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Strapped for Cash(less) Lights, Sound & Screens Audience Insights GEI Summer Edition

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IQ104 CONTENTS

Cover: Mr Jukes & Barney Artist on stage at PowerHaus Camden during IFF © Jamie MacMillan

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FEATURES

COMMENT AND COLUMNS

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20 24 28 34 36

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Index In Brief The main headlines over the last month Analysis Key stories and news analysis from around the live music world New Signings & Rising Stars A roundup of the latest acts that have been added to the rosters of international agents

IFF 2021 A review of the 7th IFF, which took place in London in late September Strapped for Cash Adam Woods talks cashless payments with the experts Insights for Sore Eyes Improving event profit margins using audience insight tools Green Events & Innovations A look at the summer outing of the sustainability event for events Don't Call it a Comeback Suppliers of lights, sound and screens detail how they have weathered the Covid storm

The Importance of Trust Mark Davyd of the Music Venue Trust talks grassroots Alive & Kicking Jürgen Schlensog & Sven Meyer on the obstacles Jazzopen Stuttgart faced in 2021 Your Shout If you had 25 hours a day, how would you use your extra time?

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BITTERSWEET REUNION

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s I write this, the 2021 edition of the International Festival Forum is still very much in mind.

From the moment the opening party kicked off, you could tell that the event was going to be special. For many, it was the first time they had gathered in a room with friends and industry colleagues since the last in-person ILMC, a full 18 months ago, and the sense of happiness and relief was palpable. The showcase events were also the first live music a number of delegates had seen in a very long time, as, lest we forget, many terrtories are still to reopen, as Covid-19 continues to restrict activities internationally.

There were some serious debates during the conference programme, and a lot of business conducted in the numerous speed meetings and agency pop-up offices, but overall the mood was joyous as people actually met face to face and IFF felt like it could be a catalyst to getting the outdoor business back up and running for 2022.

Of course, proceedings were overshadowed by the dreadful news that Steve Strange had passed away (see page 8). X-ray hosted an emotional toast to commemorate their colleague and during the three days of the conference, hundreds of Strange-y tales were told, as all in attendance remembered him affectionately and artists around the world paid tribute. He was, indeed, a unique individual and having heard many of the stories, and speaking to friends and colleagues myself, I think the words of Josh Javor summed the man up: he was generous and he was genuine. For someone so successful at his chosen craft, Steve Strange always offered young people in the business his support and encouragement. He will be sorely missed.

In keeping with the IFF theme, this issue of IQ touches upon some related sectors, as festival organisers start looking toward next year’s gatherings. Adam Woods learns that the pandemic is helping the appetite grow for contactless systems for access control and cashless payments (page 24), while Derek Robertson talks with suppliers of lights, sound and screens to find out how they have weathered the storm (page 36).

We also take a look at some of the services offering audience insight (page 28) and how such data gathering and analysis could prove crucial to improving profit margins for venues, events and promoters as they look to hit the ground running in the weeks and months ahead.

And if all that isn’t enough, we take a glimpse at what went on at the Green Events and Innovations Conference Summer Edition (page 34), while you will also find a summary of IFF on page 20, where you’ll see some of the 600 industry professionals who registered and made their way to London for the forum.

Confidence has been hard to find since the Covid pandemic hit the world, but the main takeaway from IFF was the optimism that everyone has for the year that lies ahead. If anyone was in any doubt that fans are reluctant to return to live shows, surely FKP Scorpio reporting the sales of one million tickets for Ed Sheeran in less than three days will put those fears to rest.

And with that in mind, I can end this editorial with the words I’ve been praying to say for the past year: I hope to see lots of you, at a gig, very soon indeed.

ISSUE 104 LIVE MUSIC INTELLIGENCE IQ Magazine Unit 31 Tileyard Road London, N7 9AH info@iq-mag.net www.iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 3743 0300 Twitter: @iq_mag Publisher ILMC and Suspicious Marketing Editor Gordon Masson Staff Writer Lisa Henderson Advertising Manager Steve Woollett Design Rather Nice Design Sub Editor Michael Muldoon Head of Digital Ben Delger Contributors Jon Chapple, Mark Davyd, Sven Meyer, Derek Robertson, Jürgen Schlensog Editorial Contact Gordon Masson gordon@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 3743 0303 Advertising Contact Steve Woollett steve@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 3743 0304 ISSN 2633-0636

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IN BRIEF INDEX The concert business digest

The Danish government drops all remaining Covid-19 restrictions.

Iceland Airwaves cancels for a second year due to “new and ongoing Covid-19 measures imposed by the government.”

Vaccine passports may be legally required to enter certain events in Scotland in a bid to “help stem the recent surge in the number of Covid cases.”

Live Nation Denmark announces the first full-capacity stadium show in Europe since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

British band Massive Attack calls on the government to introduce a plan to cut carbon emissions in the live music business.

Live Nation GSA reveals more details about the inaugural edition of Download Germany.

Belgium’s live industry may take up to two years to get to pre-pandemic levels of operation, according to key venues.

More details emerge about ABBA’s upcoming Voyage concerts, as tickets go on general sale.

Roblox and Warner Music Group announce a virtual concert experience with Grammy-awardwinning duo Twenty One Pilots.

OVG appoints Chris Granger as CEO of the group’s facilities, following the company’s merge with US venue giant Spectra.

The Swedish government announces that it will drop almost all restrictions on live events by 29 September.

Coldplay will be the first act to play OVG’s Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle – the world’s first carbonneutral-certified arena.

Belgium’s Sportpaleis Antwerp opens its doors for the first time in a year and a half.

Portugal is set to gain an 18,000-capacity, multiday festival this winter.

The fourth annual Nordic Music Biz Top 20 under 30 list is revealed.

Electric Picnic 2021 cancels following the local council’s refusal to grant the organisers a licence.

Viagogo sells its StubHub business outside of North America – including the UK – to investment firm Digital Fuel Capital LLC.

Dutch campaign group Unmute Us enlists the support of 4,000 organisers for its second protest against government restrictions.

Live Nation resumes its acquisition of Ocesa, the third-largest promoter in the world and the parent company of Ticketmaster Mexico.

Australia’s live industry comes together to launch a provaccination campaign under the banner #Vaxthenation.

Amazon brings its palmrecognition technology to music venues, starting with the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in the US.

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Twitter starts to roll out Ticketed Spaces, a functionality that will enable some creators to generate revenue from hosting live audio events on the platform.

American rock band Kings of Leon becomes the first act to send an NFT into space.

SJM Concerts’ Chris York is presented with the NAA’s 2021 award for Outstanding Contribution to the Live Entertainment Industry.

The Scottish parliament approves plans for vaccine passports.

Copenhagen is set to gain a new 2,500-capacity music venue this winter.

An estimated 150,000 people across ten cities take part in the second Unmute Us protest in the Netherlands.

Leading dance music promoters Insomniac and Alda host Saga, Romania’s first large-scale music festival since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

The Netherlands’ live sector say the new 75%-capacity limit for indoor standing events is “unsubstantiated, arbitrary, and extremely harmful.”

Australia is set to gain two new rock festivals in 2021 and 2022, Knight & Day and Uncaged.

Wasserman Music announces five newly promoted agents.

Dutch promoter ID&T signs a partnership agreement with leading live organisation Superstruct Entertainment (see page 12).

In Brief

The UK’s live sector commits to reaching net-zero emissions by the year 2030, as part of a new campaign to deliver climate action.

Spanish concert halls are suffering under the broadest restrictions in Europe, says a recent study by Live DMA.

Live powerhouse Superstruct Entertainment acquires a stake in Amsterdam-based Festival Travel (see page 12).

The inaugural edition of Belgium’s Arena 5 concert series draws around 50,000 people over the course of seven weeks.

The efficacy of coronavirus detection dogs is trialled at a test show in Hanover.

Electric Group unveils plans for the £1.5m (€1.75m) redevelopment of its newest acquisition NX.

The live-streaming market consolidates further with the acquisition of NoonChorus by USbased startup Mandolin.

Renowned booking agent and X-ray co-founder Steve Strange passes away after a short illness (see page 6).

Leading promoters in the UK live industry say they’re experiencing mixed fortunes following the full reopening in England on 19 July.

Senior music agent Rebecca Prochnik joins UTA as director of creative strategy, UK music.

Tomorrowland announces the return of its winter edition in 2022, after a successful debut in 2019.

Elton John is forced to postpone the 2021 UK and European legs of his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour.

The 14th edition of the Green Events and Innovations conference sees the industry “come of age” on the subject of sustainability.

Arenal Sound 2022 in Spain sells out in less than seven hours.

Frontier Touring, Live Nation and TEG in Australia unite in a bid to encourage concert-goers to get vaccinated.

Riot Games teams up with entertainment firm Wave to produce an immersive concert by virtual heavy metal band Pentakill.

Entertainment app Stageverse launches with a 360-degree virtual show from Muse.

The 20th anniversary Green Man Festival in Wales sells out in a record three days, and 11 months ahead of the event.

The British government’s highly anticipated £800 million (€935m) insurance scheme for live events launches.

Isle of Wight Festival promoter John Giddings criticises the British government’s long-awaited reinsurance scheme for live events.

UK-based gender equality initiative Keychange announces a series of new appointments following the exit of project manager Maxie Gedge.

ATC Live warns that Brexit is “the next major threat to live music” after two of the agency’s British acts are forced to pull out of Spanish dates due to Brexit-related visa issues.

Dreamstage hires veteran marketing executive Jesse Kirshbaum as CMO. ASM Global taps industry veteran John Boyle as global chief content officer.

Live Nation Urban makes Mari Arionne Davies its new VP of booking and talent.

The European Arenas Association names Olivier Toth, CEO of Rockhal Luxembourg, as president.

Dice, the UK-based mobile ticketing and discovery platform for live events and live-streams, raises up to $122m (€105m) in Series C funding.

CTS Eventim’s share price reaches an all-time high following its expansion into the North American ticketing market.

CAA and ICM Partners plan to join forces in a landmark agency merger.

BTS announces a mini residency at the brand new SoFi stadium (cap.

70,000) in Los Angeles this winter, promoted by Live Nation.

Secret Garden Party 2022 sells out in record time following an “overwhelming response” to the reunion event.

MDLBeast announces Saudi Arabia’s first music conference.

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Ed Sheeran’s recently announced ‘blockbuster’ tour fills promoters with optimism about the industry’s post-pandemic recovery.

Epic Games announces the next set of immersive virtual performances coming to Fortnite, under the banner Soundwave Series.

Open’er announces a slate of global stars for next year’s edition including Dua Lipa, Martin Garrix, Jessie Ware, and Jehnny Beth.

Prodiss announces a new cancellation insurance policy exclusively for its members.

Wasserman Music appoints Shannon Casey as SVP of fairs and festivals, to expand the agency’s reach in the business area.

Superstruct Entertainment signs an investment and partnership agreement with Finnish Metal Events Oy, organiser of Tuska Open Air Metal Festival (see page 12).

Live Nation announces the expansion of its global artist discovery platform Ones To Watch to Australia.

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Analysis

STEVE STRANGE 1968–2021

Renowned booking agent and X-ray cofounder Steve Strange has passed away after a short illness. He was 53.

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he shocking news prompted numerous artist tributes, not just from his own clients but also from other acts, as well as friends and industry colleagues from around the world.

“We are devastated by the news of our dear friend Steve Strange’s passing,” said a statement from Coldplay on Twitter. “A giant of the music industry and the cornerstone for so many bands’ and artists’ careers, including ours.

“Never afraid to talk straight and fight for his artists, you always heard him before you saw him, and you knew you were in for a good evening. We spent a bittersweet hour with him last week. Despite his illness he was still taking calls and watching ticket counts.”

In addition to Coldplay, Strange’s roster included, among many others, the likes of Eminem, Queens of the Stone Age, Jimmy Eat World, The Charlatans, and Snow Patrol, the latter of whom wrote, “He had so many friends because he was so irresistibly loveable, positive, kind, passionate, generous, funny, and sincere.

“Sincerity [is] not always an easy thing to find in the business side of music (or any business for that matter) but Steve had it to spare. When Steve loved your band there was no one [who] loved it more. To picture a world without him in it is to picture a world so diminished. With less joy, less positivity, less optimism, less heart. Quieter, duller, and much less interesting. We love you, Steve.”

Indeed, Ed Sheeran, who was not a client, paid his own tribute, simply stating, “A very sad day, and a huge loss x.”

His death, in Los Angeles, was confirmed by the company he co-founded, X-ray Touring, on Friday, 24 September. “We have lost a legendary figure in our personal and professional lives that we will all deeply miss,” said the statement.

“Steve was a unique individual within our industry, his overwhelming love of music led to a 30-year-plus career guiding the touring of an eclectic mix of artists from all genres of music that he adored. A universally known, hugely respected and loved character – if you hadn’t already seen him at a gig or festival, you’d most certainly hear his infectious and infamous laugh.

“Steve had the best ears in the agency business, signing and developing the careers of countless world-class artists from small club venues to vast international multi-stadium tours.

“He will always be remembered with love by his friends and colleagues at X-ray and the world over.”

Born in Lisburn near Belfast on 17 April 1968, Strange was raised in Carrickfergus in nearby County Antrim during the troubles in Northern Ireland. At the age of 11, after his cousin took him to see UFO at Ulster Hall in Belfast, Strange’s love of hard rock was born, which saw him devote his youth to the likes of Rush, AC/

Analysis DC, Kiss, and Def Leppard.

His first band, Slack Alice, didn’t reach the heights its members had hoped for, so Strange found himself sitting behind the drums for a couple of cover bands before becoming part of the line-up for popular Belfast outfit No Hot Ashes in 1986. A record deal with GWR, thanks in no small part to Strange’s powers of persuasion, saw the band move to London a year later.

Strange later accepted an offer from Jon Vyner to join The Bron Agency and book some gigs.

“I used to do [that] anyway – it was always left to the drummer to chase support tours and gigs,” he told IQ in 2009. Tapping up GWR’s Doug Smith to secure his acts occasional support slots with the likes of Motörhead and Girlschool, Strange worked tirelessly, making himself known around London’s gig circuit, making friends with bands, and offering to book shows. “I did a lot of analysing about how the business worked, and it was a steep learning curve. I was intrigued by it – how

“His talent and expertise coupled with his never-ending enthusiasm has made him one of the world’s leading music executives” tours were routed, why some bands played clubs not halls, etc. It was very exciting.”

Strange moved to Adam Parson’s Big Rock Inc, and then to Prestige Artists working with Clive Underhill-Smith and Rob Hallett, who was also his flatmate for a period. In 1992, Strange moved back to Northern Ireland to promote at the Limelight with Eamonn McCann. The move led to one of his biggest breaks when he discovered a trio of school kids, Ash, becoming the band’s agent and working with Rob Challice at Forward Artist Booking.

Feeling the need to work at a larger agency, Strange moved to John Giddings’ Solo, before another move to Fair Warning/Waster Talent where he met fellow X-ray founders Ian Huffam and Jeff Craft. Adding Scott Thomas and Martin Horne to the mix, the five individuals launched X-ray in 2005, fast becoming one of the UK’s most respected booking agencies.

Strange was renowned for signing and developing US artists. “I’ve always listened to American music, and a lot of the bands I liked when I was younger were from the United States,” he told IQ in 2018. His relationship with Interscope Records’ label head Martin Kierszenbaum and A&R chief Don Robinson led to an introduction with Eminem, who alongside Queens of the Stone Age became a cornerstone of an eclectic

roster that included Coldplay, Maximo Park, Feeder, Snow Patrol, The Charlatans, Jimmy Eat World and more, many booked with long-time colleague Josh Javor.

Strange was a longstanding ILMC member, and in March had picked up the top agent award (Second Least Offensive Agent) in a special decade showdown at the Arthur Awards. Strange had topped the category twice before. He appeared in person to collect the gong at the Royal Albert Hall, thanking his clients, and “all the people at Team Strange and X-ray Touring who’ve all had a very difficult year, but we’re getting through it.”

More recently, in May, X-ray announced a strategic partnership with New York-based AGI, part of the Y Entertainment Group, which also includes UK agency K2. “I am personally excited and delighted by our renewed joint venture partnership with my good friend Ron Burkle and the Yucaipa group,” said Strange of the announcement. “I am also looking forward to our new strategic partnership with AGI in the US.” In an emotional memorial at IFF on Thursday, 30 September, his X-ray colleagues paid tribute to him, along with many colleagues from around the world.

X-ray co-founder Ian Huffam joked that Strange would have enjoyed “the vast level of national press coverage his passing has generated.”

Josh Javor, who worked alongside Strange for the past 16 years, said, “I’ve learned a lot from him. He was just a wonderful, generous, and really genuine person who really loved what he did. He wasn’t cynical or anything like that and I am going to miss him a lot.”

Tributes to Strange began flooding social media as soon as the news broke. Amongst those, was CAA’s Emma Banks, who wrote that Strange was “a truly good and loving person without a bad bone in his body. The life and soul of every occasion, a music man to the core and dedicated to his clients, friends, and family. If you knew him, you will understand why everyone is devastated by his passing, and if you didn’t know him, you missed out big time.”

Siren Artist Management’s Adam Parsons said, “His talent and expertise coupled with his never-ending enthusiasm has made him one of the world’s leading music executives and one of the most loved beings I have ever known.”

Paradigm’s Rob Challice wrote, “His enthusiasm for music and life was contagious and inspirational. He changed the world around him. I can’t believe we’ll never hear that big laugh of his again.”

Fellow X-ray director Adam ‘Rad’ Saunders posted, “Friend, ally, mentor, and the single most influential person in my career. Steve was an irrepressible juggernaut of a person. Full of passion, talent, and a ridiculous laugh. I will miss him hugely. I can’t really imagine a music business without Steve in it. It leaves a hole so big it cannot be filled.”

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Analysis

INDUSTRY GIANTS BOOST OPERATIONS IN THE AMERICAS

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usiness behemoths Live Nation and CTS Eventim have signalled their optimism that live music is set to resume by pushing ahead with expansion plans in the Americas.

CTS Eventim fulfilled long-held ambitions to launch its ticketing services into the North American market – a move that immediately received the backing of investors who boosted the firm’s share price to an all-time high of $68.50 on 27 September, just days after the company began selling tickets for its first US client, Big Apple Circus.

The German-headquartered CTS says that prior to the pandemic it was servicing more than 250 million tickets for around 800,000 events each year, making it the world’s second-largest provider of ticketing solutions and the number one in Europe.

Company CEO Klaus-Peter Schulenberg believes those numbers will become even more impressive if the company can establish a foothold in its newest territory. “North America is the

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most attractive market in the world for live entertainment and ticketing. The platform Eventim.com puts us in an ideal position to benefit from the restart there,” he observes.

“The sale of tickets for Big Apple Circus is a first step on this journey. We are already in discussions with potential partners and customers about making our cutting-edge ticketing systems available to them soon.”

Big Apple Circus is being coproduced by veteran entertainment executive Michael Cohl, a former chairman of Live Nation, who last year formed joint venture EMC Presents with CTS Eventim to concentrate on events in the United States and Canada.

The move is Schulenberg’s second foray into the US market. In 2009, Live Nation partnered with Eventim to launch Live Nation Tickets, a platform intended to challenge Ticketmaster’s dominant position in North America. However, Live Nation subsequently pulled out of the

deal when it merged with Ticketmaster instead, prompting a breach of contract lawsuit that was finally settled in arbitration in 2013.

This summer also saw the launch of Eventim Live Asia, which from its base in Singapore is targeting the rapidly growing live entertainment markets in China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Meanwhile, Live Nation has resumed its acquisition of Ocesa, the third-largest promoter in the world and the parent company of Ticketmaster Mexico.

The $444 million (€383m) deal, if completed, would give the world’s largest live entertainment company a 51% stake in one of its largest competitors, which dominates the Latin American market. The acquisition, first mooted in summer 2019, was put on hold during the pandemic.

But with the lawyers back at work, it is now expected to close by late 2021 or early 2022, subject to regulatory approval (which it had already received clearance for in Mexico).

The benefactors of the Live Nation interest are the Inter-American Entertainment Corporation (Corporación Interamericana de Entretenimiento or CIE) and Grupo Televisa, a media giant in the Spanish-speaking world. Live Nation is reportedly buying a 40% stake in Ocesa from Grupo Televisa, and 11% of the concert promoter from CIE, which will retain its remaining 49%

Analysis

minority stake in Ocesa.

With the pandemic still causing uncertainty, Live Nation is expected to hold back 7% of the closing price to cover any potential operating losses for several quarters.

“After serving as Live Nation’s touring, festival, and ticketing partner in Mexico for years, we know Ocesa is a stellar business with deep roots in live entertainment in Mexico,” says Michael Rapino, president and CEO of Live Nation. “As we continue to build on the return to live, Ocesa will play a pivotal role in putting together many incredible shows in Mexico and the rest of Latin America.”

Alejandro Soberón Kuri, president and CEO of CIE, adds: “We are extremely proud to finally join Live Nation. This is a natural evolution of our long-standing relationship and it gives us a unique opportunity to continue Ocesa’s 30-year contribution to the development of the Mexican live entertainment industry. Additionally, it will help us foster CIE’s commitment to the promotion of Mexican artistic talent abroad.”

Ocesa promotes more than 3,100 events for nearly six million fans annually across Mexico and Colombia and has a robust business portfolio in ticketing, sponsorship, food & beverage, merchandise, and venue operation – including 13 premier venues across Mexico with a collective capacity of nearly 250,000 seats. Its primary ticketing business, Ticketmaster Mexico, was shifting around 20 million tickets annually, pre-Covid.

TOTH ASSUMES EAA PRESIDENCY

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he European Arenas Association (EAA) has named Olivier Toth, CEO of Rockhal in Luxembourg, as its new president. Toth succeeds AEG Europe’s John Langford, who is stepping down after completing his two-year tenure.

“I can think of no better person to lead the EAA,” says Langford of Toth. “Since joining the association, Olivier has been working tirelessly on behalf of the members to deliver the association’s goal of strengthening ties with the European Union and boosting the advocacy impact of the EAA at EU level.”

Toth is a co-founder of the Arena Resilience Alliance (ARA), which has been lobbying the EU’s governing bodies during the pandemic.

“Through the ARA, we have seen how arenas play a vital role as the hub of the live events ecosystem and how necessary it is to have a collective voice for our industry,” says Toth. “We can all agree the world we are returning to is not the same one we left behind and I am confident that the EAA and its ARA subgroup will work towards building a stronger and more unified European live events sector.”

The EAA’s membership comprises 34 arenas in 20 European countries.

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Analysis

SUPERSTRUCT EMBARKS ON AMBITIOUS EXPANSION

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rovidence Equity-backed Superstruct Entertainment is emerging from the pandemic pause with aggressive growth plans, including major investments in a Finnish festival, a pact with Dutch promoters ID&T, and the acquisition of a stake in a festival travel operation.

Most recently, the company announced it had signed an investment and partnership agreement with Finnish Metal Events Oy, organiser of Tuska Open Air Metal Festival.

Launched in 1988, Tuska (Finnish for “pain”) takes place annually in Helsinki across three days and is one of the largest metal festivals in the Nordic countries. In 2019, the festival set a new attendance record, welcoming 43,000 visitors over the course of the event.

Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, it will see Superstruct become a key shareholder in Tuska.

“This is the next step for Tuska,” stated festival director Eeka Mäkynen. “Focusing on boutique festivals, Superstruct will provide us with more muscles for development and more rivets in our belt.

“All shareholders and key personnel will continue to be involved, and the organisation will continue to run the festival independently. The mosh pit will keep spinning, only faster – in other words, the festival will remain its own unique rough self, as it has been until now.”

Jouni Markkanen, who has been the head promoter at Tuska since 1999, added, “We had been thinking about expanding our ownership

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base for a long time. Now the pieces all fell into place and the time was right.

“We believe that the festival business will intensify after the corona crisis. International connections have always been close to our hearts when booking bands. The arrival of Superstruct opens up more opportunities to create even better programmes and festivals for Tuska’s loyal customers, our tribe.”

Superstruct’s portfolio now numbers more than 30 European festivals, including another Finnish event, Flow Festival, as well as Sziget in Hungary; Spanish-based party promoter Elrow; German genre-based gatherings Parookaville and Wacken Open Air; Boardmasters in the UK; Zwarte Cross in the Netherlands; and Sónar, which has hosted festivals across six countries during its 27-year history.

The Tuska news came less than a week after Superstruct announced its acquisition of Netherlands-based festival holiday company Festival Travel.

The Amsterdam-based company specialises in

festival holidays and has organised travel arrangements for international visitors to events such as Exit in Serbia, and Hungary’s Sziget and Balaton Sound over the past decade. The company’s expertise should help Superstruct tap into additional revenue streams for the hundreds of thousands of fans who attend its portfolio of events.

Festival Travel co-owner Ruud Bongaerts comments, “It is very valuable to gain the trust of a company of this size. The customer experience is always central to our way of acting, and with that, we create unique festival summers for tens of thousands of young people every year.

“The past summers were, of course, very difficult for us, with everything that resulted from the corona pandemic, but this new chapter gives us a lot of confidence in the future.”

A week prior to the travel company deal, Superstruct pulled off another coup in the Netherlands when it signed a partnership agreement with ID&T – the promoters of Mysteryland, Defqon.1, Awakenings, and Milkshake. It is also the parent company of organisations such as Q-dance, ID&T Events, B2S, Monumental (Awakenings), Art of Dance, Platinum Agency, and Headliner Entertainment.

According to the partners, the deal has helped steer ID&T into “a safe haven” after a tough year and a half that saw the company take out a number of loans, make many staff redundant, and cancel its festivals.

“By creating this financially sound situation, we have secured the employment of our 100+ employees and are able to move forward with our suppliers, who are also struggling at this time,” says Ritty van Straalen, CEO of the ID&T Group.

As usual with Superstruct deals, financial terms were not disclosed, but the founders and senior management of the ID&T Group have become shareholders in Superstruct as part of the agreement. The companies also believe the deal will create synergies to further improve the fan experience at their festivals.

James Barton, chairman of Superstruct, said, “We are very excited to join forces with ID&T, a business that I have long admired. Our partnership with ID&T is a very significant milestone for Superstruct and reflects our deep conviction in the value of experience-focused live music festivals and our excitement about the significant joint growth opportunities that lie ahead as live events return.”

“By creating this financially sound situation, we have secured the employment of our 100+ employees and are able to move forward with our suppliers, who are also struggling at this time” Ritty van Straalen | ID&T Group

Analysis

CAA/ICM DEAL TO SHAKE UP AGENCY LANDSCAPE

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reative Artists Agency’s proposed deal to acquire ICM Partners could fundamentally change the global agency business, if the companies can satisfy regulators that it meets anti-trust guidelines, both in the entertainment and sports industries.

The deal would effectively create a “big three” situation, alongside corporate giants UTA and WME and while lawyers and business watchdogs will no doubt argue that this could stifle competition, others believe that such a set-up might offer opportunities for the independent agency sector.

Indeed, speaking at the International Festival Forum on 30 September, ATC Live leader Alex Bruford drew comparisons with the recorded music business, where Sony, Universal and Warner dominate market share but multiple indie labels around the world enjoy success and provide different opportunities to numerous artists.

For their part, the merger partners claim the deal will “drive broader and more inclusive representation” for their clients. If approved, the agreement will result in the largest talent agency transaction since WME acquired IMG in 2014 and since Endeavor joined forces with William Morris Agency in 2009, which forged the contemporary WME. Consolidation in the agency business isn’t

likely to end there, as it’s also expected that powerhouse agency Wasserman will soon reach agreement with Paradigm in the UK, having already tied up a deal with the parent company of the same name in North America.

In a statement, CAA’s Bryan Lourd, Kevin Huvane and Richard Lovett, said, “The strategic combination of CAA and ICM bolsters our collective resources, expertise, and relationships to deliver even more opportunities for our worldclass clients to build their careers and their brands across multiple disciplines and platforms in an evolving marketplace.

“Our strong financial position enables us to continue to expand and diversify our businesses, with service and representation remaining central to what we do and who we are. We’re fortunate to have a partner in ICM who shares our commitment to the widest and most inclusive vision possible for what our clients and company can accomplish together.”

ICM’s Chris Silbermann, who would join CAA’s shareholder board, said: “We’re thrilled to partner and combine forces with the talented CAA team.

Together, we will build upon our accomplishments and entrepreneurial spirit, and continue to demonstrate an unwavering commitment to the best interests of our clients, as well as empowering

new, diverse voices within the industry.”

In addition to numerous sports and actor clients, ICM’s music roster includes Chaka Khan, Buddy Guy, Chris Rock, Corinne Bailey Rae, D’Angelo, Dan Auerbach, Good Charlotte, J. Cole, Jerry Seinfeld, Jill Scott, Kamasi Washington, Khalid, Lisa Loeb, Los Lonely Boys, Mavis Staples, Migos, Puddles Pity Party, Roger Daltrey, Rosanne Cash, Scott Stapp, Sheila E, The Black Keys, Tower of Power, Trey Songz and more.

Last year, ICM joined forces with Primary Talent International, one of London’s last major independent booking agencies, representing more than 900 music clients, including The 1975, alt-J, Noel Gallagher, Patti Smith, The Cure, Pussycat Dolls, Two Door Cinema Club, Lana Del Rey and Catfish and the Bottlemen.

Industry insiders note that while mergers usually result in a programme of redundancies, both CAA and ICM will be keen to retain as many agents as possible, coming hot on the tail of the pandemic where staffing numbers have already been cut.

But with such cost-cutting exercises also proving a catalyst for the launch of new agencies, optimists are predicting that more boutique agencies may emerge from the ashes of CAA’s ICM plans, should they be given the green light.

Magazine

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NEW SIGNINGS & NEW MUSIC

LISTEN TO ’S ‘NEW MUSIC’ AGENCY PLAYLIST HERE

Each month, ’s partner agencies help us to compile a playlist of new music, much of it released by the new signings to their rosters. Among the tracks on October’s playlist are submissions from 13 Artists, ATC Live, CAA, ICM Partners, ITB, Mother Artists, Paradigm and WME.

HALF WAIF AGENT

Nikita Lavrinenko PlayBook Artists

GIULIA TESS

(UK/IT)

AGENT

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Ollie Seaman Earth Agency

iq-mag.net

(US)

H

alf Waif is the project of singer-songwriter and producer Nandi Rose. The project – which blends pop, folk, and electronic styles into a layered and transportive sound – has been featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk series, in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Pitchfork. She has toured internationally with bands like Mitski, Iron & Wine, and Calexico; and recently announced her fifth full-length album Mythopoetics with ANTI- Records.

Half Waif’s previous albums The Caretaker (2020), Lavender (2018) and Probable Depths (2016), garnered acclaim for their compelling journeys through solitude, desire, and the search for independence, while on new album Mythopoetics, she breaks the familial patterns handed down to her, transforming this source of pain into something bearable, beautiful, and celebratory.

G

iulia Tess (aka Italy-born, London-based DJ and producer Giulia Campanella) started her musical exploits by first banging on the drums, before shifting the weight and hunger of new vibrations to the decks of the local clubs of the east coast of the Bel Paese.

In 2016, she moved to London where she embarked on collaborations with forward-thinking collectives like Femme Culture, Nervous Horizon, and More Time.

Her 2019 IENE EP received support from artists like Objekt, Mor Elian, Violet, and Scratcha DVA, while the track Watch How Mi Dweet featuring Logan was played at the Stella McCartney Winter 2020 Show in Paris.

In 2020, she collaborated with Nan Kolè on the Homemade EP, while also releasing her own Cattiva II / Nightmare EP, pushing her towards a more experimental sound. Indeed, her latest release, 200417, is an excellent example of her genre-pushing style.

Alongside her production projects, Giulia is a regular on the London club circuit and a resident DJ at Threads Radio. She has also appeared as a guest DJ on NTS, BBC Radio 1, BBC radio 1xtra, BBC Asian network, Balamii, and Reprezent Radio.

New Signings

ARTIST LISTINGS Agoria (FR)

Laetitia Descouens, Primary Talent

Ailbhe Reddy (IE)

Paul McGivern, PlayBook Artists

ANGRY BLACKMEN (US)

Joviale (UK)

Lucy Atkinson, Earth Agency

Joyeria (UK)

Felipe Mina Calvo, ATC Live

Marlon Burton, ATC Live Eleanor McGuinness, PlayBook Artists

Big Image (UK)

Matt Bates, Primary Talent

Bondax (UK)

Sam Gill, Earth Agency

Bou (UK)

Tom Jones, UTA Beckie Sugden, ICM Partners

Daseplate (UK)

Danny Misell, Earth Agency

Dillom (AR) Dowdelin (FR) Etaoin (UK)

KAVO (UK) Kid Brunswick (UK) Let’s Eat Grandma (UK) Loose Articles (UK) Lucy McWilliams (IE) MadeinTYO (US) Mechatok (NL)

Felipe Mina Calvo, ATC Live

MJ Nebreda (VE)

Andre Marmot, Earth Agency

Naima Bock (UK)

Angus Baskerville, 13 Artists

Finnegan Tui (NZ)

Matt Bates & Chris Smyth, Primary Talent

Fumez The Engineer (UK)

Max Lee, Earth Agency

Opus Kink (UK) Otis Kane (US) Podge (UK) SEB (US)

Half Waif (US)

Nikita Lavrinenko, PlayBook Artists

Silky (UK)

Hannah Watts (UK)

Laetitia Descouens, Primary Talent

TAAHLIAH (UK)

Liam Keightley, ITB Will Church, ATC Live Sally Dunstone, Primary Talent

Sarah Casey & James Wright, UTA Sam Gill, Earth Agency Lucy Atkinson, Earth Agency Felipe Mina Calvo, ATC Live Liam Keightley, ITB Skully Kaplan & Steve Taylor, ATC Live Beckie Sugden, ICM Partners Mike Deane, Earth Agency

Danny Misell, Earth Agency Ollie Seaman, Earth Agency

Horsegirl (US)

Steve Nickolls, UTA Graham Clews, ATC Live

Rod MacSween & Kara James, ITB

Giulia Tess (UK/IT)

Honeyglaze (UK)

Sam Gill, Earth Agency Lola Mitchell, 13 Artists

Owenn (US)

Gemi (UK)

Hyd (US)

Caitlin Ballard, ATC Live

Tom Manley, ATC Live

Bawo (UK)

Dana Dentata (US)

Beckie Sugden, ICM Partners

Serena Parsons, Earth Agency

Anna Prior DJ (PT) Beverly Glenn-Copeland (CA)

J.I The Prince of NY (US) Johanna Warren (US)

The Byker Grove Fan Club (UK) Tokio Myers (UK) Tom King (UK)

Carlos Abreu, UTA Danny Misell, Earth Agency Sally Dunstone, Primary Talent Steve Taylor, ATC Live Angus Baskerville, 13 Artists Alice Hogg, ATC Live

HOTTEST NEW ACTS THIS MONTH 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

LAST MONTH 26 14 17 31 47 33 22 16 96 1 -

PREDICTIONS FOR OCTOBER 2021

ARTIST ROT KEN (US) BMW KENNY (US) RANCID EDDIE (AU) TRU CARR (US) YEAT (US) CKAY (NG) CHLOE (US) A-WALL (US) JVKE (US) TOM CARDY (AU) BUJU (NG) NAVOS (UK) ANXIETY, THE (US) MARCUS YOUNG (US) PIRI (CA) BER (US), CAPELLA GREY (US), MIKE DIMES (US), ARZ (UK), BIGWALKDOG (US)

Artists not in the current top 15, but growing quickly

Fastest growing artists in terms of music consumption, aggregated across a number of online sources.

SEPTEMBER 2021

Magazine

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Comment

The importance of Trust Mark Davyd, CEO of the Music Venue Trust, reveals why the organisation hosted the closing party at IFF, underlining the importance of grassroots venues to the entire music ecosystem.

I

t might seem a bit odd for Music Venue Trust, the charity that acts to protect, secure, and improve grassroots music venues in the UK, to be hosting the closing night party of the International Festival Forum. Actually, it makes a lot more sense to us, and to you, than you might initially think.

Music Venue Trust has a pretty exclusive mission around the needs of live music venues at grassroots level, but that work doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Over the last 20 months it has become incredibly clear, if it wasn’t already obvious, that grassroots music venues are part of a vast ecosystem. If we think of that ecosystem as a car engine, in our view the grassroots sector is the ignition system. If we don’t have grassroots music venues, our whole industry has nothing to kickstart the rest of the engine with the essential constant high-voltage surge of new talent. All the shiny carburettors, radiators, and cam shafts are important, they do the work that moves us from point A to point B. But all of them will sit there idle if we don’t actually have anything that starts the engine in the first place. Large venues such as Glastonbury or The O2 might be the engine block of UK live music, but unless small venues like The Hull Adelphi, for example, emit a spark every so often we should be imagining a future in which they are sitting idle in a garage somewhere gathering dust.

At MVT, we particularly like this laboured and slightly bloated metaphor because we often get the response that the car is motoring along just fine. Which it is, or at least was. In the UK we have an incredibly successful £5.4billion [€6.3bn] a year industry that has been significantly exceeding any expectations across the world stage for almost sixty years. But that vehicle was already in motion, already started. Our concern has always been what happens to the whole engine if we let the ignition system disappear. Frankly, we have just seen it turned off temporarily by the Covid crisis. The problems that provoked are wide-ranging and will have a deep impact on our industry for many years to come. In the Covid crisis we had to deal with the very real prospect that 83% of all the

grassroots music venues in the country could close and never reopen. The possible loss that represents of potential next festival headliners for everyone, not just in the UK but right around the world, should be enough to make us all pause and think again about the value of what we have at the grassroots, how interconnected all of us actually are.

When a grassroots music venue closes, it’s a disaster for the local community, which for us is enough of a reason to fight against it. But even if you’re not in that local community, and you don’t directly feel that loss immediately, you, the festival community, will feel it in the loss of potential talent in the future. Ask the artists you headline at your festivals where they started and why they started. Festivals need this ignition system as much as record labels, publishers, and streaming platforms.

MVT has been fighting the cause of preventing venue closures for nearly eight years now. In that time, our work has increasingly become about the whole ecosystem. Not just the venues. The venues are the bricks-and-mortar spaces in which artists, crew, sound engineers, lighting techs, merch vendors, stagehands, promoters, bookers, agents, managers, and the whole ecosystem come together to deliver events. If we were clever and wanted to get access to all the public funding grants being thrown at tech companies, we would be calling them Co-working Spaces Fostering Micro-Business Development. Every part of our ecosystem leans on the ability of the others to work. Revisiting our car engine, any part of the mechanism that has grit in it or isn’t able to function properly is a challenge to all of us. It was before the crisis, and led to the creation of Music Venue Trust, and we’ve seen it magnified to terrifying levels during and post Covid. A malfunctioning part of our ecosystem impacts on all of us struggling within it.

Coming out of this crisis, MVT thought about these issues and forged a partnership with The National Lottery to create the Revive Live Tour. That programme offered support directly to artists, crew, agents, and managers to get back out and

“A malfunctioning part of our ecosystem impacts on all of us struggling within it”

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Bob Vylan headlined the final night of MVT’s Revive Live Tour at IFF

playing in grassroots music venues. It’s easy to understand why we, as a charity concerned for the future health of the grassroots music venues, would create such a programme to benefit our own specific sector of premises. But the programme was about much more than that. It was about restarting the whole of our ecosystem, recognising that the people who make up a functioning version of it needed support to restart it.

Festivals, festival programmers, bookers, agents, promoters, the core audience for the International Festival Forum, are a vital part of the grassroots ecosystem. The person who operates the desk on a Friday night at a music venue in Cornwall has a portfolio career, which is formed by that work and the work they get from you, our partners at festivals. They

need all parts of our ecosystem to be firing and moving together to restart their careers.

So we are delighted to be part of that story and to have joined you at the IFF this year. Our closing-night party, presented in association with our colleagues at Allianz, was a chance to see the type of artists we have been supporting to get back to the careers they love. We wanted to give you a chance to see the artists currently blowing up on the UK grassroots circuit that you should be thinking about for your festival line-ups next year. It was also a chance to have the type of networking and discussions that we need to encourage and have more of, between venues, festivals, agents, promoters, bookers, as we strive to work together to recover from this crisis. All of us, the whole ecosystem.

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Comment

Alive & kicking Jazzopen Stuttgart’s Jürgen Schlensog and Sven Meyer explain why it was important for the German festival to take place in spite of debilitating Covid-related obstacles.

W

e at jazzopen Stuttgart felt that it was hugely important for the festival to go ahead this year.

We did not want to call it two years in a row; we wanted to show our guests, partners, and sponsors that making this incredible event happen was possible and that we are, despite everything, very much “alive and kicking.”

Of course, getting the festival up and running was no easy task. First, we had to book a completely new line-up. When we went on sale it was an act of faith, we could not know what the pandemic might hold for us this September.

It currently looks like the jazzopen may be the only large-scale German festival to happen in 2021. Our restrictions on live music are different to other European markets that have already fully opened and enjoyed some semblance of a festival season. Germany is a federal state and we experienced both the positive and negative consequences of that structure simultaneously.

It is very difficult for promotors to plan shows because the restrictions and regulations can vary from state to state. Overall, the German governing bodies were very cautious, and all their rulings were debated heavily.

However, the German state has put in place a system to cover any loss of revenue due to lower ticket demands. State cover guarantees 80% of lower ticket sales during the pandemic – cost free. In the UK, the system arranged by the government and Lloyds does not and, moreover, costs 5% premium (of the insured limit) and covers only cancellation due to Covid.

Putting the festival on sent a message; it was important to fly our flag. This will bolster our reputation and stand us in good stead for the future. Those factors were more important this year than the financial side of things: we knew that we could survive until next year, come what may.

Naturally, we had to change the way that we welcome our guests. We had to impose “3G” (geimpft, genesen oder getestet, which means vaccinated, recovered or tested, in German) for our guests and implement intense controls, which required at

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least 50% more security, but it worked.

Our guests were happy overall and, crucially, felt secure.

They were very patient and accepted the regulations, though we did notice reticence from some regular patrons about committing to the festival and buying tickets. However, once they were onsite, they were thrilled to have live music again and reconnect with this almost forgotten experience. They had fun.

Around 18,000 people attended the jazzopen rather than our usual 40,000. Our secondary venue sold fairly well, whilst at the main venue, sales were mediocre. Ticket sales were recognisably lower than normal, but the shows were spectacular.

Every performance was special in its own way because we could feel how relieved and delighted both the artists and the audience were to enjoy live music once again. The first day or two felt unreal.

The process of making the festival happen this year felt special. There was a real common purpose that resonated throughout the whole industry; people wanted to help us make this work. We all love our jobs – even more so now that we have come to realise how fragile this industry can be.

Our colleagues in the industry had our backs and were as pleased as we were that jazzopen got up and running. The audiences were as hungry as the artists after such a long time without live music and the whole atmosphere was just electric.

Now that the last note has died away, we are left with a feeling of pride and relief. We made it – even in these weird times! We were fortunate to have a great team in place to allow us to do what we needed to do.

The feedback from everyone underlines how important it is that people can access live music. We have missed it and its power. Our governments need to realise that culture is essential for all humans. Perhaps something good that can come from this Covid experience is that they learn how our sector operates and what our needs are because our services are essential – both economically as well as culturally. Come to Stuttgart next year, we’ll be ready to welcome you!

International Festival Forum

Jon Ollier makes a point to The Agency Business 2021 panel

The IFF opening party allowed delegates to meet face to face for the first time in 18 months

Earth Agency presented Loshh as part of its showcase programme

After 2020’s online-only version, the International Festival Forum enjoyed a successful return to a physical event in late September, as more than 600 delegates registered for the event that focuses on booking agents and festivals.

E

nthusiasm for IFF was evident at the opening party, hosted by UTA, where many delegates renewed acquaintances with colleagues they had not seen in the flesh since ILMC in March 2020.

With agency partners reporting oversubscribed speed-meetings at their pop-up offices around Camden, the conference element included a number of pre-recorded sessions, covering such topics as Your Next Headliner – Climate Action; Festival Playground – the Future of Music Festivals; Festival Insurance in a Post-Pandemic World; and Counting the Cost of Brexit.

The keynote saw CAA’s Maria May interviewing Festival Republic chief Melvin Benn and FKP Scorpio founder Folkert Koopmans, who delivered an optimistic message about the future of the business.

Both men noted that there had been no dialogue between the live music industry and the government prior to Covid, meaning much of the last 18 months had been spent educating politicians and persuading them to help support the business.

Quizzed by May about what could be done to help emerging talent, given that many festival line-ups have rolled over into 2022, Benn

revealed that he would be launching new events next year. “I am starting new festivals in 2022,” he said. “I've always got to have at least one because I try to keep up with Folkert. So, we’ve got at least one or two next year, and that will give new talent the opportunity to start getting to play to a bigger audience.”

“When I hear that Melvin is doing two or three new festivals, we might do four,” quipped Koopmans. However, he admitted that staffing was a problem and, along with spiralling costs, it means there will be some tough choices to make, so establishing any new showcase festivals might have to wait.

“It’s been fantastic to have everyone back in the room together. The joy on peoples’ faces has been great to behold.”

Alex Bruford | ATC Live Magazine

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International Festival Forum

ITB’s Pizzagirl was the first band that a number of delegates had seen perform live in 18 months

Cassyette was one of Paradigm's showcase artists

X-ray's Ian Huffam paid a heartfelt tribute to colleague and friend Steve Strange

CAA's Maria May conducted the keynote interview with Melvin Benn and Folkert Koopmans

“It’s been amazing to see everyone in the family again. It’s been really emotional and I would not have missed it for the world.”

Beatrice Stirnimann | Baloise Session

But he predicted that not only will the 2022 season go ahead, but “it will be the biggest year ever. And I suppose the next years will just grow.

I'm super optimistic.”

Benn concluded that the industry can also take a lead on sustainability. “Now it feels like everybody is on the same page – artists, managers, promoters, agents, suppliers, and fans – and collectively there’s a lot we can do together, and that needs to be one of the greatest collaborations that the music industry can continue with.”

Elsewhere, The Agency Business panel examined the recently announced CAA and ICM Partners acquisition, with panellists agreeing

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that the deal could provide opportunities for independent agencies, while former CAA staffer Jon Ollier admitted to being “fascinated” by the merger, noting that CAA will be determined to preserve the company’s culture.

And it was Ollier, now boss of One Fiinix Live, who shared his belief that one potential outcome of the Covid pandemic may be that the industry will lose its winter season. “There might not be a complete shutdown, but booking a European tour in February, at the height of flu season, will be a huge risk. So why not follow the sun around the globe to mitigate that risk?”

ATC Live leader Alex Bruford noted that re-

building consumer confidence would be a major challenge, while he predicted a more flexible approach to touring where acts may put on a series of arena dates at short notice as market conditions change.

The conference’s opener involved a Therapy Session where delegates shared stories from the past 18 months, alongside plans to rebuild and reopen their various markets for live events.

With Barnaby Harrod (Mercury Wheels) and Claire Courtney (Earth Agency) onstage to represent the different parts of the business, those in the room heard a number of tales, with arguably the most inspiring related by Georg Leitner of GLP, who revealed that Syrian refugees are being recruited by security firms in Germany to help that sector get back to full strength ahead of the 2022 season.

Paradigm’s Clementine Bunel, meanwhile, moderated The Roaring 20s? where she and her guests examined whether the rest of the decade

International Festival Forum

“It’s been good to talk to people in flesh and blood.

I haven’t actually started my new job yet, so technically I am on holiday, but there was no way I was going to miss IFF.” Marion Meier | Blue Balls Festival

Paradigm's Clementine Bunel moderated The Roaring 20s? session

Represented by Primary Talent/ICM Partners, Police Car Collective brought an infectious energy to the stage at PowerHaus Camden

could be a golden era for live music. And while the future could indeed be rosy, multiple challenges were identified, not the least of which will be sharp rises in ticket prices to cover spiralling costs – an issue that Lowlands Festival’s Eric van Eerdenburg warned could prevent young fans from attending.

And noting increased drop-off rates at recent live events throughout Europe, AEG’s Jim King called out the scandal of guest-list ticketing fall-off, which has been 40% on some shows, compared to 10-12% normally. “It’s outrageous,” he blasted.

The afternoon and evening programmes at IFF once again featured some of the hottest emerging talent on the rosters of ITB, Earth Agency, Paradigm, Primary Talent & ICM Partners, Marshall Live, X-ray Touring, and ATC Live, while Music Venue Trust used the occasion to bring down the curtain on their nationwide Revive Live Tour, as well as sponsoring the closing IFF party.

The Therapy Session saw delegates sharing their tales of hardship and recovery from the pandemic

“It’s great to see the family again.

Everyone has been so gentle – even people who were fierce rivals, so it’s like there is a new harmony. The opening party was definitely the best thing I have been to in the past 18 months.”

Okan Tombulca | eps

IFF's numerous networking breaks enabled delgates to catch up in both formal and informal settings Magazine

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Cashless_Feature

Adam Woods talks to some of the boffins behind contactless payment systems, as the implications of the pandemic make their tech a no-brainer for event organisers.

T

o get the obvious dark joke out of the way, most festivals literally went cashless in the pandemic-stricken calendar of 2020/21, and not for strategic reasons. But now, after the better part of two years on pause, the survivors are gradually returning to a changed world in which actual cashless systems, once a matter of preference for live events, seem destined to become the standard.

As shows and festivals come back online around the world and begin to thrash out solutions to Covid safety, staff shortages, visitor flow, and our own increasingly cash-free habits, cashless and contactless options are a must-have, whether based on RFID, mobile pay, barcoded tickets, or some hybrid of the above.

“I think [cashless] was maybe 30% before the pandemic,” estimates Event Genius founder Reshad Hossenally, “and now it’s probably close to 80%-odd, maybe more.”

Nor is this likely to be a temporary shift. “In the festival world, the biggest change we are going to see when everyone is back is that cash and tokens will be out,” says David De Wever, CEO and partner at Antwerp-based PlayPass.

Before Covid, cashless festivals weren’t always to everyone’s taste – an NME column from 2018 was unambiguously entitled ‘We need to talk about cashless festivals, because they f***ing suck’ – but things are different now.

The pandemic isn’t over yet, but event management technology – of which access control and cashless systems are just the most visible applications – will certainly be an important tool in the process of piloting the live business back out of the wilderness.

According to recent research, 63% of fans have greater event health and safety concerns than before, and 66% of fans are more worried about venue hygiene [source: Performance Research].

Meanwhile, the most mature markets are well along the road of phasing out cash, with hard currency in Sweden down to 9% of transactions in 2020, against 14% in the Netherlands, 23% in the UK and 28% in the US [source: McKinsey].

It all adds up to a major opportunity for cashless specialists, many of whom offer ticketing, access, marketing and travel within the same system, and whose technology easily flexes to encompass any number of testing and vaccine

passport options. Where festivals have returned in 2021, the majority have come back in cashless form, usually in tandem with some form of digital access control – whatever the particular situation has required.

“As a result of the pandemic, we’ve seen a huge increase in demand for our solutions,” says Jason Thomas, CEO of global cashless provider Tappit. “Cash is no longer a preferred payment method, as cashless systems allow for a much cleaner and safer experience for fans and staff.

RFID solutions work perfectly for festivals, but we’ve seen a real increase in demand for our white-label mobile pay solution, which works for events and venues with their own app or digital ecosystem.”

But while certain markets in well-vaccinated nations have bounced back to life, 2021 has not been quite the wholehearted return to action we were all hoping for – even if early signs were good.

“Around April, May, suddenly everyone was active,” says De Wever. “At that stage, a lot of them needed proposals for Covid testing and all different kinds of extra technology. Then it went quiet for a bit, particularly the big festivals.”

Most of those big festivals decided against risking a 2021 return, and even now, with pockets of events carefully raising the curtain again, just about everyone in the event technology business has seen too many false dawns to indulge in too much unvarnished optimism.

“What we have seen this year is some of the mid-sized festivals are trying to have an edition, depending on the country,” says De Wever, speaking in late August. “UK, Belgium, France is busy at the moment, but apart from that, it is still really flat in a lot of countries. We are just watching what is happening at each national level, and we also have some promoters who are taking the initiative themselves.”

One such example is Barcelona’s Cruïlla festival at the city’s Parc del Fòrum, which decided to proceed in July, safeguarding fans with an antigen-testing regime made possible by PlayPass’s RFID system. “[Cruïlla director Jordi Herreruela] decided he was going to test everybody, every day, no matter what,” says De Wever. “The procedure was that people had to create an account and buy a test for each of the days they were going to the festival. When you arrived at the festival, you swapped your ticket for an RFID wristband Magazine

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Feature_Cashless and took a test. The company doing the testing linked the ID with the barcode on their tests, and when you got the results back after 15 minutes, that was linked with the wristband. Then you could scan the wristband to see if it was valid and if the result was positive or negative.”

This year’s patchy albeit largely cashless revival comes on the back of an extremely lean period in which, like so many other companies in the live space, the survival of the key cashless players was far from guaranteed.

Most also count sport as another key market, and consequently found themselves hit hard across several sectors.

Like many others, Intellitix saw its 2020 calendar wiped out and executed a quick pivot, developing a Covid-screening and assessment tool.

“2020 was getting it into the hands of the essential businesses, making it work for construction, manufacturing, food processing, retirement homes, schools, healthcare,” says Milan Malivuk, chief strategy officer at the Toronto-based global provider. “But the reality is, as busy as we have been with that, we are very keen to get back to what we do.

“So, we are obviously trying to bend over backwards to make things happen, but not to the point where we are willing to cobble together some half-assed deployments that aren’t going to be successful.”

PlayPass and its French rival Weezevent announced a merger in March 2020, retaining both brand names but creating a 100-strong team with offices in Antwerp and Paris, as well as Canada, Switzerland, Spain, and the UK. “We were in a growing industry where every year you could expect growth,” says De Wever.

“And suddenly it was completely finished, and we lost 90% of our revenue, so that was quite confronting. And like a lot of businesses, we started to evaluate the best options of how we make sure we can survive this, and how we can become stronger after.”

The two companies had been in discussions before the pandemic, De Wever reveals, but the tempest of 2020 focused the need for mutual support. “We had already had some discussions with Weezevent before. For my part I always considered them the biggest competitor. A lot of companies claim to be a European leader, and I don’t think there was one, but now… let’s wait until 2022, but I think we can say we are in a position to be the European leader.”

The immediate function of modern event technology this year has been to help get the show back on the road in difficult circumstances. But the deeper promise of such technology manifests itself on several fronts. As well as timely safety capabilities, it also potentially offers better experiences, shorter queues, and transactional efficiencies in a sector that, as most festivalgoers can probably confirm, could sometimes do with them.

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Butlr’s cashless system allows users to use the app for their bar orders

“What Covid has done, in our opinion, is to accelerate something that was coming already – this attitude of ‘what’s the quickest and easiest way to transact?’ That’s the expectation now,” says Sam Biggins, commercial director at UKbased food and drink ordering app Butlr.

“We are quite optimistic that, although Covid was a terrible thing, it has pushed technological advancement in a sector that typically is very slow to change. Music venues have been operating in almost exactly the same way since their inception.

Same with festivals. I don’t think the first Glastonbury will have been very different to Glastonbury these days, in terms of technology at least.”

And for promoters, efficiency isn’t the only win to be had here. The promise of teched-up festivals is that they belatedly offer promoters the opportunity to know their customers, learn from their movements around the site and create opportunities to communicate, preview, reward, and strategically market to them.

“We have been doing this since 2010,” says Malivuk. “And the reason people have used us is because they want to know who is inside their

event – for marketing, for the ability to re-engage, build brand connections, the ability to improve traffic flow inside the event. And it’s about facilitating cashless transactions and speeding them up, gathering more data and increasing the average spend per person, typically by 30% to 40%.”

Tappit’s Jason Thomas agrees. “In this market, the solution that will provide real value is one that can go beyond simply delivering cashless functionality, to provide a frictionless fan experience and enable event organisers to understand each and every fan - connecting what they bought, when they entered the venue, when they left and how to maximise this,” he says.

“Data is the most valuable element of the cashless solution, and as we work with our clients throughout the process, we help provide insights and ways to make events even more profitable.

Making consistent connections between a fan or consumer and ensuring you know their preferences is crucial in building strong brand loyalty.

Providing real-time data and insights to deliver real value for organisations will make the difference between success and failure.”

“We are quite optimistic that, although Covid was a terrible thing, it has pushed technological advancement in a sector that typically is very slow to change” Sam Biggins | Butlr

Cashless_Feature

Tappit were on hand to help the Bestival team ensure its fans enjoyed the best possible experience

On the one hand, some operators note that avid data capture isn’t necessarily the way the wind is blowing in the wider world. “We were on the BBC recently and it was all around data-less ordering,” says Biggins. “Some solutions will mine users’ data and it’s ludicrous and it’s intrusive. You don’t need someone’s date of birth to place an order. We are of the opinion that the less data you take, the more seamless the experience.”

But for broad-ranging event management systems, suggests Hossenally, a restrained data-driven approach, deploying closed-loop systems that enable organisers to bank all the data generated by their events, offers benefits on both sides.

“With the onsite experience now, there’s a lot more that can be enabled that promoters didn’t really think about before, because they didn’t have the technology solutions to do so,” he says.

“It’s a real opportunity to be able to create that full end-to-end journey, from the company buying the ticket to accessing the event to paying onsite.

“It’s about understanding that customer and having a 360-degree view of their spending habits. It’s not necessarily all about Big Brother but how, in order to generate more revenue, promoters have to give more to the customers in the form of a better, more tailored experience: rewards, loyalty, all that sort of stuff that promoters couldn’t really do before.”

Gradually, other barriers to seamless operation are being removed, too, including the perennial difficulty of networks for mobile solutions. “We have held off on releasing a mobile solution for a very long time, purely because net-

work infrastructure wasn’t there,” says Malivuk.

“But now with 5G, you can have 150,000 people in one place and have reliable connectivity.”

Intellitix acquired a mobile-first company called CrowdBlink in January 2020, on which it has built “a lightweight version of Intellitix, with a ticketing solution, access control, and cashless.”

The future, Malivuk suggests, isn’t necessarily increasingly complex systems but more accessible ones, aimed at smaller events.

“Intellitix has always been a no-brainer for events over a certain size,” he says. “But we always also had a lot of demand from events that want what we do but the numbers don’t make sense. CrowdBlink doesn’t do everything Intellitix does, because that’s kind of the enterprise option, but for smaller events that just want to sell tickets, scan people in, conduct transactions but at a lower price point – that’s what this is for.”

As a dedicated payment system, UK-based Butlr also has an ambition to strengthen the technological hand of those it works with, which includes independent festivals, the IFF, and up to 700 venues. At Brighton’s On The Beach, Butlr displayed QR codes on posters and screens around the event, which allowed customers to order using their phones and receive a push notification when their order was ready to collect.

“We had four members of staff, compared to 50 on the main bar, and we were responsible for 50% of the takings,” says Biggins. “We want to avoid those scrums at the bar, five-deep. In my opinion, those should be a thing of the past. But as with all things, it takes time for adoption.”

At festivals of the future, he says, Butlr plans to spread its PickUp points around a site. “So rather than having one big bar miles away, we will have points really close to the stage. You scan a QR code, choose a PickUp point, and pick up pre-made drinks. That’s our vision of the future and we are starting to do it now.”

The wider future, of course, is a carefully managed return to business, as events attempt to gauge demand in a market where they haven’t drawn an audience in eighteen months or so. For cashless technology, the picture is a combination of the highly ambitious and the very down to earth.

“In five years from now, I think we can expect truly immersive and customised event experiences,” says Thomas. “The launch of ABBA’s live event experience has shown just how creative events can become. Connected devices and 5G will all create the perfect environment to deliver a unique and tailored event experience for each and every fan. The right cashless solution will connect the fan’s experience to their purchasing preferences. Delivering deep and meaningful engagement can be endless, and the connection between brand and consumer will continue to grow stronger.”

And then there is the down-to-earth side.“I think there’s core tenets that are fundamentals, like, can we make it more invisible?” says Malivuk. “That’s the future of it – being less obtrusive. That’s where everyone’s interests align. If you improve the festival experience, that’s where you are going to see more revenues. Just make it suck less to buy things onsite. If you focus on that piece, everything else follows. Make all those steps that suck, suck less.”

CONTRIBUTORS

DAVID DE WEVER | PLAYPASS RESHAD HOSSENALLY | EVENT GENIUS MILAN MALIVUK | INTELLITIX JASON THOMAS | TAPPIT Magazine

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INSIGHTS FOR SORE EYES As the business rubs the sleep from its collective eyes after an 18-month-long talks to some of the companies helping live music professionals slumber, learn more about their audiences and improve their fans’ experience.

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W

ith restrictions on events gradually coming to an end and shows and festivals restarting across much of the world, promoters and venues are finally getting back to business after a year-and-a-half-long shutdown unprecedented in the history of the concert business.

Also getting ready for a return to something approaching normality are the clever companies behind the software and hardware solutions that help concert businesses learn more about their audiences before, during, and after their events – many of which have used the enforced hibernation of the coronavirus period to tinker with, finesse, and add new functionalities to their already feature-rich products, they tell IQ. Pascal de Mul, CEO of Exit Live, explains that his company is filling the space left by the decline of physical media to provide fans with a digital souvenir of their favourite shows.

“Live music recordings used to be a major release platform, but streaming has refocused the industry and the fans on studio recordings. Today, there are no good places to find quality live recordings,” he says “The CD at the door and the bootleg cassettes are gone, with nothing to replace them.

“We created a platform that is 100% focused on celebrating the best audio recordings of live music, and have done it with a passion for the artist first. Performers and songwriters are in control, receive 70% of all proceeds, and can receive this immediately through our ‘pay me now’ button. Once a transaction is made, the funds are available immediately. Artists do not have to wait to be remunerated; they can be rewarded instantly. We believe the artist deserves full control and that is our ethos.”

OnePlan, says CEO Paul Foster, provides analytics on fan engagement at the time of ticket purchase, connecting to a venue’s ticketing platform via its Venue Twin solution.

“OnePlan is a collaborative festival planning platform that enables teams, partners, and all stakeholders to plan their events in one system,” he explains. “It’s centimetre-accurate and easy to use, with all the infrastructure and objects you need, plus real-time event analytics.” OnePlan “seamlessly connects with our hyper--realistic, interactive 3D platform, Venue Twin, including the most advanced 3D SeatView when buying tickets.”

“Festivals have till now been planned in non-specialist tools, with screenshots of maps emailed back and forth. OnePlan massively simplifies and improves the event planning process,” he adds “ensuring your team and stakeholders all have one single source-of-truth for the entire festival and any scenario.

“Venue Twin is a game-changer for stadiums and arenas, with incredible hyper-realistic digital twins of the venue that can be used for oper-

Audience Insights_Feature

Viberate is confident its data analysis tools can help event organisers maximise their profit margins

“…always stay flexible. Be open to new ways of using technology you have already built and be open to expanding beyond your initial target market” Claudia Bacco | ComeTogether

ational planning, customer walk-throughs from any angle, easy-to-change signage and branding and more. It even enables light and sound production planning for concerts.”

“Given Exit Live is a global platform, any artist utilising our tool will be able to see where in the world fans are most likely to buy an audio recording,” says De Mul, outlining Exit Live’s audience insight capabilities. “Even beyond this, an artist will be able to judge pricing structures to sell audio live show recordings by measuring the success of the sell-through of shows. This can help to boost sales whereby the pricing to fans will be agreed at a point that works for everyone.

“Also, over time, as artists upload more and more live show recordings, more data will be received, which will showcase which shows were most popular with fans. Again, this will help to inform any future decision to promote any historical shows in a different way.”

Zack Sabban, CEO of Festicket and subsidiary Event Genius, identifies a number of Event Genius solutions, including egMarketing, egTicketing, egTravel and egPay, that he says will help “to build strong and clear profiles of fans throughout the life cycle of the events that they attend.”§ “Perhaps the most fruitful area for audience

insights comes via our cashless solution, offering venues, event organisers and promoters, access to a wealth of data usually reserved for the big banks,” he says. “Putting this data in the hands of venues and promoters is very powerful; our cashless offering is as much about delivering a better fan experience as it is about regaining ownership of data and insight that promoters and venue owners can usually never gain access to.

“By offering a greater understanding of customers’ spending habits, we can help venues and promoters to deliver a better fan experience, using data to build different profiles of customers – favourite products, food, drink, merchandise, etc – to ascertain how to best serve these audiences and adapt accordingly, as well as offering insights into which customers are the biggest spenders and those that offer the greatest value. All of this data across the fan experience, from discovery through to on-the-day purchases, offers the opportunity to engage with audiences in new and creative ways before, during, and after events, via rewards, incentives, gamification and more.”

Festicket’s ticketing and travel businesses, meanwhile, “can help to build a picture of the audience for an event, whether that’s through traditional demographics like age or gender, Magazine

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or more detailed insights into where fans are travelling from the split between domestic and international audiences; and even the preferences and budgets when it comes to VIP tickets, accommodation options, and extras. We can also offer insights into spending behaviours in terms of what proportion of fans make use of payment plans to spread the cost of their booking over instalments,” says Sabban.

ComeTogether’s ticketing solution uses cryptocurrency-like blockchain technology to give event organisers complete control over a ticket and its life cycle. It also offers tickets as NFTs (non-fungible tokens), with other concert content, such as video and augmented-reality (AR) experiences, also available in the in-vogue collectible format.

With ComeTogether, event organisers are able to “conduct targeted marketing for future events and to better understand the demographics of attendees,” says ComeTogether’s CMO, Claudia Bacco. “All information is tracked in

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accordance with GDPR and information can be anonymised as needed. Examples of details that can be provided include who used the ticket to attend the event; the type of ticket purchased; where they sat; whether the ticket was purchased in the primary or secondary market and how much they paid for it; and if they purchased a group of tickets this information would be linked to show who joined as a group.”

Viberate monitors all major social, streaming and other music channels – including radio, Spotify, Beatport, Instagram, YouTube, SoundCloud and Twitter – and uses the data to determine how each music artist is performing online, and how they rank in popularity compared to other similar artists.

“We measure [the artists’] fanbase growth and engagement for each of those channels through time, so it’s easy for anyone to track their promotional and growth efforts in one place,” comments Vasja Veber, Viberate

co-founder and business development director.

“We go even deeper into breaking down fans by accurately pinpointing where they come from – by country and city – what age they are, and what gender they are.

“One major thing is that we listened to the artists and labels and really focused our efforts building extensive analytics for Spotify, radio and Beatport, and we can say that we managed to do that – we really covered everything.”

He adds, “All this information is very useful when artists or their teams want to promote new releases and other ventures, assess past gigs and promotional activities, or look for specific cities that have the most potential for future gigs.”

Despite its focus on recorded/streaming music channels, Veber says Viberate has been affected by restrictions on concerts during the pandemic. “The live music industry was hit hard, and since events and festivals were a big chunk of our business, we had to adapt quickly. “Now,

Audience Insights_Feature automated calculations for entrance and exit.”

Sabban explains that Event Genius spent its pandemic downtime “evaluat[ing] our offering in light of the lasting changes that Covid-19 will inevitably have on the live events industry. We made a series of innovations to our services to make sure we had a completely Covid-ready solution for event organisers. Things like reduced contact between staff and eventgoers suddenly became a huge part of an event experience, so we invested heavily in things like unmanned top-up stations, contactless payments, and selfscan contactless ticket and wristband scanning.

“We wanted to make sure we were able to reassure fans and staff that they were attending an event that felt safe. We developed time-slot-specific tickets to help maintain social distancing and improve attendee flow, while also making sure promoters could be fully [contact tracing] compliant with us.”

For ComeTogether, coronavirus lockdowns were initially “a complete halt to our business,”

according to Bacco, with the company undergoing a “short-term pivot to focus on the development of Covid-19 certificates to support health access control based on our blockchain engine.

This solution was made available as a standalone app, and also combined with the main digital ticketing app.

“As the industry started to reopen, we [found ourselves] ahead of solutions that don’t offer as many options to implement this functionality.”

What makes ComeTogether unique, she adds, is the “ability to have a single digital ticketing solution that also supports health access control and NFT collectibles through a single app. The app can be provided as a white-label solution to promote individual branding, and NFT solutions can be customised to the event, audience or topic.”

De Mul says that the shutdown, despite the proliferation of live-streamed events, underlined the importance of live shows for both performers and fans.

“What the pandemic has shown us is that

Festicket/Event Genius has rolled out its egPay cashless tool to bolster its onsite credentials

with things slowly picking up, we’re happy to notice that a lot of music professionals have turned to data and tech in general to help them navigate their online presence.

“The music business has always been notoriously slow at adopting tech solutions, but the adoption and use of analytics has now leapt forward by at least five years.”

Foster says OnePlan, which is used by over 2,000 events in 50 countries, including music festivals in the UK and US, has also seen increased demand for its solutions as promoters sought to minimise travel after March 2020.

“The global pandemic has made it much more difficult for promoters to visit venues for site visits,” he explains. “Venue Twin provides perfectly realistic virtual site visits, massively reducing the need to travel and significantly cutting costs.”

OnePlan, Foster adds, has also developed a “social distancing toolkit” that event organisers can use to plan the flow of attendees, including with Magazine

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Festicket has integrated with Spotify to help fans discover festivals that might appeal to their musical tastes

“Never before has technology allowed so many fans to get so close to their idols” Pascal de Mul | Exit Live

live shows are very important to artists and the music industry. As an artist, it is within the live show where a real connection with the fan is made,” he comments. “This cannot be replicated in any other format.

“With the return of live music, we are excited to support artists and share content with fans and audiences once again.”

Having “worked with thousands of partners across more than 50 countries,” including festivals such as Coachella, Tomorrowland, Mad Cool, Afro Nation and Rolling Loud, and promoters like AEG and Untitled Group, Festicket and Event Genius are now looking at other business areas, including striking agreements with artists directly, says Sabban. “Because our platform is versatile we’re always looking to explore other verticals, and we’re currently working on deals with some globally renowned artists, so being a part of more global tours like these is something we’d definitely like to do more of,” he explains. “There’s also scope for events that aren’t music-based: seasonal

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events, attractions and the like.”

Viberate, which is currently offering a 30-day free trial of its fully featured Viberate Premium service, is “in the final stages of launching a personalised professional feed that will deliver unique and up-to-date information for every single registered user,” reveals Veber.

“Apart from the feed feature, we’re currently working on adding several other features to the platform, such as TikTok Analytics, Facebook Analytics, the most comprehensive YouTube analytics available, as well as the data export feature,” he adds. “We expect to roll everything out in the coming months.”

“The main lesson learned” over the past 18 months by the team at ComeTogether, which prior to the pandemic had provided its solution to 14 events in Greece, is “to always stay flexible. Be open to new ways of using technology you have already built, and be open to expanding beyond your initial target market,” says Bacco.

De Mul, meanwhile, is looking forward to the return of live music, as well as new audio technologies that will enable fans to hear live recordings in a higher quality than possible before: “New digital technology, spatial audio and HD-quality [sound] all contribute to the intensity and intimacy” of the recordings, he says. “Never before has technology allowed so many fans to get so close to their idols. Fans wanting to relive those incredible live music experiences will truly benefit from Exit Live, and will do so in the assurance

that their artists will receive a fair deal.”

Ultimately, he concludes, “there is nothing like the energy of live music. In person, or as a recording, hearing an artist or band at their creative peak is exciting and exhilarating like nothing else.”

CONTRIBUTORS

CLAUDIA BACCO | COMETOGETHER PASCAL DE MUL | EXIT LIVE PAUL FOSTER | ONEPLAN ZACK SABBAN | FESTICKET/EVENT GENIUS VASJA VEBER | VIBERATE

WHEREVER YOU GO, WE ARE THERE… Your global leader for temporary flooring and crowd control solutions

info@eps.net | www.eps.net

GEI Summer Edition round-up

With sustainability topping the agenda of many organisations who are endeavouring to “build back better,” GEI’s inaugural summer edition gathered delegates virtually from all over the world to witness a host of panels broadcast live from PYTCH in Bristol, UK

T

he A Greener Tour panel, chaired by production manager Wob Roberts, focussed on the work behind making Bring Me The Horizon’s tour as environmentally friendly as possible.

This involved a “360-degree dialogue of learning with the whole industry” to find out what is already possible in terms of sustainability, as well as the many projects that people are working on to improve their carbon footprints. The session revealed many of the steps that vendors are taking to bolster their green credentials and underlined the need for open communications so that the entire ecosystem can benefit.

Putting venues in the spotlight, A Greener Arena Emerging saw Teresa Moore (A Greener Festival) joined by Dale Vince from Ecotricity, Emma Ball from the NEC, and Lee Lacey from London’s O2 arena. Vince explained that 80% of everyone’s carbon footprint lies in energy, transport, and food, and by targeting those three specific areas, huge results are possible. Ball spoke of the new-found enthusiasm displayed by event stakeholders in working together to tackle the climate emergency. Whilst Lacey underlined how key artist engagement with fans is

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in delivering messages about sustainability, thus helping venues and the industry in general to achieve green targets.

The event also saw UK industry organisation LIVE reveal its united action declaration, which involves sectors across the live music business working together to agree a common stance on the environment and a voluntary charter setting out directions for the industry over the next few years.

LIVE Green Working Group chair John Langford explained that the pause due to the pandemic had allowed many like-minded people to debate how live entertainment could become more sustainable, as well as giving the time and space to allow the drawing up of plans on how to achieve cross-industry cooperation. To date, 13 industry organisations have signed the declaration.

Artists Creating Change saw Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt, DJ Eli Soul Clap, and a panel of industry professionals discuss the power of artists and musicians when it comes to communicating positive environmental messages to the masses and bringing about real change.

Fearlessly Feminine, hosted by A Greener Festival’s Claire O’Neill, saw Khalila

Sandrah Mbowe, founder and CEO of Unleashed Africa Social Ventures, speak about the organisation’s work in youth development, social innovation, and job creation, and her passion for creating brands that can transform Africa; Claire Dubois, founder of TreeSisters, explained the organisation’s remit as a social change and tropical reforestation programme; and Diné (Navajo) activist Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining) highlighted the work of indigenous peoples around the world in fighting to maintain the way of life – working in harmony with nature and the earth – that they have enjoyed for millennia.

Other sessions included Creativity Conquers Conflict; Carbon Removals & Climate Heating; Sustainable Signage & Branding; the Tyndall Centre’s Massive Attack Research; Greening Sports; Energy & Power; and Live From the Fields, which examined some sustainability measures that were introduced at 2021 events.

Video footage of GEI’s summer edition is available online for all delegates, while on-demand access is still available for £55 (inc VAT) by emailing hello@agreenerfestival.com.

GEI Summer Edition round-up

Magazine

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SOUND, LIGHTS & SCREENS: Sound, Lights & Screens_Feature

DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK

As festivals and gigs start to resume in earnest, sound, lighting and video screen contractors are suddenly finding themselves inundated with business again. Derek Robertson learns about the rollercoaster ride that suppliers have experienced during the pandemic.

D

o you remember at which point the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic first hit home? For some, it was when they suspended all flights to mainland China.

Or when the UK government admitted that we faced a “substantial period of disruption… due to the outbreak.” For others it was the realisation that, after the announcement on 9 March of a strict nationwide quarantine in Italy, lockdowns were coming to us all. For those whose livelihoods were invested in the music industry, watching all of this unfold prompted an increasing feeling of dread.

For Yvonne Donnelly Smith, music lighting sales director of PRG – a global company operating audio, camera, lighting, and various other production services – that latter date was particularly significant. “I got my first email from Bryan Adams’ team saying: ‘All shows cancelled due to Corona,” she says. “That was quickly followed by The Script, who cancelled because someone in the touring party had caught Covid. Then the domino effect really started to kick in.”

As she tells it, every day two or three more tours would cancel as the reality of the situation began to outweigh optimism that the whole Magazine

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One of the new streaming studios at John Henry’s

thing would blow over quickly. And then the summer festivals started to fall – “which everyone was holding out hope for,” she says.

It was a similar story with John Henry’s, a multi-disciplinary company in the live sector offering audio, backline, and staging services, who had just sent out audio and backline equipment for multiple US country artists touring Europe and heading towards the C2C Festival at London’s O2 Arena. “We’d just loaded the trucks to head to site the next day when everything was cancelled,” says Johnny Henry, company director. “We then had to negotiate the return of equipment from all around the country to get it back before we had to close the doors and send staff home. It was a devastating moment for everyone.”

Christie Lites, a global stage lighting vendor covering live music, theatre, TV, corporate, and special events, and employing over 400 employees around the world, were ramping up into what business development executive Jessica Allan describes as “a very, very busy year.” It all came to a sudden, complete halt. “The realisation that pretty much everything was coming back in kit-wise – including shows that had been out for five years or more – and the logistics of what that involved was definitely one of the ‘Oh shit!’ moments,” she adds.

Everyone IQ spoke to for this feature talks of the initial shock and disbelief, and how thoughts turned extremely quickly from dealing with the mammoth task of returning equipment and personnel, to the question of “what happens now?”

Bryan Grant of Britannia Row, a company that has been supplying audio systems and crews since 1975 and is now part of the Clair Global

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“I think what we’ve learnt over the last 18 months is that you can’t stand still” Johnny Henry | John Henry’s

Group, was initially optimistic. “The enormity of it didn’t really sink in for some time,” he explains. “We all thought it was only a temporary blip, not an 18-month hiatus.”

As such, hard work continued behind the scenes at all these companies, to ready themselves for whenever a re-opening – and largescale music events – could once again take place.

Grant notes how crucial it was to keep key people in place and remain open for business, while Donnelly Smith says that “remaining flexible and resilient” kept PRG busy through the onslaught.

John Adam’s famous old adage, that “Every problem is an opportunity in disguise,” was severely tested as companies struggled to make sense of what they were dealing with, and what the long-term future of touring and live might look like. Tentative suggestions that late summer 2020 could see some events return, were nixed by the looming threat of the second wave, and with further lockdowns throughout winter and the early part of 2021 – not to mention the Delta variant – the prognosis looked gloomy.

Nevertheless, the pause became a chance to take stock, to develop their offerings, and branch out into new tech or events. Britannia Row, through the Clair Global Group, developed the Virtual Live Audio system, a high-qual-

ity, low-latency streaming platform that allows presenters and performers in the broadcast and corporate sectors to interact in real time with their audiences, while PRG was also helping clients move into streaming, setting up studios and live spaces, and tailoring solutions to help events transition into the digital space. They opened a rehearsal space, too, The Bridge, which allows clients to prepare for shows safely and securely.

John Henry’s began working with an AV company, PIXL, to convert their studios into a live-streaming and broadcast hub, and were actually able to service a number of recorded events that saw over a thousand people back through their doors. For Christie Lites, planning and research never stopped, but they also – like the others – took a brief step back.

“We took the opportunity to re-evaluate internal processes with our team behind the scenes, making improvements in preparation for the return,” says Allan. These ranged from technology tweaks through to broadening and building on sustainability programmes, as well as a number of ‘Crew Prep’ events to help crew and clients prepare for getting back to work.

With Britain having lifted restrictions on 19 July this year, many other countries following suit, and the continuing rise in the number of people double vaccinated, something approach-

Sound, Lights & Screens_Feature ing normality has begun to return. Music’s live and touring sector has been scrabbling to respond, but with lead times normally measured in months, and many still wary of attending packed, sweaty arena shows and festivals, it’s been a stuttering reopening. PRG just serviced Creamfields – as did Christie Lites – alongside Rewind, Wireless, and Isle of Wight, but really all eyes are on 2022, and a full-blown return.

“We’re optimistic,”, says Britannia Row’s Bryan Grant. “We think there’s going to be huge demand,” adds PRG’s Yvonne Donnelly Smith.

Others are even more confident: 2022 is shaping up to be a “very mad year” says Christie Lites’ Allan, with two years’ worth of events squeezed into one system. But that pressure is already being keenly felt, and having some worrying knock-on effects.

“Ramping up from essentially a standing start, combined with the uncertainty still floating around, was always going to be a challenge,” says Allan. “There is fear from vendors and freelancers that limits will be pushed both of budgets, timescale, and of people to meet demand.

The other big issue is the lack of crew, as so many have had to get work elsewhere or have decided not to come back.” That’s a problem noted by Britannia Row director Bryan Grant as well; “that’s why we’ve kept up with our training programmes and have kept as many of our people employed as we possibly can,” he says.

Demand outstripping supply has had other consequences too. “Material shortages are already affecting manufacturers, so spares and some of the vital things that you need for touring and shows are in short supply already,” notes Johnny Henry. “There is no sign of that improving yet.”

There is also the issue of Covid bubbles being broken, and isolated infections bringing whole operations to yet another temporary halt.

“We’ve already recently seen shows and tours being pulled at the last minute because of positive Covid cases,” continues Henry. “Everyone involved in productions is doing their best to avoid these situations, but it’s clearly very difficult no matter what precautions are being taken. I expect this to continue into 2022.”

And that concern has led to yet another issue, particularly with regard to larger tours. “We’re starting to see some now pushed back into 2023 as artist management look at scheduling, and also the fact that so many artists and bands are potentially competing for venues and punters in 2022,” says Allan.

Making sure long-awaited live performances are delivered in the best possible way to fans is a key component for festival chiefs and touring acts when deciding on their 2022 and beyond plans.

Innovation has seemingly blossomed during lockdown; so too gains in efficiency. “We are constantly upgrading our systems to provide more efficient packages in terms of weight, size, and

PRG helped Creamfields create a dazzling stage set

coverage,” says Grant. “For touring acts, the fact that we can duplicate both equipment and people in many territories means less freight and air travel, which saves money and the environment.”

That last part – sustainability – is becoming an ever more vital component of companies’ offerings, and something the music industry is keen to embrace. All of the companies IQ spoke to had placed it at the top of their agenda.

“There’s a high demand for LED products to take the lead on jobs, and PRG were doing this well before the pandemic,” says Donnelly Smith. “Joining and working with TPG has been extremely influential for us in continuing this journey towards sustainability in our events – we’re taking an inside-out approach to solidify this culture change, offering sustainable kit to our customers and also making changes inhouse, like switching energy suppliers and using sustainable materials.”

“We are constantly trying to learn about where we can improve on sustainability – it is something we are passionate about,” says Allan.

“We have a living sustainability programme, so our warehouses use rainwater harvesting and solar panels where possible, and we’re excited to be opening our most eco-friendly building to date in Nashville in September, which is built using a revolutionary decarbonised method of construction. On tour, our standardisation of flight cases helps reduce the truck pack and the fact that you can pull and drop a European leg from the UK and pick up again in North America without the need to fly or ship kit is a key reason why sustainability conscious clients use us.”

Undoubtedly, the last 18 months have been a seismic shock, and recovery will depend on the ticket-buying public – as Grant notes, “Covid isn’t going away, so we are just going to have to adapt to the circumstances that confront us.” But live events have proved resilient before, and are doing so again. The future will just be a little different.

“This past year has shown what we can achieve if we pull together,” says Allan. “Yes, a

very difficult road lies ahead, but we have confidence that collectively the industry will find a way through and come out the other side.”

“I think what we’ve learnt over the last 18 months is that you can’t stand still,” adds Johnny Henry. “You have to use any spare time to continue to refine your trade, improve where you can, be more efficient, and get more out of your resources than you think possible. Your staff are your greatest asset, and while you’ve got to put faith in the future, don’t forget the past.”

Ultimately, the message is one of collaboration, and working together for greater success – and the greater good. “It’s an opportunity for all of us in the touring community, from artists, agents, promoters, and managers, to supply companies and all of those who work within these organisations to realise that we’re all on the same side,” says Grant. “We all need to earn a living, and all need to respect what we all contribute to making this wonderful, mad machine work; let’s keep going.”

CONTRIBUTORS

YVONNE DONNELLY SMITH | PRG BRYAN GRANT | BRITANNIA ROW JOHNNY HENRY | JOHN HENRY’S JESSICA ALLAN | CHRISTIE LITES Magazine

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Your Shout

If you had 25 hours a day, how would you use your extra time?

TOP SHOUT

My home is a museum of my life thus far… There are hundreds of unread books, unlistened albums, boxes of archival stuff and heaven knows what. And I keep buying more stuff (with a Covid dip while my income evaporated.) I like buying stuff.

And then there’s my own music; some of it I put out, much of it I record and don’t release because there isn’t time. Then there’s thousands of unedited photos, and books to write… Ah fuck it! Twenty-five hours a day isn’t enough, can I negotiate this up?

Nick Hobbs | Charmenko

Sex. (Or motor racing – it lasts longer!!)

John Giddings | Solo Agency I thought 25 hours a day is what music managers always work…

Paul Craig | Nostromo Management Covid has made it clear that life is short and very unpredictable: certainties can disappear in minutes. So my extra time would be spent playing, reading, walking, smiling, and lots of family time. Work is not everything, it already takes eight hours a day, that’s enough.

Corrado Canonici | World Touring Exhibitions Not to work.

Natasha Gregory | Mother Artists Live This just made me waste three minutes as I have been thinking about how I will use that extra hour!

Lucia Wade | ITB

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Sleep.

Kenneth Svoldgaard | CSB Ed Grossman | Brackman Chopra Mark Davyd | Music Venue Trust Richie Mattila | ISO Exercise. Fitting in half an hour of exercise does wonders for my mental health on any given day.

Connie Shao | AEG Presents

I would split that extra hour into 20 minutes office, 20 minutes golf, and 20 minutes family!

Peter Schwenkow | DEAG One hour extra? With my daughter and family as the rest of the day is dedicated to work, even when I try to sleep.

Roberto De Luca | Live Nation

I’d save up all the extra hours, add them together and take a holiday. I’m not one for holidays, to be honest, but I’d give it a try.

Gillian ‘Centre’ Park(s) | MGR Touring

I would probably want to use that extra hour to check on my colleagues and friends in the business and make sure they are okay. Come to think of it… I should do that more often anyway.

Guido Janssens | Emagic

Reading the wonderful IQ Magazine in even more detail, and preparing for ILMC 34, of course.

Martin Goebbels | Miller Insurance

I would ride horses in our mountains listening to opera arias through headphones.

Patrik Kohut | Ostrava V Plamenech

Read a good book!

Nadia Solovieva | SAV Entertainment

I would spend the extra hour around animals… the best therapy.

Betina Canalis | PopArtMusic

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