Pollstar (08/22/25) Eliezer, Christie

The global concert industry certainly saw its share of news last week. It was announced that a number of major U.S. acts will make their long-awaited returns in spring and early summer for two Australian festivals. Destroy All Lines’ three-city Good Things is bringing back Tool for their first festival headliner Down Under since 2011. With Australia ranked as the world's third biggest EDM market, trance event company Symbiotic has added to its list of festivals with Hypersonic set to take place Nov. 29 at Sydney Showground and Nov. 30 at Melbourne's Showgrounds. Over in New Zealand, the final speakers list for the Going Global summit on exporting New Zealand talent will see Pixie Weyand, music festival programmer at SXSW, step up to the podium on Aug. 28-29 in Auckland. Other international speakers from the live sector will include Mario Stresow of Germany's FKP Scorpio and Cindy Castillo of Spain's MadCool. Now in the books is Summer Sonic, Japan's premiere urban summer music festival, which was held simultaneously at the Zozo Marine Stadium and Makuhari Messe convention center in Tokyo and at the Expo '70 Commemorative Park in Osaka on Aug. 16-17. Both venues were sold out and benefited from a pre-festival Friday night rave featuring everyone from The Prodigy to Floating Points. The weekend's headliners on the main stages were Fall Out Boy and Alicia Keys. Finally, Oasis has upset some of its Asian fans with a promotional gambit for its ongoing tour. This time, the offense was felt by Koreans after the band released a new "visualizer" for its hit song "Morning Glory" that includes an oft-repeated image of a sun radiating light. Korean fans were reminded of the rising sun flag that the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy used during their brutal occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

Read the full story from Pollstar.