Apple Music Hall: who’s playing and how to get tickets

Elton John is scheduled to open Apple Music Hall at Battersea Power Station on Monday 28 September, launching a London venue that puts major artists in front of just a few hundred people. Charli xcx, Burna Boy and Troye Sivan are among the performers announced for its first programme, with every show also destined for a global livestream.

For fans, the immediate business is tickets: the first three shows go on sale through Dice at 9am that Monday. For British live music, the more interesting question is what follows the opening splash. We rate the prospect of ambitious performances in a compact room. Whether this becomes a useful addition to the gig circuit will depend on more than famous names and expensive speakers.

What happened

Apple has announced its first permanent live music venue, with capacity for 600 standing or 300 seated. Its programme through the end of 2026 also includes Baby Keem, Skye Newman, Arlo Parks and Chase & Status. That gives the launch a mix of pop, rap, electronic music and singer-songwriters rather than a single musical identity.

The booking operation involves independent UK promoter Communion One, which is supporting programming and promotion. That matters because a permanent venue needs more than occasional headline-grabbing appearances: it needs relationships with artists, touring teams and audiences who might come back for something less familiar.

A small audience, a substantial production setup

The stage measures 38 feet across and can be adapted for performances with the audience surrounding it. Backstage space can accommodate a touring crew of more than 60 people. The proposition is not simply to strip an arena artist’s show down to a microphone and a stool; there is room for substantial equipment and a full band.

A 48-speaker L-Acoustics spatial sound system is another central feature. Its purpose is to distribute sound around the audience, rather than rely only on a conventional left-and-right presentation. The hardware is promising, but speaker numbers alone cannot establish how a concert will sound. Mixing decisions, the performance and the occupied room will all matter.

The broadcast infrastructure is equally deliberate. Two recording and mixing studios, wiring for more than 16 cameras and a control room supporting iPhone video capture make this a production facility as well as a concert space. An upstairs mixing room can handle 800 input channels. The people watching remotely are part of the plan from the outset, not an afterthought served by a camera at the back.

The background

Apple’s involvement in London concerts predates this building. Its first iTunes Festival took place in 2007, and the series subsequently spent eight years at Camden’s Roundhouse. A permanent address changes the commitment: instead of arriving for a festival run, the company now has a room to programme and an operation to maintain.

Battersea also brings several functions together. Alongside the hall are Apple Music Radio broadcasting suites and spaces for interviews and promotional production. For visiting musicians, that creates the possibility of combining a performance, a radio appearance and other recording work in one stop. It is an efficient arrangement for a touring schedule, though efficiency is not the same thing as cultural importance.

The wider economics explain why a glossy opening can attract both enthusiasm and scrutiny. Music Venue Trust’s research covering 2025 put the average profit margin for UK grassroots music venues at 2.5 per cent, with 54 per cent recording no profit. Those figures describe businesses with little room to absorb a weak run of ticket sales or rising costs.

Musicians face their own financial squeeze. The 2023 Musicians’ Census found that nearly half of UK musicians earned less than £14,000 a year from music. A successful show involving an established star does not, by itself, change the conditions facing performers still building an audience.

Nor does a modest capacity automatically make a venue grassroots. The distinction is about function as well as size: giving developing acts regular opportunities is different from presenting internationally recognised performers to a deliberately limited audience. Both can produce worthwhile nights. They do different jobs, and treating them as interchangeable makes it harder to judge what support the wider circuit needs.