Pipeline To Success: Chappell Roan, John Summit, Matt Rife Having Breakout Years in 2024

When Lil Nas X appeared onstage at the Palomino tent at Stagecoach with Diplo and Billy Ray Cyrus in 2019, the viral performance catapulted him into the spotlight, as opposed to the old paradigm of 10-year development plans and smelly tour vans going from backwater to backwater for gas money to the next gig, building word of mouth.

Chappell Roan is one such artist who, like Lil Nas X, recorded her own music and in 2014 uploaded it to YouTube where she caught the eyes and ears of record labels. Her signature track “Pink Pony Club” was included on her 2023 debut studio album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.

In a matter of months, Roan was a support act on Olivia Rodrigo’s “GUTS” world tour and, with the deft guidance of a team of agents led by Kiely Mosiman and Jackie Nalpant at Wasserman Music, the queer pop icon in the making became the breakout star of 2024’s festival summer.

Roan’s box office numbers from 2023 into the first half of 2024, while certainly respectable with mostly sold-out, per-show averages at clubs and theaters of 2,914 tickets sold and $110,536 gross sales, could not have hinted at the avalanche of demand for Roan once summer kicked in.

Her June performance at Bonnaroo drew a massive crowd that was described by The Tennessean as stretching “halfway through the festival’s grounds.” At Lollapalooza on Aug. 1, Roan’s set was moved to a main stage in anticipation of demand, and rightly so – her set has been described as the largest in Lolla’s history. As a post on X by Lollapalooza declared, “It’s Chappell’s world and we’re just living in it.”

A representative from producer C3 Presents told Pollstar at the time, “It was the biggest daytime set we’ve ever seen … We’ve never seen anything like it. It was a magical moment added to Lolla’s DNA.” The C3 Presents team was prepared, then, as the trend continued into October at Austin City Limits festival, where an estimated 80,000 fans swarmed Roan’s stage.

John Summit, similarly, is another 2024 breakout star who has taken an unconventional path, producing music as a hobbyist until the COVID lockdown provided the opportunity to make music 16 hours a day and send out demos.

His songs started going viral on TikTok; he was signed by Daisy Hoffman at Wasserman Music who, with the help of a team including agent Ben Shprits, booked him at LIV Nightclub in Las Vegas, as well as festivals, amphitheaters and arenas.

Summit’s tour history includes major electronic festivals (and many all-genre fests, too) including EDC in Las Vegas, Miami’s ULTRA, Bonnaroo, Firefly, Electric Forest, Coachella, UK’s Creamfields, Electric Zoo, Beyond Wonderland, Lollapalooza(s), HARD Summer, Life Is Beautiful, Tomorrowland, and so many more.

Summit sold out Madison Square Garden on June 29, moving 15,636 tickets for a gross of $1,575,060. He was booked for three nights at Kia Forum Nov. 14-16, for which box office reports have yet to be received. But with a 17,500 capacity, the Forum shows represented a potential ticket count of more than 52,000 – the equivalent of a stadium play.

Becky Colwell, GM of Kia Forum and VP of Music & Events at Intuit Dome, told Pollstar, “We have a strong history with EDM shows, but this is our first three-night stand for a single artist in this genre and we are proud that they chose us for his return to Los Angeles.”

In the world of comedy, Matt Rife has parlayed TikTok videos into a booming career in a very short time. He earned the No. 107 spot on Pollstar’s Top 200 North American Tours chart with 227,089 tickets sold and a total gross of $19,800,087.

His most impressive 2024 achievement was a record-setting gig at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles during the Netflix Is A Joke festival. Drawing 17,016, the 28-year-old became the youngest comedian to perform and sell out the venue.