Pollstar Live! Panel Preview: The State Of Independents

Pollstar Live!, the world’s largest gathering of live entertainment professionals, returns to Los Angeles April 14-16 and will be held at Loews Hollywood Hotel. The three-day conference is a flagship event for Pollstar magazine with compelling keynotes, panels, roundtables and the Pollstar Awards, celebrating the best in the business, along with plenty of opportunities to network and engage in insightful discussions.

Pollstar Live! kicks off with Production Live!, the one-day companion conference that features panels on all topics related to staging live events, including lighting, video, stage management, sound technique, concert production, regulations, security and more.

Click these links for the Production Live! and the Pollstar Live! schedules. Register for Pollstar Live! here.

Moderator
Wayne Forte, President, Entourage Talent Associates Ltd

Speakers
Thomas Cussins, CEO, Ineffable Music Group
Dayna Frank, President & CEO, First Avenue Productions
Shahida Mausi, President & CEO, The Right Productions, Inc.
Katie Nowak, VP, Marketing & Partnerships, TBA Agency
Frank Riley, Founder, High Road Touring

Independent venues, bookers, agents, managers and promoters are the foundation of the live industry. They are often the entry point for artists who will one day fill arenas and stadiums and they provide critical infrastructure and guidance not just to upstart acts but the hard working road warrior performers who keep the industry humming.

While two major promoters and a half-dozen mostly-alphabet agencies have their hands on an estimated 70% of the overall global concert business, the independents have fought on, often with clients and clout bigger than their sheer numbers would suggest, despite predictions that market conglomeration would be their end. Nimble and creative, the indies — the agents, promoters and managers and the venues with whom they share a symbiotic relationship — have learned to compete intelligently, manage risk and overdeliver for artists, their teams and their fans.

But times are tough. Touring — and everything else for that matter — is more expensive than ever — a reality that touches everybody but is especially rough on the indies, where margins are much tighter: The National Independent Venue Association’s 2025 State of Live report found that even while contributing more than $86 billion to the United States’ gross domestic product, 64% of independent stages were unprofitable in 2024.

Moderator Wayne Forte, founder of boutique agency Entourage Talent Associates will be joined by representatives of all sectors of the indie market: Thomas Cussins, CEO of Ineffable Music Group, which books in venues throughout the Bay Area; First Avenue Productions president and CEO Dayna Frank, who led the Twin Cities venue operator’s expansion and is a NIVA co-founder; Shahdi Mausi, president of The Right Productions, operators of Detroit’s Aretha Franklin Amphitheater; Katie Nowak, VP for Marketing and Partnerships at TBA, who roster includes Faye Webster, Courtney Barnett, Big Thief and more; and the venerable Frank Riley of High Road Touring, whose roster runs the gamut from Emmylou Harris to Mitski. 

From Minneapolis to Detroit to Sausalito and Santa Cruz, the panel represents indies from the perspectives of agents, promoters, managers, venues and production, eager to share information from successful live events across the country and beyond. Independence means doing more on your own, where success is hard won, but oh-so-sweet with benefits that accrue upward throughout the industry