Executive Profile: Rolling Stone Live’s Sophie Allen On Stateside & The Future Of Live Events

Music festivals are a bit of a mixed bag in 2026. On the one hand, the post-COVID landscape saw fans gravitate towards smaller-scale festivals, seeking more intimate spaces after years of isolating lockdown protocols. Many events have even been canceled altogether due to low ticket sales amid skyrocketing production costs.

On the other hand, many major music fests have reportedly shattered post-pandemic attendance and revenue records in 2026. For example, Miami’s massive Ultra Music Festival broke its attendance record with over 150,000 attendees this year, per a UMF statement. The BottleRock Napa Valley festival also saw an incredible turnout, generating $212.6 million in total economic activity in the region and $61.7 million in local economic impact for Northern California, according to Pollstar reports.

And it’s here, within this volatile market, that Sophie Allen and Rolling Stone Live have entered the fray.

Sophie Allen has spent more than a decade shaping how fans experience live music. At C3 Presents, Allen helped transform camping into a destination experience at Bonnaroo, featuring premier talent, created the FairWell brand for the Bend, OR, festival in 2022, and helped launch Lollapalooza Stockholm. Now, as Senior Vice President of Live & Creative at Rolling Stone, she’s applying that same work ethic to one of music’s most recognizable media brands, building an events business that has expanded from just a handful of activations to an army of live events in just two years.

Rather than chasing another mega-festival with Rolling Stone Stateside, the event billed as the iconic media company’s first true festival, Allen’s vision centers on something more grounded, more curated. Under her leadership, Rolling Stone Live is betting that audiences crave and seek intimate, editorially driven events that blend journalism, artist discovery, and fan experiences into something uniquely reflective of the publication’s legendary history that can exist within this current era of festival-going.

“It’s a blank slate,” says Allen of RS Live’s foundational stages and Stateside. “Rolling Stone is Rolling Stone…I would buy a ticket to a Rolling Stone event, and that’s how I approached building this business.”

“There wasn’t necessarily a pressure of, ‘We are trying to build the next giant festival,” Allen continues. “We really wanted to grow grassroots…The market is definitely trending [toward] interesting, unique, boutique, individually curated events. That’s what we hoped people were buying tickets to.”

For this festival at Hutton Brickyard Riverfront Venue in Kingston, NY, Allen and RS Live tapped folk-pop singer Noah Kahan to headline, with nine other rising acts across indie, folk, country, and more performing all day across two stages.

At just under 4,000 in total capacity (with tickets selling out in 4 days), Rolling Stone hopes festival-goers will enjoy a unique, intimate experience. The evening will culminate with a celebratory fireworks show immediately after Noah’s set.

With Rolling Stone Stateside arriving on July 4th and more events to arrive later this year and in 2027, Allen dished on the publication’s mission for live programming.

Pollstar: How do we get from C3 Presents to Rolling Stone as Senior Vice President of Live & Creative?

Sophie Allen: I love C3, and I could have been at C3 until I was 90. I served as the Global Festival Promoter for C3 Presents for 10 years. The team there is fantastic, but I got a call out of the blue 2 and a half years ago, at this point, from one of my girlfriends who works in the PMC network, saying they were looking for someone to come in, book, and run the festival division at PMC.

What specifically attracted you to Rolling Stone Live and this new opportunity?

I think the blank slate of it all was very exciting to me. There wasn’t a directive of ‘We’re trying to build like a 50,000-person festival.’ It was more just like, ‘Hey, this is a super iconic brand, it’s a real staple in a lot of people’s lives, and there has been a request time and time again for us to have a presence in the live space, and we really think that, you know, fans would buy tickets to it.’

With that, I wondered, ‘What are we and what makes sense to build here?’ That question was super exciting to me. So, there wasn’t a a pressure of this is what we must do, or we’re all of a sudden trying to build like the next big uber-festival spectacle, but more so something intimate and grassroots-focused. And that is super exciting to me. Plus, Rolling Stone is, like I said, Rolling Stone. I do think it would be one thing if a no-name promoter had approached me and asked me to build their events business. I think that would have felt scary and risky. But when I saw how the concept was approached and what they intended to set forth and create in the festival space, I wanted to be a part of that.

Naturally, because I was so pumped for this, I began wondering what would make other people buy a ticket to a live Rolling Stone festival. I started thinking about the music that could be involved, and about interesting new topics we could explore that other festivals maybe couldn’t. So, that was my biggest thing. This is something so new that I can really put on my curation hat and figure out what people want to see and what they don’t. But with an event with Rolling Stone behind it, it just felt safer to take that kind of leap and get to work. And the other events we have…it’s exciting.

Was Stateside conceived as Life Is Beautiful’s potential replacement?

As for the Stateside of it all, this festival is definitely like a completely separate new iteration, a brand new festival and RS’ first. And obviously, a completely different model on a smaller scale compared to Life Is Beautiful, which represents the changing of focus when it comes to festival planning, I think. Stateside is capped at 4,000 people. It’s really boutique, which is kind of what I wanted to do since I started. And the idea is basically exactly what we’ve been trying to achieve; it’s like bringing back one of Rolling Stone’s iconic franchises and putting it on the stage.

Yeah, talk more about that; talk to me about the inspiration for Stateside.

So, Rolling Stone had a special edition a couple of years ago called “American Icons,” which was a huge hit. We do special editions a lot of the time, and obviously this year is America’s 250th birthday. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world right now. We wanted to celebrate all things American and have a reason to do so, without focusing on the political aspects of the birthday.

So, the vision… we have Sean Woods, who’s one of our editors, and he’s amazing. He was a very key part of “American Icons” originally. So that was kind of the conversation between him and Julian and we decided, hey, we should bring it back, right now just on paper for the magazine. Still, it would be really great to have someone or our magazine celebrating all things America, a publication celebrating all things about America in just a really beautiful, nonstressful sense.

And so that’s the birth of Stateside: we should bring “American icons” back, but we should also take it to a live format, which we felt was the right thing to do on July 4th. And of course, that, along with the super iconic Rolling Stone brand, we began having the conversations. And those conversations rolled into conversations with Noah Kahan’s team. I’ve worked with Noah’s team for a really long time — Joe Atamian is wonderful — and he has the best team and when that all seemed like it was actually coming to fruition and we could put the person that’s on the cover on our stage…this is what we wanted to achieve from the beginning with RS Live and at all of our different tentpoles.

What was the process like putting this kind of festival together?

I immediately began researching venues. New York obviously is where our head office is. It’s really a big part of the Rolling Stone story. And so we were like, ‘Do we do it in the city?’ And they were like, ‘Well, there’s Gov Ball, and other iconic festivals. Where could we actually do it?’ And, as the nerd I am and have been for 15 years, I began looking into which other markets people are attracted to, which led me to Upstate NY. And it just feels like Upstate is just having such a huge moment right now. Along with that, people are also trying to get out of NYC for a bit for stuff like this and go to green, clean spaces that feel more intimate and close to nature.

I found Hutton Brickyards Riverfront [in Kingston, NY], which is a absolutely stunning venue. We then found out that Kingston was the original capital of New York, which intrigued us, especially for a celebration like Stateside, where we want to celebrate all things culturally from music, arts, and food of America, but specifically now, Kingston and this community that stays here.

Along with that, though, we can go even further. We started discussing things like parking, what this venue can accommodate capacity-wise and power-wise, where the closest airport is, from a ticket-selling accessibility standpoint, whether it’s feasible to do a event here, and maybe the biggest question: going into a local market, do they even want you there? For us in particular, which Kingston has, and they’ve welcomed us with open arms, and it’s been awesome. Still, they see this as added programming to what’s happening there, rather than, like, a company with a big name coming in to do anything else. Hutton has been a great venue partner since we went through our initial walkthrough. They’ve done a couple of concerts there, which was a big thing for us. They kind of knew, from like a smaller scale, how it worked. Like, they’ve had the Marley Brothers, Bob Dylan, and a couple of other concerts there. But nothing on this scale. So I would say these steps we took are kind of the key pieces to put it all together, and then you go and do like your nerdy walkthrough.

John Monroe came out with me on a bunch of site visits a the venue with different specialists. We really vetted everything, and if it can work and it can be safe and we can make it medically safe in all these other things, and then you get down to a point, and if it ticks all the boxes or at least a good percentage of the boxes, then you’ve got something great. So that’s kind of how we ended up with Hutton: they just had a lot of that infrastructure, or were able, you know, to be confident that we could bring in a lot of that infrastructure to make it work.

What about F&B (food & beverage)?

We’ve been really selective about which craft vendors we bring in, and we kind of want fans to feel they’re getting a little microcosm of that upstate experience on site.

What do you hope fans can experience at Rolling Stone Stateside that they wouldn’t find at a traditional festival?

It’s a good question. We went smaller on purpose. We really wanted fans to feel like they were all getting a front-row seat to a Noah Kahan show, which, for us…I mean, he’s playing stadiums now, so we’re so honored that he’s playing at something on a much smaller scale. So, this is something more personal that a lot of festival-goers aren’t used to getting from a massive star headlining. Also, we obviously want fans to see and feel the local culture and get immersed in everything Upstate NY has to offer, which in July, Upstate is like the number one place to be.

So that’s my hope. We’re only doing one day, which we did on purpose so that fans can come in, get breakfast in town, or have that ideal, relaxed weekend experience. From the Rolling Stone end, it has been a part of so many people’s lives for so long, from parents to new discoverers. I think that’s another hope with this: we want to make sure that, like, our original OG readers and fans that have been with the brand forever see this and they’re like ‘That’s awesome! I want to be a part of that.’ So Stateside is a new addition for those who’ve loved the magazine over the years, and we’re also getting a bunch of new people who maybe just love Noah, Sydney Rose, Gigi [Perez], or any of the artists involved.

On that note, what was the plan for Stateside’s lineup?

The main thing we just wanted to do was showcase badass new artists. We wanted to reach out to Noah, Sydney, Bebe Stockwell, and their fan bases, but what overlap…what other artists can we highlight that tap into that?

And so I’m actually really proud of the lineup we’ve built, but it’s just a bunch of really cool, great new artists. And obviously we have Gigi, who’s on [Noah’s] tour, and I’m so stoked because I love her, and I think it’s a really nice, eclectic mix. It’s a couple of artists like you’ve got Arcy Drive and Derby that are huge upstate, but I mean they’re also big everywhere. Then a bunch of really cool stuff, like Calder Allen, Hudson Ingram, and Michaela Anne, that I think just tap into the wholeness of the experience and aesthetic of the festival. So, with a lineup like this for a festival like this, making sure fans are really stoked about their experience for the day and seeing stuff they know they would like, rather than taking that gamble.

So, beyond Stateside, what else does RS Live got cooking up?

Rolling Stone has always been so authentic to the brand’s voice and audience. I want to make sure that whatever we’re doing next, we’re continuing on that authenticity, so that’s been the MO. So you know, we launched our Rolling Stone Rock Tour. We’re doing a bigger edition later this year that will focus on all the reasons to love rock & roll. Like that is Rolling Stone to its core, right? And so, we launched that last year. We did four live version dates. We produced this cool lineup featuring 12 different artists, with Mk.gee, the Beaches, Wet Leg, and MJ Lenderman headlining across Denver, Chicago, Nashville, and New York City. All of them sold out within a couple of days and that has been the way we’re trending. Fans saw this and were like ‘That makes sense for Rolling Stone.’

Along with that, we have our Musicians on Musicians Live series, Future of Music, and SXSW Showcase, and, as I feel, those are all just so true to Rolling Stone. We’re trying to grow authentically and not do too many things in the festival space.

I know PMC owns both Rolling Stone and VIBE, and it was previously announced that the two brands would be joining forces in a major merger. Could we potentially see a VIBE festival under the RS Live banner?

It’s in the works. It’s in the works. Yeah. That’s what I mean, right? In terms of when I said I want to be very careful about which spaces Rolling Stone shows up in, how we show up, and doing that authentically. We’ve been talking with VIBE about doing something. I mean, we do a couple of things already in the hip-hop space on a much smaller scale. Obviously, we’ve had a BigXThaPlug on Future Music, and we do a lot of stuff at VIBE, but it’s just a different audience. I feel like VIBE has OG fans from the old days who are still riding for them.  So, yeah, we’re definitely…we’re going to do multiple events in the VIBE space; that is already in the works.

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