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Music Summit Debuts Artist Wellness & Touring Sustainability Track

Music Summit Debuts First-Ever Artist Wellness & Touring Sustainability Track

The booming return of global live events has pushed artist burnout and freight emissions to record highs. Today, the Billboard Live Music Summit unveiled a dedicated “Artist Wellness & Touring Sustainability Track,” making it the first major U.S. conference to integrate mental-health programming with carbon-reduction workshops under one roof. The track will debut at the summit’s 2026 edition, scheduled for November 16-18 at the JW Marriott L.A. Live.

According to the most recent Mental Health & Touring Report released in September 2025 by Help Musicians UK and the U.S.-based Music Industry Research Association, 68 % of touring professionals report moderate-to-severe anxiety, while 41 % of musicians have canceled shows in the past 12 months for wellness-related reasons—up from 24 % in 2019. The same study found that live-music freight and passenger transport now account for 3.9 million t CO₂e annually in North America alone, a figure that has doubled since 2018.

“The data made it impossible to keep these issues siloed,” said Sarah Kim, executive producer of the Billboard Live Music Summit. “If an artist cancels because of panic attacks, the carbon footprint of that tour becomes a sunk cost. Wellness and sustainability are the same conversation now.”

The new track will occupy an entire floor of the convention center and feature:

Certified therapists offering 30-minute “tour-ready” counseling sessions;
A zero-emission freight pavilion where vendors such as EV trucking firm ElectricRoad and bio-fuel supplier Neste demonstrate scalable low-carbon logistics;
A keynote fireside with Maggie Baird, founder of Support + Feed and mother of Billie Eilish, who will outline how her nonprofit partnered with Live Nation to divert 97 t of catering waste from landfills during the 2024 Happier Than Ever tour.

“Our goal is to give every attendee a turnkey toolkit—whether that’s a mental-health rider template or a Scope-3 emissions calculator they can upload before rehearsals start,” Kim added.

Market demand for such resources is accelerating. Eventbrite’s 2025 State of Live white paper shows that 71 % of ticket buyers now factor an artist’s public stance on sustainability into purchase decisions, while mental-health disclosures rank among the top five most-engaged social posts for 62 % of touring acts, according to analytics firm Chartmetric.

About the Billboard Live Music Summit

Launched in 2015, the Billboard Live Music Summit is the pre-eminent gathering for promoters, agents, venue operators, and tech innovators in the $38-billion North American concert industry. The invite-only event regularly sells out 3,000 passes and is owned by Penske Media Corporation.