Hey, y'all, it's Matt Hildreth for another episode of Goodskews.

Today's good news. Live Nation's predatory grip on the live music industry is finally cracking,

and a homegrown music scene is rising up in its place.

Joining me to dig in as longtime music publicist and industry expert, Devin Leje.

We're going to talk festival season and why the corporate giants are getting pinched

and how house concerts and small town venues are quietly building up the future of live music.

Well, Devin, thanks for joining us. It's festival season. There's a lot that's happening.

Live nations in the news. Some of it's probably good news, which is good for good skews, but some of it maybe

not so good. So when you're looking at what's happening in the festival world right now and the

live music world in general, where do you start that conversation with people, especially

those that maybe aren't a part of the music industry? Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, there's a lot of doom and gloom, you know, that we keep hearing every single year.

We hear about the festival bubble bursting, you know, and the festivals are still here.

So it's kind of hard to interpret what's going on.

And the reality is that there's like some really specific forces at play here that are really kind of surprising and interesting and

maybe not what you'd expect. And they're really pushing music festivals pretty hard right now.

But, you know, I mean, I think like in terms of like the good news, bad news about music festivals

is that we're starting to see like big kind of mega corporate festivals have a hard time.

I mean, you mentioned about

Coachella that they had like the least amount of music you said for the highest ticket price

this year. Yep. So, you know, you know, these big festivals, they're not immune. They're

getting pinched pretty hard. And the problem is that when you're operating a festival like at that

level, you know, you're operating it for money right

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