How Live Nation Designed Its New Venues for Local Music Culture

Live Nation is opening two music venues in Tennessee, and neither one looks like a template.

The Truth in Nashville is a 4,400-seat hall dedicated to songwriting craft.

Satellite Music Hall in Memphis is a 1,300-capacity club named after Satellite Records, the label that became Stax.

Each carries its own identity, rooted in the city it sits in.

Live Nation holds a stake in about 460 venues worldwide and promotes tours for many of the biggest names in music.

Most live entertainment companies standardize to scale, running one formula across every market.

Live Nation went the harder route, investing in two venues built to be impossible to replicate, each made to stand for its city.

"Rather than creating spaces that could exist anywhere, we build venues with soul," says Mietra Beyer, head of brand and experience at Live Nation's Blueprint Studio.

In this DesignRush interview, Beyer explains how Live Nation translates local music history into venue identity, and how it will know the gamble worked.

Who Is Mietra Beyer?

Mietra leads global brand and experience strategy for Live Nation's venue development, connecting brand, design, and business goals.

Before Live Nation, she held senior roles at lifestyle company POWDR, including SVP of experiential marketing and VP of brand strategy.

Earlier, at Factory Design Labs, she led brand and experiential strategy for clients like Oakley, The North Face, Audi Aspen/Snowmass, Nokia, and Fanatics.

She also spent five years mentoring with Femme It Forward, a Live Nation-backed group supporting women in music and entertainment.

Find the Story Only That City Can Tell

Live music already runs on excitement, and Beyer sees the venue's job as deepening this feeling from the moment people arrive.

The rooms people remember are the ones tied to a specific place, and Beyer says that "the most memorable venues have a distinct sense of place and tell a story."

Blueprint Studio handles the full build, brand, architecture, interior design, construction, and rollout.

Every project starts with the city, so the design responds to a place instead of a house style.

"So we start our process by understanding the culture, history, and creative spirit of a city, and then build an identity that feels authentic to it," Beyer explains.

This process matters for touring artists, too, as they spend much of the year between markets and want each arrival to feel specific.

"Every night, artists step on stage and pour their heart into a performance. The venue should inspire that same feeling," she points out.

Nashville and Memphis give the team rich material, which raises the risk as much as the reward.

"Authenticity has to be earned. That starts with listening. 

Our strategists work closely with our local teams and spend time with historians, fans, business owners, and others who know these communities best."

From there, Beyer says the team explores "many possible directions before deciding what the venue should stand for."

"When a venue reflects its community, it becomes part of the memory of the show itself. That's what creates a destination for both artists and fans."

The winning idea also has to feel true today and still hold up in the next decades.

For Beyer, belonging is an operating decision as much as a design one.

A venue's local identity has to outlast the opening-night press release.

It shows up in the programming, the partnerships, and the people who treat the room as part of the city.

Place the Song at the Center of Everything

The Truth takes its name from songwriter Harlan Howard's line that all a good song needs is "three chords and the truth."

Live Nation skipped the obvious Nashville cues, the cowboy hats and neon, and kept circling back to the city's songwriting culture.

Beyer describes a place "where kitchen tables double as late-night writers' rooms and dive bars become testing grounds," and that became the brand.

The design stays stripped back, with a black-and-white palette and typography pulled from old-school letterpress.

"Three chords and the truth" worked as a filter, so every element had to serve honesty, craft, or restraint.

A working letterpress studio typesets each night's setlist and prints it for fans to take home, while a lyric chandelier projects words from the artist on stage.

"Each element was designed with intention and restraint to celebrate the creative process in a way fans can experience for themselves," Beyer tells DesignRush.

The commitment runs past the building, with multi-year support for the Nashville Songwriters Association and the W.O. Smith Music School.

Anchoring a venue to one local idea gives it a brand identity that is genuinely its own.

Honor the Legacy and Build What's Next

Satellite Music Hall carries a different kind of pressure.

It takes its name from Satellite Records, the Memphis label later known as Stax, one of soul's defining homes.

Beyer says the team was "very intentional about drawing inspiration from the spirit of Satellite Records rather than trying to recreate it."

The look pulls from vintage recording studios, with salvaged materials and retro textures in a warm orange-on-maroon palette.

A contemporary geometric system sits on top, all fine lines, a hexagonal orbital logo, and orbital patterns that echo sound waves.

Inside, a Vinyl Room gives fans a dedicated space to listen.

"You'll find subtle nods throughout the venue, but the goal was always to create a contemporary music hall that helps write the next chapter of Memphis music," Beyer shares.

Satellite Music Hall backs this up with a Stax Music Academy apprenticeship for local students, plus roughly 100 shows and 150 jobs a year.

A heritage brand earns its relevance by putting the legacy to work through new talent, training, and a stage for the next generation."

"Club venues of this size have long been where artists find their audience, develop their craft, and begin building a following.

We wanted Satellite to carry that tradition forward," Beyer explains.

The design system serves this same goal, since a retro, hands-on space built to feel creative is exactly the kind of room new artists want to make music in.

Let the Return Visit Be the Verdict

Once the doors open, the artists, fans, and crews closest to the venue give Live Nation its first read on success.

"The number one reason fans buy a ticket is the artist," Beyer points out.

"When artists describe a venue as a special place to perform and want to return, we know we've created something meaningful."

The goal, Beyer says, is for both venues to become "must-play and must-return stops because of the experience they provide."

Live Nation is already seeing early signs at The Truth, where select artists have asked for construction tours, eager to see what is being built.

After opening, the read shifts to the fans that will keep the venue alive for decades to come.

"We'll also watch how fans engage, including social conversations, guest feedback, and the specific moments they choose to photograph and share.

Those behaviors tell us whether the brand is resonating in real time," she adds.

Measuring a venue by who comes back keeps the brand honest, since repeat visits are the truest read on customer experience.

"Over time, we'll look at whether venues like Satellite help bring more artists into new or underserved markets.

When that happens, it signals the venue has become part of the live music ecosystem in a meaningful way," Beyer notes.

Satellite Music Hall and The Truth are just two pieces of a bigger push, part of the $1 billion that Live Nation committed to 18 new venues in 2024.

The scale is national, but the payoff is local, landing as shows, jobs, and foot traffic in American cities

Learn From These Three Live Nation Moves

The Truth and Satellite look nothing alike, yet the same method built both.

Here are three moves any venue brand can learn from Live Nation's strategy:

• Root the brand in local culture. Local culture should drive the room, the partnerships, the programming, and the fan journey from day one.
• Anchor heritage in participation. A heritage reference earns its place when it creates new artist, fan, or community participation.
• Trust behavior over buzz. Return visits, shared posts, artist feedback, and local turnout show whether the brand is working.

Live Nation's method suggests that template branding is hitting its limit in live music, and event branding is moving toward place as the advantage.

"Our local teams live and work in these cities, and they help shape the brand from the very beginning.

Those decisions help ensure each venue feels like it belongs in its city," Beyer shares.

With a stake in hundreds of venues worldwide, Live Nation shows that a venue can be a brand of its own, built as deliberately as any product.