IQ45

The Time Travellers’Guide to the ILMC

Eight-page registration guide to ILMC 25

25 Years of...PromotersQuarter of a century entertaining the masses

Market Focus – GermanyRising expenses threaten robust German business

25 YEARS OF... PRODUCTIONTechnological breakthroughs over the last 25 years

THE GAFFERJason Danter’s ascent upup the production ladder

TREASURE UNDER THE TICKETING PYRAMID: DAVE NEWTONIT’S ONLY ROCK AND ROLL – BUT WE LIKE IT: MARC LAMBELET

HEALTH AND SAFETY ARE NOT DIRTY WORDS: CHRIS HANNAMFROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE: ILYA BORTNUK

LIVE MUSIC INTELLIGENCEIssue 45

An ILMC Pub l i ca t ion . J an 2013

International Live Music Conference 8-10 March 2013 • www.ilmc.com The Royal Garden Hotel, 2-24 Kensington High Street, London

A JouRney THRouGH Time And SpAceAs anyone who’s been to March 2013 and back will tell you, ILMC 25 was a resounding success…”the best ever” someone will say; “more networking than O2” will comment another. But bending time can always take the edge off, so ILMC is inviting all time travellers of the universe to join our 25th anniversary in real time. Or some time.

The Institute for Limitless Movement in Chronology is prepared…the flux capacitors are charged…which means that the most important weekend in the live music industry is ready for its next adventure…

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IT’S NOT EASY BEING A MEMBER OF ILMC. No sooner have we transported you to a distant, prehistoric jungle, do we conjure a post-apocalyptic wasteland where the very fabric of society is reconstructed amid zombie hordes and terminator robots. But our next incarnation is so mind-bendingly exotic that only the bravest of our numbers will dare the experience…

In March 2013, over 1,000 of the world’s leading live music professionals will step warily into an enormous time machine as we travel back over a quarter century of the conference. In celebration of our 25th anniversary, the Institute for Limitless Movement in Chronology (ILMC) will be bending time itself in the most paradoxical adventure yet!

The following pages are your personal introduction to ILMC 25 and some of the many pit stops on this journey to an alternate reality. There are plenty more updates to come in our regular eNews, and of course online at www.ilmc.com, so time bandits everywhere can relax, safe in the knowledge that we will be keeping you informed in the run up to the big event. However, one part of time we can’t bend is how quickly spaces fi ll up, so don’t delay in registering –

this is a voyage you absolutely won’t want to miss!As a wise man once said, ‘time changes everything’,

and this is certainly true of ILMC 25 which will be introducing new events and conference sessions to refl ect the ever-changing nature of the international live music industry. The ILMC Gala Dinner will be marking our anniversary in style with an evening at London’s premier luxury hotel, The Savoy, while additional Dragons’ Den sessions ensure expert knowledge is passed on to the next generation. And with nightly events and parties, an expanded showcase schedule and more than a few surprises in store along the way, ILMC is a quantum leap for conferences…

So ready your sonic screwdrivers and prepare for alternate realities, cryogenic rock and rollers, 88mph supercars, and a journey that goes backwards to very much go forwards… ILMC 25 probably took place from 8-10 March 2013. Or something like that…

Reading the Future

THE PRIMARY AIM of the ILMC has always been to bring people together, and throughout the weekend there are many ways to meet, greet and catch up with other time travellers. The ILMC Networking Scheme allows delegates to sign up to a secure area of ilmc.com and arrange meetings before the conference weekend, while a host of events and socials allow delegates to meet new people. For fi rst-time delegates, ILMC can be an overwhelming experience, so the New Delegates’ Orientation (Friday 8 March at 11:30) is a must, after which The ‘Portals Open’ Party invites all travellers to share the same moment in time and space, as the conference begins.

Q: What do cryogenic rock and rollers, 88mph supercars andtwisted alternate realities all have in common?

5

The Roaring 20s Anniversary Dinner and Arthur Awards

The ILMC’s star-studded dinner and Arthur Awards are always the most prestigious night in the live music industry’s calendar, but 2013 takes them to a whole new level. With London’s most famous hotel, The Savoy, as a backdrop, ILMC’s 25th anniversary will be celebrated in ultimate style, with delegates transported back in time to the Roaring 20s.

The Savoy Hotel was the epicentre of the high society social scene of London in the 20s. Now, after a multi-million pound refurbishment, it is once again one of London’s most prestigious venues. In addition to fi ve-star cuisine and the fi nest wines in the Capital, guests will be thrilled by a unique blend of performers and homespun ILMC entertainment, with bands playing and fl appers dancing as the champagne fl ows. Sponsored by Robertson Taylor Insurance Brokers, all ILMC delegates and other music industry professionals are welcome to attend.

The event takes place on Saturday 9 March, and includes a champagne reception, glorious top-class fodder, and later that night, the highlight of the weekend: The Arthur Awards. During a spectacular ceremony we will hand out our Oscar equivalents to those most deserving, in categories such as the Promoters’ Promoter, Liggers’ Favourite Festival, Second Least Offensive Agent, First Venue to Come into Your Head and Tomorrow’s New Boss. In addition, we will recognise the industry’s fi nest suits in the Most Professional Professional category, The Golden Ticket will reward those intrepid ticket sellers amongst us, and we will give the nod to tour service companies in our Services Above and Beyond category.

Finally, the pinnacle of proceedings is The Bottle Award, where we honour one special offi cer for their outstanding contribution to the live music industry. Any prior ILMC adventurer or IQ subscriber is eligible to vote for The Arthurs, with voting open at www.ilmc.com until 1 March.

The ‘Highland Fling’Sunday Dinner

Celebrating the end of the 25th ILMC in the best style available on the planet, the ‘Highland Fling’ Sunday Dinner is a trip back in time to Scottish Hogmanay to bring in the start of the New ILMC Year. With its whisky bars and traditional Scottish dishes, we’ll be having tea in the past at the lively Boisdale of Belgravia, just a short, complimentary coach ride from the hotel.

With drinks on arrival, highland games, Scottish dancing, perhaps even a piper or two and, of course, an inevitable, rousing chorus of Auld Lang Syne at midnight, it’s everything delegates could want in an evening hosted by our northern neighbours. Whether it’s ‘tossing the caper’, or enjoying the restaurant’s fi nest Edinburgh haggis, it’ll be a quantum leap for both cuisine and fun, hosted by some of our renowned Scottish friends including AECC.

Rules & RegulationsAll the information you need to attend ILMC 25 can be found in this copy of IQ Magazine and at www.ilmc.com.

If you are paying by cheque, please print the delegate/s full name on the reverse and send it to: ILMC Accounts, PO Box 70170, London, WC1A 9HE

When registering online, payment will be made via our secure server at www.ilmc.com.

NO fi nal reservations can be made on your behalf (for the conference and/or particular events) until payment has been received.

The ILMC is an invitation-only event. ALL new delegates must be nominated by two existing ILMC delegates, who have attended on more than one occasion.

The website and Globetrotters Guide will contain the name and company name that appear on your registration form. No changes will be made. (Conference passes can display an alternative name. This should be indicated on the online registration form.)

CONFERENCE PASSES MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMESwhilst in the Royal Garden Hotel, throughout the ILMC weekend. The organisers reserve the right to charge the full registration fee for the replacement of lost or misplaced conference passes.

Visas are the responsibility of the attending delegates and letters of invitation are not issued by the ILMC.

The ILMC takes no responsibility for the fulfi llment of gifts or prizes offered by third parties during the conference.

Register online atwww.ilmc.com

6

Arrive on TimeRoyal Garden Hotel2-24 Kensington High St, Kensington, London, W8 4PT

The nearest tube station to the Royal Garden Hotel is Kensington High Street.

Delegates who drive to the venue will be subject to a Congestion Charge (between 07:00 and 18:30 on weekdays) unless their vehicle uses alternative fuels. For more information or to pay, refer to www.cclondon.com.

From Heathrow Airport: 45 minutes by taxi (approx £45) directlly to the Royal Garden Hotel; or 15 minutes by rail on Heathrow Express to Paddington Station (from £18) and then a taxi from Paddington Station to Royal Garden Hotel (approx £10).

From Gatwick Airport: 75 minutes by taxi (approx £100) directly to the Royal Garden Hotel; or 30 minutes by rail on Gatwick Express to Victoria Station (from £16.90 one way) and then by taxi from Victoria Station to Royal Garden Hotel (approx £10).

From St Pancras InternationalEurostar Terminal:45 minutes by taxi directly to the Royal Garden Hotel (approx £25).

From Waterloo Terminal:15 minutes by taxi directly to Royal Garden Hotel(approx £15).

All costs are correct at time of going to press.

Time to Talk

AS EVER, THE THEME OF ILMC is closely linked to the state of the industry. As the American philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” so on the occasion of our 25th anniversary, we’ll be taking the opportunity to review some of the key trends over the last quarter century in the industry. Far from focusing purely on what’s been, we’ll also be twisting our time machine’s dials fully forward to predict some of the paths that lay ahead.

For all the theming around the conference and embarrassing costumes we shoehorn our staff into each year, the ILMC has a serious side to it. At the core of the conference – and what drives it to continue and survive – are the meetings, which provide an open forum to discuss those issues affecting the business. And the current state of the industry shows that these platforms are more necessary now than ever. From the highs of A-list sell-outs and new markets coming online; to the lows of the ongoing fi nancial climate and festival season woes, it’s a mixed bag right now.

The ILMC agenda draws from the key issues across the international live music industry, whether that’s the relentless corporatisation of the business; advances in technology; the evolution of booking agent and manager roles; what record labels and brands are bringing to the party; health & safety fears in the concert environment; the changing face of venues; or diverging trends and expanding markets.

Our agenda committee – a randomly picked selection of delegates – has contributed more feedback than ever this year, and we’ll be once again running additional meetings on Friday afternoon to release the pressure on Saturday’s schedule. Meanwhile, the number of Dragons’ Den sessions will increase, allowing delegates an intimate audience with some of the industry’s biggest names. The full agenda will be released in the next issue of IQ and also online at www.ilmc.com, but if there is a topic you strongly feel we should cover, please drop a line to [email protected]… it’s YOUR conference, and we rely on YOUR input.

Meeting Other TravellersThe Networking Scheme provides delegates with the opportunity to communicate with other delegates and plan meetings in advance. Members of the scheme are issued a code to access a password-protected section of the website where they can fi nd each other’s contact details.To take part, please tick the relevant box when registering or contact [email protected].

Basic details about every registered delegate will be listed on the ILMC website and in the Globetrotters Guide (unless you opt out) but the networking scheme is the only way for delegates to access each others’ contact details in advance.

Networking Drinks take place on Friday 8 March immediately after the last afternoon session.The adult-in-charge of the Networking Scheme is Tom Hopewell ([email protected]), who will be able to advise you on getting the most out of your weekend, and will be on hand to make the odd introduction, if necessary.

There’s no need to watch re-runs of

Doctor Who to get up to speed on ILMC.

It’s all online at ilmc.com

7

Important DatesRATE CHANGE Thursday, 31 January (18:00 GMT)Registration rates change from early to late fees.

DELEGATES TO WEBSITEFriday, 8 February (18:00 GMT)Delegates details uploaded to website(and then each Friday).

GLOBETROTTERS GUIDE Friday, 22 February (18:00 GMT)Delegates’ details not listed in Globetrotters Guide if payment not received by this date.Changes to delegate details no longer acceptedafter this date.

REFUNDSWednesday, 27 February (18:00 GMT)No refunds of registration or event fees after this date. Prior to this, registration refunds will be less £50 admin fee; and events less 12.5%.

GALA DINNER TABLE BOOKINGThursday, 28 February (18:00 GMT)Bookings must be received by this date.

FINAL REGISTRATION– NEW DELEGATESFriday, 1 March (18:00 GMT)New delegates must have been offi cially accepted and registered by this date.

LEAFLET TABLE BOOKINGSFriday, 1 March (18:00 GMT)Bookings must be received by this date.

FINAL REGISTRATION– PREVIOUS DELEGATESMonday, 4 March (18:00 GMT)Previous delegates must be registered by this date. (After this date, contact [email protected] for details of availability).

LATE DELEGATES LISTMonday, 4 March (18:00 GMT)Final date to have delegate details included in Late Delegates List.

LEAFLET TABLEMATERIAL DELIVERY Monday, 4 March (18:00 GMT)Materials not to arrive before this date.

How to Make Your Own Time Machine1. Turn on your computer2. Open a web browser3. Type ‘www.ilmc.com’4. See exactly what’s going to

happen at ILMC 25 in March 2013.

TAKING PLACE AT the Royal Garden Hotel (2-24 Kensington High Street, London) from 8-10 March 2013, ILMC will be a journey through inner space and outer limits. Attended by the leaders of the global live music business, it’s a place and time that you simply cannot afford to miss.

Help is at Hand!Got stuck in a time warp? Can’t fi nd your way out of a black hole from the night before? Throughout the conference, The Help Desk is on hand to answer your questions, and Pollstar’s Mainframe Cybercafé is open 24/7 for getting online with a nice cuppa. In advance of getting to ILMC, everything you could want to know is online at www.ilmc.com.

8

Thursday 7 march 2013

i. ILMC Production Day (IPM)The sixth annual IPM will see production professionals from across the globe converge for a day of panel sessions, discussion and networking. IPM will be hosting four dedicated sessions and delegates will be treated to a light buffet lunch, followed by a closing drinks party. Sponsored by eps and Megaforce, registration is separate to the main conference. Email [email protected] for more info or check online.

ii. ILMC 25th Birthday BashILMC will be marking its 25th anniversary by hosting a birthday party on Thursday night, as all time lords, ILMC and IPM delegates kick off the weekend at the Royal Garden Hotel. The IPM Closing Party runs from 18:00-20:00, after which the Birthday Bash begins proper, with complimentary drinks, and a sneak preview of one of the hottest stage shows on the market. It all takes place in the Lancaster Suite and The Time Zone, on the Mezzanine fl oor of the hotel.

iii. The Breakout SessionsThe ILMC showcase schedule has proved so popular in recent years that we’re adding two new venues in 2013, all within easy walking distance of the hotel. IA&R tastemaker night Breakout, in partnership with some of our most esteemed agency friends, will be running a full showcase schedule on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, presenting some of the hottest new talent out there. Check www.ilmc.com and future issues of IQ Magazine for more details.

Friday 8 march 2013

i. The ‘Portals Open’ PartyWith two hours of wine, soft drinks and networking, this is the only way to begin your ILMC weekend. A moment to treasure as time travellers from across the world bring each other up to speed on another year – or ten – of adventures. It all takes place from 12:00-14:00 on the lower ground fl oor.

ii. The Temporal Texas Hold’emPoker Tourney

Gambling is not something that most ILMC delegates are averse to, so it’s no surprise that the poker tourney has become a perennial favourite among the sharks and bluffers out there. Sponsored by American Talent Agency, the showdown raises money for our chosen charity, with a selection of bar tab prizes up for grabs. It takes place from 22:30 until late and costs just £20 to enter – sign up when registering or email [email protected].

iii. The ‘Dutch Impact’ PartyMusic, drinks, presentations, snacks, competitions... meeting those crazy Dutch is a fun time at any time. Showcasing the best of what those high folk from the low countries have to offer, Dutch Performing Arts’ annual meet and greet takes place across the road from the Royal Garden Hotel at AAA from 18:00 to 21:00.

iv. Table Football ‘Coupe du Monde’ An annual battle for those with a supple wrist and a quick eye, the annual Table Football ‘Coupe du Monde’ takes place in the hotel bar from midnight

‘til late. It’s possibly the only opportunity to play for your country with a drink in one hand. An established fi xture, IQ’s Terry ‘offside’ McNally will be overseeing proceedings.

v. Access All Areas showsThe Access All Areas programme allows entry to some of the hottest gigs around the capital. For most shows, delegates can gain entry with their badge, but some may need arranging in advance. Check your conference guide or the Help Desk for listings.

Saturday 9 march 2013

i. Match of the Year FootballThere are some venues that you dream of returning to year after year. Wembley Stadium is at the top of the list, and in a fi t of supreme generosity, has again agreed to allow Match of the Year Football – where the UK takes on the Rest of the World – to return to its hallowed turf. Hosted by Aiken Promotions, places are extremely limited, so contact Peter Aiken ([email protected]) to get on side.

ii. Access All Areas showsAccess All Areas shows, and the ILMC showcases continue. It wouldn’t be a live music conference without some of the best gigs that London can offer. These shows only happen once, so check the timings in your conference guide or the Help Desk, or travel back in time later if word is that the show was good.

iii. The Roaring 20s Anniversary Dinner and Arthur Awards

The star-studded ILMC Saturday dinner is the highlight in the industry’s annual calendar. In celebration of ILMC reaching its mid twenties, this fi ve-star affair will take place at The Savoy Hotel in 2013. Without doubt the grandest of occasions ILMC has thrown, over 350 guests from across the live music world congregate for an evening of sumptuous fi ve-star cuisine, champagne, fi ne wines, tip-top entertainment, and the annual Arthur Awards. This lavish birthday celebration is sponsored by Robertson Taylor… see page fi ve for more details.

iv. ‘Rock Around the Clock’ KaraokeAfter some of the most hair-raising, eyebrow-lifting scenes ever witnessed at

Time TRAVeLLeRS’ Guide

Register online atwww.ilmc.com

9

an ILMC, in 2012, ‘Rock Around the Clock’ Karaoke will transport all those frustrated starlets and singers straight back to the 70s. Taking place in the Time Zone, on the mezzanine floor of the Royal Garden Hotel, it all kicks off at 22:30, with prizes for the best rendition of Rocky Horror’s ‘The Time Warp’ and much, much more. Sponsored by Rock-it Cargo.

Sunday 10 March 2013

i. Nikos Fund Grand Prize DrawThe ILMC raises a signifi cant amount of money every year, and in exchange for making a donation from every registration we receive, delegates are entered into the Nikos Fund Prize Draw. Turn up for a 14:45 start as our chosen charities benefi t, but you must be there to win.

ii. The ‘Out of Time’ Closing DrinksCapping the weekend to end all weekends, The ‘Out of Time’ Closing Drinks take place in the Lower Ground Floor lobby after the fi nal session on Sunday. Preparing to zip off to another place or time, there’s no better chance to pick up some last minute tips and review the weekend that nearly was, and will be. A glass or two of bubbly to help round off the weekend in style before time travellers of the world go their separate ways…

iii. The ‘Highland Fling’ Sunday Night Dinner

Whether it’s ‘tossing the caper’, or enjoying some of the rare whiskies from the bar, the ‘Highland Fling’ Sunday Dinner promises the best possible end to ILMC as delegates are transported back to Scottish Hogmanay. See in the New Year with Scottish dancing, highland games and fi ne local cuisine, hosts include AECC.

iv. The Wind Down WingdingThe fi nal moments of ILMC will gently bring us back to the present after the mayhem of the weekend. A few chilled hours in The Time Zone where we’ll be taking some of the best songs of the last fi ve decades, and doing our worst with them….

Travellers’ ChecklistRegister online at www.ilmc.com no later than 6pm GMT on Thursday 31 January 2013 to qualify for the early-bird discounted registration fee and make sure that you have booked for the following:

TEMPORAL TEXAS’ HOLD ‘EMPOKER TOURNEYYork Suite, Mezzanine Level, Royal Garden HotelFriday 8 March 22:30 – 02:00Price: £20 (which is donated to the Nikos Fund)To participate: sign up on the registration form,or email [email protected]

MATCH OF THE YEAR FOOTBALLWembley StadiumSaturday 9 March 19:30 – 21:30 (transport provided)Price: FreeTo participate: contact Peter Aiken at Aiken PromotionsTel: +353 (0)1 775 5800 Email: [email protected]

THE ROARING 20s ANNIVERSARY DINNERAND ARTHUR AWARDSThe Lancaster Room, The Savoy, The Strand, London, WC2R 0EU(River Entrance, Savoy Place)Saturday 9 March 19:30 – 00:00 (transport provided)Price: £135To participate: tick the box on the registration form

THE ‘HIGHLAND FLING’ SUNDAY DINNER15 Eccleston Street London, SW1W 9LX(transport provided)Sunday 10 March 19:30 – late…Price: £55To participate: tick the box on the registration form

THE NIKOS FUND LEAFLET TABLETo display up to two types of marketing material on the leafl et table.To participate: tick the box on the online registration form

DON’T FORGET TO…• Sign up for the Networking Scheme by ticking the relevant box when

you register, or email [email protected].

• Book your accommodation with The Tour Company on our websitewww.ilmc.com or email [email protected].

• Make sure your company details are printed in the Globetrotters Guide by registering no later than 18:00 GMT Friday, 22 February 2013.

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THURSDAY 7 MARCH 201310:00 - 18:00 Association Meetings10:00 - 18:00 IPM (ILMC Production Meeting)13:00 - 21:00 ILMC Early Bird Registration13:00 - 18:00 Travel Desk18:00 - 20:00 IPM Closing Drinks Party18:00 Park Terrace Table Reservations20:00 - Late ILMC 25th Birthday BashTBA The Breakout SessionsTBA Access All Areas shows

FRIDAY 8 MARCH 201309:00 - 20:00 Registration / Help Desk09:00 - 18:00 Travel Desk10:00 Pollstar’s Mainframe Cybercafé opens10:00 - 16:00 Association Meetings (Invitation only)11:00 - 12:00 Rock of AEG’s Bar11:30 - 12:00 New Delegates’ Orientation12:00 - 14:00 The ‘Portals Open’ Party14:00 - 18:00 Conference Sessions18:00 - Late Rock of AEG’s Bar 18:00 - 21:00 THE DUTCH IMPACT PARTY18:30 Dinner in The GardenTBA The Breakout SessionsTBA Access All Areas shows22:30 - 02:00 THE TEMPORAL TEXAS HOLD’EM

POKER TOURNEY00:00 - 03:00 TABLE FOOTBALL

‘COUPE DU MONDE’

SATURDAY 9 MARCH 201307:00 - 13:00 Breakfast available09:00 - 18:00 Registration / Travel Desk09:00 - 19:30 Help Desk09:30 - 10:30 Coffee Break (complimentary) & bars10:00 - 13:30 Conference Sessions11:00 Rock of AEG’s Bar13:00 - 15:00 Complimentary Lunch

Buffet & Pay Bar14:30 - 18:00 Conference Sessions15:30 - 16:30 Feld’s Cryogenic Ice Cream Break 19:30 - 21:30 MATCH OF THE YEAR FOOTBALL

Wembley Stadium19:30 - 00:00 THE ROARING 20s ANNIVERSARY

DINNER & ARTHUR AWARDS The Savoy, London

TBA The Breakout SessionsTBA Access All Areas shows22:30 - 02:30 ‘Rock Around the Clock’ Karaoke

SUNDAY 10 MARCH 201307:00 - 13:00 Breakfast on Mezzanine09:00 - 18:00 Help Desk09:00 - 16:00 Travel Desk10:00 - 11:00 Coffee Break (complimentary)

and Bars10:30 - 14:00 The Breakfast Meeting and

Conference Sessions11:00 Rock of AEG’s Bar13:30 - 15:30 Complimentary lunch buffet

and pay bar14:45 - 15:15 Nikos Fund Grand Prize Draw15:30 - 17:30 Conference Session & ILMC Autopsy17:30 - 18:30 ‘Out of Time’ Closing Drinks19:30 - late THE ‘HIGHLAND FLING’

SUNDAY DINNER23:00 - 03:00 The Wind Down Wingding

The Time BanditsProducer, Alia Dann Swift .....................+44 (0) 7774 446 446 [email protected] & Press, Chris Prosser .......+44 (0) 20 3204 1190 [email protected], Greg Parmley ..........................+44 (0) 7740 868 956 [email protected], Allan McGowan .......................+44 (0) 1273 880 439 [email protected], Tom Hopewell .........................+44 (0) 20 7117 6357 .... [email protected], Gordon Masson ......................+44 (0) 20 3204 1190 [email protected], Lou Percival ....................+44 (0) 20 7117 6357 .... [email protected], Christine McKinnon .................+44 (0) 141 353 8800 [email protected] Inventor, Martin Hopewell ....+44 (0) 20 7117 6357 .... [email protected]

TIMETABLE[Provisional]

The times, they are subject to changin’. Check ilmc.com

for details.

ILMC 25 probably took place from 8-10 March 2013.

January 2013 IQ Magazine | 11

3

24

32

50

40

58

News

14 In Brief

The main headlines over the last two months

15 In Depth

Key stories from around the live music world

Features

3 The Time Travellers’ Guide to the ILMC

Prepare to be transported through time at ILMC 25

24 2012 in Review

Allan McGowan’s annual retrospective of

the global business

32 Years of… Promoters

Looking back over 25 years in the business

40 Market Focus – Germany

Rising royalty tariffs and power costs threaten robust

German business

50 25 Years of… Production

Technological breakthroughs over the last quarter of

a century

58 The Gaffer

Jason Danter details his ascent up the production ladder

Comments and Columns

20 Treasure Under the Ticketing Pyramid

Dave Newton highlights ticketing options for the

grass-roots sector

21 It’s Only Rock and Roll – But We Like it!

Marc Lambelet wants to make the business more

enjoyable again

22 Health and Safety are Not Dirty Words

Chris Hannam believes a new attitude is needed

across the industry

23 From Russia with Love

Ilya Bortnuk’s insight into the Russian concert market

66 Your Shout

New Year Resolutions for 2013

CoNteNts


To subscribe to IQ Magazine: +44 (0)20 3204 1195 [email protected] Annual subscription to IQ is £50 (€60) for 6 issues.

Issue 45LIVE MUSIC INTELLIGENCETHE ILMC JOURNAL, Jan 2013

IQ Magazine140 Gloucester AvenueLondon, NW1 [email protected]: +44 (0) 20 3204 1195Fax: +44 (0) 20 3204 1191

PublisherILMC and M4 Media

EditorGordon Masson

Associate EditorAllan McGowan

Marketing & Advertising ManagerTerry McNally

DesignMartin Hughes

Sub EditorMichael Muldoon

Production AssistantAdam Milton

Editorial AssistantJoanna Stevens

ContributorsChristopher Austin, Ilya Bortnuk, Chris Hannam, Marc Lambelet, Dave Newton, Greg Parmley, Manfred Tari, Adam Woods

Editorial ContactGordon Masson, [email protected]: +44 (0)20 3204 1195

Advertising Contact Terry McNally, [email protected]: +44 (0)20 3204 1193

Gordon Masson hopes for a return to industry growth in 2013 – and a time travelling ILMC to remember…

teMPUs FUGIt

TIME FLIES WHEN YOU’RE enjoying yourself, so I’m told, which means I must have had one hell of a 12 months because I can’t quite believe it was a full year ago that I was writing my first IQ editorial. Such is the life of an editor that at the time of writing this New Year edition of the magazine, there is still a full month of 2012 to go. But we want to get IQ to you before the holiday season starts, hence our calendar juggling exploits. I won’t go into the various headlines and developments of the last year, as Allan McGowan’s excellent review of 2012 (see page 24) does a far better job than I can do in the limited space here. However, looking forward, 2013 promises to be a stellar year, and the ILMC team will be hoping to see hordes of time travelling regulars descending on the Royal Garden Hotel in March to mark the conference’s 25th anniversary. For a hint of what we have lined up for ILMC 25, take a look at the registration guide (page 3), if you haven’t already.

Hopefully, the forthcoming year will see normal service resume in the festival market as well. The impact of the Olympics, especially in the UK (where they were held), definitely took its toll on live music’s summer season, but with the extra demands that the Games placed on production suppliers now lifted and the harmful, free concerts thankfully a distant memory, the return of events such as Glastonbury Festival should hopefully provide a catalyst to jump-start the market in 2013. Fingers crossed.

Ahead of the New Year, we’ve got a packed edition of the magazine which might prompt some discussion when ILMC 25 comes around in three months’ time – not least through our retrospectives on production (page 50)

and promoters (page 32), where various luminaries reflect on the ways in which their businesses – and the industry in general – have developed over the last quarter of a century.

Elsewhere in this issue, our German correspondent, Manfred Tari, examines the state of his nation’s live music market and reports that controversial changes to performance royalties are prompting public demonstrations against GEMA, while new ecological taxes on energy prices are set to send electricity costs soaring, which will also hit the live business hard.

And last, but certainly not least, I had the privilege of speaking to this year’s recipient of The Gaffer award, Jason Danter, who took time out from a manic schedule that currently sees him steering Lady Gaga’s spectacular show, The Born This Way Ball, from South Africa back toward Europe. One of the international touring circuit’s most sought after production managers, Jason is truly one of the most likeable gentlemen in the industry and the story of his voyage through the ranks of boththe Royal Navy and the music business makes for a fascinating read for anyone looking to carve out a career in the production sector.

All that remains for me to do is wish you all the very best for the holiday season from everyone involved in IQ and the ILMC. 2012 was a challenging year for many, many reasons, but as Marc Lambelet points out in his comment piece (page 21), we’re lucky enough to be working in the coolest business imaginable. So with that in mind, let’s try to approach 2013 in a positive frame of mind with the goal of making it one of the best years for live entertainment ever. Happy New Year!

14 | IQ Magazine January 2013

News

To subscribe to IQ Magazine: +44 (0)20 7284 5867 [email protected] Annual subscription to IQ is £50 (€60) for 6 issues.

In BrIef...October

AEG introduces its AXS ticketing ser-vice in the UK ahead of two March 2013 Girls Aloud concerts at The O2 arena in London, highlighting the ability to buy through social media websites and reserve adjacent seats for friends.

Sharon Osbourne announces Ozzfest’s first Japanese date through promoter H.I.P’s website. The 11-12 May, 2013 event will reportedly be the start of an international Ozzfest tour, although no acts are confirmed for the outing.

The WOMEX conference attracts around 2,200 delegates from 90 countries to Thessalonika in Greece, making it one of Europe’s largest music business gather-ings in 2012, despite recording a 2.2% dip in attendee numbers compared to 2011.

Promoter Barry Hogan sells half of his company, All Tomorrow’s Parties, to UK-based MAMA Group, allowing the com-panies to collaborate on bookings for the likes of Lovebox, Wilderness, and The Great Escape. They also intend to develop shows run by ATP in the UK and abroad.

ICM chairman/CEO Jeff Berg ends his 40-year relationship with the company after being bought out by his partners. Berg is reportedly looking to set up a new boutique agency to represent talent for television, movies, theatre and publishing.

Veteran Australian entertainment publi-cist Suzie Howie (63) dies after a seven-year battle with breast cancer. Her client roster included names such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Cher.

NovemberThree women are killed after a stampede in the entrance hall of a Halloween dance party in the Madrid Arena.

AEG is awarded the contract to take over shows at London’s prestigious Hyde Park venue, ending Live Nation’s decade-long relationship with the 80,000-capacity space.

Vince Power buys back Spain’s Benicas-sim Festival from the administrators of Music Festivals plc – the company he

founded. It is unclear what will happen to the company’s other festivals, including Hop Farm Music Festival in the UK and Costa del Fuego in Spain.

The new 50,000-capacity, multi-pur-pose Friends Arena opens in Stock-holm, Sweden, making it the largest sta-dium in the Nordic countries. The first band scheduled to play the venue is Iron Maiden in July, 2013.

Australian festival, Laneway, confirms its return to Singapore for a third time and promoters Chugg Entertainment and

Laneway Singapore announce a move to the 30,000-capacity Meadow at Gardens by the Bay venue for the 26 January event.

CTS Eventim says it will produce tickets with customised band or tour designs in a bid to bring back sentimental value to tickets. The technology could also help make the company’s tickets tamper-proof by personalising passes for purchasers.

One person dies and 19 are injured after a temporary advertising structure collapses in high winds outside of Cape Town Sta-dium, prior to a Linkin Park concert.

AEG appoints two new general managers for its venues in China. Michael Enoch will be the new GM of the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai, while Mike Cerha becomes GM of the under-construction China National Games Arena in Dalian.

Jon McIldowie is appointed booker for Reading and Leeds Festivals, replacing Neil Pengelly who left Festival Republic

earlier this year. McIldowie worked with MAMA Group for 12 years across festi-vals such as Lovebox and Wilderness, as well as co-founding The Great Escape.

Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber are among the big winners at the MTV Europe Music Awards, each taking home three statuettes. Other winners are Psy, Lana Del Rey and One Direc-tion, while performers at the event in Frankfurt’s Messehall include Swift, No Doubt, Alicia Keys, Muse, The Kill-ers and Rita Ora.

AEG partners with eBay in a global agreement to make StubHub the exclusive secondary ticketing partner for AXS Tick-eting. The deal also makes product from AEG’s BandMerch available on eBay.

RFID specialist Intellitix hires Turn-key Management Group director Dion Brant as director of business develop-ment to lead its operations in Australia. Sydney-based Brant says the company will announce its first shows Down Under within weeks.

Jon Bon Jovi, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Alicia Keys and The Who are confirmed on the bill for a 12 December benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Sandy in NYC’s Madison Square Garden.

Record companies are spending $4.5bil-lion (€3.5bn) per year on developing tal-ent, according to the latest IFPI ‘Invest-ing in Music’ report. The figure is around 3.6% lower than that of 2008, but trade value of the industry has fallen 16% in the same period.

Frank Barsalona, founder of Premier Tal-ent, dies aged 74. Premier was the first agency to work exclusively with rock artists and had an impressive client list, including The Yardbirds, Bruce Springs-teen, U2, Tom Petty and Van Halen.

A coach driver is killed, while jazz bassist Marcus Miller and several band members are injured in a bus accident in Switzerland. The vehicle was on its way from Monte Carlo to Hengelo in the Netherlands.

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Mojo Barriers Launches Australian Operation

Crowd safety product sup-pliers, Mojo Barriers, has opened a permanent Aus-tralian office offering its full range of products across the continent, with enhanced logistical capabilities and customer services.

The main office situ-ated in Sydney officially opened its doors on 2 Octo-ber, meaning Mojo was in full operation for the start of the Australian event season. Its office and storage prem-ises house can provide over 1,500m of stock with more in other major cities to allow for efficient supply and ser-vice. Newly appointed direc-tor, Nicola Carroll, says, “Being trusted to lead the Australian business is highly motivating, and I’m so excit-ed to represent Mojo’s high-quality products and unri-valled knowledge of crowd

control and dynamics in the Australian market. Our aim is to help events of all sizes become safer for audiences, crew and artists.”

Supporting Carroll is operations and account man-ager, Craig Edwards, who has led installations of over 50km of barriers across Aus-tralia and Europe. Mojo Bar-riers managing director, Cees Muurling, comments, “Nico-la and Craig’s combined knowledge of the local mar-ket along with faster access to our full product range and support from our internation-al team of crowd control spe-cialists enables us to deliver the best possible service to clients in this region.” Mojo Barriers has been supplying equipments for events such as Big Day Out, Soundwave and Future Music Festival in Australia since 2002.

ManageMent at The Telenor Arena in Fornebu, near Oslo, have renewed the venue’s sponsorship deal with the tel-ecoms provider, despite no longer being the host for Nor-wegian football club, Stabæk.

After losing its soccer tenant, the venue’s owners embarked on a new strategy to become a multi-purpose arena, focusing on concerts, sports and family events. “The diversity in the types of events which is developing at Telenor Arena is certainly something which we at Tel-enor want to be a part of and hope we can contribute to strengthening further,” says

Petter Svendsen, the telco’s head of sponsorship.

The 26,000-capacity are-na’s CEO Øystein Flenning says the change in direction, strategically, has elevated the venue’s reputation on the live music circuit so that it has established itself as a strong alternative for promoters such as Live Nation and Atomic. “We have achieved a signifi-cant increase in the number of visitors to the arena in 2012, and with the content we have secured for next year, we expect to achieve a growth from this year’s 200,000 visi-tors to over 500,000 visitors in 2013,” says Flenning.

Telenor ArenA reTAins HeAdline sponsor

London’s Carnaby Street has been given the Rolling Stones treatment to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary, with a special pop-up shop featuring a full range of the iconic act’s merchandise as the centrepiece.

Merch specialist Bravado is running its first standalone retail store, with everything from T-shirts, mugs and hood-ies to CDs, posters and even a £1,500 (€1,863) limited-edition art boxset. Bravado’s manag-ing director David Boyne tells IQ, “There are three or four different elements to the prod-uct in the store: the 50th anni-versary stuff; the new Grrrr! album merchandise; and a lot of generic archive material.” He adds, “It’s an exciting first

for Bravado and it has some interesting challenges. In terms of logistics, some of the merchandise is made in the Far East, but for things like T-shirts we have a local solution so we can turn around new stock orders pretty quickly.”

The London shop will remain open until 13 January, but Boyne hints that Bravado could open similar outlets else-where. “Carnaby Street is a perfect setting as it has a long history of fusion between fash-ion and music and although the Rolling Stones are a unique act, if the opportunity for a similar exercise presents itself any-where in the world – and makes commercial sense – then we’d certainly be interested.”

Michael Hapka will become the new managing director of o2 World Berlin in January, taking over from Uwe From-mhold. Currently MD of the Sporting Club Aspria Berlin, Hapka has been in charge of strategic development and that venue’s operational man-agement since 2002.

AEG Facilities Europe executive vice-president, Rod O’Connor, comments, “Michael Hapka’s proven track record as a leader and business entrepreneur is a per-fect fit as we look to further develop o2 World Berlin. He

has been deeply rooted and successful in the market for over 20 years and we trust his experience and leadership to continue to move us forward in Berlin.”

Hapka adds, “I am looking forward to this new challenge and am excited to be work-ing with an already success-ful team. O2 World Berlin is one of the leading venues in the world and is known for first-class entertainment and an extraordinary customer experience. It will be my job to develop new content and further raise that standard.”

Hapka Takes Helm at o2 World Berlin


News

ProMoters Christian Gre-melmayr (Abart), Marc Lambelet (Black Lamb Pro-ductions), Derrick Thomson (Cult Concerts Agency), and Redda Music’s Santosh Aer-thott and Martin Schrader have joined forces to create a new company called Main-land Music based in Swit-zerland. The new operation, they say, will focus on pro-moting concerts particularly in Zürich, Basel, Bern and Lake Geneva.

Mainland has already agreed deals with four Zürich venues – Komplex 457, Hafenkneipe, Eldorado and a new 400-capacity club to be opened in April. Pull-ing on the vast experience of its individual promot-ers, Mainland Music will be able to offer shows from small-scale up to arena-level across the country.

Along with these initial venues, the partners intend to develop Mainland’s pres-ence on the festival scene,

following on from previous ventures with Open Air Gampel, St. Peter at Sun-set Festival, Loud Fest and M4Music. They will also be working alongside the likes of Pleasure Productions for Open Air Val Lumnezia Festival, and with Sold Out Productions on Metropop Festival.

The new company will have a significant stronghold on the Swiss territory with each director jointly running the company from four dif-ferent offices around Swit-zerland, in Basel, Lausanne, Winterthur and Zürich, where its headquarters will be based.

Mainland Music’s strat-egy also involves strength-ening the partners’ national and international roster of clients. The quintet already count the likes of Queens of the Stone Age, Maroon 5, Calvin Harris, and Muse among the acts they promote and using their combined power, they intend to add other talent to that stable.

two ConCerts by Elton John officially opened the new Perth Arena in Australia in November with sell-out audiences witnessing the unique ven-ue’s state-of-the-art facili-ties. The 15,500-capac-ity arena was built at a cost of AUS$548million (€442m) and is operated by AEG Ogden on behalf of owners VenuesWest. The arena features a retractable roof which is due to be used for the first time during the Hyundai Hopman Cup ten-nis tournament, 29 Decem-ber-5 January, to emulate conditions at the Australian Open for competitors.

Swiss Promoters Form New Alliance

one of the worLd’s lead-ing airline ticketing specialists is turning its attention to the live entertainment market as it looks to develop its portfolio of services around the world. Access IS provides boarding gate readers for airlines to scan tickets at check-in, reading bar-codes, magnetic strips and even boarding passes on mobile phones, and the company is now looking at other ticketed businesses to expand its remit.

“We’ve had a number of people in the sports and live entertainment sectors approaching us, so we’re starting to look at areas out-side of the airport industry,” says Access IS technical director Nigel Bonsor.

Access IS originally sup-plied customised robust key-boards to the banking and finance industries and then took that equipment to the airline business for check-in procedures. The company then added a device that could swipe the magnetic strip on

tickets as well as passport data. “That became very important post 9-11 when the Americans insisted that all passenger details had to be entered before a US-bound flight took off,” Bonsor explains. As a result, Access IS claims to have more than 70% market share for the air-line industry, with a proven and secure system.

“Two or three years ago the airlines moved to adopt the idea of downloading boarding passes to mobile phones and Access have been active in making sure barcode readers can work with that technol-ogy, because scanning a bar-code on a lit screen of a phone is very different from scanning a piece of paper. But that tech is now being used in the wider world and we’re looking to introduce our ticket scanners to turnstiles, kiosks and hotel check-in, for instance, while handheld scanners at music venues is also something we could potentially do.”

Airline Specialists Target Live Music Access

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Ls-Live is introduCing a new show weighing service to improve the safety of touring productions. As operators of one of Europe’s biggest arena rehearsal facilities, the firm has teamed up with Radiohead production manager Richard Young’s new company, Load Cell Rental, to provide touring shows who rehearse at LS-Live’s Wakefield studio with an accurate weighing service.

In previous years, touring productions have had to rely on estimates to calculate the weight of their flown equip-ment. Now, thanks to this ser-vice, productions can be more confident about the safety of their shows with accurate measurements to help crew.

“Unfortunately, our indus-try has suffered several tragic stage collapses in recent years.

There is absolutely no reason why this should continue to happen,” says LS-Live gen-eral manager Ben Brooks. “Because our businesses [are] often the starting point for large-scale tours, we felt it our duty to implement new initiatives that give clients the opportunity to reduce the risk of incidents on tour and make their shows safer.”

The innovative service allows riggers to instal clip-on load cells during load-in, which record the weight once the rig is hanging. With access to a large stock of load cells, the biggest rigs can be meas-ured in one go and left in place until the production loads out. A report can then be given to clients that includes calibra-tion certificates of the cells used and that report can be

forwarded to all venues on the tour as part of health and safety documentation in addi-tion to the rigging plot.

Load Cell Rental’s Young says, “Working with LS-Live to provide our weighing ser-vice means we can dovetail with the production load in, ensuring minimum disruptions to rehearsals.” Brooks adds that an on-site industry train-ing centre, Backstage Acad-emy, will be provided at the LS-Live premises so produc-tion crew can also top up their skills whilst they’re booked in at the studio, with short cours-es in things like Event Safety Passport, Rigging, Working at Height and Equipment Sus-pension & Rigging.

“By incorporating Load Cell Rental’s weighing ser-vice as an optional extra in

the studio rental package, we can offer a hassle-free and reliable solution to touring shows who need an accurate weight report at the start of the tour,” says Brooks.

LS-Live Launches Weighing Service for Tours

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organisers of the Eurosonic Noorderslag gathering are preparing an event with a distinctly Finnish feel to it, when the great and the good of the live music industry descend on the Netherlands in early January.

The national focus for the 27th annual edition of the con-ference and showcase event will be on Finland and is set to feature 16 Finnish acts including Acid Symphony Orchestra, Death Hawks, Eva & Manu, Lau Nau, LCMDF, Mesak, Michael Monroe, Pert-ti Kurikan Nimipäivät, Phan-tom, Satellite Stories, Sin Cos Tan and Siinai. Meanwhile, to celebrate the focus on Fin-land, four acts that previously performed at Eurosonic – Dis-co Ensemble, Don Johnson Big Band, Huoratron and Rubik – will be headlining a tailor-made event in the host city of Groningen.

Each year, the European music conference and show-case festival highlights one European country with a flourishing musical climate. In previous editions focus countries have been France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Bel-gium, Norway, The Nether-lands and Ireland.

In keeping with that musi-cal theme, subjects important to the Finns will be high-lighted during the four-day conference programme at Eurosonic from 9-12 Janu-ary. Several panels will fea-ture Finnish artist managers, festival and radio representa-tives and Finnish journalists, who will share knowledge on their market and how it relates to other European countries. In addition there will be a networking reception bring-ing together European live music professionals and their Finn counterparts.

“Eurosonic Noorderslag has succeeded in creating excellent chances of con-necting with, and showcasing to, a top-notch international delegation comprising festi-val bookers, media and key players from other industry sectors alike,” says Music Finland executive director, Tuomo Tähtinen. “Consider-ing this and the current, steady uprising of interesting new Finnish acts in all genres, the country partnership couldn’t take place at a better time. Together with the Eurosonic Noorderslag team, we’re on a path to building something very interesting for Eurosonic Noorderslag 2013.”

And as if that wasn’t enough, Finnish band French Films has been confirmed as one of the winners of a Euro-pean Border Breakers Award (EBBA). The ten EBBA win-ners will receive their awards in a televised ceremony hosted by TV personality and musician Jools Holland at the opening of Eurosonic Noorderslag, on 9 January. The ceremony, including performances by most of the winning acts, will be broad-cast by Dutch National Tel-evision (NTR) and will also receive European coverage through TV channels and radio stations.

Eurosonic Noorderslag creative director Peter Smidt, comments, “Music Export Finland, Finnish Music Infor-mation Centre, YleX, Provin-ssirock and Ruisrock Festival have been steady partners from the start of Eurosonic Noorderslag. With success-ful acts like Disco Ensemble, Astrid Swan, LCMDF, French Films, Reckless Love, Mirel Wagner and many many more there is enough reason to do a focus on the healthy Finn-ish music scene at Eurosonic Noorderslag 2013.”

Also being held the same night as the EBBAs are the European Festival Awards, where a dozen prizes are up for grabs in categories such as best major, medium-sized, small, indoor, and new fes-tivals, as well as trophies for best line up, headliner of the year and the coveted prize of Artists’ favourite festival.

With such events entic-ing people from all over the world, organisers say that the 2012 edition of Eurosonic attracted more than 3,000 del-egates, where more than 260 acts performed live and the conference element featured 100 panels, keynote speakers, interviews and meetings.

The January event will also mark the tenth anniver-sary for the European Talent Exchange Program (ETEP), which each year uses Euro-sonic as a platform to partner emerging talent with festivals and radio stations throughout Europe. Run with support from the European Broadcast-ing Union (EBU), Yourope and Network Europe, ETEP has been the catalyst for a total of 1,145 shows, featur-ing 418 European artists at the 70 festivals signed up to the scheme.

Eurosonic Noorderslag 2012Total number of visitors: 33,000 (sold out)

Conference delegates: 3,150 (sold out)Nationalities: 41

Acts: 293Media and journalists: 404

EBU radio stations: 28ETEP festivals: 70

International festivals: 413 Number of venues/stages-Eurosonic: 34

Number of stages-Noorderslag: 11

Finnish to start Eurosonic 2013

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Comment

TickeTing has hisTorically been a ‘top-down’ business with the availability of advance tickets for events dependent on the viability of the ticket printing and distribution expense. There was a point below which it just wasn’t workable – ie a £5 cumulative charge (booking fee + transaction fee + delivery) on top of an £8 ticket was never going to stimulate advance sales. Any new players that came into ticketing entered at a middling level and tried to expand upwards by picking up exclusive and non-

exclusive deals where possible. For example, Metropolis and SJM joined forces to set up Gigs and Tours / Way Ahead a number of years ago to increase the profit margin on their own shows, and that then expanded and evolved into See Tickets.

But as WeGotTickets (and a number of other companies) have seen over the last decade, it is possible to independently enter the market at the grass-roots level and expand into a viable business without needing to target the middle and top levels of events. In fact, since we launched back in April 2000, we’ve actually seen our market grow downwards as well as sideways and (to a limited extent) upwards. By removing the physical ticket from the equation, most of the associated unit costs (ticket printing and postage) disappear, leaving only the credit card processing fees to come out of each transaction. [I am still amazed at any ticket company that has the barefaced cheek to charge their customers for print-at-home tickets.]

There is, of course, the ongoing overhead of providing

support to the thousands of event organisers as well as the millions of customers, coupled with the technical resources required to maintain and develop the service. But as long as a sufficient margin can be maintained out of the booking fee, then there is no floor below which advance digital ticketing can’t operate.

A maximum, all-in booking fee of 10% suddenly makes events of all shapes and sizes open to advance ticketing, thereby ‘closing the circle’ for all of the promoter’s digital marketing activity – which is pretty much all of their marketing activity at the grass-roots level of the market.

Not only has this empowered a wide spread of event organisers by giving them an opportunity to get sales in the bag in advance of opening their doors, but it has expanded the knowledge of customer behaviour at a level of the market that was difficult to monitor previously, as it was based purely on cash transactions. Knowing something about these customers has enabled WeGotTickets to work alongside the event organisers to better market their events to the most appropriate potential audience.

Putting the right events under the right noses at the right time is the key strategy when you have such a thin spread of customers across a broad range of events. We prefer to send 100 mailshots to the same 50 people rather than one to 5,000 people. Putting relevant and interesting information under the nose of the right customers at the optimal time will not only stimulate more advance sales but it will nurture the relationship with those customers, making them more receptive to each subsequent communication.

Currently we’re seeing 240 new event organisers signing up to WeGotTickets each month and 720 new ticket-buying customers registering an account every day. This gives us a reach far and wide across the grass-roots events spectrum, whether that is in contemporary music, classical, comedy, theatre, film, sport or the myriad of events that fall under our ‘other‘ category. This year we saw over 700 festivals (across all the sectors listed above) on sale through our WeGotFestivals.com portal. This was almost double the 2011 total; although a note of caution should be appended here, as the aggregate sales across the whole of our festival sector were only slightly up year-on-year.

Obviously there is another welcome side effect of this move towards digital ticketing, and that is the significant environmental benefit compared to both physical (posted) tickets and print-at-home tickets. We have recently commissioned a study to provide accurate figures for each of these three ticketing methods and will be announcing the results very soon.

WeGotTickets MD, Dave Newton, points out that there are still viable opportunities in the complicated world of ticketing to benefit grass-roots ticketers, promoters and audiences…

Treasure Under the Ticketing Pyramid

Putting relevant and interesting information under the nose of the right customers at the optimal time will not only stimulate more advance sales but it will nurture the relationship with those customers, making them more receptive to each subsequent communication.”

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Comment


Have you ever heard a kid saying he wants to be in the music business when he’s a grown-up? Jet pilot, policeman, doctor, yes, but unless grandad is called Neil, Harvey or Barry, no kid really dreams about becoming a promoter or an agent.

Well, actually, perhaps they should. Because, let’s face it, we have a great job, don’t we? We can ride fake dinosaurs at international conferences; go to bed late every day of the year; dress the way we want, there’s no problem with our long hair, tattoos and piercings; and we can swear like troopers with or at even distant colleagues. On top of all that we get to meet very interesting people, many of whom become friends, meaning we can go to almost any city in the world and always find a place to crash!

Now try all that if you work in a bank, a shop or any other ‘normal’ office! Yes, what we do and how we do it is special and we like the way it is.

Following up on the excellent article by the no less excellent Juha Kyyrö on the importance of being nice, I would like us to remember that even though marketing plans, sales, age groups, consolidated growth and other things like that are important matters; passion, fun, freedom of choice and the likes are equally important, if not more so.

I don’t know about you, but I do what I do because I chose to. I didn’t end up here by accident having been forced by life to enrol, feeling that at least this is better than no job at all. I deliberately chose to be in the live music business because it was one of the last areas of human activity where I could feel in harmony with my aspiration of living the life I wanted.

Yet, now, I fear that we are getting dragged into a world we don’t want to be part of. In a few years, our dream job as promoter, agent, manager and even artist might eventually turn into a nightmare if we don’t pay attention to the flourishing number of bureaucrats that seem to gather around to give us a hard time with what we’ve always considered secondary issues.

Our business is getting more mature and more professional – and that is definitely a good thing. I honestly don’t mind not being shouted at anymore when the backstage fridge is short of beer. But ‘professionalision’ implies rationalisation and its natural consequence: corporatisation. This inevitable process is slowly changing our person-to-person business into a company-to-company operation and I believe this is potentially dangerous if not controlled by our own values.

One example, not necessarily the most painful but definitely enlightening: the tyranny of ticket sales reports. Sending ticket sales figures once a week is fine, but when asked in the morning and then reminded twice more during

the day to provide these twice a week is a concern. And not only because you realise the trainee who chased you last week has been replaced (as he/she probably didn’t anticipate that the music business would be so boring), but also because soon we’ll be expected to provide these reports every day, and while we are at it why not twice a day, or even worse! Obviously, the first thing you do, if you can afford it, is to hire a trainee yourself to do all that. Before you know it, that person will spend their days doing nothing else and become disenchanted by a job we told them would be the best in the world – not to mention that your office is looking more and more like one of those companies you didn’t want to be in.

The evolution of how we handle contracts is another example of what I consider to be a wrongful inversion of priorities. Spending an hour reading, amending, signing, scanning and sending 15-page contracts even for club shows (when just one should suffice) is not only nonsense, but also a waste of valuable time that would be better spent on what the job is really about.

The time has come to reassess what we care for and how we want to implement the only real activity we should strive for, ie bringing an artist and audience together.

As Bob Dylan said: “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” What we have is rare and precious; it is our duty to protect our industry against normalisation by explaining how we do business to our lawyers, shareholders or other civil servants and not let them dictate how they think we should do it.

It’s Only Rock and Roll – But We Like it!Marc Lambelet of Black Lamb Productions in Switzerland promotes the idea of getting back to enjoying what we do, by running our business the way we want to…

The time has come to reassess what we care for and how we want to implement the only real activity we should strive for, i.e. bringing an artist and audience together.”

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We regularly hear of horrific accidenTs in our industry from across the world: stage collapses, fires, falls, crowd-related disasters, etc. I am sure everyone thinks these are terrible and that we should find ways to prevent them. But mention the words ‘health and safety’ and the average person working on live events will either glaze over; walk away and claim it’s none of their business; or start to moan that it’s too expensive, or a waste of time, that it slows the job down, and then proceed to trot out one of the hundreds of myths that surround health and safety.

We safety professionals are often treated in a disgusting manner by crews from some of the so-called leading companies in the production industry: we are avoided; ignored when we try to enlist their help and support; we are ridiculed; and it is assumed we are killjoys or ‘fun police’ that represent the authorities when, in fact, we are simply advisors working to look after the crew and protect them from any legal and financial problems due to breaches of safety legislation. We’re also there to help them fulfill a moral obligation to protect people from accidents and injury.

One of the most important roles we carry out is trying to help create and promote a positive ‘health and safety culture’ within an organisation. This is a term almost unheard of in our industry, which has a risk taking culture. Without this essential safety culture, almost every other aspect of safety management is doomed to failure, and it’s not all about rules and regulations.

There is no single definition of ‘safety culture’. It is a term best-used to describe the way in which safety is managed in the workplace, and often reflects “the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and values that employees share in relation to safety.” You could say a safety culture is the way staff and crew operate when nobody is watching them – they either do it right (positive safety culture) or they take risks, short-cuts and ignore safety (negative safety culture).

To make health and safety effective, employers need to get their staff involved and committed. The process involves having trained and competent staff allocating responsibilities; securing commitment; providing instruction and supervision; ensuring there is full co-operation between individuals and groups; and communication of the company’s safety policy and ongoing safety consultation.

A safety culture is one in which safety is regarded by everyone as being an issue which concerns everyone. As a result, safety rules are set, understood and adhered to; negative and macho attitudes to safety (‘we couldn’t work if we followed health and safety regulations’/‘hard hats are for wimps’/’we don’t waste money on safety’) go out of the window; and accidents and near-miss incidents are reported and investigated quickly and thoroughly to prevent reoccurrence, rather than apportion blame.

The benefits of the safety culture to the organisation as a whole extend beyond decreasing the number of accidents. Studies show that companies demonstrating strong safety cultures also show improvements in performance, quality and staff morale.

The road to a positive safety culture starts with the company’s health and safety policy – this should be communicated to all employees. Next, leadership: directors and managers have to lead by example on matters of safety. They must lead in a positive manner and enlist the help and support of staff – everyone needs to be brought on board and to be involved. Positive safety communication is required at all times, safety committees with representatives from all departments within an organisation are an excellent method of communication. But remember, communication is a two-way street. Listening to staff is as important as giving them instruction or information.

Until we see the change to a positive safety culture, nothing else will improve. Health and safety is everybody’s business!

Health and Safety are not dirty wordsChris Hannam of Stagesafe urges the live music business to take more responsibility when

it comes to health and safety matters…

The benefits of the safety culture to the organisation as a whole extend beyond decreasing the number of accidents. Studies show that companies demonstrating strong safety cultures also show improvements in performance, quality and staff morale.”

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The russian music markeT differs from not just Europe, but also CIS countries like Estonia, Latvia, and Finland. A description of our music market and what goes on in the country evokes the words of the famous Russian poet Tyutchev: “No one can understand Russia through logic.”

Firstly, the concert market is very centralised – about 30% of the main venues, media, record labels etc are situated in Moscow, and 12-15% in St. Petersburg, with the rest spread throughout different cities. It is highly competitive, and competition between promoters is not always civilised. Proposals are often not based on common sense and economic and business principles, but on personal ambitions to secure the artist – whatever. This results in expensive tickets and the misapprehension among foreign agents that Russia is a super-rich country.

It is very unpredictable. Only 5% of the Russian population spends on restaurants or concerts, even less in times of financial instability. The political situation directly influences the market, eg after the Pussy Riot convictions, some foreign musicians cancelled planned visits to Russia, and both promoters and audiences suffered.

Promoters’ usual methods of evaluating the potential audience – radio rotations, mass media – sometimes don’t apply. Often arena-filling artists in neighbouring Finland attract only one thousand people to the Russian concert, whereas artists relatively unknown at home can play concert halls. Corporate or private concerts in Russia rival public concerts, and provide the main source of income for most promotion companies and many artists. With very little mass media in the country, it is difficult to market and create interest in particular artists. However, it is possible to spot rising interest and to develop it. You need good instincts and to be a music fan in order to be a successful promoter, especially in venues for 300-3,000 people.

Apart from TATU and Pussy Riot, not known because of their musical talent, why are no Russian artists popular abroad? There is a lack of available money, business or social structures and no government export support for modern Russian music. With state support for modern music, as in Estonia and Finland, Russian artists could find audiences abroad.

Generally, I would describe the Russian music market as ‘unreliably stable’, with change unlikely in the very near future. However I am optimistic. Perhaps because music for me, and fortunately for a small but very grateful audience in Russia, is primarily a source of inspiration and fun. When choosing artists to promote we firstly consider talent and artistic value before commercial potential.

From Russia with LoveIlya Bortnuk, MD of Light Music, provides a brief overview of the current state of the Russian concert market…

Health and Safety are not dirty words


Yet again I’m reviewing a year in the wonderful world of live music before it’s even over, as dictated to by the deadlines involved in bringing you this beautiful – might I even say, glossy journal, writes Allan McGowan. However, if, as some believe, the sudden termination of the long running Mayan calendar in December results in the end of the World, then it’s all academic anyway…

Talking of now-exTincT but once-proud civilisations, there are those of the opinion that an industry that has until recently experienced what appeared to be a golden era has lost more of its lustre in the past year, and that perhaps, the ‘glory days’ may be over.

The continuing effects of economies that are at best only just beginning to clamber out of recession and at worst heading for a ‘double dip’ are still biting into the reduced leisure spend of discriminating ticket buyers with a variety of entertainment options.

“If the governor of the Bank of England thinks the UK is about to enter the biggest economic depression since the 30s, we had better take notice. Going to gigs is a luxury item compared with keeping a roof over our head, keeping warm and fed, especially if the unwaged figures grow. The harbingers of doom have been hovering for a couple of years but this one feels real.”

Paul Latham – president, Live Nation UK

New headliners are thin on the ground (but don’t worry, the Stones are on the road again!); the weather gods still interfere with festivals and Hurricane Sandy had a devastating effect on the industry in the New York area; and in the UK, the

Olympics scored on various levels, but provided far too much competition for many.

“Both the record industry and live industry have a part to play in the lack of development. You can count the number of stadium acts that have broken in the last ten years on less than the fingers of one hand.”

John Reid – EU president of concerts, Live Nation

But, the main thing is, for now at least, we’ve got through another year and with the sad exceptions of Brent Grulke of SXSW, Lasse Ollsen of Viva Art, Jon Lord of Deep Purple, Radiohead’s drum tech Scott Johnson, to name a few, most of us are still here to assess it.

The Numbers & The markeTs

as usual, we Turn to available figures to give us a rough idea of where we stand. We lack the usual extremely good report by UK economist Will Page for PRS for Music, as he’s now gone to Spotify, where we wish him well. What we do know, is that live music royalties collected by the society in 2011 grew to £22.5million (€27.9m), more than 8% up on the previous year. After the first review since 1988, and sometimes heated consultation with the industry, PRS held the royalty rate for popular music events, the biggest generator of revenues for the UK music industry, at 3%.


“Responses showed that since the last review the live industry had changed significantly, with live music becoming a more professional enterprise and thriving mainstream leisure activity. However, they also confirmed that as the market has grown, so have the costs associated with putting on events.”

Keith Gilbert – director of public performance sales, PRS for Music

In the US, Pollstar reported falls in concert attendance in 2011, but increased box office receipts as ticket prices rose yet again. Top 50 global tours attendance declined by 8.7%, and by 2.6% for the top 100 tours; as promoters, including Live Nation, staged fewer shows. 2012 mid-year figures presented a different picture, as the top 100 tours in North America generated a combined gross of $1,125.9m (€1,790.9m), up 1.2% over 2011. Ticket prices dropped on average by $6.34 (€4.95), or 9.4%, to $60.68 (€47.38), the lowest since 2007.

According to editor-in-chief Gary Bongiovanni in Pollstar’s mid-year business analysis, “The concert industry appears to have made some successful adjustments to better reflect today’s economic realities. Simply put, ticket prices have been lowered and venues have been downsized. To make up the revenue, many artists are working more shows. The top 100 tours of North America played shows in a combined total of 2,822 cities. That represents a 17.4% jump in the number of markets or 420 additional played over what we saw in 2011.”

The top-grossing act in the United States during the first half of 2012 was Cirque du Soleil – Michael Jackson: The Immortal, which played 95 shows in 46 cities and sold 703,793 tickets for a total gross of $78.5m (€60.5m).

Roger Waters followed up in the US, selling 575,444

tickets for a gross of $61.9m (€47.7m), and dominated Pollstar’s global chart, playing 63 shows in 40 cities and selling 1,431,852 tickets that grossed $158.1m (€123.4m). When this huge production of The Wall completes its run, it is estimated that the tour will exceed $350m (€273m) and 3 million in attendance.

In second place, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band played 34 shows in 29 cities, selling 925,839 tickets grossing $79.9m (€62.4m), and is still out there clocking up more. Cirque du Soleil, Coldplay and Lady Gaga completed the top five, with Madonna in hot pursuit.

The figures show that the old guard are still doing the majority of the business: Van Halen took $38.6m (€30.1m) and attendance of 371,276 from 33 shows (and postponed another 30). Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chili Peppers were out doing good business at their own shows and playing to new crowds at festivals; and did I mention that the Stones are to play more dates?

In the US, country music remains strong while electronic dance music bids for the genre crown with three EDM artists in the top 100 this year. Last year, at this time, only DJ Tiesto featured. Increased US delegates at The Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) bears out this resurgence of interest in the genre.

The top scoring single (well, actually now double event, having become a two-weekend affair) is Coachella; the Goldenvoice festival amassed $47.3m (€36.9m). Interesting to note that 20 of the top 25 Billboard Boxscore engagements in the first half of 2012 are from markets other than the US.

Generally then, the late 2011/early 2012 forecasts of a flat market were refuted. In fact, in September Live Nation reported improved ticket sales and stated that compared to summer 2011, concert attendance from June to September 2012 rose by around 5%.

DeceMber�• AEG Ogden appoints former Wembley Stadium and

O2 arena exec James Irvine to head up its new global partnerships division in the Asia Pacific.

�• Anna Calvi emerges as the European Talent Exchange Programme’s most popular act of 2011 with 12 festival shows booked through the scheme during the year.

�• Live Nation emerges victorious in the saga for the rights to run the new DKK1billion (€134million), 15,000-capacity arena in Copenhagen, Denmark.

�• Student Francesco Pinna (20) is killed when a stage he is helping to build for rock act Jovanotti in Trieste, Italy, collapses.

�• Seatwave chief, Joe Cohen denies speculation that the ticket resale company is in financial trouble, despite reports that it has amassed losses of €40m since 2007.

�• UK entertainment retailer HMV puts its 13 live music venues and various festivals up for sale in an attempt to slash its £164m (€196m) debt.

JANUArY �• AEG China signs a 15-year contract to operate the new

18,000-seat Dalian Sports Center. �• Touring festival Big Day Out calls time on its New Zealand

leg after promoter Ken West admits that falling audience numbers have made the Auckland show unviable.

�• FKP Scorpio buys a stake in Utrecht-based booking agency and artist management company Friendly Fire.

�• Live Nation buys a 25% stake in Croatia’s Adria Entertainment. The Zagreb-based company, run by Vladimir Ivanković, has represented Live Nation in the Balkans for a number of years.

�• R&B legend Etta James dies at home in Riverside, California, following a long battle with illness. She was 73.

�• Festival Republic MD Melvin Benn cancels 2012’s edition of The Big Chill festival, blaming its date clash with the Olympics and artist availability. However, he says the festival will return in 2013.

In BrIef...


The markeTs

alThough This review started off in a somewhat negative fashion (don’t worry, we’ll get back to that) so far these figures aren’t looking so bad, are they? To continue in the same vein, in July a consumer survey conducted on behalf of the Federal Association for the Promoters and Event Business (bdv) and Musikmarkt, the German trade magazine, reported that the German live entertainment market had recovered from the dramatic sales drops of 2008 and 2009 with a revenue boost of 24% for 2011. A total revenue volume of €3.94billion comprised €2.76bn for music events and €1.18bn for events such as theatre, circus and comedy. Concert revenues increased 22% and non-music events 30%. Marek Lieberberg, CEO of MLK in Frankfurt told Billboard, that “MLK was able to underline its top position with a record result in 2011, and based on the figures of the first half year 2012, we will even increase this result.”

“In 2008 and 2009, the concert promoters went through a horrible year of depression following the record year of 2007. Today, Germans are again willing to spend more money for concerts because they yearn for emotional experiences of live events. The concert promoters will benefit from that also in 2012.”

Stefan Zarges – chief editor, Musikmarkt

Elsewhere in Europe, things were not so good. The IQ feature on France in July discovered that the recession was biting into live entertainment, and promoters were sceptical that even the arts-friendly new government, state subsidies and new anti-ticket scalping legislation were likely to improve the

situation for some time. Salomon Hazot of Nous Productions said, “The big acts will do OK, or you are a total idiot. But when I do medium or small shows, it is dead. It’s scary.”

“For the first time in my career I am losing more often than I am winning, And when I lose, I’m losing more than the profit I’m making when things go well.”

Gérard Drouot– CEO, Gérard Drouot Productions

Elsewhere, it has been even worse, with Spain suffering the worst economic crisis in history: most of the country’s industries are suffering and the music industry has been particularly badly hit, with sales reportedly dropping by 80% over the last decade, and concert receipts, which, as elsewhere, had made up some of the deficit, have now succumbed to the crisis. In July, Emilio Santamaria, president of ARTE, the umbrella group representing 80% of the concert industry told Billboard, “There is no sector hurting so much in this crisis as the music industry. We are facing our worst year in half a century, a complete catastrophe. Dozens of companies have already folded, but it’s just getting worse.” The economic crisis has hit much of the concert industry particularly hard because of its traditional reliance on subsidies, as Santamaria pointed out, “Nobody thought the day would come where the state would no longer be the music industry’s biggest client. It’s July, and we’re starting the high season, and in 2012 we’re facing 85% less concerts in Spain than in 2009 during the same period.”

FebrUArY �• Australia’s inaugural touring Heatwave Festival collapses, having

failed to pay suppliers, and goes into voluntary insolvency. �• Madonna sparks controversy when she tells Newsweek

magazine fans should “work all year, scrape the money together” for a $300 (€230) ticket to her MDNA tour.

�• AEG ticketing chief Bryan Perez reveals the new AXS platform will include a ticket lottery system to cope with fan demand, as well as an option allowing friends to book seats together even when paying separately.

�• Whitney Houston (48) is found dead just hours before she is due to perform at a pre-Grammy award party.

�• Armin Rahn, founder of Munich-based Armin Rahn Agency and Management, dies at the age of 58 after a long illness.• Isle of Wight Festival promoter John Giddings’ “never say

never” retort hints he could agree to sell the event following a reported £12m (€14.5m) bid from AEG.

• The Monkees’ frontman Davy Jones dies at the age of 66 after suffering a heart attack at a ranch near his Florida home, where he was visiting his horses.

MArcH �• Italian rigger Matteo Armelini (32) is killed in an accident

during load-in for a Laura Pausini concert in Reggio. �• Private equity firm CVC Asia Pacific puts its Australian

ticketing company Ticketek and Sydney’s Allphones Arena up for sale in a bid to reduce a AUS$2.7bn (€2.1bn) debt run-up by Nine Entertainment, which owns the assets.

�• Stuart Galbraith buys out AEG’s 50% stake in Kilimanjaro Live for an undisclosed sum. Both parties say that they still intend to work together on events going forward.

�• Stuart Clumpas, director of New Zealand venue Vector Arena, joins a campaign to tighten anti-scalping laws after tickets for One Direction’s tour appear on resale websites at up to 21 times face value.

�• Kilimanjaro Live cancels the 2012 edition of Sonisphere at Knebworth. The 6-8 July event was due to feature Queen, KISS, Faith No More and Marilyn Manson, among others.

�• Ebay-owned secondary ticketing service, StubHub, launches operations in the UK and admits it is looking at further expansion across Europe.


Foreign fans chasing the sun have, it seems, helped the private sector where concerts and festivals have not suffered as much, although according to promoters association APE, their income still fell at least 12% from 2010 to 2011. Things are not helped by a triple increase in the VAT on cultural events from 7% to 21%.

“Nobody is investing. I’ve turned down more artists this year than in my entire career. I used to sponsor six new talents annually, but now I’m sticking to only two established groups, and I’m taking a bigger share from concerts and merchandising. Otherwise, I would be next.”

Gerardo Cartón – director, Pias (label)

IQ’s market reports throughout the year presented a highly variable global picture. In January, our examination of the Nordic countries reported good touring industry business, supported by robust economies in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Iceland however was having its problems, but seems to have bounced back somewhat over the year.

“We haven’t been that directly affected by the economic uncertainty across Europe, though we have probably felt an indirect effect. But still we are very, very fortunate to be in a sound economy.”

Rune Lem – Live Nation, Norway

In March, we looked at Australasia, with Michael Chugg saying, “Per capita, Australia is easily the biggest market in

the world. Over the past couple of years touring has never been stronger.” However, cracks were appearing, particularly in the overcrowded festival market, with a string of events disappearing and worries about escalating guarantees and their effect on ticket prices. In New Zealand, Stuart Clumpas of Vector Arena said, “I’m gobsmacked at how expensive tickets in Australia are. NZ cannot and never has been able to charge the same amount for tickets.” There are moves afoot to establish a pan-Austral-Asia touring circuit to attract the bigger international acts.

“We’re now seeing tightening in the market, definitely in relation to tours that have very high premium-ticket prices. If you see a AUD$300 (€240) ticket it’s getting much tougher to get those away. If your second price is AUD$150 (€120), people are targeting those.”

Paul Dainty – CEO, Dainty Consolidated Entertainment

The May report on Latin America confirmed that this huge and once chancy territory had now established itself as a touring stronghold. Later in the year at the UK Live Conference Neil Warnock stated that, “In touring terms, South America is now the new America.”

“In Europe this year, things have been bad, so everyone is looking to come over here to play for more money than they can get in other places.”

Carlos Geniso – president, DG Medios

APrIL �• Serbian authorities arrest the venue owner and other

individuals following a fire at the Contrast nightclub in Novi Sad that claims the lives of six people.

�• AEG wins the contract for the new 20,000-capacity Galactica Park arena, which is scheduled to open in Moscow in 2018.

�• International delegates visiting Tallinn Music Week in Estonia increase from 194 to 306. Despite only being in its fourth year, the event has doubled in size, with total delegates up to 589.

�• The Musicians’ Union criticises organisers of the London Olympics when it is revealed that the music at the opening and closing ceremonies will be performed to backing tracks.

�• Tupac Shakur, who died 15 years ago, is the main talking point at Coachella Festival as a multi-million dollar hologram of the rapper performs on stage alongside Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

�• US artist management and music publishing company Primary Wave Music hires former EMI and Warner Music A&R man Clive Black to head up its new UK office.

MAY �• Viagogo UK raises eyebrows by shifting its operational

base to Switzerland. Speculation that it wants to resell Olympic Games tickets without falling foul of British law is confirmed when it emerges it has a deal to sell tickets on behalf of the Spanish Olympic Committee.

�• Bee Gees’ frontman Robin Gibb dies at 62 after losing a long battle with cancer.

�• Investment firm Silver Lake Partners completes a transaction to acquire a 31% stake in William Morris Endeavor.

�• Live Nation makes a deal with One Direction shows in Toronto, Detroit and Chicago to sell merch the day before the group’s concerts.

�• Beastie Boys’ Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch dies from salivary gland cancer, aged 47.

�• Australian festival Splendour in the Grass wins a four-year fight to gain local authority approval for a move to a permanent site in Byron Bay.

�• Disco diva Donna Summer dies from lung cancer, reportedly caused by the dust from 9/11. She was 63.


The Middle East came under scrutiny in September’s IQ report. The events of the ‘Arab Spring’ brought hope that the region would open up, but opportunities do not seem available as yet, and previous progress seems to be, at best, on hold. Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Lebanon have continued to be reasonably healthy markets, but the continuing strife in Syria may still affect this. Israel, though operating separately from the rest of the Middle East maintains a strong market but this is vulnerable to the country’s own escalating geo-political problems.

“There’s fewer than 4 million people living in the UAE and fewer than one million that are remotely interested in concerts. 80% of our community is sub-continent ex-pats and the majority of those are very low income workers in construction and the like.”

Thomas Oveson– COO, Done Events, Dubai

Our penultimate report of the year looked at Japan, one of the world’s biggest and most exciting live music markets, but struggling to overcome more than its fair share of serious problems this year with an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown adding to economic difficulties. Of course, the live industry was affected but appears to be recovering, although promoters, as in Australia, UK and elsewhere, have long-term concerns about an over-saturated festival market.

“With a disaster of such magnitude it’s all about people losing their jobs and trying to put food on the table, Since then ticket sales have been very low. Thanks to all the countries around

the world and their support we are gradually recovering. Back in the day, Japan had the highest ticket prices in the world, but now they have been surpassed by other countries. I’m sure this has to do with our economy; but the economy, ticket prices, and artist fees always reflect each other.”

Yuki Tamura – manager, Kyodo Tokyo international division

Right, after that quick trip around the world of live music, and bearing in mind we only have so much space – where to now? I think festivals, that most saturated (both in terms of rainfall and competition) of sectors.

a FesTival Too Far?

in The uk, aTP went into liquidation, although is still operating. Vince Power’s Music Festivals called in the administrators; as did the 20-year-old Guilfest. Various events cancelled due to a lack of ticket sales, and really bad weather hit the Isle of Wight and many other events, including Creamfields, which had to be halted early due to flooding. Hyde Park also turned into a quagmire, and the BBC pissed off various promoters by staging a huge free event in London in the middle of the season, as if the Olympics weren’t competition enough already! Oh, and UK newspaper The Guardian ran a piece entitled, “Have we fallen out of love with the great British music festival?”, but then again, they published something similar last year, and the festivals certainly haven’t ALL gone away. Still, not what we’d really see as a classic year for the festival market in the UK…

Even before the year started we knew that Ireland’s Oxegen and Glastonbury were both taking a year off. The Big Chill was the first major casualty when, in January Melvin Benn of Festival Republic cancelled the event (established

JUNe �• Former AEG Germany CEO, Detlef Kornett, forms a venue

consultancy company, called Verescon, with DEAG chief Peter Schwenkow.

�• Limp Bizkit points the finger at a lack of barriers for safety issues during a festival show in Warsaw, Poland.

�• The BBC records the biggest British TV audience of the year – 17million – with its coverage of the Queen’s diamond jubilee concert on 4 June.

�• Popkomm, Germany’s oldest annual music conference and trade fair announces its cancellation for 2012, leading to speculation that the event may be scrapped completely.

�• Swedish telecom operator Tele2 pays an undisclosed sum to secure naming rights for Stockholm’s new 40,000-capacity stadium, operated by AEG.

�• Music Finland, the new organisation formed by the unification of Music Export Finland and the Finnish Music Information Centre, officially opens for business.

�• SMG Europe promotes John Knight to regional vice-president. He will continue to oversee operations at Manchester Evening News Arena, but will add Belfast’s Odyssey Arena, York Barbican and the under-construction Leeds Arena to his remit.

JULY �• Rita Lee, wife of the late Buddy Lee and co-founder of

Buddy Lee Attractions, dies in Nashville, aged 73. �• Live Nation appoints former CAA exec David Zedeck to

the role of executive VP and president of global talent and artist development.

�• Universal Records suggests it is open to divesting certain assets, such as iconic label Parlophone, as part of the concessions it will make in its $1.9billion (€1.51bn) acquisition of EMI Music.

�• British retailer HMV posts a pre-tax loss of £38.6m (€48.9m) for the year to April. CEO Simon Fox announces his intention to leave and is replaced by Trevor Moore, former boss of camera retailer Jessops.

�• Artists including Paul McCartney, Mike Oldfield, Dizzee Rascal and Emeli Sande are each paid £1 (€1.24) for their performances at the Olympic opening ceremony. The show attracts 26.9m viewers in the UK alone – and billions more worldwide.

�• Frontier Touring Company MD Michael Gudinski is named the most powerful person in the Australian music industry by publisher Street Press Australia. Other execs named on the list include Michael Chugg, AJ Maddah, Paul Dainty and Michael Coppel.


in 1994), saying that the London Olympics had impacted on “artist availability” for the event, but that the event would return in 2013. Another high-end casualty was announced in April when the UK leg of Sonisphere (planning to headline Adam Lambert with Queen at Knebworth) was shelved.

“They are taking talent and customers out of the overall market. When you’ve got an event like Radio 1 Weekend in Hackney, with 100,000 free tickets, and Dizzee Rascal playing Hyde Park for only £15, because it’s subsidised by Coca-Cola, that’s going to have an effect on the market.”

Stuart Galbraith – CEO, Kilimanjaro Live

It wasn’t just the UK that had its problems – at about the same time on the other side of the globe, Ken West, the founder of The Big Day Out, said the event would lose money for the first time in 20 years and that the “golden age for Australian music festivals” is over, blaming poor consumer sentiment, sluggish ticket sales, a shallow pool of international crowd-pulling talent and a glut of rival events.

“A vast amount of events worldwide have sprung up in recent years with festivals being a way of printing money. Many promoters don’t understand the costs. It takes three months for a festival to reconcile its costs: from market stallholders to portaloos and generator companies. We also have 10,000 casual staff and tougher government regulations. Then there’s the bill for the talent.”

Ken West – founder, The Big Day Out

As ever, it was not all doom and gloom. Generally, the established events eventually sold out, though Leeds was slow. In fact, the V Festivals in Chelmsford, and Staffordshire (both 90,000 capacity) sold out £155 (€193) tickets in just two hours. In Belgium, Rock Werchter set a record with 139,000 visitors to the festival. Overall, with some cancellations, the Europeans did well – often with the help of cash-strapped UK fans finding it cheaper to go to events such as Sonar in Spain, or the Garden Festival in Croatia.

“ In the UK, we pay much more for headliners than festivals in Europe and that’s why certain European festivals are able to have lower ticket prices.”

Melvin Benn – MD, Festival Republic

In June, in an attempt to bring more order into the booking processes for festivals, association Yourope issued a ‘standard contract’ for all agents to use. However, the matter seems to still be under discussion.

Glastonbury will return for the 2013 season – having already sold out in record time with no mention of headliners, so let’s hope that its special kind of magic rubs off a little for the rest of the market. Certainly organisers are going to have to carefully examine how they go about things, but lets face it, nobody wants to see the festivals disappear completely – apart of course from some concert promoters who’d like to see less disturbance to the touring circuits.

AUGUST �• Entertainment retailer HMV reveals plans to downgrade its

Stock Exchange listing, allowing it to sell off its live music divisions without seeking shareholder approval.

�• Production specialists Down Under form the Event Safety Alliance Australia in reaction to some of the recent high profile stage collapses in the northern hemisphere.

�• Ultra Music Festival organisers proclaim its debut in Asia a success after attendance tops 55,000 at the event in the Olympic Stadium in Seoul, South Korea.

�• SXSW creative director Brent Grulke dies from a heart attack. Days later Viva Art Music founder Lasse Olsson loses his fight with cancer. Both were aged just 52.

�• Revenues in the Australian live performance sector fell slightly to AU$1.3bn (€1.1bn) last year, despite an increase in the number of people attending shows, according to Live Performance Australia.

�• Three members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot are jailed for two years each, after staging an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral.

�• The Michigan House and Senate debate legislation that would make it illegal to use or sell ticketing bot software in the state.

• UK dance music event Creamfields becomes yet another victim of the soggy British summer when flooding forces it to close early.

SePTeMber �• Live Nation reports improved ticket sales, beating forecasts

of a flat market in 2012. The company says that compared to summer 2011, attendance at its concerts from June to September 2012 was around 5% higher.

�• Perth Arena general manager David Humphreys dies, just two months before the AUD$500m (€435m) venue is due to open. He was 57.

�• AEG drops its claim against Lloyd’s of London on a multi-million dollar insurance policy following Michael Jackson’s death.

�• Entertainment hologram developers Digital Domain Media Group, which stole headlines in April with its Tupac Shakur gig at Coachella Festival, files for bankruptcy protection.

�• Former Big Day Out co-promoter Vivian Lees and Paul Dainty announce a new joint venture company called Two Worlds Touring.

�• Live Performance Australia-produced Helpmann Awards recognises Kylie Minogues’ Aphrodite Les Folies Tour as best Australian contemporary concert, while Prince’s Welcome 2 Australia collects best international concert.

�• Ed Thompson leaves 13 Artists to join The Agency Group’s London operations, taking a roster of acts such as We Were Promised Jetpacks, Maps & Atlases, and The Twilight Sad with him.


“The festival market is at a turning point. We’re not going to see that explosive growth in live music [that we saw in the last decade]. What will keep the festivals market going is innovation: new festivals that are genre-specific in comedy, film and art — not just music.”

Barney Hooper – PRS for Music

loose eNds

“ Attending industry conferences I notice that people constantly dwell on the down side of our industry. If we all feel like that, what’s the point of carrying on?” Anthony Addis – manager, Muse

righT – whaT’s ThaT? Wind it up? So much more to review, but no space left. I meant to talk about venues – in the UK small venues have supposedly been helped out by the coming into law of the Live Music Act, but not everyone agrees and clubs are still closing down.

The arenas have seen comedy and non music events take the lead in the Europe and more and more of them are going for in-house ticketing. Ticketing

– of course, still so much going on in the distribution

and marketing of our core product, and no matter how often we think the secondary topic had been put to bed, it‘s obvious that it’s nowhere near tucked in! As ever I urge you to refer to the excellent sector reports in your back copies of IQ.

“ Today, the relationship between the artists performing music and the investors supporting them has subtly changed and is continuing to evolve. The traditional model of significant advances and marketing support from larger record companies to artists remains widely in place, but there is now a greater emphasis on partnership, shared skills and shared revenue.”

Alison Wenham – CEO, Association of Independent Music

One thing that seems to me to have become more obvious this year, from attending conferences and chasing people to write comment pieces for IQ (yes… you!), is the impression that many professionals (see Marc Lambelet’s comment piece in this issue and Juha Kyrrö’s comments in Issue 44), are becoming disenchanted with the way we have been conducting business, and with the way the different sectors relate to each other.

With artists and others accused of being greedy and short-sighted, have we gone too far in areas of competition? Is our business becoming far too institutionalised, corporatised, regulated and regimented? In other words, exactly what we got into the music business to avoid? (This was the year we pulled the plug on Macca and The Boss to conform to the curfew, which is a bit like interrupting the Queen’s speech).

Perhaps a little re-appraisal is required… No doubt we’ll consider this and more at ILMC 25 at the Royal Garden Hotel in London next March. I look forward to seeing you all there!

“ Yes, it’s expensive. But most of the tickets go for a higher price than we’ve sold them for, so you can see the market is there. We don’t participate in the profit. If a ticket costs 250 quid, let’s imagine, and goes for 1,000 quid, I just want to point out that we don’t get that difference.”

Mick Jagger – Rolling Stone, touring again soon

OcTOber �• Japan introduces laws which could result in anyone found

possessing illegally downloaded music or movies being imprisoned for up to two years and a fine of up to JPY2 million (€19,250).

�• Glastonbury Festival takes just 100 minutes to sell out all 135,000 tickets for next summer’s event, despite not naming a single act on the 2013 bill.

�• Tim Chambers vacates his position as senior vice-president for corporate development with Live Nation.

�• Spice Girls impresario Simon Fuller becomes the latest person to be linked with EMI when it is reported he is working with a consortium on a £350m (€430m) bid to buy 60% of the company’s European businesses.

�• C3 Presents extends an arrangement with Globo Organizations’ GEO for more events in Brazil, following a successful Lollapalooza. AEG’s AXS Ticketing launches a new platform for buying tickets through Facebook which it says will allow fans to buy and reserve seats for friends.

�• Australian promoter Paul Dainty and billionaire businessman Richard Branson sign a pact to run Virgin Live which they say will promote any live Rolling Stones 50th anniversary concerts.

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Promoters at 25

Promoters

Promoters at 25


Getting bands on stage and bums on seats has, and always will be, the key task of concert promoters, but how they go about achieving that fundamental goal has changed dramatically since the ILMC first opened its doors 25 years ago.

A promoter’s clients remain artists and audiences, and pleasing them in the most professional and profitable manner is still their core objective, but the way in which those basics are being achieved has become ever more complex and demanding.

When AEG Live’s president of international touring, Rob Hallett, first started out he was promoting local bands in Brighton pubs and getting a 50% split of the 30 pence (40 cents) ticket price. More recently, he promoted Barbra Streisand at the O2 with tickets at £500 (€625). In those early days, Hallett was unable to afford local press advertising so took to the street with fliers. Now he is concerned with CRM and a database containing details of millions of people.

Meanwhile, when Thomas Johansson, chairman of Live Nation International Music, started out at Ema Telstar in 1968, concert promoters were a rare breed and his job was not considered to be a proper profession by his peers. Not only have Johansson and Hallett come a long way over the years, but since the inaugural ILMC back in 1988, the role of concert promoters has changed – dramatically. There are now thousands of promoters around the world, and an impressive international network of venues and technology available that would have blown the minds of those first ILMC delegates.

There have also been huge social, economic and political changes around the world in the past quarter of a century, in

some cases helping the concert business develop in previously uncharted territory. This particular development is clearly illustrated by the experience of Laszlo Hegedus, MD of the Multimedia Organisation in Hungary. A platinum member of the ILMC, Hegedus is one of about a dozen promoters that have been present at the conference each and every year since it launched.

When Hegedus attended ILMC 1 in 1988 the Berlin Wall was firmly in place. The following year when it came tumbling down, it cleared the way for new opportunities in the region. “The attention of the world was on Eastern Europe, there were only a very small number of people working in the business in that region at the time and we felt like pioneers. 1988 and - 89 were exceptional years; the ILMC made us the centre of attention. We had a lot of business proposals and an opportunity to learn about the business, it was a revelation to me; the ILMC opened my eyes,” says Hegedus.

The concert business has come a long way in Eastern Europe in the quarter century since Martin Hopewell launched ILMC and Hegedus has played no small part in its development, aided by the initial support he received at the London event.

While Hegedus helped build a significant touring opportunity for international artists in his region, Colleen Ironside was busy at work across the globe in Asia. Now managing director at Live Limited Hong Kong, Ironside has 20 years of experience promoting shows across the region and has worked with top-flight artists including the Rolling Stones, Elton John, David Bowie and REM.

With the 25th anniversary of ILMC closing in faster than a time traveller at warp speed, Christopher Austin talks to our promoter friends to chart the last quarter of a century at the risky end of the business…

Promoters25 Years Of…

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Promoters at 25

Over the years, Ironside has seen Asia become an ever-more appealing destination for international artists. “There have been huge changes in professionalism, the equipment that is available and the number of acts coming through,” she explains. “Twenty years ago, the equipment that bands expected was mostly not available in Asia and the local production teams were incredibly inexperienced at things like rigging, so lighting trusses would fall down. But they have gained a lot of experience over the years from international artists and crews coming through. That knowledge has been transferred locally and they have expanded on it. Now great shows are produced for local artists around the region and they are so sophisticated that they put some international acts to shame,” Ironside says.

With the concert business well established around the world, the arrival of the internet has revolutionised the way promoters communicate with clients in every corner of the globe. While some promoters feel that the speed of communication and scale of information required has made the job more demanding than ever, the benefits are undoubtedly huge. The internet has enabled cost-effective mass communication with potential ticket buyers via email and social media. It has also transformed the way in which tickets are sold.

Geoff Ellis, CEO of Scotland’s DF Concerts, is among the many promoters to have warmly embraced advances in technology. “I remember when we started T in The Park, we couldn’t find anybody who could supply a credit card hotline that would operate outside of office hours. Now 95% of tickets are sold online,” he notes. “The internet has also changed the way we find audiences. It used to be press ads, word of mouth, fliers and posters, now you have so many more channels.

Digital marketing has transformed how we promote, we can sell a show out simply by emailing past buyers.”

Speaking prior to a Radiohead gig in Brisbane and on the eve of a Coldplay show in Auckland (both promoted by his eponymous company), Michael Chugg is another of the business’s vibrant veterans and remains as enthusiastic about new music as a man a third his age. “The arrival of the internet has made the biggest change to the way that everybody promotes. It has made a huge difference to the way we market acts and has become an amazing way of finding new talent. There are so many young local bands building interest beyond Australia thanks, largely, to the internet,” Chugg says.

Social media is now a firmly established marketing tool for promoters but there remains scepticism in some quarters as to quite how important a development it is. “Hailed as the great saviour, it is really a quick fix,” says Pete Wilson at 3A Entertainment. “I have always believed a promoter has a duty not just to sell tickets, but also to expand the profile of the act, such that you lay a platform for the next tour. Social media only targets the ‘definites’, not the ‘maybes’.”

A promoter since 1959, ILMC platinum member Karsten Jahnke has seen no shortage of technological advances and his Hamburg-based Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion GmbH uses social media to promote shows, but he too believes

“ I remember when we started T in The Park, we couldn’t find anybody who could supply a credit card hotline that would operate outside of office hours. Now 95% of tickets are sold online,”

– Geoff Ellis, DF Concerts


Promoters at 25

it has limitations. “A ‘like’ or a ‘will attend’ is just so easily clicked – but this dedication may last no longer than five minutes,” observes Jahnke. “We use social media as an additional channel to promote our shows and for the smaller artists it is a very good thing to do as there’s almost no budget for advertising anyway and so getting the word out online is very useful. But social media is by no means the solution to all problems when it comes to promoting a show.”

Among those problems, says Jahnke, is the increased struggle for profit. “You simply do not earn as much money with a good selling show as ten years ago, and with so many upcoming artists you have constant investments to make in the hope they will be able to establish themselves and return the investment. Besides hard calculations beforehand, there’s not much that you can rely on to make sure you are doing alright,” warns Jahnke.

Fellow ILMC platinum delegate, André Béchir, of Good News Productions AG in Switzerland, was selected to be one of the speakers at the inaugural ILMC and recalls debates over whether there should be one rider that is valid for all artists, and what the artist cost and show cost should be. “If you look back 25 years, the business has changed completely; now we get dictated to as to the show cost and what we have to pay, but at that time it was about what we were prepared to pay,” Béchir says. “Back then, everybody took your advice because territories like Switzerland and Greece are completely different and you need the local knowledge. Now it is just about the money and loyalty is fading away.”

Hegedus points to the arrival of SFX Entertainment founder Robert Sillerman in the business as a defining moment that changed the concert promoting industry forever. During the 90s, Sillerman’s SFX spent $1.2billion (€0.94bn) acquiring regional promoters and combined them into an international organisation. In 2000, Clear Channel purchased SFX for $4.4bn (€3.5bn) leading to the birth of international powerhouse Live Nation. The consolidation of such a large chunk of the concert promoting business did not meet with the approval of many independent promoters, including Hegedus, but with the benefit of hindsight he now regards it as “an inevitable reality.”

Milan-based independent promoter, Claudio Trotta, at

“ The promoter’s role has become more like the old record company role. We do a lot of groundwork with the bands from the beginning, we work a band, do the press, TV, radio, set ups; that is a big change.”

– Thomas Johansson, Live Nation

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“ The arrival of the internet has made the biggest change to the way that everybody promotes. It has made a huge difference to the way we market acts and has become an amazing way of finding new talent.”

– Michael Chugg, Michael Chugg Entertainment

Barley Arts, has no illusions as to the effect it has had on the industry and his role. “It is harder than ever to be a promoter because of the dominance of major corporations,” Trotta says. “Most of the remaining independent promoters are creative and dynamic people that know how to survive, but they should talk to each other more and make pan-international deals that appeal to major international artists and can compete with the big international corporations.”

3A’s Wilson has seen his fair share of change in the industry over the past 25 years, but agrees its consolidation has been the most dramatic. “Now you have a number of promoters with many hats (promoter, manager, agent, ticket company, venue operator) and I can’t help think that someone loses out. I also think the soul has gone from much of the industry. Where every deal was on a handshake now it’s reams of contracts, much of which is generic and never specific to the project in hand,” Wilson says.

“The administration should not eat the art,” Bechir agrees. “The amount of administration is enormous now. When I started, it was a creative job, but now creativity is lacking.”

Something that certainly hasn’t been lacking in recent years is the perceived value of the live music experience, with concert tickets more expensive than ever. “Ticket prices have risen out of all proportion, but some of it is justified because for many years we were dumb enough to undersell our product. I remember doing arena tours with Duran Duran at £7.50 (€9.38) a ticket when West End theatres were charging £35 (€43.75),” says AEG Live’s Hallett.

Live Nation international president of touring, Phil Bowdery, contends that a large part of being a successful promoter is knowing the market, judging an event’s appeal and establishing the right ticket price. “The price has to be relative to the artist and the attraction. We are mindful that we need to watch what we are doing because there is not an endless supply of money out there,” Bowdery says.

But the fall in recorded music revenues has had the knock on effect of artists becoming increasingly dependent on the live business to generate significant income, and many are looking for considerable live fees to bolster the coffers. The decline of the record business has also meant that there is no longer the kind of budget available for frontline A&R, and artist development and marketing that there was in past decades. As a result, some promoters are concerned that there is not enough new talent coming through at a significant level.

Álvaro Ramos of Ritmos e Blues in Portugal is another ILMC platinum member. For him, one of the more worrying changes is the decline in the number of major league acts. “These days there are not as many bands with long careers and fans all over the world that are capable of doing a stadium tour with huge success,” Ramos says.

Trotta agrees. “There is a lack of stadium-level talent. There are only about 15 of them [bands/artists] and most of them are over 50-years-old, so in a short period, we will have none,” he says.

Meanwhile, as the music industry has evolved, promoters have had to take on additional responsibilities and cope with less support from weakened record companies. Based in Sweden, Live Nation’s Thomas Johansson has promoted concerts in the Nordic region for a remarkable array of A-list artists including Abba, Jimi Hendrix, Queen, the Rolling Stones and U2. He says today’s promoter has had to multi-task in order to fill the void left by a retreating record label business. “Until the last ten years, the record companies were absolutely instrumental, together with the promoter, in getting the band on the road,” Johansson states. “Today, the record company’s role has somewhat changed and the promoter’s


Promoters at 25

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role has become more like the old record company role. We do a lot of groundwork with the bands from the beginning, we work a band, do the press, TV, radio, set ups; that is a big change,” he says.

Manila-based Mel Tyler has been a promoter for 28 years and believes that success, more than ever before, depends on thinking outside of the box. “In this economic climate it makes sense for promoters to look around for ancillary revenues,” says Tyler, who is part of Midas Promotions, as well as CEO-Live Touring for World Wrestling Fan Xperience. “Family entertainment offers us great opportunities – none more so than with wrestling which has a global audience of 250 million viewers per week.”

Tyler is developing WWFX as an international brand, with the ultimate aspiration that the live shows will get its own syndicated TV show, on a par with other wrestling franchises. And one of the main developments Tyler has witnessed over the last quarter century is the need for shows to be flexible enough to adapt to local markets. “That’s certainly what we’re doing with WWFX,” he says. “We can provide local promoters with a customised event to fit the needs of their specific venue, market, or tour, including market specific talent, market specific matches, as well as market specific continuity to match the event with what is currently being seen on TV regionally in that area.”

Divesting into other areas has helped other promoters around the world bolster their balance sheets too. In the UK, DHP Group has virtually grown up alongswide the ILMC, having been established in 1980, originally as a

local promoter and venue operator in Nottingham. Now the company has a portfolio of venues in that city – including Rock City, The Rig, Rescue Rooms, Stealth and The Bodega, with a total nightly capacity of 4,000 people – as well as the Thekla in the city of Bristol.

However, under the guidance of George Akins junior – whose father established the company – in addition to promoting and operating venues, DHP now also has its own ticketing operation, Alt-tickets, and an expanding artist management division. “The whole DHP business grew out of Rock City in Nottingham, which opened in 1980, and from that we started promoting externally about eight years ago to other venues in Nottingham, such as the concert hall and the arena,” explains DHP promotions director Anton Lockwood. “In the last three years we’ve started doing a serious number of shows and we’ve diversified into other areas, such as our Dollop brand of club events and our urban festivals, which we probably promote more of in the UK than anyone else.”

This year DHP has organised more than 1,200 shows and has now stepped up to the next level by promoting national tours for artists such as Ed Sheeran, The Human League, The Gaslight Anthem, Fat Freddy’s Drop and many more, as well as hosting the outdoor event the Splendour Festival and the indoor Dot to Dot Festivals in Nottingham, Bristol and London.

Miami-based promoter Phil Rodriguez at Water Brother Productions agrees that the life of a promoter has never been so all encompassing. “As a result of the demise of record companies, as we knew them, managers, agents, and promoters now deal with pressures and demands that simply did not exist in the past,” he says.

But, despite the added pressures and increase in responsibilities, it’s hard to find a promoter who doesn’t love his job. The roles of promoters have changed dramatically since the first ILMC, but clearly the passion that promoters have for the business remains a constant.

DF’s Geoff Ellis sums up the mood. “You have to take the ups with the downs, but it is still a fantastic business to be in. I love every minute of being a concert promoter.”

“ Most of the remaining independent promoters are creative and dynamic people that know how to survive, but they should talk to each other more and make pan-international deals that appeal to major international artists and can compete with the big international corporations.” – Claudio Trotta, Barley Arts


Germany

Introduction

Germany


Almost like no other sector, music has been hit by the rise of digitalisation, which has ravaged a once-established value chain. Nowadays, the industry is working within a completely revamped business inventory and the differences between markets have become increasingly evident over the last decade.

Christian Dieckmann, CFO at DEAG sums up how the business has changed in recent years, “Even the record companies today have to make money with live, and have their own interest in this market.” He adds, “At DEAG, we have a [long-standing] cooperation with Ringier (a Swiss media and publishing company) and today we work together with Pro7, Sat1, RTL, Axel Springer and many other media ventures. Those have a much higher relevance for our business than previously.” On the subject of DEAG being one of the few live music companies that have a joint-venture with Sony Music, Dieckman comments, “I don’t know if this would have been possible before, but I very much enjoy working within this decade of change as this opens up many new opportunities.”

DEAG is a something of a pioneer in the ongoing evolution of the live music business in Germany, which remains a challenging market for foreign companies to infiltrate. For

instance, the global market leader Live Nation, which is a powerhouse in the UK, Benelux and Scandinavia, has never managed to set up a company unit in Germany, despite that territory being one of the most successful worldwide in terms of the strength of live music.

The Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI), the German branch of the IFPI, reported that in 2011, the market share of physical music product was still at 83%. In June 2012, the BPI (British Phonographic Industries) reported that for the first time ever, digital music sales overtook physical CD sales with a market share of 55.5% sales. On the other hand, the BVMI reveals that (also for the first time ever), the share of domestic repertoire on album sales reached a market share of 55%. A milestone for the German music industry.

During the last ten years the revenues for recorded music in Germany plummeted from €2.2billion to €1.2bn in 2011, while the estimated revenues of the live entertainment industry have increased to €3.9bn, according to a consumer market survey undertaken by the research company GFK on behalf of the promoters’ association Bundesverband Veranstaltungswirtschaft (BDV) and trade publication Musikmarkt.

GermanyAs Europe’s largest country, Germany has long been a destination for international tours. But while public appetite for entertainment has rarely been healthier, Manfred Tari reports that there are some dark clouds threatening to dampen the spirits of those working in the business…

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Promotersthe depth And breAdth of promoters in Germany is vast, with numerous operations competing for comsumer spending power in the live entertainment sector. Folkert Koopmans, MD at FKP Scorpio says, “The German concert market is pretty robust. Compared to my experience in other markets such as in the Netherlands or Scandinavia, the German concert market is more stable, which is, of course, backed by the overall [good] economic situation in Germany.”

“The concert market is very sensitive these days,” stresses Julia Frank at Wizard Promotions. “On the one hand, concerts are the only reliable source of income for artists now that record sales are what they are. On the other hand, everybody is trying to make the most of it by overplaying markets or pushing ticket prices beyond the point of reason. If you do not overbook and stick to a sensible ticket price, you will have a solid business.”

Voicing his concerns, live music elder statesmen Karsten Jahnke observes, “Germany as a concert market is still highly interesting for artists and bands worldwide and therefore vital. What we all have to bear in mind is to avoid overfeeding the market as there are so many artists wanting to play at the same time that you start cannibalising your own market with competing shows, given the fact that people have more and more bands and music to choose from, but not more time, let alone money.”

While statistics for the overall number of concerts are not available, it appears that the figure is increasing. For the winter season 2012/2013 alone, FKP Scorpio has more than 70 tours. Asking Koopmans if this is overkill, he responds, “There is still more room for further concerts and tours. But in terms of the number of shows, it is indeed massive. The number of tours and concerts just went up in recent years, but it also led to the business concentrating on a few bigger companies.” He adds, “One of the side effects is that you can see now that an artist that doesn’t tour on a new release, fails to sell tickets, and people move quickly to another ‘hot’ act.”

Dieter Semmelmann of Semmel Concerts concurs. “Of course, there is some kind of a natural limit on the German concert market. We have to work carefully and keep our eyes open. In the end, it often depends on the right production. With creative ideas, premium artists and a good marketing and promotion concept there is still space for new things – as long as the customer is willing to appreciate this.”

Notwithstanding the absence of Live Nation, the live music business in Germany has one dominant player – the live entertainment division of CTS Eventim. Since the debut of the company on the Frankfurt stock exchange in February 2000, CTS Eventim has created a network of concert companies and is considered the undisputed market leader. Among the companies it controls or holds stakes in are Marek Lieberberg Konzertagentur, Peter Rieger Konzertagentur, Semmel Concerts, and local promoters such as Dirk Becker Entertainment, Argo Concerts and the Promoters Group Munich. Since CTS Eventim lowered its stake in FKP Scorpio to below 50%, the company is now only considered to be associated with CTS.

The portfolio of DEAG (the other stock market-listed concert company), includes companies such as A.C.T. Artist

Agency, DEAG Classics, DEAG Concerts, Gold Entertainment, KBK Konzert- und Künstleragentur and Manfred Hertlein Veranstaltungs GmbH.

But in contrast to the record industry in Germany, where three surviving corporations control 70% plus of the markets, the independent sector of concert companies still holds the larger market share.

The largest and mid-sized independent concert companies in Germany are A.S.S. Concerts, Buback Konzerte, Contour, Contra Promotion, Creative Talent, Four Artists, Karsten Jahnke, ID-Media, KKT, MCT, Meistersinger Konzerte, Melt! Booking, Powerline Agency, Solar Penguin, SSC Concerts, Target Concerts, Wizard Promotions and X-why-Z, to mention a few. Smaller and upcoming companies include Burning Eagle Booking, Landstreicher Booking, and Proton Booking..

All these companies are the gatekeepers for international artists wishing to perform in Germany. Direct bookings by international agencies with regional or local promoters are unusual in Germany, except for festival bookings or concert bookings for smaller artists that approach local promoters directly.

Nevertheless, Koopmans notes that the market concentration by some of the top companies has definitely increased in recent years. While FKP Scorpio has 72 tours booked over the winter season, Karsten Jahnke has 46, MLK 43 and Semmel Concerts has 30 tours up until spring 2013.


Germany

Legal and regulatory issues

one of the biggest concerns in the German live entertainment sector is the controversial policy of the copyright society – GEMA – to increase its rates for the usage of music at live events. In September 2012, public demonstrations took place with protestors numbering from 800 to 5,000 people in cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Leipzig and Munich – the first time ever that a tariff increase by a collections society has caused such a public backlash anywhere in the world. The protest rallies prompted five German regional governments to file parliamentary documents against the tariff changes.

The tariff proposal itself is significant: the rates for the usage of recorded music in music venues, clubs and bars, and copyright controlled music by GEMA played by cover bands could increase by up to 1,000% – which accounts for the wave of civil dissent. Basically, GEMA wants to receive 10% on all revenues linked with events that play and use music. But that’s not all: for events that last longer than eight hours, an additional fee – amounting to another 25% – will be charged.

Promoter Karsten Jahnke says, “GEMA charges are much

too high. They take no risk and want 10% from the gross income – that is ridiculous. I can’t remember earning 10% from the gross at any concert within the last ten years – and I take the risk.” Frank is also a vocal critic: “At the end of the day, they are taking money, sitting on it for a year and paying out with a deduction of 15-20%. In a time when the live market is struggling due to a weak economy it does not help that we have to increase ticket prices even further to be able to pay for GEMA. Why should the copyright charges in Germany be 10% if copyright payments to PRS [in the UK] have remained at 3% for years?”

Currently, there are 12 petitions against GEMA lodged at the German government’s petition commission. Three out of those 12 petitions have been discussed by the commission, but all three have been refused by the state secretary Max Stadler on behalf of the Ministry of Justice, which underlines the strength of GEMA’s lobbying initiatives.

The newly proposed GEMA rates have prompted concert clubs and venues to establish their own trade association. Livekomm is an umbrella organisation (for various regional associations) that currently represents 288 clubs throughout Germany. Livekomm president, Karsten Schölermann, says, “We are negotiating to [try to] reduce this to at least the 5% live rate – although some of our clubs can’t even cover that.” He continues, “Most of ‘our’ musicians do not even benefit from the GEMA royalty payments – because of non-transparent rules and regulations within GEMA. This makes things even more complex. Why shouldn’t we pay authors and composers royalties directly?”

“ We have developed a contractual clause that is likely to disallow commercial secondary ticketing. Any artist/promoter will get the option to integrate this clause via their ticketing platform.”Jens Michow, BDV

More obstaclesthere Are other impediments that are currently dominating the live music agenda in Germany. Since the tragedy of Loveparade (where 21 people died in July 2010), public authorities have devised new health and safety guidelines. Okan Tombulca, director and owner of eps holding, one of the biggest production suppliers in Germany, tells IQ, “There have always been regulations, but because of various accidents in recent years and owing to unclear responsibilities, German authorities assume that they have to safeguard themselves in the first instance. That means that they draft restrictions so that they are able to say ‘We have fulfilled our duties and it’s out of our hands – it wasn’t our fault.’ Such behavior results in extreme requirements.”

Such punitive measures lead to promoters having to bear higher production expenses. But Michael Brombacher of the stage supplier Megaforce states, “For some promoters, the issue of higher expenses still matters more than the safety aspect. Nevertheless, it became much better in the last couple of years, and among a few promoters, it has become a priority topic.”

Tombulca at least comes up with good and helpful recommendations. “The authorities need have the same level of education. There should be more common and valid

guidelines and we should communicate more.”Brombacher also notes new regulations in Germany

and the EU Commission for buildings and constructions. He considers that these are still “trouble afflicted”, “Some aluminium constructions for festival productions won’t work any longer and also steel constructions will suffer in terms of the carrying capacities.” He believes this will cause “market distortions” for the next couple of years, as suppliers who are working in line with the new regulations will have to bear higher expenses than those who offer constructions that only partly meet the new standards.

Another looming dilemma is a price hike in electricity charges. Around 900 electricity providers in Germany will increase their tariffs between 10-15% from the beginning of 2013. The increase is a consequence of new ecological taxes by the German government and will affect most households, and all live music companies. However, certain industries reliant on high energy consumption have been granted exemptions, but it remains a miracle of lobbyism why McDonalds is considered one such company, while, for instance, the o2 Arenas in Berlin and Hamburg are not.


Germany

Venuesthis Autumn, cts eventim took over the management of the Lanxess Arena in Cologne. (For years the arena has suffered losses, similar to the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund). Top notch metal promoter Ossy Hoppe, MD of Wizard Promotions describes the market situation for arenas as follows: “There are still a lot of artists that can play arenas and as long as they do, arenas will survive.”

Rainer Appel, senior vice-president, legal & business development at CTS Eventim reports that in addition to the Lanxess Arena, his company has signed a joint-venture with AEG to operate the Hammersmith Apollo in London. “While Eventim has chosen to invest in these iconic venues, and will carefully consider any future offers for comparable landmarks, we do not plan to make venue management our core business or build a large portfolio in this area.”

With such facilities as Düsseldorf’s Mitsubishi Electric Halle, ISS Dome, Castello and Esprit Arena, Stuttgart’s Porsche Arena and Schleyerhalle, SAP Arena in Mannheim, the Sportstätten in Cologne and the Festhalle Messe Frankfurt, which in November

hosted MTV’s Europe Music Awards, there are no shortage of large-scale venues on the German circuit, but Semmelmann believes there is room for improvement elsewhere. “You can find great multifunctional arenas in nearly every big city in Germany. An increasing problem is much more the lack of mid-size venues with seating capacities between 2,000 and 3,000,” he explains.

When it comes to the spread of events, Uwe Frommhold, vice-president AEG Facilities Germany and managing director of o2 World Hamburg and Berlin says the content inventory “varies from year to year over both venues, but as a rule of thumb, concerts, shows and sport events each share a third of the event calendar.” Frommhold voices concerns about the future of venues: “Energy prices will rise and that will have a significant impact on our business. Unlike other German businesses we have no exemption from the new energy laws and as venues that obviously need around ten gigawatt hours a year, we will be potentially hit with a six-figure increase in costs.”

Ticketing

since the tAkeover of ticketonline by CTS Eventim in 2011, the latter is the undisputed market leader in Germany. However, there are healthy competitors, such as Smart Tickets, Ticketscript and Amiando, that offer online shop solutions for promoters and can be considered as alternative ticketing service suppliers. As an arch-rival, Ticketmaster can still be considered the main competitor for CTS Eventim, but Adticket is aiming to increase its market share and is aggressively trying to position itself as the leading ticketing portal for festivals.

2011 marked an exceptional year in Germany’s secondary ticketing sector. Scumeck Sabottka, MD of MCT, in collaboration with law firm CMS HascheSigle and Smart Tickets managed successfully to thwart secondary ticketing for last year’s three Take That shows in Germany, thereby creating a template that sets out strict terms and conditions that can accompany personalised tickets for shows. The legal conditions borrowed a concept from airline tickets, meaning ticket holders at the door needed to identify themselves with ID cards. The personalised tickets then needed to match with a ticketing database. The whole procedure was very successful and allowed top selling MCT shows to proceed without attracting the massive online advertisements by the usual suspects. For example, for ten Kraftwerk shows that sold out within minutes, there have been

no tickets offered for these shows via Seatwave and eBay and only around 50 tickets on Viagogo. “We consequently stuck to the concept of personalised tickets and legal prosecution against touting, so the touts have certainly learned a lesson. But even more important is that the fans have learned too.” Sabottka believes more promoters should adopt the personalised tickets model and he predicts, “The sale of tickets via mobile phones will come soon and grow fast.”

Jens Michow, president of the BDV, takes the issue of secondary ticketing seriously. “If the artist/promoter has disallowed secondary ticketing, BDV will initiate legal court procedures including temporary injunctions against any secondary ticketing platform and commercial sellers on eBay and similar markets,” Michow says. “BDV will bear all legal costs of these court procedures. We are very positive that as soon as the [appropriate wording is] integrated in the sales conditions, it will be successful to fight this disgusting market.” Michow adds, “We have developed a contractual clause that is likely to disallow commercial secondary ticketing. Any artist/promoter will get the option to integrate this clause via their ticketing platform, such as CTS Eventim, to forbid secondary ticketing.

In the meantime, CTS has “Introduced one of the biggest innovations in computerised ticketing ever: the FanTicket, a full-colour, high resolution ticket with artist pictures and tour artwork, which, after decades of bland computer prints brings emotion back into the ticket itself,” reveals Appel. In line with Sabottka’s predictions, Appel hints at breakthroughs in the delivery of tickets to mobile phones. “We recently relaunched our smartphone app for iOS and Android. Our app’s download rates are amazing – we’re expecting to cross one million downloads soon, and believe that this channel is going to be very important in the future.”

“ We consequently stuck to theconcept of personalised tickets and legal prosecution against touting, so the touts have certainly learned a lesson. But even more important is that the fans have learned too.”Scumeck Sabottka, MCT

Germany


Festivals

A number of festivAls are prospering, as the German public shows no sign of falling out of love with alfresco events. The Wacken Open Air with 85,000 visitors is Germany’s biggest festival and has already sold out for its 2013 edition, while boutique festival Haldern Open Air with a capacity of 5,000 has only 400 tickets left.

FKP Scorpio’s Koopmans is the biggest festival promoter in Europe, running festivals such as sister events Hurricane and Southside, which both sold out in 2012 with a combined visitor record of 128,000. FKP Scorpio now also runs festivals in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. Asking Koopmans if it was a question of strategy that drove him to such international expansion, he replies, “In the first place it was opportunity, but now it is company strategy. We are working to concentrate festivals in various countries on one weekend, which enables us to offer acts the opportunity to play three festivals during one weekend.”

Besides several high profile events such as sister events Rock am Ring and Rock im Park there are many festivals that have become established on the German festival landscape. The Berlin Festival at the former Tempelhof airport, CTS Eventim’s Splash, the Summerjam Festival by Contour in Cologne, are just the tip of the iceberg.

Electronic and EDM festivals are quickly springing up throughout Germany. Stefan Lehmkuhl, managing director of the Melt! Festival in Gräfenhainichen in Eastern Germany, describes their evolution. “Borne from the electronic music scene (Melt! started as a one-day techno event back in 1998)” from 2003 it began to offer other music that techno fans might also want to hear.”

The first electronic event of this kind was techno event Mayday, which has been running since 1991 in the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund. Since 2003, Mayday has been promoted by ID-Media, an EDM specialist that also promotes Nature One, which with 60,000 visitors is the biggest EDM open-air event in Germany. ID-Media also promotes 13 other EDM festivals in Germany, Poland and Russia, and reaches a combined audience of 220,000.

And it appears that a lot of the talent for EDM is home grown and therefore dealing with international agents in other countries isn’t always necessary. Sven Schaller, head of booking at ID-Media, says, “We have German artists Paul Kalbrenner and Boys Noize doing concert tours, but besides this, only David Guetta and Skrillex are [touring]. The German market is still focused on the big festivals and on the club scene.”

“ We are working to concentrate festivals in various countries on one weekend, which enables us to offer acts the opportunity to play three festivals during one weekend.”Folkert Koopmans, FKP Scorpio

AgentsAt the top-level, business is booming. But for newcomers and mid-sized artists, the situation is getting tough. “Festivals still play a very important role in presenting new talent to big crowds, but they are under pressure from international agents to take on their baby bands rather than being able to independently curate a steady line up,” observes Alexander Kralitsch of Melt! Booking. “Touring nowadays is a crucial part of the income stream for established acts and the market is almost collapsing under the amount of tours that are on sale, which makes it very hard for young talent to stand out. In key cities like Berlin, there are up to ten different shows every night aiming for the same group of people. [New] bands have almost

no chance of breaking even.”Due to the departure of the Popkomm convention in

Berlin, the German live music community meanwhile meets in September at Reeperbahn Campus in Hamburg, a B2B congress as part of the showcase Reeperbahn Festival.

Kralitsch continues, “Promoters, agents and bands have to find new ways of funding their live runs. Sponsored events or tours can be a way of still getting exciting new talent on the road, but we need the brands to understand the long-lasting value in investing in young bands, rather than trying to put their name to established bands or festivals. But it does feel like that could be changing soon.”

German Live Music Revenues (2011)Total Revenue: €3.943 billion

Revenue Music: €2.763 billionTickets sold: €74.3 millionAverage ticket price: €37.17Revenue none-music: €1.180 billionTickets sold: 47.7 millionAverage ticket price: €24.72Data compiled by GFK Research on behalf of BDV-Musikmarkt

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Production at 25

Production at 25


Giant leaps in technology during the last quarter century have transformed the ways in which artists communicate with their fans, none more so than the live performance. Adam Woods investigates how the production business has evolved since the first ILMC…

No one could be said to have truly mastered the large-scale rock production 25 years ago, and if everyone had taken the advice of a man who did as much as anyone to address the challenge, it’s likely that no one ever would have done.

“Tours [like that] are extravagantly dangerous to do because they’re so fucking tiring,” David Bowie was still grumbling, four years after his 1987 Glass Spider tour set a new standard for unwieldy but ambitious stadium spectacle.

“Just the pressures of organising the event – and it’s no longer a show, it’s an event; there’s God knows how many people running around, and everybody’s doing something… and it’s a mass of confusion and somehow it’s all supposed to come together.”

Madonna hit the stadiums that year too, along with Michael Jackson’s Bad and U2’s Joshua Tree tour. A debate is said to have raged before that last one about whether a big screen would distract the crowd from the stage. This from a band whose most recent tour included a video wall with a million components. Clearly, much has changed.

Amid head-scratching, nail-biting and failed and successful experiments, the scene was gradually set for an era of mega-tours. Plain old screens would be just the beginning of a remarkable audio-visual revolution that would see lights merging into video into stages. As the years went on, computerisation and increasing know-how would allow lavish productions to hit the road without necessarily driving artists to the point of nervous exhaustion.

“You can see computerisation as a thread through everything that has happened in production over the past three decades, from moving lights in the early-80s to motor

control systems and tracking systems and putting musicians up on lifts and everything else,” says Guy Forrester, director at All Access Staging & Production.

You can see ravenous demand as the other thread, as every development is constantly one-upped and jaundiced audiences call for ever greater thrills and more seamless entertainment.

Staging

“The audience got more spoilt,” says Hedwig De Meyer, founder and president of Stageco, as he reflects on what has happened in the past few decades. “They have seen it all, so you need to come up with something new that they haven’t seen, which is getting harder and harder.”

You also have to come up with something more spectacular but more sustainable, safer and – given the commercial importance of touring to artists – more profitable. Artists need perfection on a budget, so where sets might once have been laboriously constructed and then dumped, these days they are more likely to be cleverly combined from separate, hired parts.

“At the beginning of the era of stadium shows, it was perfectly acceptable just to trash the sets or burn them,” says Carol Scott, Tait Technologies director of sales and marketing. “In today’s environment, where sustainability and stewardship of the planet are crucial, you can’t do that anymore. It’s immoral, it’s impractical and it’s a bad use of the world’s resources.”

So, inevitably, the staging and production hire business has become more sophisticated, and components more

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standardised and re-usable. Even The Claw, from U2’s 3600

tour of 2009-11, was essentially a vast skeleton full of LEDs and other elements that are currently blinking and flashing somewhere else. “Although The Claw itself is still in existence somewhere, it was made up of all sorts of elements,” says Scott. “We built a camera deployment system on the front of the stage which is now part of our rental inventory and has gone out with other tours since.”

Sustainability presents a challenge, but the spectacle obviously can’t be allowed to suffer, and needless to say, standards have only risen on that front, at least in the last 20 years. While the big shows of the late 80s may look rather under-produced from this vantage point, by the early 90s, reckons De Meyer, cutting-edge stadium acts were producing spectacles that would still pass muster nowadays. “Look at Pink Floyd and the show we did with them in 1994 [the Division Bell tour, the band’s last to date, with a 130-foot arch designed to resemble the Hollywood Bowl] – if you saw that show today, it would still be a very modern show, even when you stand it next to the technology we have today.”

Stageco also had an important hand in The Claw (now three years old) which still arguably stands as the defining example of stage-as-art-in-its-own-right. “If you look at the U2 stage, it doesn’t look like a stage anymore. It’s part of the show; it’s a big part of the show,” De Meyer says. “It becomes a determining factor in the show. That is the main evolution over all these years.”

Stageco’s gradual re-imagining of the role of a stage started in the 1980s, when Genesis’s Invisible Touch tour abandoned scaffolding in favour of three towers, supplied by Stageco and ESS, which went up faster and gave more

rigging capacity, with, for the first time, a waterproof roof on top. Moving into the 1990s, stages became more stylised and started to play an increasingly major part in the production, bringing staging companies fully into the production fold for the first time, as they were called upon to work alongside architects and specialist designers.

A series of Rolling Stones tours made a dominant contribution to the trend: Mark Fisher’s stage sets for Steel Wheels (1989), Voodoo Lounge/Urban Jungle (1994-5), Bridges To Babylon (1997-8) and A Bigger Bang (2005-7), creating instantly recognisable visual personalities for each. “The designs on the Stones I have always really loved a lot, because they were the first ones to really do stadium tours,” De Meyer says. “In one way, if you look back at the Stones’ first outdoor tour [the 1981 American tour, though the band had mixed arenas with occasional stadiums on previous excursions] you would say, ‘well, yeah, it’s big, but it is what it is’. Now, we have more possibilities.”

Not every show walks the earth with such pounding footsteps, but efficiencies have evolved that make a difference to all sorts of touring productions. The advent of rolling stages gives far greater flexibility when loading in, while

“ The audience got more spoilt. They have seen it all, so you need to come up with something new that they haven’t seen, which is getting harder and harder.”

– Hedwig De Meyer, Stageco

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allowing for plenty of customisation from tour to tour.Timo Mathes, head of international sales and project

management at German stage specialist Megaforce, likewise cites such mobile, hydraulic stages as a major, relatively recent step forward. “Looking at how much effort is being put into the engineering element of those structures, you really can tell that stages keep constantly attracting inventors and engineers, and that they will always be a major column in the event industry,” he says.

The continuing development, of course, means a high capital outlay for suppliers, as they continually invest in the latest gear, but it is vital to do so, Mathes adds. “Always having state-of-the-art systems available on stock means more clients will prefer you in the end,” he says. “That’s what some competitors don’t realise. They are still offering their 20-year-old material and selling it as modern.”

Lighting and video

Where lighting is concerned, a breakthrough made in the early 80s was still being explored a decade later. In a similar vein, the key lighting breakthrough of the 21st century so far offers a platform for many more years of successful experimentation.

Until the 1980s, stage lighting systems for concerts were bulky rigs with countless fixtures, often numbering in the thousands. Each of these had to be manually focused beforehand, and colours were varied using celluloid gel, applied in an equally labour-intensive fashion. To change colours in mid-song, the relevant lights had to be turned on and off using electronic dimmers, albeit controlled by a computer lighting console.

Internal glass filters and metal halide bulbs eventually allowed colours to be changed almost instantly and offered a new range of saturated tones, but it was the idea of adding two motors (hatched at a barbecue in Dallas in 1980) that made the first Vari-Lite system, trialed by Genesis in 1981, such a game-changer.

Guy Forrester was working for another lighting company across the road from Vari-Lite developer Showco at the eureka moment, and still remembers the impact. “From my point of view, it gave me the opportunity to move from being effectively a technician to being able to operate moving lights, and from there to become a lighting designer.”

Several decades on, the arrival of LED lights has legitimately been the next major leap in lighting. They haven’t yet replaced their PAR-can cousins for heavy-duty applications, but certainly the integration of LED into staging and video offers enough creative possibilities to keep lighting and production designers busy for decades more.

“In the old days, you would have a very standard stage with a couple of risers, and the lighting guy would come in and basically do a light show above the stage,” says Forrester. “The change now is that the light show incorporates the stage, it incorporates the video screens, the whole lot. Everything is crossing over and becoming more integrated, and the video and lighting guys have to work together, where once it was a battle between the two groups.”

Needless to say, the LED union of lighting and video isn’t just about light, and it isn’t just about pictures – it’s about texture and effect. “Production designers aren’t just using LEDs for TV images or IMAG [image magnification],” says Adrian Offord, director of business development at video production and hire specialist Creative Technology. “You look at Strictly Come Dancing and they are using LED screens as proscenium arches, just to give movement.”

Scott cites Madonna’s MDNA tour as a prime example of the LED-as-staging philosophy. “She had a matrix of 36 LED lifts that came out of the stage floor,” she recalls. “They had video content, they could be used as blocks of colour, and they were all automated to give her a dynamic working platform.”

Before lights became screens and vice versa, screens had a rapid evolution all of their own, starting with the popularisation of LED to replace CRT [cathode ray tube] screens in the 1990s. While it might be tempting to sniff at yesterday’s technology, early LEDs still survive and continue to do a job.

“Jumbotrons were the first screens that we had, and they would tend to be used for big outdoor stadium shows, like Michael Jackson, ” Offord says. “You would lift those old things in place with cranes. Everything is so much lighter now, but then again, I sold our last bit of Jumbotron to Millwall Football Club and that’s still running, so that’s a good reflection of how well it stood up.”

audio

One unfortunate conclusion of any long, hard look at developments in live music production over several decades is that, technically, all the great old shows of any size can’t have been all that great by today’s standards, with primitive lighting, bad sound, crude production and probably

“ Technically, the audience experience is a hundred times better now. But our audio memory is very short. I talk to people who say to me, ‘I remember Knebworth in 1974, and it was fantastic!’ It must have been dreadful, in fact; but we thought it was great.”

– Bryan Grant, Britannia Row

a bad, un-enhanced view. And still, somehow, a crowd had a fine time, both because you can’t miss what hasn’t been invented yet, and because live music is a mysterious thing.

“Put it this way: technically, the audience experience is a hundred times better now,” says Bryan Grant, managing director of audio rental company Britannia Row. “It’s a million times better. But our audio memory is very short. I talk to people who say to me, ‘I remember Knebworth in 1974, and it was fantastic!’ It must have been dreadful, in fact; but we thought it was great.”

In the past 25 years, never mind the past 40 or so, live audio has submitted to an absolute transformation, driven by electronics and onrushing developments in audio science. Line arrays arrived in the 1990s, giving focused, efficient, directable sound, and, as in every walk of technological life, everything got smaller and smaller.

“Clair [Brothers Audio Systems] used to have these great S4s, and Showco had big cabinets of their own, and then they had the pyramid system,” remembers Forrester. “That obviously all changed, and everything reduced in size with innovation in sound.”

Speakers may not have the same bulk or heft as they once did, but it’s just as well, because while a typical large show in, say, 1980, could probably have fit in four trucks, its equivalent today needs four times as many, purely because

of the rise and rise of the increasingly elaborate production. A shrinking part of that growing bulk are the ever-lighter consoles, digital processors and portable effects clustered front of house, all entirely computerised and operated by people in constant wireless and Blackberry contact with the rest of the crew.

“At a Depeche Mode concert a couple of years ago, I was standing at front of house and started idly counting the number of computers. I got to 23 and I got frightened – I had to go back for a cup of tea,” says Grant. “There’s a whole plethora of changes in the hardware, and the software – which is what I call people – has had to change too. Everyone has to be computer literate – you can’t just pick this stuff up anymore.”

While the mixing tools have changed beyond recognition, many of the instruments themselves seem to have reached their evolutionary peak many decades ago. “In keyboards, Hammond organs, Wurlitzer and Rhodes electric pianos and acoustic pianos are as popular now as they have ever been, in spite of the development of sampling synths that replicate their sounds,” says Pepin Clout, special projects manager at north London hire company John Henry’s.

“In guitar and bass amplification, while manufacturers constantly develop new product, Fender and Marshall, to name but two, make large amounts of money reissuing designs from the 60s and 70s.”

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“ Always having state-of-the-art systems available on stock means more clients will prefer you in the end. That’s what some competi-tors don’t realise. They are still offering their 20-year-old material and selling it as modern.”

– Timo Mathes, Megaforce

effectS and Safety

Beyond the video, the lights, the audio, the stage and set itself, there’s always more you can do. Make huge projections, for instance, like those seen at the Jodrell Bank Transmission shows, where the enormous satellite dish became a canvas in its own right.

Such processes depend on the fairly recent conjunction of three technologies: a new generation of powerful, sophisticated projectors; increasingly powerful media servers that can serve high-definition content within virtualised, 3D environments; and the 3D and motion graphics software that creates the images themselves.

“We had been projecting onto buildings and mapping content for years,” says Pod Bluman, founder of Bluman Associates, Transmission’s chosen projection mapping specialist. “The French especially have got a tradition of son et lumière displays. But the last three or four years have seen the transition from the analogue way of doing it to the digital way of doing it. Some purists will argue that using photographic processes will always be better than using video, in terms of resolution and colour. However, most people wouldn’t notice that stuff.”

Further everyday elements of the production arsenal are the pyro, lasers, haze, cryogenics, ground fog, confetti, even inflatables that, while not new, have never been quite so ubiquitous.

And they aren’t necessarily all about sound and fury. For the Trafalgar Square Poppy Appeal, effects specialist BPM SFX recently created a confetti shower of poppy petals. For the Radio 1 Teen Awards at Wembley Arena in October, it was random air bursts and gerbs; multiple hits of confetti and streamers; low smoke entrances and huge hits of various pyrotechnic lifts and chases, plus balloon drops.

Live music has become an ever more dynamic business over the past 25 years, in every sense, and it is no coincidence that with the arrival of stadium and festival scale, there also arrived an increasing emphasis on safety.

“Safety was a big concern 25 years ago,” says Mojo Barriers director Cees Muurling. “That is basically the reason Mojo was developed, but I think, worldwide, there is a growing attention to safety even now.” That attention took a while to reach its current level, Muurling notes. “Twenty, twenty-five years ago, if you did a project that needed 150, 200 or 300 metres of barricades, it was the event of the year, and the entire office would head out to get it done,” he says. Nowadays, 1500m of barricade on a single project is not unusual, and in January, Mojo will work at the inauguration of US President Barack Obama.

But where the development production in general has been a story of increasing technology and sophistication, Mojo offers only a tale of education. “A barricade still pretty much looks the same as it did 25 years ago,” says Muurling. “It’s no longer steel, it’s aluminium, but other than that and the add-ons we do – the turnstiles, the counting systems – the basic principle has not changed. It has had a huge impact, not through development of the

product, but through a development in the understanding of how to use it.”

Internationally, that kind of thinking has been a major force in the development of new markets. “For Gearhouse the most significant development, production-wise, has been the arrival of international shows and the resultant uplift in the technical standards in this country,” says Ofer Lapid, managing director at Gearhouse South Africa.

“We were basically pushed by international production managers to deliver properly and safely. The demand for a particular standard of equipment made us realise that we had to find the resources to purchase equipment that would meet the demands of international riders.”

Undoubtedly the last 25 years have seen the live entertainment industry evolve into a truly global business and the companies and individuals involved in the production side of things have been quick to learn about new developments from their peers to transform today’s concerts and festivals into the spectacular events that audiences have, quite rightly, come to expect. Now, with more and more calls from within the production sector to agree and adopt international standards, the future for live music in the next 25 years looks secure, although with the speed of technological advancement, quite what shows will look and sound like by ILMC 50 is anyone’s guess.


Jason Danter

Jason Danter


Britney Spears’ 2009 Circus tour made headlines around the world and confirmed Jason Danter as one of the go-to production managers. Now, with Lady Gaga just the latest of a growing array of A-list stars to rely on his skills, Jason talks to Gordon Masson about his rise to the top...

A career in the military might not be everyone’s route to the pinnacle of the production pile, but for Jason Danter the experience of working in the Royal Navy and the discipline and leadership skills learned in the forces have served him well. However, as the winner of The Gaffer award for 2012 explains to IQ, his path has been punctuated by being in the right place at the right time, and even joining the Navy was more of an opportunity seized than a long-term plan.

With new clients such as Britney, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Alicia Keys and long-termers Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music in his contacts book, Danter is a worthy recipient of The Gaffer, following in the footsteps of production gurus Jake Berry and Chris Kansy. “We are working together now as we are sharing equipment in South America – Jason with Gaga, and myself with Madonna,” says Berry. “I find him easy-going and this in itself tells me that he has a handle on what is going on with his tour. Also, it is nice to know that someone is doing a good job, and some day can take over from us old folks as we need to retire at some point. I would like to add my congratulations to him on this award.”

The man himself is typically modest. “Jake Berry is the Godfather. I have the utmost respect for what he has done and, to be truthful, I can’t believe I’m on the same list as Jake and Chris Kansy as The Gaffer: I’m hugely flattered, but also completely daunted at the same time.”

And it’s not often that Danter is daunted. “I like to think I’m not big headed – I’m just getting away with it,” smiles Danter. “We work in a multi-billion dollar industry run by charlatans and chancers. That’s not meant to be disrespectful to anyone, but we all just fell into what we do, be that in audio, lighting or a carpenter, there’s nobody I’ve met who said this is what they wanted to do when they were at school.”

Born in Birmingham, England, Jason has always been a huge music fan, but the thought of earning a living from the business never crossed his mind in his youth. “I messed around with bass and lead guitars in bands at school and I’d cut out lyrics from Smash Hits or whatever, but it wasn’t something I ever contemplated working in full-time – I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do,” he says. A move to Wales

in his latter schooldays opened a door that previously hadn’t been apparent, when he confessed that a job involving travel would be his ideal choice. “Maths was always my favourite subject and when a careers teacher suggested working with numbers in the military, it made perfect sense. I remember telling my parents, John and Hazel, I wanted to join the Navy. They were surprised, but really supportive and within six months I was in Portsmouth doing my basic training.”

That life changing decision was the start of an eight-and-a-half year military career, during which Jason’s wanderlust was fulfilled through voyages to the likes of South America and West Africa, among other destinations. His love of music never diminished and aside from representing ship’s company at football and rugby, he frequently dusted off the guitar to provide entertainment in bands formed either aboard warships or in shore-based quarters. His time in the military also provided him with skills that would prove invaluable when he eventually started making a name for himself in the world of live entertainment.

“I’m really grateful for the values instilled in me in the forces,” he states. “I spent two years at the Navy’s school of leadership, which probably explains my ethos that you have got to have a plan: it might not be the right plan, but you have to have one. You’ve also got to be flexible enough to be prepared to change it if that’s the case.”

That said, Jason admits his success is more circumstantial than down to any notion of a master plan. “I didn’t want to be in the Navy for the full 22 years I’d signed up for,” he says. “But you could give 18 months notice to leave – which, with hindsight, is actually a ridiculous amount of time. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I left, but I was entitled to do a course to help rehabilitate me back into civilian life, so I actually took a four-week course in sales and marketing.”

Despite that training, Danter was impatient to start work and wanted to immediately get his teeth into something else. “I lined up some job interviews and got a couple of offers – one in admin at a hospital and the other at a solicitors firm in Birmingham – but, in the meantime, a temping agency contacted me to offer me two weeks at a company in Walsall

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Jason Danter

called MCP, which I obviously knew about because of the numerous concerts I’d been to over the years,” he says. From that point forward, his ascent up the production tree was in motion, albeit after an unusual start. “The job at MCP was covering as PA to Maurice Jones and he was a bit surprised to see a guy coming in,” laughs Danter. “But then they asked if I wanted the full-time job and because I was working in an industry I had a lot of interest in, I jumped at the chance. Also, Maurice was involved in Donington Park and because I’d been riding motorbikes since I was eight years old, it just seemed like a perfect match.” That passion for motorbikes (Danter has several bikes scattered around the world) has only been matched by his love of snowboarding – a sport he immerses himself in on both sides of the equator whenever possible. And that’s all thanks to having a career in music, which he admits he still has to pinch himself about.

“I remember on one of my first days at MCP, the receptionist had gone for lunch, so I answered the phone and it was Bruce Foxton from The Jam on the other end. I was just star struck. I couldn’t believe I was in a job where I got to speak to my heroes. Shortly afterwards, I remember going to my first gig where I was on the guest list – I just knew I’d landed my dream job.”

Those fortuitous circumstances may have allowed

Danter to put a foot on the live entertainment ladder, but his unfaltering work ethic and eagerness to learn soon saw him volunteering for more and more tasks at MCP. “Monsters of Rock was Maurice’s baby so I would be his promoter’s rep,” he states. “Then one of the guys in production at MCP left and I asked if I could transfer to that department, so I started working there with Roy Morley and Q Willis. Conal Dodds had just joined the company as a new promoter, bringing in bands like Oasis and Stereophonics, and I also got to start working with Stuart Galbraith on his tours.”

In terms of an introduction to the business, Danter could not have been in a better place. “In the mid- to late-90s, any bands that were up-and-coming tended to be promoted by MCP or SJM. As a promoter rep, I’d speak to the tour manager for the band, get the rider details, advance those to the venues and then act as the middleman if there were any issues. So from February ‘95 until August ‘96 I worked for Maurice and then from ‘96 to ‘99 I was a promoter rep at MCP.”

The travel bug never left though, and Danter says his first lucky break came in ‘99 when Bruce Springsteen reunited with the E Street Band. “I knew it was going to be a long tour, so I handed in my notice at MCP – it was only two or four weeks, from memory, which seemed a lot more reasonable than 18 months – and both Tim and Stuart wished me well, which was really encouraging.” Unfortunately, those plans were quickly dashed. “I thought Springsteen’s tour would be eight to ten months, but after the European leg they decided not to take all the crew to America because of visas, travel, accommodation and all those other things that I have to consider now, but at that time I had no idea about. So I found myself with no work, which was a first. But I reached back out to MCP as a freelancer and Stuart had some tours going out.”

That proactive attitude soon saw others turning to Danter for help. “At the end of ‘99, ITB asked if I could go on a Bryan Ferry UK tour as their rep. When the European tour started, ITB asked if I could double-up as their rep as well as the tour accountant.” That willingness to multitask was to pay dividends. “The production manager, Moe Haggadone, had to take a week off for his daughter’s wedding and he suggested I should fill in. At the end of that leg, Moe was going on a ZZ Top tour, but Bryan still had a bunch of dates, so that gave me the break to become production manager for Bryan Ferry.”

Danter then found himself working with a series of pop

“ For an artist like myself, who lives on the stage, he sure makes it feel like home. More than anything he knows the importance of a show’s consistency – so the fans all get the same spectacular experience and I can perform with spontaneity and passion, with no fear of mishap. Thank you, Jason.”

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acts. “Steve Levitt from Production North asked me to be the tour manager for Five for the UK, Europe, Australasia and South America. The day everyone was flying home, I took off for Bali to do two corporate shows with Bryan Ferry, so that cemented me into Bryan’s camp. At that time he was talking about putting Roxy Music back together, so in May 2001 I found myself out with Roxy.”

Congratulating Danter on The Gaffer award, Bryan Ferry says, “Jason is an outstanding production manager and has done numerous tours for Roxy Music and myself. It’s great to have the security of knowing that whatever problems might occur on tour, you have someone reliable and inventive enough to overcome them.”

Monitor engineer Stephen May has worked with Danter since 1999 when they met during a Bryan Ferry tour. “He’s the best production manager I know – you get treated really well when you work with Jason. He’s lightning at thinking on his feet: we were running late at one show and missed the bus. When we turned up late at the band’s hotel, they wanted to know where the hell we’d been. Jason had noticed there was a marathon being staged locally that day, so quick as a flash he explained that we’d been caught behind the runners. Genius!”

At the start of the Noughties, word about Danter was spreading. “Steve Levitt asked if I would be stage manager for Westlife on their first tour and that just became huge: we were doing multiple arena dates all over the UK. From the end of 2001 until 2006 I was pretty much flipping between Bryan Ferry or Roxy Music and the pop bands for Production North, some as tour manager, but mostly as production manager.”

In addition to the late Maurice Jones, Danter counts Levitt as one of his mentors. “Working with a frugal Yorkshireman instilled the value of money in me. He’d say ‘if everyone is making a little bit of money, then we’re all kept in work. If a band is not making any money, then they’re not going to tour’, so the bottom line is, never rip people off.” And he admits Levitt also prompted a change in his perspective. “It’s a black and white world in the forces, but the music industry is a kaleidoscope of colours. Steve taught me to cut people a bit of slack because we’re not in the military and we’re not going to war,” he says.

“Jason definitely cut his teeth with us at Production North,” says Levitt. “In 2002 we did the most difficult tour we’d ever done – Westlife, when they had the heaviest rig that had ever been flown from arena roofs – and Jason just made it happen. I’m very pleased to hear through other people that the way that he does things is definitely borne out of techniques he learned with us.” Levitt adds, “In 2004 my wife died and Jason filled my boots and did the job admirably. I can never thank him enough for that. I wasn’t able to face work and he just kept things going. If it wasn’t for Jason, I wouldn’t have what I have today.”

Not every tour can be successful, of course, but even when ticket

sales don’t match expectations, Danter’s professional approach has always won him friends. Indeed, a 2006 North American tour of Celtic Tiger with Michael Flatley, which Danter admits “died on its hole” eventually led to another major career break.

Danter continues, “By the time 2007 came around I was only doing production manager work. I was working with an audio guy in Australia who was going back to Europe for an Iron Maiden tour and I just happened to say to him, ‘say hello to Dick Bell for me’. I’d no idea they were looking for a new production manager, but I received a call from Ian Day because Dick was coming off the road. It was for the Flight 666 tour, where Maiden were flying their own plane to gigs around the world, so it was very exciting.”

“My wife told me if I didn’t come off the road then I wouldn’t have a home,” recalls Bell. “But I’d made a mental note to keep in touch with Jason. So when it came to the interview for my replacement, as far as I was concerned, it was just a question of agreeing Jason’s wages.” Bell continues, “The tour using the 757 aircraft was amazing. We had everything on the plane: we took desks, monitors and quite a bit of flooring, but most of the stuff we needed was sourced locally. It’s a totally different way of doing things, but it’s very efficient because you don’t ever have to wait for airfreight. Jason came in with a great attitude – he didn’t have any doubts or throw any spanners into the works.”

That Maiden tour might have tested the capabilities of local suppliers, but Danter enthuses about its innovative approach. “We jokingly referred to it as our splitter plane because there was a false wall in the fuselage that we stored equipment behind. When you have a plane you can pick and choose your own route without having to worry about freight.”

Although he is recognised for his hard graft, obsessive attention to detail and outstanding leadership skills, Danter

“ Jason is an outstanding production manager and has done numerous tours for Roxy Music and myself. It’s great to have the security of knowing that whatever problems might occur on tour, you have someone reliable and inventive enough to overcome them.”

- Bryan Ferry

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Jason Danter

himself is modest enough to suggest his progression involves a certain amount of good fortune. “I was checking out of a hotel in New York at midnight – and we all know how many hotels there are in New York – when I bumped into Steve Dixon who I’d worked with when he was tour accountant on the Michael Flatley tour. He was working with Alicia Keys so I ended up working on that tour during a break from Maiden. In 2009 I was back on a plane with Maiden from February to April and Steve was putting together Britney Spears’ Circus tour. That tour was going to be a year, but it overlapped with Maiden so I couldn’t commit to it.”

Dixon was persistent and when the Circus production ran into difficulties, there was only one man he turned to. “The Maiden tour ended April 4th in Fort Lauderdale, so Steve asked if I would take over Circus when it went to Europe. Then, when we were in Bogota, he called and asked if I could be in Minneapolis on April 5th. So when everybody was flying home from the Maiden tour, I was starting my first day on Circus. That’s what I love about this job – it can be one extreme to another. The audience, the music, the fact that you can be dealing with a young female pop star, rather than a group of guys in their 50s... It can be complete chalk and cheese.”

Circus tour manager Mo Morrison was sufficiently impressed to put Danter at the top of his PM wish list. “In 2010 I was due to do some Alicia Keys stuff again, but she changed management and they decided they wanted to start afresh with new people. But then Mo called and asked if I was interested in working on Lady Gaga.” At the conclusion of Gaga’s North American leg of the Monster Ball tour in

2009, the artist decided to totally change the concept of the show, effectively meaning that the entire production had to be built from scratch during rehearsals.

A former production manager for the likes of the Grateful Dead, Michael Jackson and Prince, Morrison says, “Jason Danter has been my one and only production manager since the Britney Spears Circus tour and through the last two Lady Gaga world tours. That statement alone speaks to my feelings about his professionalism and how Jason approaches his craft. I am his biggest fan and look forward to many more successful world tours with him.”

“Originally the Monster Ball tour was going to be a bunch of theatre dates with seven trucks, but that quickly became a UK arena tour,” recalls Danter. “I remember reading about Jake Berry doing U2 and having 42 trucks and I thought, how the fuck do you do that? But Gaga was seven trucks and that became 17. And then that became 22, then 25 and by the time we left rehearsals we were up to 32 trucks.”

David Coumbe, managing director of trucking specialists Fly By Nite says, “We were already working with Lady Gaga when Jason came on board. All of a sudden she became massive, Live Nation got involved and, as so often happens, changed all the production people, but Jason stuck with us and we’ve developed a good working relationship.” In addition to Gaga’s Monster Ball tour and the current Born This Way Ball, Fly By Nite also worked with Danter on Beyoncé in 2011 and are looking forward to Gaga coming back to northern Europe in December 2012. “The Gaga tour, for us, fluctuates between 32 and 44 trucks depending on whether the shows are indoor or outdoor,” continues Coumbe. “So when she comes back to play Oslo, St Petersburg and Moscow in December we’ll be looking at 33 trucks with double drivers, which is a really big job at a very busy time.”

Danter reveals that planning that Monster Ball outing was fraught. But the result was spectacular. “The moment the house lights went out at that first show in Manchester, it was hairs on the back of the neck time. Lady Gaga is so talented and a complete entertainer, and the six weeks of pain we went through was suddenly all worth it. She’s a sweetheart. She knows what she wants and there’s no compromise in that.”

“ The Gaga tour is a very big and complicated show, but when he was presented with it initially, Jason certainly wasn’t intimidated – he had a clear sense about how it would come together, move and go up and down efficiently.”

- Arthur Fogel

Jason Danter

For her part, Gaga says, “For years Jason has taken such good care of me. From the stage production flowing with perfection to the positive morale he creates on the road, I am truly blessed to have him looking out for me. For an artist like myself, who lives on the stage, he sure makes it feel like home. More than anything he knows the importance of a show’s consistency – so the fans all get the same spectacular experience and I can perform with spontaneity and passion, with no fear of mishap. Thank you, Jason.”

The phenomenal success of the Monster Ball tour elevated Danter to a new level and he soon found himself working with another fantastic female talent. “I had two days off from the Gaga tour in San Francisco, but used those days to fly to New York for a meeting with Beyoncé. I was offered the job and started to put things together based around her Glastonbury appearance.” However, while plans were advanced for a full tour, there was one dilemma Jason couldn’t plan for. “Beyoncé cancelled the tour plans when she fell pregnant,” he says. “But on the back of that I got involved with Kanye West.”

Fastidiously fussy about his live performances, West has a somewhat notorious reputation among the production fraternity and although Danter experienced some initial difficulties, he was able to win over the trust of the artist, helping him secure his place for one of the tours of 2012 – West and Jay-Z’s Watch The Throne. “There were three or four incarnations about what both artists wanted to do and it was a real task for sure, because when you start to run out of time, the

costs quickly start to go up.”Budgets are key to Danter’s work and he believes his early

experience at MCP has been invaluable. “I’ve seen it from the promoter side as well,” he states. “Beyoncé said that, in the past, she felt like she’s spent a lot of money but hasn’t got what she paid for. She definitely gets the business side – she knows if you add five things to a show then you’ll need another truck and another couple of people to look after that. But my answer to Beyoncé was the same to any artist I work with – it’s your money and it’s up to you how much of it you spend, but it’s my job to make sure you get the best use of it.”

Now in the midst of Gaga’s Born This Way Ball tour, Danter is truly at the top of his game. “There are 80 of us on the crew, so there can be 80 different opinions – and they are all entitled to them. But someone has to be in charge,” states Danter. “If I make a decision and 60 people think it’s a bad idea and only 20 people think it’s good, then so be it.” But another Danter work practice ensures his popularity among crew. “I’m the first guy in with the riggers in the morning and the last to leave at night. You can’t ask people to do things that you’re not prepared to do yourself.”

Arthur Fogel, chairman of Global Music and CEO of Global Touring at Live Nation, states, “The Gaga tour is a very big and complicated show, but when he was presented with it initially, Jason certainly wasn’t intimidated – he had a clear sense about how it would come together, move and go up and down efficiently. A lot of people, when faced with

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such a daunting challenge, would react in any number of ways, but Jason just rolled up his sleeves, brought together a great team and working with everyone, figured it all out.”

Tres Thomas senior vice-president of global operations at Live Nation is another fan. He says, “I’ve had the good fortune to be in this business for 30 years and I’ve worked with some of the best production managers in the world. I now count Jason in that circle. I guess his experience of working in the military explains why he doesn’t get flustered by anything. Jason is a 24/7 man when you are touring, but as soon as there’s a break in the schedule he manages to gets lost in some godforsaken place that still has snow in the middle of July.”

Jason Kirschnick of audio specialists Eighth Day Sound

observes, “The logistics for this Gaga tour were challenging because nothing of this scale had done an Asian tour before. Pretty much every night we had to get the gear flown to the next country, so there was a lot of work getting audio equipment into air freight packs, scheduling and fitting all that into the budget. I’d also advance and coordinate all RF frequencies in each country, so I’d interface with Jason on those kind of aspects as well and I have to say he’s fantastic to work with.”

Tait Towers president and CEO, James “Winky” Fairorth, says of Danter, “He’s one of my favourite people. Jason has become a bit more independent on this Gaga tour – he’s really become the captain of the ship and it’s the fucking Titanic.” And applauding Danter for his attention to detail, Winky adds, “He’s really geared toward the technical side and logistics seem to come naturally to him. Right now the Gaga tour is just on autopilot because of the team that Jason has put together.”

With such universal popularity Jason Danter is, indeed, a worthy recipient of The Gaffer. But while other production managers look with envy upon the tours he is involved in, Danter concludes, “I’m doing ok. The work keeps me in snowboarding trips and motorcycles – I have bikes all over the place: Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Texas and a bunch in the UK and I ride them whenever I get the chance. And I’ll be flying straight to Whistler when this leg of the Gaga tour is finished.” But work is never far from his mind. “When I’m not boarding, I’ll be spending the evenings planning the North American leg of the tour, which starts in January.”


Jason Danter

“ Jason has been an incredible resource for us on the last two tours. His experience and patience-level are unmatched and we’re very lucky to have him on our team.”

Troy Carter – manager of Lady Gaga

“ Congratulations and all Kudos to Jason for his acknowledgement from IQ Magazine. He is a low-key mate who doesn’t seek out fame and notoriety and I am extremely happy for him to be acknowledged in such a fashion.”

Mo Morrison - Lady Gaga’s tour production executive

“ The best thing about working with Jason is that he knows exactly what he wants and is very organised and detailed about how he communicates that, but then he just allows you to get on with the job – his approach is that we are the experts with pyro, lasers, fogs, so he trusts us to get on with it. A lot of people are hit and miss and don’t really know what they want – and if the artist is unhappy it’s the vendors that are first to get thrown under the bus. But Jason always knows what he wants and there are never any problems, so he more than deserves The Gaffer award.”

Lorenzo Cornacchia – president, Pyrotek Special Effects

“ I’ve know Jason for 15-20 years and he is one of the best production managers out there: he’s organised, hard working, calm and efficient. The Born This Way Ball is one of the biggest tours we’re involved in this year and it’s been great to be involved with an artist like Lady Gaga whose career has just snowballed. Jason has played a significant role in that, so for that – and all the other artists he works with – he fully deserves The Gaffer recognition.”

Alan Durrant – general manager, Rock-it Cargo

“ It’s great to work with Jason. Everything goes seamlessly and he has a good relaxed way of working. He has a no-nonsense approach and it’s all about getting the job spot on. When he’s totally confident that people know what they are doing, that’s when he trusts you to get on with your job, but he always knows exactly what is happening.

David Coumbe – managing director, Fly By Nite

“ Occasionally, you come across people who just seem to have it, and that’s my experience with Jason Danter. I knew from day one he had the expertise, but it was good to see him in that role taking command and being on top of all the facets of what it takes to be a great production manager. There are various skill sets you need to put you at the top of your game – not just the technical side of things, but the ability to put together a great crew and manage, motivate and lead that crew, while at the same time managing a big-budget tour. I didn’t know he had military service, but I’m not surprised because he does have that strength of leadership and the ability to manage a lot of moving parts.”

Arthur Fogel – CEO Global Touring, Live Nation

“ Jason is a very loyal man. I never had any issues with him in the 10 years we worked together, which is remarkable in this business where if a banana skin is the wrong colour of yellow, we get a complaint. There were never any doubts in mind that Jason would go on to do worldwide tours with big artists. He was always destined to get to where he is now and I wish him continued good luck with that – especially those 36-truck tours.”

Steve Levitt - Production North

“ I’ve known Jason for 15 years, worked with him on various tours and this recognition is long overdue. Jason is always a true professional, a pleasure to work with and has a great sense of humour. Well done, sir!”

Byron Carr – managing director, The Appointment Group

“ It’s a pleasure working with JD. He’s very calm, cool and collected and gets the job done. Working with someone who is so on it is a pleasure. He works as hard as everyone else so that he can make life as easy as possible for everyone on the tour. It’s a way of life for everyone on the road and he embraces that.”

Jason Kirschnick – chief technology officer, Eighth Day Sound

“ The Born This Way Ball is a huge show and it’s fabulous. Any challenges there were for the production have been worked out by Jason – he is a very clever man. He is super intelligent, has a good heart and a whole load of talent. Jason is also very inspiring to the team around him and you can see that everyone wants to work hard for him. For many reasons he’ll be around in the business for a long, long time.”

Robin Shaw – vice-president, Upstaging Inc

“ Jason is super-efficient – he gets things done and everything goes smoothly, which makes it really easy for us. If you ask a question, you get an answer – so many people either give you an answer to something completely different or they don’t answer at all. For instance, [on this Gaga tour] we needed to get three buses away from Barcelona a day early, so I called Jason and asked if that would be possible. He was happy to do it and then, when he wanted to keep three crew buses for a bit longer, that was the trade off. That’s the way things should work, but they obviously don’t always run as smoothly, so it’s great that we’ve developed such a good working relationship with Jason.”

Paul Hattin – operations manager, Phoenix Bussing

“ Jason is very able, capable and unflappable. He has a very simple, straight down the line approach, and I like that. He hasn’t got the ego that other production managers seem to possess and you never hear anything from him unless there is a genuine problem. He gets the job done and doesn’t create obstacles to put in the way of a show, unlike some others in the business. He’s a joy to work with.”

John Giddings – founder, Solo Agency

Testimonials


Your Shout

“ What would your ideal resolution(s) be for the live music business in 2013?”

Paul Sergeant, Melbourne Stadiums LtdAt an ILMC in the mid 90s I recall there being so much doom and gloom around the live entertainment industry because Sonic the bloody Hedgehog and the computer game frenzy meant that kids – the future ticket buyers that are our lifeblood – were going to be locking themselves away in their bedrooms playing games and would stop going to live gigs. Harvey Goldsmith made one of his impassioned statements about how everyone in the industry had to wake up and smell the coffee, massively improve the experience and fight back otherwise we’d be dead in the water. Well, the live entertainment industry did get its act together with promoters, production, venues, service providers, etc making huge investments into their respective businesses. The live experience is fantastic today and Sonic the bloody Hedgehog is nowhere to be seen.

However, that was then and this is now. Time has moved on and the world is a different place. The internet exists, the GFC continues to hit everyone, and your TV is now a home theatre that does almost anything. The industry needs to wake up to the challenges we ALL have to deal with and work together to fathom out what next. How do we ALL combat the many distractions that look to attract our audience, who are more time poor than ever, to ensure they remain loyal to the live experience?

Borek Jirik, Punx Not DeadFind a way to support better distribution of the values created in the live music industry in accordance with undertaken risks and set standards, since the common old ways seems to be losing sense somewhere above club-level events.

Juha Mattila, Live NationCommunism – capitalism is killing us (guarantees).

Gerry Stevens, Gerry Stevens Talent Care International1. Some artists should desist from taking things out on their fans by charging high fees, which result in high ticket prices just because they no longer earn good money from mechanical and record royalties – and stop blaming the hard-working promoters.2. Many artists’ production managers are exceedingly difficult, unprofessional and plain arrogant, especially the British ones (complaining and threatening to cancel shows). Something should be done about this but, having said that, I have no idea how to deal with this situation.3. It would be wonderful if the ticketing situation could be simplified, but I guess there is virtually no chance of this happening, everyone is scrambling for a piece of the cake and trying to fleece the ticket buyers, from whom all the income comes to finance almost every aspect of the live music industry.

David Glick, Edge GroupFirst, that the weather is better in summer 2013. Second, that we begin to nail the ticketing issues which are testing the industry’s credibility with consumers. And thirdly, that we see the emergence of young rock bands with the potential to be the arena stars of tomorrow. We desperately need some fresh blood.

Corrado Canonici, World Concert ArtistsKeep on booking exhibitions and shows, they do well. In the meantime, cut down on artists – I have experienced enough bulls**t already; I want to keep on representing only the ones I love

working with. Trust me, I might even consider opening an internet shop on the side so at least the money comes in immediately, instead of having to employ lawyers to get what I am rightfully owed.

Georg Leitner, GLPStay creative; enjoy what I am doing; have a good laugh every now and then – especially in moments of unsurpassed absurdity; stay humble and thankful for the gift of working with the GLP family and making a living in a profession I enjoy; and enjoy the never ending party.

Bryan Grant, Britannia RowLet’s remember who pays us all – yes, that’s right, the ticket buyers – and treat them with respect. If they feel ripped off and don’t have a great experience, they’ll find something else to spend their money on and we’ll be left wondering what happened to our industry. You have been warned!

Nick Hobbs, CharmenkoFor the long-overdue collapse of that speculative balloon called Live Nation; for agents to have the honesty to admit their mistakes to the artists and managers for whom they work; for deals to cease to be based on fairy-tale scenarios which make ‘creative accounting’ and ‘income streams outside of the deal’ a promoter’s necessary evil; for promoters to be able to have long-term arrangements with artists whereby losses from previous shows are set against the bonuses on future ones (just like in the record business or probably any sane business); for cross-collateralisation not to be seen as a dirty word, but simply a fair way of spreading risk for any business operating in more than one market; for there to be no discussion about the immediate obligation of artists to refund a promoter’s costs up to that point if the artist cancels for non-insurable reasons; and lastly, it’s not so relevant to the live business but what the hell, for all the grandees of the music business to agree to a workable definition of copyright protection in the digital age.

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