From the tape-trading trees of the 1980s to 21st century torrenting and file-sharing, Deadheads have spent decades tracking down live recordings from the Grateful Dead‘s 30-year career. In the early ’90s, the Dead themselves began officially releasing archival live recordings — and that operation has steadily grown into a commercial juggernaut, helping the band to set chart records 30 years after frontman Jerry Garcia‘s death and 60 years after its formation.

Now, Deadheads have another way to enjoy the band’s extensive live catalog. On Thursday (April 16), the live-music streaming platform nugs — home to archival recordings by artists including Bruce Springsteen, Phish and Pearl Jam — launches Play Dead, a new app dedicated to the high-resolution presentation of the Grateful Dead’s sprawling vault.

Authorized by Grateful Dead Productions and developed in conjunction with Rhino Entertainment, which has exclusively licensed the Dead’s intellectual property since 2006, Play Dead will offer high-resolution streaming of all previous archival Grateful Dead releases. This includes roughly 300 concerts, including many previously available only as physical-only releases, like the 58-volume quarterly Dave’s Picks series, launched in 2012.

Play Dead subscriptions will cost $9.99/month or $99.99/year, with other pricing options available for existing nugs subscribers and new customers interested in bundling Play Dead and nugs.

Rhino’s robust physical release schedule for Dead recordings will continue apace, with all new releases also appearing on Play Dead, but the service will also offer two new vault releases every week in perpetuity — amounting to an exponential increase in the volume of new archival releases available to Deadheads. Twenty of these previously unreleased vault recordings have gone live on Play Dead to accompany its launch.

“This is my life’s work,” says nugs founder/CEO Brad Serling, a Deadhead who launched the platform in the late ’90s. “I was born to do this. So here we are — it’s finally happening.”

It’s been a long time coming for Serling, who the Dead hired in 2000 to do a version of this. That initiative, dubbed Project Bandwagon, would have created an online distribution channel for the music of a handful of acts — including, possibly, the Dead, Dave Matthews Band, Phish and Pearl Jam — along with tie-ins for merch and ticketing. Without subscription apps, iPhones and social media, the band considered selling hard drives pre-loaded with Dead concerts, Serling says, calling the ill-fated project “a very pie-in-the-sky, very 2000, dotcom-era idea.”

But the seed was planted, and for the next two decades, as the Dead’s business operation evolved, Serling would find himself discussing the prospect of digitizing the Dead’s vault with two key players in its releases: Rhino Entertainment president Mark Pinkus and the band’s legacy manager and audio archivist David Lemieux. In January 2020, at Dead & Company’s Mexican destination festival Playing In The Sand, Serling and Pinkus began to outline what creating such a platform would look like in practice.

So, a Deadhead might ask, what’s taken so long? “What we’re embarking on now is the largest tape transfer project in the history of rock and roll, as far as I know, at least for any single band,” Serling says. The Dead’s vault contains a vast assortment of tapes — multitracks, reel-to-reels, DATs, anywhere from two to a dozen for a given show — that all require careful digitization. A decade ago, nugs partnered with a third-party company, Sonicraft, to help operationalize Springsteen’s archives for the platform; the Dead project is substantially more time-intensive.

“We thought we were going to be ready to launch it prior to the 60th [anniversary] shows,” says Pinkus, referring to Dead & Company’s August 2025 concerts in Golden Gate Park celebrating 60 years of Grateful Dead music. “As with most things in life, it takes a while to do them right.”

Doing it right has been critical for the Play Dead team. Bootlegs for many of the 2,300-plus concerts the Grateful Dead performed exist, of course, and resourceful Deadheads know where to find them. But Play Dead continues the philosophy of the band’s archival releases up to this point: deploy savvy mastering techniques to ensure official releases significantly outstrip the audio quality of the unauthorized versions floating around the internet or living on old cassettes. “This is not, ‘Let’s do quick transfers and spit them out,’” says Lemieux, adding that the fidelity is “really unlike anything you’ve heard.”

In fact, Play Dead will even surpass the audio quality the Dead’s archival customers are familiar with; the service has a minimum 24-bit, 48kHZ audio quality threshold, which exceeds the quality that can be committed to a CD. Beyond mastering unreleased recordings for future Play Dead vault releases, the Dead’s audio team, led by mastering pro David Glasser, has gone back through previous archival releases, optimizing them for the fidelity enabled by streaming. Even for listeners who have worn out their copies of the CD-only Dave’s Picks, those recordings should sound better on Play Dead.

“The music’s all over the place on the internet, but it’s not in good enough quality, and it’s not presented in a thoughtful way,” Pinkus says. “Play Dead is going to give it to you in high-res, sounding better than you’ll find it anywhere on the internet, and it’s going to be in a logical, thoughtful, fun way to listen to and interact with.”

High-resolution audio isn’t all Play Dead has to offer. The platform will support the creation and sharing of playlists, along with curated selections by Lemieux and other venerable Deadheads. Lemieux raves about the app’s interface, which helps to make a daunting amount of data navigable. Play Dead will also allow offline listening and seamlessly transition between bit rates and sample rates based on available bandwidth.

“This app is going to create a completely different experience than the joy that one gets from these physical releases,” Pinkus says.

Meanwhile, Deadheads accustomed to the band’s predictable schedule of physical releases and (still impressive) array of live recordings available on major streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify can carry on. “Play Dead will be additive,” Pinkus says, assuring that the band’s physical releases will continue as normal, and that its music won’t leave other streamers. “Play Dead will just be more music for more Deadheads.” But, he adds, those sources won’t approach the audio fidelity now offered by Play Dead.

“This is the closest you are getting to the piece of media that was in the room with the band, other than the band members on stage and whoever might still be alive from who was in the room,” Serling says. “This is the last living relic of what was in the room with the band on any given night, and we are making a high-res digital capture of that relic. To me, it’s very much like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they lift the lid off the Ark and everybody’s faces melt. We want to melt your faces.

“You can listen to it on archive.org [the site where many Dead bootlegs circulate], but that’s a copy of a copy of a clone,” he continues. “Some of them sound pretty good, but they’re not mastered by Dave Glasser — and, I think it’s important to say, they’re not hand-picked by David Lemieux. He’s choosing these [shows] for a reason.”

It’s a role Lemieux has cherished since he began steering the Dead’s archival releases in 1999. He’s a voracious listener of all the band’s distinct eras, and says “we’re really going for a full variety” with Play Dead’s vault releases, promising music from each decade the Dead was active. Plus, where recent archival Dead releases have generally held firm to a “complete shows” criteria, Play Dead will allow flexibility for posting partial shows in the Dead’s vault that may be victims of deteriorated physical media or a distracted audio engineer.

“We’re definitely going to be putting things up that we don’t have complete,” Lemieux says. “It’s either, let it sit on the vault shelves forever and nobody hears it, or get up the 30, 60, 80% of the show that we have, so at least people can hear what is in the vault on the shelves.”

In conversation, Pinkus, Serling and Lemieux — all dyed-in-the-wool Deadheads who first saw the band in the ’80s — repeatedly emphasize that they approach their work with the Dead’s legacy as fans. And to them, Play Dead realizes a long-held dream of many Deadheads. “This is really the opening of the vault,” Lemieux says. “Ultimately, we don’t really have an interest in stuff sitting on shelves. We want to get it into people’s ears.”

You’ve experienced the album, more than once. Sung its title track loudly with besties. And how you wished you’d seen it performed live.

Now, Pink Floyd is celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Wish You Were Here with a sportswear tie-in that you never saw coming.

The prog-rock masters have teamed up with Italian soccer giants FC Internazionale Milano (Inter Milan) and Sony Music Italy for another round of Pink Floyd Football Club (PFFC), with a new capsule inspired by the friendly team founded by the band in the 1970s.

The PFFC collection includes two exclusive, limited-edition goodies, including the “anthem jacket” (priced at $290.10), one of just 400 numbered pieces with exclusive packaging which the Nerazzurri will wear prior to the team’s match again Cagliari at San Siro on Friday, April 17. Fans can also snap-up a bundle consisting of an original T-shirt and an exclusive blue vinyl, limited to 1,908 copies (and priced at $64.70), plus retro PFFC jerseys, scarves, plectrums, drumsticks, tote bags and more.

PFFC kicked off the start of the ‘70s, a squad that played during breaks from touring and featured David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, the late Richard Wright and crew.

The iconic PFFC photo by Kim Gottlieb-Walker “inspires the collection,” reads a statement. Look closely at the groovy blue-and-white retro jersey, which carries the PFFC lettering at its center as a tribute to the shirt worn in the original photograph. The back is emblazoned with 50th anniversary logo of “Wish You Were Here,” adapted for the club, and the sleeves are embellished with the Inter logo and the iconic Pink Floyd burning man handshake symbol.

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The PFFC merch is available at the official Inter online store and at Inter Stores Milano, Castello, and San Siro.

Wish You Were Here is here to stay. The album was the U.K.’s Christmas No. 1 last year, five decades after it first hit the top spot. A new digital and physical reissue of the 1975 LP features several previously unreleased alternate versions and demos of songs such as “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” and its title track. It was Floyd’s second No. 1 album of the 2025 after the re-release Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII, a live show from 1971, hit the top spot in May. 

“Wish You Were Here” is one of eight curated classics from 1971-79 that will appear on Pink Floyd 8-Tracks, a new compilation album due out June 5. The tracklist includes hits “Money,” “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2,” “Time,” “Comfortably Numb” and an exclusive full version of “Pigs On The Wing,” previously available on the 1977 Animals 8-Track cartridge release.

The music and merch lives on, but Pink Floyd is no longer active. “I’m done with it,” Gilmour told Classic Rock magazine in 2015, a year after the release of what turned out to be the British band’s final album, The Endless River.

KATSEYE’s wild week adds another chapter with the announcement of a visit next month to Australia.

To celebrate what will be the international girl group’s first trip to these parts, fans will have the chance to attend an exclusive fan Q&A experience in Sydney on May 6.

Fan can enter here for the chance at a golden ticket, and by pre-ordering their forthcoming EP WILD. Universal Music Australia is behind the contest, the winner of which will receive flights, accommodation and a double pass to the Q&A in Sydney. Also, 29 runners-up will receive a double pass for the session.

KATSEYE is on the express elevator, going up. After releasing new single “Pinky Up” and delivering an eye-catching performance for the first weekend of Coachella, the pop singers announced WILD would arrive on Aug. 14 via HYBE x Geffen Records.

According to a statement, WILD “leans into something more euphoric and untamed. Rooted in self-discovery and self-determination,” and the group “embraces every version of themselves, resulting in a project that feels open, boundless, and entirely their own.”

Members Daniela, Lara, Megan, Sophia and Yoonchae celebrated the new-music announcement by sharing a cute video on Instagram of themselves backstage at Coachella.

The new collection will mark KATSEYE’s first EP since last year’s Beautiful Chaos, which reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and features Billboard Hot 100 hits “Gnarly” and “Gabriela.” In Australia, “Gabriela,” “Touch” and “Gnarly” are all certified platinum, while “Debut” and “Gameboy” are certified gold.

It’ll also be the group’s first multitrack project since HYBE announced that bandmate Manon would be taking a hiatus to “focus on her health and well-being.” When the “Pinky Up” music video dropped on April 9, Manon was absent from the visual, and she didn’t perform at Coachella (though she was spotted at the festival).

KATSEYE will return to the California desert for weekend two of Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, on April 17. Fresh off their main stage spot, KATSEYE dropped a hoodie collection including six styles designed by each member of the group, through an ongoing partnership with Gap.

Jessie Ware is going large with her forthcoming tour in support of Superbloom.

The British pop artist’s trans-Atlantic tour is said to be her biggest to date, and includes her first-ever U.K. arena run. The Superbloom Tour gets underway in Toronto on Oct. 6, and includes stops in Toronto, New York’s Radio City Music Hall, Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre, before heading to Mexico City’s Teatro Metropolitan.

Then, in November, the jaunt heads to Continental Europe before culminating in a U.K. arena stretch with a hometown date at London’s The O2 Arena, and concerts in Glasgow and Manchester.

 “I am so excited to be performing my biggest shows ever. We made it to arenas,” she comments in a statement. “I am playing iconic venues around the world and I couldn’t be happier. The Superbloom Tour will be filled with celebration, dancing, theatre, cowboys and goddesses and of course a LOT of singing. Can’t wait to step into my garden where we all shall bloom!”

The presale starts next Tuesday, April 21 at 9am local time, and the general on sale follows on Thursday, April 23 at 9am local time.

But first, the release of Superbloom on Friday, April 17 via EMI Records. It’s the followup to 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? and 2023’s That! Feels Good!, both of which peaked at No. 3 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart. The London-born singer and songwriter announced her arrival with with her Mercury Prize-nominated debut album from 2012, Devotion, the first of five consecutive U.K. top 10 appearances.

According to a statement, the new collection “erupts into a glittering rush of Studio 54-inflected groove-pop, exploring themes of pleasure, intimacy, connection and transformation,” and houses the previously-released singles “I Could Get Used To This,” “Ride,” and “Automatic.”

Ware personally shaped the sound of the record, “firmly maintaining creative control,” reps say. Collaborators include Ford, Barney Lister, Karma Kid, Jon Shave (Charli XCX), and Stuart Price, while Ben Baptie (Sault, Little Simz, Adele) mixed the album.

“I’ve been trying out this fantasy world and escapism,” she enthuses.  I’m not the most by-the-book ‘pop star’, but I do like to play with dress-up, glamor, and fun, While I love dance music, I wanted to dig deeper with this record; to connect with real relationships and appreciate the love I have, and the fears I have of losing it.”

Pre-order Superbloom here.

The ‘Superbloom Tour’ 2026

Oct. 6 — HISTORY Toronto, Toronto, ON

Oct. 8 — Radio City Music Hall, New York, NY

Oct. 10 — The Anthem, Washington, DC

Oct. 11 — The Fillmore Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA

Oct. 13 — Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, IL

Oct. 16 — The Warfield, San Francisco, CA

Oct. 20 — The Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, CA

Oct. 22 — Teatro Metropolitan, Mexico City, MX

Nov. 10 — Casino de Paris, Paris, FR

Nov. 12 — SaSaZu, Prague, CZ

Nov. 13 — Inside Seaside Festival, Gdansk, PL

Nov. 14 — Compensa Concert Hall, Vilnius, LT

Nov. 16 — Huxleys Neue Welt, Berlin, DE

Nov. 18 – K.B Hallen, Copenhagen, DK

Nov. 20 — Ancienne Belgique, Brussels, BE

Nov. 21 — AFAS Live, Amsterdam, NL

Nov. 28 — The O2, London, UK

Dec. 1 — 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin, IE

Dec. 4 — OVO Hydro, Glasgow, UK

Dec. 5 — Co-op Live, Manchester, UK

Is Boards of Canada about to end its 13-year-long hibernation? If a cryptic poster run by Warp Records is anything to go by, maybe.

The beloved British independent label dropped a bombshell for BoC’s long-suffering fanbase, with a string of puzzling images that raise more questions than offer answers.

The posters, which are captured in a post shared on Warp’s official social channels, without comment, depict zombified children, an image that ties in with the artwork for BoC’s magnum opus from 1998, Music Has The Right to Children. And each image is stamped with a brand that invokes the electronic act’s Hexagon Sun logo.

The easter eggs don’t end there. New York and London phone numbers can be seen among the images, the edge of a “City of Westminster” street sign is visible in one, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame can be spotted on another.

What it all means, only time will tell.

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Boards of Canada is the Scottish electronic music duo of brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin, a universe-building pair that is both enigmatic, secretive and adored by connoisseurs of minimal electronic music.

The siblings rarely give interviews and have performed only a small handful of live shows, mostly in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Their fourth and most recent album release was 2013’s Tomorrow’s Harvest. That collection peaked at No. 7 in the U.K., for their first top 10 entry, and at No. 13 on the Billboard 200, their first appearance on the all-genres U.S. albums chart, and a top 40 debut on Australia’s ARIA Chart. That release, too, enjoyed a subtle promotional push with a string of clues drip-fed for fans to gobble up.

In 2019, a comeback of sorts with “XYZ,” a previously-unreleased tune from their Peel Session of July 1998, which appeared on a new Warp Records 30th anniversary package, WXAXRXP Sessions.

BoC’s impact, however, can’t be measured in hits, or streams.

Warp’s teaser could allude to a Record Store Day exclusive, appearing just days out from the annual celebration of vinyl record stores. BoC’s most recent Instagram post dropped 34 weeks ago, announcing the 30 years anniversary of their first publicly-available vinyl mini album Twoism and a new batch available on wax.

A book acknowledgement is one of the greatest honors an author can bestow upon a loved one, and Lena Dunham just did so for Taylor Swift.

Actor, producer and author Dunham released her second memoir Famesick on Tuesday, and toward the end of the book, add a list of acknowledgements to the most important people in her life who helped her get the memoir published. Included in the names is Taylor Swift, who Dunham refers to as “TayTay.”

“TayTay — you sing the songs I wrote this book to, the stories that pulled these stories out of me, the music that makes the whole world feel seen,” Dunham writes. “And yet somehow, miraculously, you also pick up every desperate call at every desperate hour.”

Dunham continues the heartfelt message by telling Swift, “I love you so much and forever, for the reasons that everyone does and for reasons all my own.”

The actor-singer duo have been friends for more than a decade. Dunham has taken to social media several times to praise Swift’s music and has spoken about the Grammy winner in interviews. In a 2024 interview with The New Yorker, the Girls creator talked about how, even prior to their friendship, she was a fan of Swift’s music. In the same interview, Dunham also shared that she is ” always very careful to be protective of [Swift] in every single way.”

Swift received another major honor from Dunham when she served as a bridesmaid for the actress in 2021 when Dunham married musician Luis Felber. In the years since, Dunham has continued to express her love for her friend and support her music, including attending The Eras Tour.

After sharing a glimpse of Ariana Grande taking the infamous Meet the Parents lie detector test, Universal Pictures dropped the first trailer for Focker-in-Law, the fourth film in the franchise, late Wednesday (April 15).

The trailer introduces Grande’s character Olivia Jones, a lovable former FBI negotiator who’s meeting her boyfriend Henry Focker’s (Skylar Gisondo) family for the first time. The video opens with the same scene as Tuesday’s teaser, with Grande in the hot seat and hooked up to a polygraph test administered by none other than Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro), the tough-to-impress, untrusting patriarch from the original 2000 Meet the Parents film. As Byrnes’ questions begin to heat up, Olivia’s potential future father-in-law, Greg Focker (Ben Stiller), walks into the room.

“Would you like to ask me some questions, Greg?” Olivia asks her boyfriend’s dad.

“Do you think I hold Henry emotionally hostage?” Greg quickly retorts.

“I mean, yeah. You call him ‘Wee Wee,’” Olivia replies truthfully. “What is that? Like a joke about his wee wee?”

The trailer continues with Grande’s character fitting in easily with the Focker family as she charms them with her impressive career, ability to win over their scary German shepherd, and hostage negotiation skills.

“I pull the strings of the hostage takers, like strategic emotional puppetry,” Olivia explains to Henry’s family during one dinner scene. “That’s how I’m gonna free Henry from you, Greg.”

While the rest of the family is immediately taken with Olivia, Greg is not convinced. The two spend the rest of the trailer embroiled in a hilarious back-and-forth as Greg does everything in his power to one-up Olivia and expose her emotionally manipulative ways that only he sees.

Focker-in-Law is Grande’s first film since the two-part 2024 and 2025 Wicked movies, the first of which earned the pop star her first Academy Award nomination. The Grammy winner’s other acting credits include the 2021 Netflix film Don’t Look Up, the Ryan Murphy series Scream Queens and Nickelodeon’s Victorious and the spin-off Sam & Cat.

Focker-in-Law hits theaters Nov. 25. Watch the trailer below.

Duran Duran is stepping away from the darkness of Halloween and shimmying into disco — with the help of long-time collaborator Nile Rodgers.

The new wave legends tease “Free to Love,” a snippet of which features a glittery disco ball and the musicians wearing their sparkly best. With its thick synth bass line, and Simon le Bon’s vocals heavily manipulated with effects, the new track seems to sit in a lane parallel to the modern disco revival.

Check out the teaser below.

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Duran Duran and Rodgers have a special hit-making relationship that dates back to 1984, when the New York City-born guitarist, producer and co-founder of seminal disco-era band Chic sprinkled gold dust on the band’s Seven And The Ragged Tiger opener “The Reflex.” His contribution converted the song into a global smash, giving Duran Duran their first leader on the Billboard Hot 100.

Rodgers was a hero to the members of Duran Duran long before they got to work together, and their connection would stay tight through the years, including collaborations across multiple shows and studio projects, including “Wild Boys,” plus the Notorious, Astronaut, Paper Gods albums and, most recently, 2023’s Halloween-themed collection Danse Macabre.

The Rock Hall-inducted British band is locked in for a run of 2026 shows, including a residency next month at Bleaulive at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, arena and festival spots in North America and across Continental Europe, and a headline date July 5 at BTS Hyde Park.

Rodgers, too, has a busy itinerary in the months ahead with concerts booked for the U.K. and Europe, North America and elsewhere.

Duran Duran is one of the great survivors from the early stages of the ‘80s, a period of music that was scythed by the time grunge made its move. Along the way, the band has collected every conceivable award, including the Brit Awards’ Lifetime Achievement, two Ivor Novellos, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, two Grammy Awards, and, in 2022, long-overdue induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In 2024, Le Bon was been named a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by King Charles, a salute to his services to music and charity.

Duran Duran’s “Free to Love” featuring Nile Rodgers is due to drop April 23.

A jury in New York has found that Live Nation runs an unlawful monopoly that touches multiple corners of the concert industry. But it will take some time before we find out the consequences.

The blockbuster verdict, which came down on Wednesday (April 15) after a monthlong trial and four days of jury deliberations, is limited to findings of liability. That means jurors were asked only to decide whether Live Nation monopolized the market for primary concert ticketing and unlawfully required artists to use its promotion services in order to play its amphitheaters — and they answered a resounding “yes” on all counts.

Live Nation will now ask U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian to overrule that verdict and enter judgment in its favor. If he declines to do so, it’s this judge who will then be tasked with deciding what the ruling practically means for Live Nation’s future by way of a “remedy” — that is, an order for the company to pay financial damages and/or change the way it does business.

Critics of Live Nation, including the state attorneys general that litigated the trial, say the remedy should be the forced divestiture of Ticketmaster. The states’ antitrust case rested on the theory that controlling both ticketing and artist promotion gives Live Nation an anticompetitive edge — specifically, because it threatens to withhold concerts from venues that don’t use Ticketmaster as their primary ticketer. The jury’s verdict could be interpreted as endorsing this argument.

Judge Subramanian could alternatively allow Live Nation to keep Ticketmaster but require the company to sell off other assets, such as certain amphitheaters it owns. Lauren Spahn, an entertainment partner at the law firm Buchalter, says this could be a strategic way for the judge to “weaken [Live Nation and Ticketmaster] without completely killing the combined companies.”

While judges do have the power to split up companies, dating back to the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911, such orders have become rare in the modern court system. In 2024, for example, Google was found liable at trial for monopolizing the online search market. But when it came time for remedies, a federal judge declined to order the forced divestiture of Google’s Chrome browser or its Android operating system.

In the Google search case, the judge instead required the tech giant to change its contracting practices and make certain data available to rivals. It’s possible this case will have a similar outcome, with Judge Subramanian deciding to order damages and putting operating guardrails in place for Live Nation in lieu of a forced divestiture.

Such guardrails could include limiting Live Nation’s use of exclusive ticketing contracts, capping fees or requiring the company to open up its amphitheaters to rival promoters. Live Nation already agreed to make many such changes to its business practices — and create a $280 million payment fund — as part of a proposed settlement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) struck a few days into the antitrust trial. The company said in a statement on Wednesday, “We remain confident that the ultimate outcome of the states’ case will not be materially different than what is envisioned by the DOJ settlement.”

This could get complicated, though. The settlement still needs Judge Subramanian’s approval, and numerous state attorneys general who initially sued Live Nation alongside the DOJ criticized that deal as too lenient before forging ahead with the trial on their own. This now puts Judge Subramanian in the awkward position of simultaneously being asked, by two sets of government agencies that were once litigation partners, to both approve a settlement and order a more stringent structural remedy on the same set of facts. Kenneth Dintzer, an antitrust partner at Crowell & Moring who spent 33 years at the DOJ, says the situation is “unprecedented.”

“Nobody’s ever seen something quite like this,” Dintzer tells Billboard. “So exactly how these cards are going to be shuffled is anybody’s guess.”

The process won’t be quick, either. It could take months, or even up to a year, for Judge Subramanian to gather all the arguments and evidence he needs to come up with detailed decisions on both the settlement and a proposed remedy. Then there’s the appeal. Live Nation has said it “can and will appeal any unfavorable rulings,” and this could drag the proceedings out for at least another year.

In other words, says Spahn: “It’s going to take a while before anything trickles down to the consumer level.”