Noah Kahan is, unsurprisingly, standing up for concertgoers in his home state of Vermont.
The chart-topping singer-songwriter testified earlier this year before the Vermont State Senate to support bill H.512, which aims to crack down on predatory resale practice and ticket scalping.
The new law was officially approved by Vermont Governor Phil Scott last week. The legislation cap’s Vermont’s ticket resale prices at 110 percent of their original value for concerts, sporting events and other live entertainment.
“As an artist that cares deeply about the fan experience and accessibility of concert tickets, this bill is a critical step in eliminating predatory resale behaviors and offer Vermonters a great solution for exchanging and reselling tickets on a safe marketplace,” Kahan said in his testimony, which The Hollywood Reporter has received.
The singer thanked Governor Scott and the senate members for considering him and the bill. Added Kahan, “This means a whole lot to the artist community and fans and consumers of music and concerts.”
The new Vermont legislation reflects a growing trend across the country as states look to curtail ticket resellers from significantly marking up tickets to concerts. Maine passed legislation in 2025 capping resale prices to 10 percent above a ticket’s face value, while New York and California lawmakers introduced similar bills this year as well.
The efforts have received backing from groups like the National Independent Venue Association, which has for years voiced criticism toward the predatory ticket resale market and resellers who get tickets over actual music fans, only to list them for significant markups. Proponents for resale caps argue the only way to stop ticket scalping is to remove the profit motive involved.
Secondary ticketing services such as StubHub have argued against caps, arguing ticket holders should be allowed to do as they wish with their tickets.
Kahan’s testimony isn’t the first time he’s advocated to make ticket-buying more fan-friendly. For his Great Divide Tour, Kahan used an identity check software on Ticketmaster in an attempt to stop bots from buying up tickets, and he also is using a face value exchange so that tickets can only be re-sold for the price they were originally purchased for.
Kahan is in the midst of a record-breaking year. The 29-year-old earned his first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 last month. One of the most hotly anticipated albums of 2026, The Great Divide had the third biggest week for an album this year when it was released.
The Great Divide serves as the follow-up to Kahan’s breakthrough hit album, Stick Season, which helped transform the Vermont native from a club act to a stadium headliner. The singer announced the album in late January and dropped the music video for its first single, the titular track, during a commercial break at the 2026 Grammy Awards.
Less than 24 hours after the release of the 17-track album, Kahan surprise dropped an extended version, The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs. The expanded version of the album featured four new tracks — “Lighthouse,” “Staying Still,” “A Few of Our Own” and “Orbiter” — bringing the final number of tracks up to 21.
Leading up to The Great Divide’s release, Kahan dropped two pre-release singles, “The Great Divide” and “Porch Light.” The singer previously told THR that he and his team had many long conversations about why the titular track should be the first released off the album. “We realized that we wanted to make sure we led with the storytelling first. The Great Divide is really emblematic of the storytelling on the rest of the record, in my opinion,” Kahan said.
“It’s the best entryway into the record from a storytelling and sonic perspective. I think it offers something a little bit different from a lot of the stuff on Stick Season,” he continued. “There’s a little bit more going on musically, it’s a little bit more rocking, and I think that is really fun because that’s the direction I want to go in.”
Ahead of the album’s release, Kahan released a Netflix documentary, Noah Kahan: Out of Body. The 90-minute film, directed by Nick Sweeney, follows the singer as he prepares to make The Great Divide, standing at the crossroads of what to do in the wake of a smash hit. “I don’t want to be stuck in one way. It was these fears that just rattled around in my head that made it so hard for me to write it all that eventually I just had to let him go,” the singer told THR.
“We really wanted to capture the feeling of Vermont in this album. Vermont has so many quiet, beautiful moments that you really just need to hear to experience,” he later added. “Some of the songs were recorded in ways that really capture that feeling.”
