Live music in Spain recorded revenues of €807.2 million (more than $930 million) from ticket sales in 2025, according to the 2026 Yearbook of the Association of Musical Promoters (APM). This figure represents an increase of 11.24% compared to the previous year and builds on the growth registered in 2024, when the sector exceeded €725 million ($836 million).

The report attributes this result to an increase in the offering of concerts and festivals, as well as the consolidation of large-scale formats, particularly in high-capacity venues. According to the document, this growth coexists with structural challenges such as administrative processes, differences in criteria across territories and the impact of ticket reselling on the perception of ticket prices.

Beyond musical activity, the report highlights the impact of live events on sectors such as tourism, hospitality and commerce. In this vein, the APM has begun developing a national economic impact report to provide data for dialogue with administrations.

Geographically, the Community of Madrid regained the top spot with revenues of €237.1 million (29.4%), followed by Catalonia, with €163.2 million (20.2%) and Andalusia with €108.7 million (13.5%), which, despite remaining in third place, recorded a 6.4% drop in annual revenue.

In the national tours category, Joaquín Sabina topped the ranking with Hola y Adiós (The Project, Get In, Riff), selling 383,633 tickets across 41 concerts, all of which were sold out. He was followed by Manuel Carrasco with Tour Salvaje (Riff), which sold 367,256 tickets across 31 shows, and Antonio Orozco with “La Gira de Mi Vida” (Clipper’s Music Group), with 170,378 tickets across 32 concerts.

Meanwhile, Aitana became the first woman to enter the top 10 of the national ranking with her Metamorfosis Season tour (GTS, Clipper’s Music Group), which sold 153,198 tickets across three concerts. The report also notes that several artists surpassed 50,000 tickets sold per concert, concentrating demand on a limited number of dates.

In the international artists category, Ed Sheeran led the ranking with 137,884 tickets sold across two concerts in Madrid (Mercury Wheels @ Live Nation), followed by Imagine Dragons (Live Nation) with 112,419 tickets and AC/DC (Gay Mercader/Live Nation) with 103,946. Festivals also represented a significant portion of live music activity in 2025, according to the report. Among cycle festivals, Icónica Santalucía Sevilla Fest (Seville, Green Cow Music) led with 276,601 tickets sold across 28 dates, followed by Marenostrum Fuengirola (Fuengirola, Fox Group) with 191,573 tickets across 35 concerts and Noches del Botánico (Madrid, Serious Fan Music) with 185,753 attendees across 50 dates.

In the macro-festivals segment, Arenal Sound (Burriana, The Music Republic) remained the largest event with 300,000 attendees, followed by Primavera Sound Barcelona (Barcelona, Primavera Sound) with 297,000 and Viña Rock (Villarrobledo, The Music Republic) with 240,000. With these results, live music in Spain surpassed €700 million in revenue for the second consecutive year and reached a new record of over €800 million, according to the APM report.

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Big names such as Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, BLACKPINK’s JENNIE, KATSEYE, Morgan Wallen and more are nominated for the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards, making the award show one to watch.

The show, hosted by Ludacris, is set to air live Thursday, March 26, at 8 p.m. ET (PT tape-delayed) on Fox, and will take place in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theater. Swift is set to make a special appearance and is leading nominations with nine, followed closely by Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter and Alex Warren with eight each. Swift is the most decorated artist in iHeart’s award show history with 34 awards to her name. She is also the only singer to win Song of the Year twice, for tracks “Shake It Off” in 2015 and “Anti-Hero” in 2023. Other artists set to perform throughout the night include Alex Warren, Lainey Wilson, Ludacris, RAYE, TLC, Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue.

2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards at a Glance

Categories to watch include song of the year with nominees such as Doechii, Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift, Alex Warren, and album of the year with hard-hitters including Bad Bunny, Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, Morgan Wallen, Sabrina Carpenter, Tate McRae and Taylor Swift. We’ve got some big names on the nominees list as mentioned, along with intense fan-voted categories such as favorite TikTok dance, favorite Broadway debut, favorite K-pop collab and favorite tour style, just to name a few. The 11 fan categories can still be voted on via iHeart Radio’s website.

How to Watch the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards Online for Free

As mentioned, the 2026 iHeart Radio Music Awards will air live on Fox Thursday, March 26, at 8/7c. There are multiple ways you can tune into the show for free. Keep reading to find out more.

DIRECTV

If you’re looking to tune into the show, consider DIRECTV. The service’s ENTERTAINMENT package, giving you access to Fox, as well as ESPN Unlimited and over 130 channels all in one neat package. This package is currently $89.99 per month. If you’re unsure about committing to a new subscription, you can simply try the service out for free for five days.

Sling Blue

For those looking to watch the award show, Sling Blue is another option that includes Fox. The service costs $45.99 a month and includes 40-plus channels along with Fox such as CNN, TNT, NFL Network, Bravo, NBC and more. With your subscription, you’ll have access to the holiday special, along with all the live sports and news you could ever want. Unfortunately, Sling Blue does not have a free trial option.

Fubo

Another way to watch the award show via Fox is on Fubo, which has a five-day free trial available here. Fubo’s package includes free DVR so you can record the show to watch all the greatest moments back on-demand. Continue with one of Fubo’s streaming deals or cancel before your free trial is up to avoid being charged. See details here.

Hulu + Live TV

Another option for our readers is a Hulu + Live TV subscription, given that Fox is included in the live TV channel lineup. The service’s live package includes major networks along with MTV, like ABC, NBC and more for all your live TV viewing needs. A subscription to the service (with ads) will cost $89.99 per month, while the plan without ads goes for $99.99 per month.

This subscription gives you access to the titles in Hulu’s library, along with live TV programs 24/7. This is one of the more pricey plans on our list. However, the bundle is well worth the price, thanks to the added Hulu titles, which include music-themed shows and movies.

More About the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards

Big names like Olympian Alysa Liu, Ne-Yo, Nicole Scherzinger, Nikki Glaser, Sombr, Weezer, and more will make appearances at the ceremony. Ludacris will receive the 2026 iHeartRadio Landmark Award, while Miley Cyrus will be honored with the 2026 iHeartRadio Innovator Award and Alex Warren will receive the 2026 iHeartRadio Breakthrough Artist of the Year Award. Folk and rock artist John Mellencamp, otherwise known as Johnny Cougar,  with the 2026 iHeartRadio Icon Award. Other recipients of the Icon Award include Mariah Carey in 2025, Cher in 2024, Pink in 2023, Jennifer Lopez in 2022, Elton John in 2021 and Bon Jovi in 2018.

Paul McCartney is going back to the start on his upcoming 18th studio album, the nostalgic The Boys of Dungeon Lane. The 14-track collection announced on Thursday morning (March 26) is due out on May 29 through MPL/Capitol Records and is prefaced by the wistful first single, “Days We Left Behind.”

McCartney’s first release since 2020’s McCartney III is described in a press release as a look backward at the former Beatle’s formative years, revisiting those youthful times that “shaped not only his life, but the very foundations of modern popular culture. In a career defined by timeless storytelling and unforgettable characters, Paul now tells the most personal story of all, his own. The Boys of Dungeon Lane is his most introspective album to date and takes the listener back to where it all began.”

The proof is in the lyrics to “Days We Left Behind,” a gentle acoustic ballad on which McCartney sings, “Looking back at white and black/ Reminders of my past/ Smoky bars and cheap guitars/ Nothing ever stays/ Nothing comes to mind/ No one can erase/ The days we left behind.” The album’s title is also a youthful Easter egg, a reference to the road from the singer’s native Liverpool to the Speke shoreline in the region that McCartney grew up in.

The release says the songs find McCartney, 83, in a “candid, vulnerable and deeply reflective mood,” writing with “rare openness” about his childhood in postwar Liverpool, as well as the resilience of his parents and the early adventures he shared with future Beatles bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison years before the group changed the course of pop culture. And, in a throwback to his 1970 solo debut, McCartney and its 1980s sequel, McCartney II, the upcoming LP is credited solely to McCartney, who played the majority of the instruments on the album.

 “This is very much a memory song for me,” McCartney said in a statement. “The album title, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, comes from a lyric in this track. I was thinking just that, about the days I left behind and I do often wonder if I’m just writing about the past but then I think how can you write about anything else? It’s just a lot of memories of Liverpool. It involves a bit in the middle about John and Forthlin Road which is the street I used to live in. Dungeon Lane is near there. I used to live in a place called Speke which is quite working class. We didn’t have much at all but it didn’t matter because all the people were great and you didn’t notice you didn’t have much.”

The album was born five years ago when McCartney and producer Andrew Watt (Elton John, Ozzy Osbourne) met for tea and the former Beatle began noodling around on his guitar. According to the release, during that jam, McCartney happened upon a chord that he didn’t recognize and kept fiddling around until he locked into a three-chord sequence that Watt insisted they record.

The LP was then recorded with Watt in bits in Los Angeles and Sussex, England between legs of McCartney’s tours, with no label pressure or deadlines. “Like his career, The Boys of Dungeon Lane is musically eclectic and sees Paul across an array of instruments and styles showcasing his broad musicality,” according to the release, which says it swing from “Wings style rock, Beatles style harmonies, McCartney style grooves, understated intimacy, melody driven storytelling, character songs – the common thread being Paul.”

Listen to “Days We Left Behind” and check out the tracklist for The Boys of Dungeon Lane below:

The Boys of Dungeon Lane tracklist:

Last weekend, the music world was taken over by the return of BTS, the South Korean pop septet who rose to local stardom in the mid-’10s before swarming the globe over the course of the late ’10s and early ’20s. The group had been on hiatus since 2022, with its members satisfying their country’s mandatory military service requirements, but returned on Friday with Arirang, the first new BTS album since 2020 — and then just a day later, also greeted ARMY in person with a live show at Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square, livestreamed globally on Netflix as BTS The Comeback Live | Arirang.

On this Pop Star Performance Review episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard K-pop correspondent Abby Webster — who was on the scene in Seoul for the Comeback show, and also at a screening of the group’s upcoming BTS: The Return Netflix doc special — to catch up on all the happenings of BTS’ massive comeback weekend.

Along the way, we answer all the most pressing questions about the Bangtan Boys’ massively anticipated return: How are folks feeling about Arirang a few days into its release? Did the minimal rollout of content before the album’s release help or hurt anticipation for it? How do we feel about “Swim” as a lead single? What songs from the new set go off the most live? Does “Mikrokosmos” make sense as the group’s current big encore song? Should RM have gotten a better chair for his seated onstage moments? And perhaps most importantly: Does BTS still have anything left to prove at this point?

Check it out above, and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom!

And as we say in every one of these GPS podcast posts — if you have the time and money to spare, please consider donating to any of these causes in the fight for trans rights:

Transgender Law Center

Trans Lifeline

Destination Tomorrow

Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe

Human Rights Campaign – In Your Area

Billboard and Carnival Cruise Line partnered at SXSW by bringing the fun directly to the fans. To start the weekend, Carnival installed four “LOL booths” (think New York phone booths) across high foot-traffic areas including Congress, 6th Street, and outside Moody Amphitheater. Each blue and white booth featured an old-school pay phone and a joke-filled phone directory — festivalgoers picked up the receiver to hear pre-recorded jokes, and some lucky participants were randomly rewarded with upgraded VIP tickets to Sunday’s Billboard THE STAGE, tickets to comedy shows at Esther Follies, and even the chance to win a Carnival cruise.

Speaking of Esther Follies, Carnival took over the iconic comedy venue for the weekend, with branded moments throughout the space and comedy performances stacked every two hours, giving festivalgoers a place to pop in, cool off, and laugh between shows.

Over at Moody Amphitheater, Carnival fully owned the back lawn experience. Across all three nights, attendees could grab animal towel creations that doubled as blankets for the shows, cool down with chocolate and vanilla soft serve ice cream, get airbrush tattoos, and snap photos at colorful backdrops for a chance to score VIP pit upgrades. With thousands filling into the amphitheater each night, the Carnival lawn became a destination in itself — just steps away from the stage, but with its own unique energy.

Sunday night was meant to be the grand finale at Moody, but high winds had other plans. In true show-must-go-on fashion, Carnival and Billboard quickly pivoted the event to a secret location — The Concourse Project — that perfectly complimented the EDM night in store and what could have been a setback quickly turned into one of the most talked-about moments of the weekend. Refunded tickets meant the show was effectively open to everyone, and fans immediately made the move from Moody to Concourse, forming a line that stretched well beyond the block (everyone got in). Instead of losing momentum, the energy doubled — the indoor space transformed into a neon-lit late-night playground, the Carnival activations picked right back up, and the crowd that packed the room felt like they were in on a secret. It became one of those surprise, unforgettable nights — a quick pivot that only added to the fun, making it a moment fans will remember for years.

The party ran until 2 a.m., with Austin Ashtin and Apex Martin setting the tone before Mau P hit the stage close to midnight, closing out the weekend with a packed dance floor and a neon spectacle of a Sunday night.