The Billboard Music Awards show is set to return to Las Vegas on May 15 with a full, live audience for the first time since 2019. Its comeback will be bolstered by the inaugural Billboard MusicCon, a two-day event featuring additional performances from music’s biggest current stars, along with panel-style conversations with artists and industry figures and other consumer-facing experiences.
The new event will take over Area15 May 13-14, and officials from Billboard, the media outlet and chart-and-rankings standard bearer for the music industry, say the timing is right to expand the impact of the annual awards show.
“We’re so happy to be able to do it again in real life, and now to have the chance to expand and make sure there is access to these really special experiences with top artists and creators and executives in the industry, it’s just great to celebrate music again,” says Dana Droppo, senior vice president of marketing. “[MusicCon] is something we’ve thought about for a long time, but we wanted to make sure that if we do it, we do it the way we really wanted to, live and in person, and with different groups of attendees.”
Among its scheduled panels are “Women on the Rise: Management 101” with music managers Dina Sahim (Swedish House Mafia), Alex DePersia (Pharrell Williams) and Nelly Ortiz (DJ Khaled); “The Explosion of Afro-Fusion” with rising Nigerian artist Burna Boy; and “The Future of Reggaeton” with Puerto Rican rapper/singer Rauw Alejandro, who just co-headlined the first Vibra Urbana reggaeton festival at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds on April 30-May 1.
“This is a hybrid event, so if you are an executive at a label or managing an artist, you can come sit and listen to conversations that can enrich your career,” Droppo says, “but if you’re a fan of [Brazilian singer] Anitta or Rauw Alejandro, you can come and listen to your favorite artist drop gems and perform some songs. It’s really meant to be an experience that balances what’s best for the industry and best for fans.”
The Billboard Music Awards, hosted this year by Sean “Diddy” Combs at MGM Grand Garden Arena, were first held in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock Hotel in 1996. The event took place at the Grand Garden Arena 11 times before moving to T-Mobile Arena in 2016 and 2017. It has been held in LA during the pandemic the past two years.
Because of the number of large venues on the Strip, Las Vegas has long been a popular destination for music awards shows. But after landing the Grammy Awards for the first time this year, the city’s standing as a music industry stronghold akin to LA or Nashville appears to be rising.
“It was a great success for us, and we’ve received a ton of positive feedback surrounding not only an incredible array of performances this year, but the way we were able to spotlight some of the less-commercial genres through rooftop performances from the MGM parking structure,” says Branden Chapman, chief operating officer of the Recording Academy. “It was a wonderful experience, and we wouldn’t rule out any possibility for the future. We were thrilled to take the show to Las Vegas.”
This year’s Grammys event was originally scheduled for January 31 in LA before rising COVID cases caused the shift to Las Vegas. The show was broadcast live on April 3 from the Grand Garden Arena, and the academy was able to continue several of its annual adjacent events at different Vegas venues, including the MusiCares fundraising gala at the MGM Grand Conference Center.
“The good news was that we have produced the annual Latin Grammy Awards in Las Vegas for a number of years, so we were very comfortable with the Grand Garden Arena and the crew and teams the help support our productions there,” Chapman says. “It was a bit of a challenge after we had already started down the path in LA, but … we found some great partners in venues there we haven’t used before, and the [Vegas] teams are used to producing events at a top-notch level.”
The iHeartRadio Music Festival, which will return to Las Vegas in September at T-Mobile Arena and Area15, isn’t an awards show like the Grammys or the Billboards, but it’s similar in that there’s a major concert-style, public-facing presentation bolstered by a massive, behind-the-scenes industry presence. And new events like the Emerge Impact & Music Conference in 2017 and 2018 have found a well-resourced launching pad in Las Vegas.
The growth of these types of events demonstrates that Vegas has elevated its reputation of the entertainment capital of the world while diversifying its capabilities.
“It’s a stop on everybody’s tour, and the residency has become very commonplace for A-list artists,” Chapman says. “The world’s superstars are planting roots in Las Vegas.”
Droppo adds that the city’s rich entertainment history and international drawing power are big reasons why the industry wants to be here.
“It is such a perfect backdrop for musical experiences and performances, and we are really proud to be in that long line of amazing things that happen there,” she says. “It’s such a quintessential American city, and a place that attracts people from all over the world who are ready to really dig into everything there is to offer at an event like MusicCon. We think Billboard will have a presence there for a long time.”
