The Biz: Trump Tariffs & Live; TikTok’s New Buyer; YouTube Music Subs Soar

Will Tariff Knock-On Effects Ding Live’s 2025?

The will-he-won’t-he whiplash of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs put Wall Street on a rollercoaster this week. As of this writing, the tariffs on goods imported from Mexico have been delayed to April and Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said a similar reprieve on Canadian goods is in the offing. The levies on Chinese goods remain. For now. At least right now.

In any event, all the changes and threats sent stocks tumbling this week and live-industry shares were no exception. For example. Live Nation hit a record anytime price of $157.75 and closing bell price of $154.62 in February. It’s now trading in the mid $130s after the blue-chip sell-off in the wake of the first tariff announcement earlier this month. Shares of Sphere Entertainment are similarly off, down nearly 13% in the last five days and more than 20% in the past month (though Sphere also had a mixed-bag earnings report during that time).

Implementation of steep and broad tariffs will no doubt raise costs for touring. Gasoline and diesel fuel in the lucrative markets of the Northeast is largely refined in Canada and for the big western markets, it’s pumped from Mexico. Everything from trucks to auto parts to soundboard and lighting components are imported and face increased levies.

At the same time costs are rising, Americans are belt-tightening — and expecting to tighten even more — and that may be the harder obstacle for the industry to overcome. The Commerce Department reported consumer spending declined in January by the biggest margin since February 2021. Consumer sentiment surveys are increasingly bleak, with one poll showing that 75% of Americans expect to slash spending in 2026 and — no surprise — discretionary categories are among the hardest hit. McKinsey’s quarterly study showed a third of consumers intend to spend less on “entertainment away from home” in the next quarter with that jumping to 43% in the year-forward outlook.

Consumers are (allegedly) rational, so it makes sense. Tariffs don’t impact ticket prices directly — there’s going to be no 25% upcharge on, say, Drake tickets because he’s Canadian or Maná because they are a Mexican band — but if people expect to spend more on the things they need (like food) in the months ahead, they’re less likely to spend money on the things they want (like concert tickets) , especially if those events won’t occur for months where untold economic uncertainty awaits. Consumers will – at best – wait on future-time purchases until they are assured things will be stable. At worst, they won’t make the purchase altogether.

It’s an eerily similar dynamic to the The Great Slump, the 2009-10 concert downturn that extended past the end of The Great Recession. Consumers stopped buying tickets when the broader economy was struggling, so even when the economy came back in the summer of 2009, it took another year for concerts to recover because would-be ticketbuyers had been won’t-be ticketbuyers for so long.

Potential TikTok Buyers Coalesce As Short-Form Video Keeps Growing

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is now a strategic advisor for The People’s Bid to purchase TikTok led by former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt.

The short-form video social media platform’s owner ByteDance is staring down the end of the 75-day delay for its sale granted by Trump shortly after his Jan. 20 inauguration; that reprieve ends April 5. The McCourt-led bid is formally from Project Liberty, which will use a blockchain-based platform to protect users’ security and address the national security concerns that prompted the legislation that forces ByteDance’s divestment.

YouTube Music Hits 125M

YouTube’s Global Head Of Music Lyor Cohen announced March 5 that his company’s music streaming service YouTube Music surpassed 125 million subscribers, having added 25 million since February 2024.

The 25% increase is, in fact, more rapid than Spotify’s, which had slightly more than 10% growth in 2024. Of course the industry leader was already working from ahead and in absolute terms, grew by a larger amount, with its 27 million new subscribers bringing its base to 263 million.