passes, and with this she begins to add reproductions of her ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You‘ until reaching milestones like the one a year ago, becoming lMost played Christmas song in Spotify history. A couple of days ago he received the award for MusiCares Person of the Year for his philanthropic work. But it’s not all good news. Also a few days ago, without going any further, there was a brawl at one of his concerts in Singapore. What happened. The International Business Times website account that a Mariah Carey concert in Singapore held on October 8, 2025 as part of her The Celebration of Mimi tour, went viral after some attendees they will count on social networks what had happened there. In them they were seen arguing with other spectators about whether they should remain seated, as most of the theater where the concert was taking place, or could get up to dance, applaud and sing the songs. Zombies with Mariah. At the event held at the Arena @ Expo Singapore there were 6,600 people, but unlike what is usual at a concert in Europe or the United States, the attendees remained seated. This caused some users, such as the tiktoker @advlogss called the audience “Zombi” for remaining impassive before the diva’s repertoire. Another user of the social network, @sha_nikitarelates: “there was a lady behind us saying ‘You have to sit down! It’s a sit-down concert!’ Different forms of enjoyment. What happened is that cultural differences between the inhabitants of Singapore, where the public tends to behave more reservedly than in the West, and people from other backgrounds collided, which, as can be seen in the videos, was the case of those who broke with tradition. On Singapore news website ‘The New Paper’ They explain it perfectly: A British security guard who has been working in the country for years, Joe Borg, claims to understand both sides. “I would understand if some people were upset because they couldn’t see the concert,” he says. According to Borg, concert-goers in Singapore are less likely to participate due to “less alcohol consumption and rowdiness” than in other countries. The respect is very nice. There’s another interviewee in ‘The New Paper’, a K-pop fan called Ms Tay, who says there are “appropriate times to sit down and times to stand up.” She has worked as an usher at concerts, and can therefore attest that banners and glow sticks can be “annoying” when they block the view of others. And in fact, he has even seen people stand on chairs just to see better. In our book of concert etiquette, that crosses several boundaries. ​ In Xataka | Spanish stadiums are desperately looking for money, and it is not on a whim. 19 business days a year are no longer enough

Will Smith’s last concert has resulted in enormous public success. Public made with ia

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Will Smith has been harshly criticized for publishing A promotional video of your tour in which the public, instead of being real, seems to have been generated or altered by artificial intelligence, showing details that are usually common in videos of this type. It is not the last controversy linked to AI, which seems to be impacting unexpected ways in the music industry. What Smith is, in fact, only one more than a gigantic phenomenon that is changing entertainment. False people. The video, shared on the official social networks of Will Smith (and that at the moment remains without withdrawing), promotes his tour ‘Based on a True Story’ and shows fans absolutely delivered in his performances. The visual anomalies were quickly detected by the commentators of the video: with blurred faces to the classic hands of six fingers, alien expressions or mutations of horror film. It is undoubtedly a curious decision at this point in Will Smith’s career, which delves into the authentic Public Relations Nightmare that the star is living. 27 Spotify tricks – Control your whole music like nobody! Since 2022 in free fall. Will Smith has been in an authentic image crisis that started when He glued a slap to chick rock at the Oscar ceremony. Since then, and despite some blockbuster such as ‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’, his career is a real succession of ups and downs. After a decade without publishing music has edited an album that has gone unnoticed, despite his clear attempt that nostalgia for times where his image was impoluta plays in his favor. Such controversial decisions (and on the other hand, easily avoidable) as it prevents him from recovering control of the narrative of his career. The AI ​​in front of the music industry. A few weeks ago we talked about how, while real groups were from Spotify To show their disagreement with the investments of the CEO of the platform, they began to emerge false groups created by artificial intelligence. It is, again, a relevant detail in a sector of the entertainment industry that is increasingly influenced by the overwhelming presence of the IAS: It is estimated That by 2028, the music generated by AI could represent up to 60% of the income of the musical sector and 20% of the total reproductions on streaming platforms. AI in the composition. More and more, the tools managed by AI are part of the creative processes: Boomy and Jukebox allow to create music from text descriptions, but the processes are not exempt from controversy. In a recent interview, the young American rapper Babychiet recognized that composing chatgpt: introduce some initial clues on the platform about the song theme and then ask the AI ​​to develop from there. The controversy between those who defend that this process removes the human component to the songs and those who defend it as a legitimate tool is served. More false groups, more false albums. The group generated by AI that we commented above was The Velvet Slown, a folk band whose image and music was entirely created artificially, and adds millions of views. But this situation is acquiring new nuances: the British folk singer Emily Portman discovered in her official Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms profile A false album called ‘orca‘Composed of ten songs generated by artificial intelligence and that imitated his voice and musical style in a completely reliable way. Spotify has taken three weeks to eliminate the album from its profile, with the consequent criticism of real artists to the platform. It is another use of AI, not quite legitimate, to which we can get used to. Will Smith’s false public is easily identifiable, but … and when is it not? In Xataka | The problem is no longer that Spotify has been filled with artists AI: is that AI is “reviving” dead musicians

More than 2.5 million people have attended a concert by Lady Gaga. It is not excellent news for music

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If someone wondered if THE FIASCO AT CUP OF ‘JOKER: Folie à Deux’ I was going to have a negative impact on Lady Gaga’s career, this weekend the artist has been in charge of demonstrating that she has not been beating a worldwide record: about two and a half million peopleaccording to sources from Lady Gaga, they gathered in Rio de Janeiro for a direct artist. It is the largest amount of audiences ever gathered for a female singer, thus exceeding the figure that Madonna had previously held with 1.6 million people. Free abracadabra. The artist played on the beach of Copacabana before these two and a half million spectators, and came to thank the presence of the crowd live. In the previous days, the fever by the singer, who has been preparing the event since last Tuesday, has taken over Brazil. Lady Gaga had been seen for the territory for 12 years, and took the opportunity to review all her great successes, including some of her last supervants, ‘Mayhem’. After being a sign in Coachella and giving this historic concert, the singer addresses Singapore. Shortly after the world tour will begin to promote his latest album. More macroconcientes. The echo that Lady Gaga’s concert has had nothing strange: the macroconciente is, paradoxically, The new music expression unit. Media mastodon with a media deployment only within reach of the largest and that are the musical equivalent of Marvel’s-evidence. Its profitability is beyond doubt: in Spain in 2024, live music entered 25.32% more than the previous year, 725.6 million euros. This upward traction is only possible in terms of great events and concerts in giant enclosures. The authentic business. We can jump to a global scale: According to Pollstar dataonly the 100 most successful tours in the world (that is, all macroconcientes) reached a joint collection of 9.5 billion dollars. If we take into account that the music industry globally billed 29.6 billion dollars in 2024we can get an idea of ​​how important this part of the business is: practically a third of the total. Let’s add another nuance: in 2023, concerts and macroconcientes They generated 304 million euros in Spainbut its real economic impact was 2.2 billion euros. The figures are multiplied in proportion to global scale, and it is understood why the industry is interested in supporting the great events, however expensive they are. The roller of the macroconciente. Macrofestivals and macroconcierts have become a completely autonomous monster and outside the industry movements. Undoubtedly, this new normality of the industry has affected, above all, the smallest concerts and the most modest proposals. As Cruz saysauthor of the ‘macrofestival’ essay, “the penalty is that the possibility of enjoying live music is only in enclosures with 40,000 people, video screens, overlapping groups. We should be able to have other ways to consume live music because I believe that this does not generate public for music, but in any case for more festivals.” More money does not imply growth. Or said with figures, Pollstar numbers of 2024 they throw a paradox. While concert revenues increased by number 8.7 % compared to the same period of 2023 and the number of shows increased by 16.7 %, which suggested an expanding industry, that growth is not uniform. On the other hand, the average gross income per show fell 6.9 % and the average number of tickets sold by show decreased by 14.9 % (what does this mean: that in a year the tickets have risen notoriously at the price). Obstacles for the rooms. All these figures point to a domination of macroeventos and macroconciertes in the musical panorama. And it is not necessary to go to the specific numbers: in Madrid, institutional efforts are turned into the Reopening of Santiago Bernabeu and in a fight with Barcelona to see who organizes the most gigantic event. Meanwhile, legislation for small rooms and events is extremely demandingwith very noticeable capacity limitations, and the most modest concert organizers find continuous obstacles to access specific subsidies or to guarantee the survival of their businesses. The artist loses. The artists themselves in groups not only small (who often have to pay rates for the rental of concert rooms), but of medium impact and sometimes international reach, they lose with the comparison. British Kate Nash talked about how after a medium -sized room tour I could lose 50,000 pounds. A few weeks ago, the group of Wales the peasants! He took off the costs of turning out of his country, and no matter how successful they had, the accounts They hardly square. The Spaniards Viva Belgrade talked about how La Riviera and Tokyo Salas filled and They couldn’t live from music. They are just some examples that give away a situation that may not be reversed. The monster of the macroconciertes devours the most modest scene, and it is not so much a popular impact problem (two and a half million people!) Or income for the industry, but of something so simple and essential for the survival of music as there are still groups that compose new songs, and that make the medium beyond the castle of fireworks. Header | Ralph_ph – Peter e In Xataka | Taylor Swift has already released 34 editions from his latest album. OBJECTIVE: Never abandon success lists

Turn it into the 3D concert spotify

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The company specialized in immersive technology Infinite reality has won the fat prize: Napster It is now her property, after paying for her a price of 207 million dollars. And has ambitious plans: compete with the rest of the platforms of streaming contributing to the panorama one of the things that the company knows best, virtual concerts in 3D. Goodbye, old Napster. Any Internet user that combs gray hair (something that is detected, for example, in the use of the word “Internet user”) will remember the times of Napster, Soulseek and other primal P2P platforms. Napster was especially controversial for becoming a Turk’s head of the increasingly popular Internet of the beginning, and for facing a music industry that had not yet discovered how to obtain benefits from digital. Metallica, Madonna and Dr. Dre sued Napster in 2000, who had to declare himself in bankruptcy in 2002. Hello, new napster. The Napster brand lived different reincarnations And it has gone through very diverse hands. Perhaps the Best Buy technology store chain is the best known, although it did not last long under its wing: In 2011 he sold it to Rhapsodyanother platform of streaming that he was looking for an already known name to expand his business. In recent years, Napster has grown up as a service of streaming Legal, Spotify style: it is available in 34 countries and has a catalog of 110 million songs. Infinite reality arrives. The purchase of this company Specialized in immersive technology Its objective is to turn Napster into “a social music platform that prioritizes the active participation of fans on passive listening”, and with more accentuated social network dyes than in competitors such as Spotify: Napster will allow artists to “connect with their fans, as well as appropriate and monetize their relationship with them.” Some ideas that Infinite reality manages are the creation of official 3D virtual spaces for virtual concerts, premiere parties, sale of merchandising and entries and general attention to the public through artificial intelligence. Some doubts. Infinite reality entrance to the Napster business lands with its own list of doubts: the main one, how you plan to stand all these innovations on the platform, and if it makes sense. The creation of virtual spaces can be attractive to some users (and above all, for some investors), but also complex and strange for others. Recall that the current CEO of the company, Jon Vlassopulos, reached the position in 2022 after managing the part linked to the music industry of Robloxa millionaire company but whose attempts to create a massive cultural metavers They have not set at all. Are we facing a new chapter of “Llamazares in Second Life“ General obscurantism. There are even more doubts in the operation, not so practical. For example, the economic viability of the project: Infinite reality has raised three million dollars In an investment round, but it has not clarified where that money comes from. In addition, the implementation of AI and expanded reality are very ambitious and can run into the obstacle of adoption by the music industry, not characterized precisely by how quickly the turns of one hundred eighty degrees in the business (Napster’s primal history in the year 2000 is, in fact, the best example). In Xataka | What is Rokk, the new alternative to Spotify for rock and metal lovers that focuses on paying more and better artists

Gloria Trevi fan grabs her by the neck at live concert

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During a vibrant concert within the framework of the León Fair, Gloria Trevi He starred in an unexpected moment that left his fans perplexed. While interacting with the public, a follower grabbed the singer by the neck, creating a scene that quickly went viral on social networks. As can be seen in a TikTok video, everything happened when Trevi, true to his approachable and charismatic style, decided to approach the attendees to greet them and take photographs. However, the gesture became uncomfortable when A woman, visibly excited, broke the security barrier to try to hug her aggressively. The incident, captured by those present, shows how the fan forcefully grabs the performer, causing her to stagger momentarily. The security team reacted immediately, separating the woman from the artist to prevent the situation from escalating. The event highlights the challenges of direct interaction between celebrities and their fans, reminding us of the importance of maintaining respect in this type of encounter. Although Trevi maintained his composure and continued with his presentation, the episode generated a wave of reactions among his followers. On platforms such as TikTok and Twitter, users were quick to express their outrage at the fan’s behavior. “That’s why artists behave the way they do and then criticize them”, “And it is because of that type of ‘fans’ that they always bring their safety”wrote some users, while others described the act as “disastrous” and a lack of respect. Despite the incident, the night continued, and the Trevi delighted attendees with a show full of energy and emotion. Among those present, figures such as Wendy Guevara, a well-known admirer of the singer, highlighted the artist’s dedication on stage. Keep reading:

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