Illinois dispensaries sold a record $127.8 million in recreational marijuana in July, with a big boost coming from out-of-state fans who converged on Chicago for the Lollapalooza music festival.

The month’s sales were 10% higher than May’s record of $116.4 million, which were slightly higher than June’s $115.6 million, according to a monthly report by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

Business boomed at Chicago-area cannabis dispensaries during the four-day Lollapalooza festival, which ended Sunday and which returned after last year’s event was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Because recreational marijuana was legalized in Illinois in January 2020, pot was legal in the state during Lollapalooza for the first time in the festival’s 30-year history. Although it’s illegal to smoke or otherwise consume the drug in public or around anyone younger than 21 years old, the large crowds at Grant Park boosted sales by as much as 50% at nearby dispensaries in River North and the West Loop, operators told the Chicago Tribune.

“We saw thousands of festivalgoers over the weekend at our River North store, making it our biggest weekend to date,” said Jason Erkes, spokesman for Chicago-based Cresco Labs, whose Sunnyside Dispensary in River North was the closest to the festivities.

In July, Illinois’ 110 dispensaries sold a record 2.8 million recreational weed products. State residents spent about $85 million, while sales to out-of-state customers topped $42 million, up 16% from June, according to the state.

“Summer tourism and the Lollapalooza attendees were strong contributors to July’s out-of-state sales,” Erkes said.

Illinois is one of 18 states that have legalized recreational marijuana use, which is still illegal under federal law. Through July, the state has generated $753 million in recreational cannabis sales, which is more than all of last year.

Total sales reached $1.03 billion last year, including $669 million in recreational weed and more than $366 million in medical marijuana sales.

Illinois has not yet released its medical marijuana sales figures for July.

LONDON – For more than a year, the U.K. live music industry has been campaigning for a government-backed insurance scheme to help festival and concert promoters get back on their feet. On Thursday (Aug. 5), those calls were finally answered when Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak unveiled a 750 million pounds ($1 billion) insurance scheme covering the cost of festival and concert cancellations resulting from COVID-19.

The “Live Events Reinsurance Scheme” enables event organizers in the United Kingdom to purchase cover for government-enforced cancellations, alongside standard commercial events insurance.

Backed by Lloyd’s market insurers Arch, Beazley, Dale, Hiscox and Munich Re, the insurance be available for a 12-month term beginning sometime in September. (The Exchequer, when contacted by Billboard, was unable to say exactly when the scheme will begin.)

The government says it is one of the only insurance schemes in the world to cover such a wide array of live events and not put a cap on costs claimed per event.

Denis Desmond, chairman of Live Nation U.K. and Ireland, says the government-backed protection is a vital intervention that “offers certainty to artists, concert and festival promoters in the live entertainment market.”

“While the new scheme won’t cover all our risk, this intervention will help protect the industry that we all know and love,” says Phil Bowdery, chairman of the Concert Promoters Association.

The program follows the establishment of similar government-backed insurance schemes in a number of other European markets, including Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, and Denmark. They provide a much-needed safety net for promoters committing non-recoupable upfront costs for future events amid the uncertainty of a pandemic.

“As the economy reopens, I want to do everything I can to help events providers and small businesses plan with confidence right through to next year,” Sunak says in a statement.

In the event of cancellations resulting from coronavirus restrictions, the government will pay between 95% and 100% of costs accrued with insurers paying the remainder. (Promoters and event organizers will need to pay an agreed excess fee, as per standard insurance deals).

While live execs unanimously welcomed the news, some expressed anger that the government didn’t step in sooner to support the country’s struggling live sector in the way it did for the film and TV industries. A 500 million pounds “Film and TV Production Restart Scheme” has been in place since July 2020 and has provided insurance cover to more than 600 independent film and TV productions to date, says the HM Treasury.

“It is devastating that the timings of this scheme could not have been earlier,” says Michael Kill, CEO of the Night Time Industries Association. He points to the large number of U.K. festivals that have been forced to cancel over the past year — many citing the lack of insurance as a determining factor.

According to the Association of Independent Festivals, more than half of all U.K. festivals scheduled to take place in 2021 have been cancelled this year because of the pandemic. Big-name casualties include Glastonbury, BST Hyde Park, Download and Kendal Calling.

Paul Reed, CEO of the Association of Independent Festivals, says the introduction of COVID-19 cancellation insurance was a positive development for the industry. But he cautioned that it doesn’t cover events needing to reduce capacity or cancel due to social distancing restrictions being reintroduced.

Nevertheless, British execs are cautiously optimistic that the tide is now turning for the beleaguered live industry and that better times are ahead.

The U.K. lifted its last remaining COVID-19 restrictions on July 19, opening the door for full-capacity shows, nightclubs, and festivals to return. Latitude Festival, held in Suffolk July 22-25 and headlined by Bastille, Bombay Bicycle Club, Wolf Alice, and The Chemical Brothers, was the first major music event to take place since the end of lockdown. It was attended by around 40,000 people as part of the COVID-19 Events Research Program.

Tentpole events scheduled to take place later this summer include the 185,000-capacity dual-site Reading and Leeds festivals headlined by Liam Gallagher, Stormzy and Post Malone, and the 70,000-capacity Creamfields, which features David Guetta, deadmau5, Alesso and Martin Garrix.

On Thursday (Aug. 5), Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Alessia Cara previewed her new song “Feel You Now” via the title sequence for the animated TV series Blade Runner: Black Lotus.

Crunchyroll and Adult Swim will launch the series later this year, which follows a young woman named Elle who wakes up in Los Angeles 2032 with no memories but with all the willpower to seek revenge on the people who wronged her as well as find her own identity.

“This little light I found/ Take it in and breathe it out/ A little drum that’s beating loud/ In my chest I hear the sound,” Cara whispers over a mysterious, heart-thumping melody that suddenly morphs into a percussion-driven electro-pop beat. “I can feel you now/ I can feel you now/ I can feel, I can feel you now.”

Cara and producer Michael Hodges co-wrote “Feel You Now,” which soundtracks Blade Runner: Black Lotus’ opening title sequence. The song will be released this fall via ASG/10:22 PM/Def Jam Recordings.

“I am so thrilled to be part of this show in any way, but I’m especially thrilled to have been able to write this song for it,” Cara says in an official statement. “To think that I made something that will be consistently attached to a show as legendary and innovative as this one feels super fulfilling. I wrote it with Michael Hodges remotely over the course of the pandemic, which is why the lyrics to ‘feel you now’ feel so striking to us. It’s not only about Elle searching for an existential understanding of what it means to be human, but also the trials we’ve all been put through in the last year and how much we relied on human connection and feeling to get us through. Michael and I both felt like it struck the right nerve in us and we’re so glad the Blade Runner team was on the same wavelength.”

Adds Hodges: “The song felt like a breath of fresh air mixed with a little hope of feeling connected again to people. Although we understand Blade Runner at its deepest levels and the nostalgia it encompasses, Alessia and my collaborators on this (co-writers Kayla Morrison, Gerald Trottman & Ghian Wright) all felt like the message of this song really connected to our current state of mind and Elle’s as well. We all need connection.”

Listen to “Feel You Now” below.