Live Music Industry News: Rapinio Testifies, StubHub, Bandsintown, More

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino is testifying Thursday as the antitrust trial continues with the States in the lead.

In the early morning hours a request was made to redact an exhibit that will be shown. Judge Subramanian will decide if Rapino's share ownership - the company's largest - should be shared wit the jury.

The States also announced that they will rest their case "next Wednesday - much shorter than the DOJ had planned.

Inner City Press is live tweeting the trial here.

32 States Still Battling Live Nation

Based on Wednesday's filings, the 32 states along with the District of Columbia actively continuing the Live Nation antitrust suit after the controversial Department of Justice settlement are: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Commonwealth of Virginia, District of Columbia, State Of Connecticut, State Of New York, State of Arizona, State of California, State of Colorado, State of Florida, State of Illinois, State of Indiana, State of Kansas, State of Louisiana, State of Maryland, State of Michigan, State of Minnesota, State of Nevada, State of New Hampshire, State of New Jersey, State of New Mexico, State of North Carolina, State of Ohio, State of Oregon, State of Rhode Island, State of South Carolina, State of Tennessee, State of Texas, State of Utah, State of Vermont, State of Washington, State of Wisconsin, State of Wyoming.

Bandsintown at SXSW 2026

On Thursday at SXSW 2026, a live recording of the podcast Making a Mind Live podcast: When AI Agents Leave the Lab featured AI experts from Amazon and Bandsintown discussing the gap between AI theory and real-world behavior.

The Panelists: Michael Reiczyk, Bandsintown; Danielle Perszyk, Amazon; Michael Giannangeli, Amazon and Amanda Doerr, Amazon.

The episode will be available in coming days here on YouTube and your favorite podcast platform.

On Wednesday, Bandsintown's Fabrice Sergent led Why Music Platforms Care About Live Music exploring the growing relationship between music streaming and concert discovery. Joining him were Abbie Riley of Spotify, Jamie Loeb of Nederlander Concerts, and Ali Rivera from YouTube. Full Hypebot coverage here.

StubHub launches Distribution Manager

StubHub announced the launch of StubHub Distribution Manager, an AI-powered self-serve tool that lets artists, teams, and venues list and manage official tickets directly on its global marketplace.

Distribution Manager is the first product built on top of StubHub's Open Distribution model, which the company has been scaling over the past 18 months.

ROSTR 2.0 Launches

The week's launch of music industry database and news site ROSTR 2.0 unifies what were previously separate tools into a single platform, combining contacts, directories, job listings, artist analytics, and industry news into one streamlined system. More details here.