IQ43, September 2012

Issue 43 LIVE MUSIC INTELLIGENCE

An ILMC Publication. Sept 2012

TV

TAKING TV ON TOUR TALENT SHOWS ON THE ROAD

THE MAN WHO OPENED THE IRON CURTAIN

L ASZLO H EGEDUS MARKS 40 YEARS IN MUSIC

THE HIGH FLIERS

T URBULENCE

IN THE AIR FREIGHT AND CHARTER SECTOR ?

MARKET REPORT: THE MIDDLE EAST

T HE

IMPACT OF THE A RAB S PRING ON TOURING

NOT THE WAY TO PLAY THE GAME: KEITH HARRIS ROCK ‘N’ ROLL CAN SAVE THE WORLD: JUHA KYYRÖ THE ONLY WAY IS UP!: TOOMAS OLLJUM EMBRACING EUROPE: CHRISTIAN HALD BUHL

Contents News 8 In Brief The main headlines over the last two months 9 In Depth

18

Key stories from around the live music world

Features 18 Taking TV on Tour

The highs and lows of TV talent shows on the road

24 The New Bosses 2012

Ten future industry leaders in the spotlight

28 The Man Who Opened The Iron Curtain

Laszlo Hegedus celebrates 40 years in music

24

38 The High Fliers

Will Waters examines the air freight and charter sector

46 Market Report: The Middle East

Adam Woods learns about the impact of the Arab Spring

Comments and Columns 14 Not the Way to Play The Game Keith Harris criticises the Olympic approach to live music

15 Rock n’ Roll Can Save the World

Juha KyyrĂś pleads for more empathy in the business

28

16 The Only Way is Up! Toomas Olljum advocates a positive approach to

achieve success 17 Embracing Europe Christian Hald Buhl forms a European pact to help cross-border sales 56 In Focus

Festival fun and Olympian feats

58 Your Shout

Lessons learned from bosses

38

46

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 3

SILVeR LININGS Storm clouds dominated the summer for some, but Gordon Masson reckons The New Bosses 2012 list hints at a bright future for the business...

The summer season is winding down in the Northern hemisphere and while some outdoor events have enjoyed recordbreaking years, others have endured a torrid time. In the UK, in particular, numerous festivals were hit by torrential rain, leaving sites flooded, cars bogged down in mud and, in a handful of cases, promoters forced to cancel all or part of their events.

Quite what long-term effect that might have on the scene remains to be seen, but some observers are already pointing to the success that other European gatherings are having in attracting Brits to travel overseas, taking advantage of cheap airlines and cheaper festival tickets, as well as the allure of guaranteed sunshine.

This year’s soggy summertime in Blighty will have done little to persuade festival goers not to do likewise, so it will be interesting to hear the opinions of event organisers in our annual European Festival Report, which will appear in the next issue of IQ. The survey for that report is now available online and, if you are involved in the festival side of the business, you will be receiving a reminder from us to complete the survey in the coming days.

Without your help, this important research would not be possible, so please help us identify the trends and gauge the health of the business by taking a few minutes to answer our survey questions.

Getting back to this issue, there is a wealth of information and news on the following pages such as an investigation

by Will Walters into the highly competitive air freight and charter sector, where the recession doesn’t seem to be having too much of an impact. Pressure to cut tour budget costs is changing the landscape and

some acts are investing in multiple rigs that can be shipped ahead of time, rather than flown.

Adam Woods visits the Middle East and learns that the Arab Spring may yet open new territories to the sound of Western music. With regime changes still in their infancy, making some countries into routine stops on the tour circuit will take time and patience. But helping those brave enough to take a risk in such markets will be vital.

One such man who is no stranger to risk is Laszlo Hegedus, who this year marks his 40th year in music. Laszlo’s experiences of working through the communist era include some fascinating tales and if any promoters or entrepreneurs are in need of inspiration, then our feature celebrating his career will do you no harm at all.

Talking of aspiring stars, this issue also includes our annual list of The New Bosses. The candidates you nominated this year are already making their mark in the industry and should indeed be among the execs to take the live music business to new horizons as their careers progress.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention two of IQ and ILMC’s friends who passed away recently. Viva Art Music’s Lasse Olsson and South by Southwest’s Brent Grulke were both in their early 50s and, while words rarely express the emotions that such untimely tragedies evoke, I hope you find the tribute pieces in our news pages befitting. On that note, Brent’s family has set up a fund for his six-year-old son. Contributions can be sent to: EMG Inc., 6101 West Courtyard Drive, Suite 2-120, Austin, Texas 78730.

Donations should be made payable to the Graham Grulke Education Fund.

Issue 43 LIVE MUSIC INTELLIGENCE THE ILMC JOURNAL, Sept 2012 IQ Magazine 140 Gloucester Avenue London, NW1 8JA info@iq-mag.net www.iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0) 20 3204 1195 Fax: +44 (0) 20 3204 1191 Publisher ILMC and M4 Media Editor Gordon Masson Editorial Consultant Greg Parmley Associate Editor Allan McGowan Marketing & Advertising Manager Terry McNally Sub Editor Michael Muldoon Production Assistant Adam Milton Editorial Assistant Laura Bennett Contributors Christian Hald Buhl, Keith Harris, Juha Kyyrö, Toomas Olljum, Manfred Tari, Will Waters, Adam Woods Editorial Contact Gordon Masson, gordon@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 3204 1195 Advertising Contact Terry McNally, terry@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 3204 1193

To subscribe to IQ Magazine: +44 (0)20 7284 5867 info@iq-mag.net Annual subscription to IQ is £50 (€60) for 6 issues.

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 5

News

In Brief... ing. Days later, promoter Baselogic Productions enters voluntary administration.

British retailer HMV posts a pre-tax loss of £38.6m (€48.9m) for the year to April.

Chief executive Simon Fox announces his intention to leave and is replaced by Trevor Moore, former boss of camera retailer Jessops.

Emeli Sande

JULY Austin City Limits announces provisional plans to add another weekend to next year’s festival. Producer C3 Presents is reportedly in talks with local authorities that, if successful, will see the 2013 edition run on 4-6 and 11-13 October.

Rita Lee, wife of the late Buddy Lee and co-founder of Buddy Lee Attractions, dies in Nashville, aged 73. Daughter, Donna Lee, remains general manager of the agency.

Live Nation appoints David Zedeck to the role of executive VP and president of global talent and artist development.

Zedeck was formerly at CAA. A Turkish government ban on alcohol sales has a sobering effect on the One Love Festival in Istanbul. Despite the ban, beer company Efes remain as sponsors.

Frontier Touring Company managing director Michael Gudinski is named the most powerful person in the Australian music industry in magazine publisher Street Press Australia’s Power 50 list.

Other live music execs named include Michael Chugg, AJ Maddah, Paul Dainty and Michael Coppel.

Carol Hawkins, a former assistant of Adam Clayton, is imprisoned for seven years by an Irish court after being found guilty of embezzling €2.8million from the U2 bass player.

Deep Purple keyboard player Jon Lord dies after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

He was 71.

Universal Records suggest that they are open to divesting certain assets as part of the concessions it will make in its $1.9billion (€1.51bn) acquisition of EMI Music.

Rumours abound that labels Virgin Records or Parlophone could be sold off.

Torrential rain and wind speeds of up to 120 km/h force organisers of the Rock For People festival in the Czech Republic to cancel certain concerts at the event.

London’s Bloc Festival is cancelled on its opening day amid allegations of overcrowd-

Artists including Paul McCartney, Mike Oldfield, Dizzee Rascal and Emeli Sande are each paid £1 for their performances at the Olympic opening ceremony, claims UK newspaper The Guardian. The show attracts 26.9m viewers in the UK alone – and billions more worldwide. More than 7,500 volunteers are involved in the production.

AUGUST Entertainment retailer HMV reveals plans to downgrade its Stock Exchange listing, allowing it to sell off its live music divisions without seeking shareholder approval.

Production specialists Down Under form the Event Safety Alliance Australia in reaction to some of the recent high profile stage collapses in the northern hemisphere. Its first priority, it says, is to publish a version

of the UK’s Event Safety Guide.

AEG Ogden appoints Guy Ngata to become the new general manager of Allphones Arena in Sydney. Currently GM at Shanghai’s Mercedes-Benz Arena, Ngata will take over from Paul Sergeant, who is now CEO at the Etihad Stadium in Melbourne.

Vince Power’s Music Festivals PLC share price slumps after issuing a profit warning, blaming slow ticket sales for its Benicassim Festival in Spain and the UK’s Hop Farm events. The company is “exploring way of raising additional working capital.”

At press time shares were trading at 2.54 pence, compared to the initial public offering price of 65 pence per share a year ago.

Ultra Music Festival organisers proclaim its debut in Asia a success after attendance tops 55,000 at the event in the Olympic Stadium in Seoul, South Korea. Acts such as Steve Aoki, Skrillex, Carl Cox and Tiesto performed over the two-day event.

Revenues in the Australian live performance sector fell slightly to AU$1.3bn (€1.1bn) last year, despite an increase in the number of people attending shows, according to a survey by Live Performance Australia. Average ticket prices were affected by a slightly larger proportion of complimentary and sponsor tickets, it says.

UK dance music event Creamfields becomes yet another victim of the soggy British summer when flooding forces it to close a day early. Promoters announce a refund scheme to compensate fans.

Three members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot are jailed for two years each, after staging an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral. Amidst international outrage, the trio are convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” by the court.

The Michigan House and Senate debate legislation that would make it illegal to use or sell ticketing bot software in the state. The technology is widely used to buy up multiple allocations of tickets to popular events.

To subscribe to IQ Magazine: +44 (0)20 7284 5867 info@iq-mag.net Annual subscription to IQ is £50 (€60) for 6 issues.

8 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

News

New Sponsor Sees Meetings and Music AVO Name Change a Must for MaMA

Matthias Müller

A change in sponsor will see Swiss event AVO Session change its name to Baloise Session in 2013, organisers of the three-week festival have announced.

Baloise Insurance, which next year celebrates its 150th anniversary, has signed a five-year deal with the Baselbased event to replace AVO Cigars – part of the Oettinger Davidoff Group – which has been the festival’s main backer since 1998. Under the new deal, Baloise has agreed

to expand the sessions to other parts of Switzerland.

“Without the Oettinger Davidoff Group, this music festival would not be what it is today,” says event founder Matthias Müller. “Baloise has been a committed and reliable main sponsor for 15 years.

We are convinced that we can work together to further the development of the festival.”

Baloise Switzerland CEO Michael Müller comments, “As presenting sponsor of the Baloise Session, we not only want to make our mark on music, we also plan to create our own national concert series: Baloise On Tour, with smaller satellite festivals all over Switzerland, all linked to this successful Basel music festival.”

This year’s AVO Session Basel will take place from 26 October to 15 November at its one-off temporary home, the Musical Theater Basel, while the new convention centre buildings are under construction. The line-up includes: Dionne Warwick, Melody Gardot, Madredeus, Katie Melua, Alice Cooper, Gotye and Rod Stewart.

As conference season heats up, organisers of the MaMA Festival and Convention are pulling together an enticing schedule for their gathering in Paris, France, on 25-26 October.

The event’s Delphine Seguin reveals that the seminar and workshop schedule is being interwoven with a series of networking opportunities for both French and international delegates, with speed meetings and thematic lunches on offer to allow professionals to do business.

“MaMA’s objective, more than ever, is to bring together international representatives from all sectors of the music business and to enable meetings between French and international music industry professionals,” says Seguin.

Last year’s event attracted nearly 2,500 delegates from 1,200 companies and 25 represented countries.

“For the 2012 edition, MaMA will host 30 conferences including six debates ‘by MaMA’ dealing with topics such as digital economy, artist careers, the relationship between music and brands and the French market viewed from abroad,” adds Seguin.

The festival programme will see 80 concerts across nine venues with a lineup constructed around the export potential of the participating acts, including Dope D.O.D, Pony Pony Run Run, DJ Cam, General Elektriks, Lisa Hannigan, Jupiter, Le Corps Mince de Françoise and Carmen Maria Vega.

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 9

News

SEC Wins IAVM Venue Prize

The Sydney Entertainment Centre (SEC) has become the first venue outside the United States to win the prestigious International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM) Venue Excellence Award. The Australian venue was judged

by an expert panel of global leaders who manage some of the world’s major entertainment venues.

“For the venue and team to be recognised by the peak international body is an absolute honour, not only

for our 30-year-old iconic venue, but also for Sydney as one of the world’s true global cities,” says general manager, Steve Romer.

The SEC competed against some of the finest venues in the world and is currently ranked the ‘number two’ arena globally with a capacity of 10,000 to 15,000 based on gross ticket sales, according to Billboard.

The IAVM judges assessed the credentials of candidates based on very diverse criteria, including ratings for operational excellence; customer satisfaction; sales and marketing; sustainability; financial integrity; professional development; safety and security; and service to the community.

IAVM chairman, Richard Andersen comments, “All SEC staff should be proud of

their individual and combined efforts for the iconic venue to be awarded as the first international recipient of the Venue Excellence Award. Although the SEC has long been recognised as an integral part of Sydney’s entertainment landscape, it is very deserving for a global city like Sydney to have one of its major iconic buildings internationally acknowledged for venue excellence.”

Despite boasting a trophy cabinet of awards, the SEC will close in December as part of a four-year, AUS$1billion (€800million) project to create an entertainment precinct at Sydney’s Darling Harbour, which will include facilities to cater for up to 12,000 people for sporting, musical and theatrical events.

Reeperbahn Promises Linkin Park Smashes African Eclectic Line-up Box Office Records More than 80 acts have been confirmed to take part in the showcase element of this month’s Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, Germany, complementing the 200 acts already lined up for the event’s official music programme.

The main showcases taking place at the 20-22 September festival are Tallinn Music Week’s Meet Estonia and Latvia event, the Portuguese International Folk Connection and the Israel Export Institutebacked Mischpoke Invasion, among others.

Not to be outdone, on the conference agenda organisers have lined up a stellar array of guest speakers including Napster Europe CEO Thorsten

Schliesche, Grammys marketing director Beverly Jackson, Spotify head of label relations William Hope, Wacken Open Air MD Thomas Jensen and many more.

Among the keynote speakers scheduled to address delegates are Italian promoter Claudio Trotta and music industry lawyer (and general counsel for Glastonbury Festival) Ben Challis, who will both take on the theme of this year’s Reeperbahn conference, ‘Diversity At Risk?’, tackling such issues as the health of the concert business in the context of a crisis-ridden Europe, as well as the impact of market concentration on the live entertainment industry.

10 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

South African promoter Big Concerts has broken sales records with its November Linkin Park dates as fans of the band helped sell out the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg within days.

Big Concerts’ chief operating officer John Langford reveals that the company has been trying to get the band to visit the territory for “six or seven years” and the pent up demand for their appearance helped shift nearly 50,000 tickets for the 10 November show within the first day of on-sale – a South African record. “It’s the first time the band have visited South Africa and we were confident they would do well, but we were pleasantly surprised

by the ticket sales figures,” Langford tells IQ. The remaining passes for the 60,000-capacity show were sold within a couple of days, while at press time some tickets for the band’s 7 November concert at Cape Town Stadium (cap. 45,000) are still available.

Both South African dates are sponsored by Lucozade, 5FM and M-Net, but with tickets priced between ZAR315-690 (€31.25-68.47), Langford admits there was a strong temptation to add more dates in South Africa. “We did consider it, yes, but in the end we decided to keep it as a hot ticket and hopefully get the band to return in two or three years’ time.”

News

Viva Art’s Lasse Olsson dies

Viva Art Music founder, Lasse Olsson, has died following a battle with cancer. He was 52.

Born Lars Inge Thorsten Olsson, he always had a great love for music and prior to his career as a promoter, he studied guitar in Boston, USA. Back in his native Sweden, Olsson became managing director at Viva Music Sweden in 1985. Five years later,

together with Marek Szpendowski, Olsson established Viva Art Music based in Sweden and, soon after, Poland.

When it launched, Viva Art Music developed the Christian music business within Europe and soon became a major outlet for American christian rock and gospel artists. The company established and developed the 13,000-capacity Gospel Globe Festival in Stockholm, which ran for six years. During this period, Olsson and Szpendowski also produced pan-European tours for artists such as Take 6, Andraé Crouch, DC Talk, BeBe & CeCe Winans, Michael W Smith, Petra, Amy Grant, LCGC, and many others.

In 1992 the company started to produce concerts and

tours in contemporary and mainstream music, producing world tours including hundreds of shows for artists such as Art Garfunkel and Al Green.

Olsson was also the agent for Julio Iglesias between 1998 and 1999, outside of the United States. Additionally, Viva Art began promoting shows in Eastern Europe for artists such as Michael Jackson, Rolling Stones, Luciano Pavarotti, Depeche Mode, Bruce Springsteen, Mark Knopfler, Roger Waters and many more.

“I’m sure Lasse would like everybody to remember him as a good promoter, a good friend and a nice, happy and cheerful man,” says Szpendowski. “I met Lasse for the first time in March 1987 and in September the same year we

did our first concert in Poland together. Lasse was very serious about business and was always trying to prepare tours, promoters and himself in the best way. But privately he loved to make jokes and he really cared about people, especially employees.”

Szpendowski adds, “Even in difficult and dangerous situations, he kept his sense of humour. The day before his cancer operation he wrote this to all of his friends: ‘I have made sacrifices – I have cancelled tennis tomorrow afternoon. Finally was convinced it would not work, or I rather realised that I may not play the same outstanding tennis as I usually do.’”

Olsson is survived by his wife, Rakel.

News

Brent Grulke

Brent Grulke: 1961 – 2012

On the morning of 13 August, Brent Grulke, creative director of SXSW passed away as a result of a heart attack after undergoing oral surgery. His sudden and unexpected death has shocked and saddened not only those closest to him and all his colleagues at SXSW, but the many, many friends he made in his constant travels around the world on behalf of the hugely respected and ever growing Austin, Texas, event.

Brent was a music man through and through – previously a writer and records review editor for the Austin Chronicle, he also worked as a record producer, sound engineer, tour manager and record company executive, working in the marketing division of Spindletop Records in the early 1990s.

He began working for SXSW as a stage manager pretty much on day one of the

event in 1987, initially booking local and underground acts and then going on to become creative director in 1994.

Brent became an extremely well known figure at many of the European festival and conference events. Always outgoing and friendly, with an insatiable appetite for music, people, conversation and the odd glass of good wine. I have lost count of the number of countries in which we shared these things, and I, like many others, will miss his company.

But he’d always check out the bands – that’s what he was there for and he never forgot it – and he knew which acts could make it in front of the highly choosy business and fan audiences in the Austin venues. I recall him battling his way up a storm-lashed Brighton Pier, having flown in that day, to get to Horatio’s Bar where I was presenting four local acts – wiping the

12 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

rain off his glasses saying, “I told you I’d be here!” The following day he gave two of the acts the chance to play at SXSW and told me exactly why he thought the other two wouldn’t benefit from the trip.

Brent’s colleague, managing director and co-founder of SXSW, Roland Swenson, had the following to say: “I’m sure there’s a funny, heart-warming story I could tell about Brent. I only wish I could go there in my memories right now.

He was my friend and companion through countless adventures. Someone asked me about the circumstances around deciding to make Brent the creative director of SXSW in 1994. There really wasn’t much discussion. As I recall, I just said “I want Brent” and Nick and Louis said “Of course.”

“The thing that made our work together so rewarding was that our vision for everything SXSW could become was very similar. He and I were almost always on the same page when it came to the tough decisions. We didn’t have to explain things to each other, or argue very often. We just knew what had to be done.

Brent balanced a lot of my shortcomings. He was gregarious, while I was shy. He could strike up a conversation with anyone, while I struggled to get to know people. He had a big vision, while I tended to get caught up in details. He was my travel companion on hundreds of trips around the US and abroad. It was thrilling to see our work make SXSW thrive.

“But it was Brent who put the music festival in overdrive.

His relationships brought in so

many of the artists that went on to greater success. And it was Brent who recruited the music staff that carried the work even farther than we dared hope. He was willing to let his staff take charge of their own efforts, and take on huge endeavours under his gentle leadership. He had a lot of faith in people and had the courage to let things happen. I can’t begin to understand how much I’ll miss him.

My heart breaks for his wife and son.”

Brent never made it to ILMC as SXSW usually took place within days of our conference, but there was a definite link and a friendship established between the two events, and he once wrote a piece for IQ. It was for the second issue in February 2005 and it finished with the following words which pretty much sum up his approach to music and life: “My favourite south

by Southwest memories still revolve around seeing Alejandro (Escovedo) on the Sunday night, playing like nothing matters but that show, that moment, and realising that the best and most foolish part of the music business is all based on capturing something as ephemeral and magical as that.

That’s what makes this work so enjoyable. Which leads to the dirty little secret that’s neither especially dirty nor secret: for the music business pros at SXSW, the business may need to justify itself in business terms, but nobody would come if it weren’t great fun….”

Allan McGowan Brent Grulke is survived by his wife, Kristen, and 6-yearold son, Graham, as well as brothers Brad and Brian.

News

Israel to Host Lollapalooza Lollapalooza Festival has pinpointed Israel as the next port of call on its international travels, with founder Perry Farrell revealing a Tel Aviv edition of the event will take place next year.

The city’s Yarkon Park will host Lollapalooza on 20-22 August, as one of four festivals Farrell and his team have scheduled for 2013, the others being São Paulo, Brazil (29-31 March); Santiago, Chile (6-7 April); and Chicago, USA (2-4 August).

The gathering’s Israeli debut

will be co-promoted by Plug Productions Generator and music distributor and publisher NMC United.

“Israel is an incredibly sophisticated music market.

Consumers have a voracious appetite for entertainment, yet there has never been a major music festival. To me, this combination screams Lollapalooza,” says WME Entertainment’s Marc Geiger, who co-founded the festival with Jane’s Addictionfrontman Farrell.

The Israel dates will mark

CTS Eventim Venue Deal Signals Strategic Shift

CTS Eventim has taken over Arena Management GmbH (AMG), operators of the 20,000-capacity Lanxess Arena in Cologne, Germany.

With up to 1.8 million visitors

per year, the arena claims it has the highest footfall of any venue in continental Europe.

The deal was rumoured for some time in the German press, however, contradictory

the first time Lollapalooza has ventured outside of the Americas. Earlier this year the festival made its debut at the Jockey Club in São Paolo (working with local promoter GEO Events), while last year it visited Santiago’s O’Higgins Park, where it partnered with Lotus Producciones.

Farrell says, “Tel Aviv was chosen for the same reasons the other international locations were chosen – there weren’t other festivals there.

He adds, “We’re gaining and creating an internation-

al family of promoters. We learn from them the musicians that they want in that region and a lot of it crosses over to what we already know and already do. It’s the same thing with the production: they have certain ways of producing their concerts and, of course, we’ve gotten very good at what we do, so we’ll hopefully be in Tel Aviv and Chile and São Paolo having learned what we do here in Chicago will translate to these other international areas.”

to some reports, CTS Eventim did the deal without Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG).

The two companies recently announced a joint venture to acquire and run the Hammersmith Apollo in London, leading some observers to speculate a similar arrangement for the Cologne venue, but CTS confirms it has taken sole control of AMG. While no financial details have been disclosed, the AMG deal is subject to the approval of the German cartel office.

However, for CTS Eventim the purchase of AMG indicates a significant strategic move, as venue management

had not been a major part of its business until now. In addition to its pact with AEG in the UK, CTS last year secured the leasehold for the Waldbühne open air arena in Berlin and the acquisition of the management company for the Lanxess Arena is being seen as another step in its plans to tap into new revenue streams.

Meanwhile, sources in Germany say there have been no developments in the investigation against CTS Eventim CEO Klaus Peter Schulenberg, regarding his alleged part in the unauthorised resale of tickets for the soccer World Cup in 2006.

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 13

Comment

Not the Way to Play The Game

The London Olympics were a great success, but not for many musicians, as Keith Harris director of performer affairs for PPL and chairman of Music Tank, points out...

I’ve often had the experience of waiting behind at the end of a film to identify a piece of music I might be unfamiliar with. I’ve noticed that the music credits always come last, after the key grip, best boy, and all those other jobs that I am sure are very important in the making of the film, (but certainly don’t interest me as much as the music). Asking why this happens, I’m told it’s because the music is always the last thing that gets added to the film, so it is the last thing that gets added to the credits. I am told that as a result of this, the music budget is almost always the smallest on a film and consists of what is left over when everything else has been spent.

Music is an area in which Britain punches well above its weight in the international arena and when it comes to celebrating British culture there is no doubt that music will always play a very important part. It is therefore appalling that music got the same ‘movie treatment’ when it came to the hiring of musicians for the Olympics – and the Cultural Olympiad. Quite apart from the many artists who were asked to perform for free, there was a letter of engagement, which was put into wide circulation showing that the Olympics were offering £50 (€63) per act, per hour, for performances at the Dorney Lake (rowing) venue. I had better write that out in full in case you think there is a typing error. That is, fifty pounds per act, per hour. So a five-piece band would get £10 (€12.60) for each member, for a one-hour performance.

That is without allowing for the time that it took to travel to the venue, set up and pack away equipment. If you allow two hours for travel and set-up, and packing away, which was probably the bare minimum required, given all the security issues with instruments and the difficulties of transport during the Olympics, that means that the musicians were getting just over £3 (€3.78) an hour.

This is well below the minimum wage of £8.50 (€10.71) an hour, that even G4S were paying their temporary security guards – remembering of course that out of that paltry wage, performers had to cover their own associated costs: travel, insurance, tax and presumably Olympic venue prices for food and drink. You get the picture...

14 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

But this looks positively generous compared to the complete lack of payment offered to some, on the grounds that “...it’s not every day you get to perform at the Olympic village!” For many years there have been complaints about the ‘pay-to-play’ culture that has developed for musicians in the UK, but remember that this is an event for which there was a budget.

Sadly, these aren’t isolated cases either, with story after story hitting the headlines, with low or no rates of pay justified on the grounds of exposure and so you can ‘boast’ the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) as a client..

However, it was made clear that performing bands and artists are not allowed to use the word ‘Olympic’ or the Olympic rings logo in any publicity material.

Meanwhile, adding insult to injury, recent announcements proclaim that the Games have “come in at £476million (€600m) under budget”.

It beggars belief that this once-in-a-lifetime chance for the UK to showcase its world-leading creativity to a captive, global audience can be left so wanting. It’s a national disgrace that LOCOG and partners have no apparent strategy or fee structure that appropriately recognises the professionalism [of the artists] and the art form and its valuable cultural contribution. All those involved in organising this fiasco should be embarrassed and ashamed.

How many of the officials, that swanned around in the reserved traffic lanes and stayed in the capital’s finest hotels were doing so purely for the pleasure of being associated with the Games? Maybe the musicians should have been given special dispensation to patrol the Olympic lanes with squeegees inviting the officials to make up the shortfall! Sorry, I forgot the traffic lights were always set on green for official cars, so that wouldn’t have worked either.

The more I hear about what went on with the Olympics, the more the words ‘snouts’ and ‘troughs’ come to mind. I know that the Olympic ideal is more about the taking part than the winning, but very few participants go in knowing that the odds are rigged for them to lose every time.

Comment

Rock n’ Roll Can Save the World

Juha Kyyrö, president of Finland’s Fullsteam Records & Agency, appeals for a little more empathy and goodwill in our industry...

You are a greedy bastard, yet I choose to work with you time after time. That means I must be even greedier than you. But can we please at least be reasonable?

I consider myself to be a nice person who gets along with people and basically enters all relationships with good intentions. I got that from my mom. But after working in this business for a little over ten years I have also come to realise that having such a benevolent attitude does not necessarily get you what you came for. My ex-boss, Risto Juvonen at Well Done, always told me to think more pragmatically.

Advice that I have come to appreciate much later than I probably should have – not that I could practise ‘realpolitik’ the way some older (and even greedier) bastards can. But hey, just like so many other young people in this business, I am still learning. And whatever good examples you show me, I will adopt them eventually.

Moodys recently confirmed that Finland is the only country in the EU to retain the highest AAA credit rating.

(This news led to the British media writing articles in praise of our forests and saunas.) I am pleased to be the proprietor of the leading concert promotions and booking company in Finland, (a rank that is evaluated either by number of shows or profitability). What is our secret?

Honesty. For better or worse, I don’t think you can find a nation more incapable of lying than the Finnish. Our correspondence might not always come across in the most formal manner, but catching a Finn telling a lie is a pretty rare occurrence. This also explains why I am just utterly confused every time I come across anyone working with the very few dishonest promoters there are in Finland.

And what confuses me even more is that those unprincipled agents and managers in question often fail to see anything wrong with that – as long as they are getting (over) paid. If the audience gets misled and abused, taxes and local crew salaries remain unpaid or the local subcontractors land up not getting their money, I fail to see what good supporting someone who operates like that will do any of us; least of all the artist – whose profile, a badly promoted and produced show will hurt the most.

“ If the audience gets misled and abused, taxes and local crew salaries remain unpaid or the local subcontractors land up not getting their money, I fail to see what good supporting someone who operates like that will do any of us.”

After all, a good and committed promoter to me seems to be the most important local partner for any international touring artist.

I am the first to admit that we are all greedy (some more than others) but can we at least be nice and honest about it? The hostile, cut-throat, no-exceptions-or-we-willcancel-and-kill-you times, are thankfully over. I’m sorry if doing away with this approach takes away everything that made you feel like a real man, but it is time to make way for Generation Nice! So just a little less pressure and a little more gratitude, that applies to all of us. If we have agreed to certain terms and conditions on a show, we should follow those terms – even if it means the artist paying for any extra equipment or the promoter paying for the full catering cost and not trying to cut it down; even without enduring the torment of those disputes that cannot be won without one or the other party left feeling abused? Or if that sounds like too much trouble, perhaps just don’t issue contracts that do not reflect the agreed terms, or reality?

Marc Lambelet (a very nice music industry professional) bravely raised the issue at the ILMC this year, but unfortunately, I have not yet seen much positive progress with the booking agencies’ ‘standard terms that cannot be amended’. If that is too much to ask, can we at least start by not cancelling shows without a legitimate reason? Or at least be prepared to compensate for such an incident?

The Flaming Lips said it right: “Rock n’ roll can save the world…if you are nice to people”. And they know what they are talking about. They are so nice and such fun to work with that you don’t even mind losing money on their shows. I think they are a good example to all of us.

Anyway, be nice to me, that is all I am asking…

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 15

Comment

The Only Way is Up! Toomas Olljum of Made in Baltics Management maintains that with a positive approach, success is available to all!

I am an artist manager from Estonia, a beautiful country with a population of 1.3 million, a daunting Soviet background and an annual music business turnover less than the revenues from Justin Bieber’s latest album (for now at least.) Recently, I read a quote by the legendary David Geffen saying he’d rather kill himself than get into today’s music business.

Should I worry and consider another profession? Well, I’m 30, and more excited than ever by the world of possibilities that creative industries offer today, where you are the main architect for your artist’s success. Almost.

Although I’m a rookie, I was recently invited to the first CEETEP (Central Eastern European Talent Exchange Program) meeting in Serbia. My involvement can be summed up in five words – Ewert and The Two Dragons. This band (which I manage) is just one example that regardless of where you come from, if you’ve got good songs, attitude and you are prepared to do ‘a bit of work’, then you can do amazing things in the 21st century.

“ Access to success is there for a lot of bands today. Not everyone will become the next U2, but a whole lot more artists can live from their profession.”

Many ‘problems’ were discussed by CEETEP attendees and I completely understood them. Years ago I was hitting my head against the same walls until I realised I had to find a way around them. So what were these problems?

First of all, people still have preconceptions about the old Soviet bloc. But in reality, Estonia for example (the country behind Skype) is a very modern and cool place where the music scene is blossoming and every spring Tallinn Music Week showcase floods our capital with industry professionals looking for ‘the next big thing’. And I think we are on the right path.

These countries actually offer much more potential than we have been able to fulfil – but once these national music industries become structured and organised, new playgrounds, new audiences and opportunities will be available to all. But it’s all up to us, not anyone else. The number of possibilities is inspiring!

Secondly, everybody complains about lack of money.

But actually lack of cash can be a driving force for creative

16 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

ideas. When I started to export my bands’ music, I went to our neighbouring country, Latvia. It didn’t cost much, but it added a much needed pan-Baltic angle when selling them outside of our region. And it worked.

The third biggest problem is that radio doesn’t play our music. At one point I really tried for newspaper articles, airplay on commercial radio stations, etc, and then I realised that instead of following the classic routes, I had to go directly to the fans. We live in a sci-fi movie today. Making videos, photos, music is easy and cheap. It now sounds like a cliché, but social media can really help. No need for expensive market research when even your audience data is free and available to everyone.

I learned to look for answers rather than problems – the core duty of a manager. Reading Rolling With The Stones,

by Bill Wyman certainly helped. I became fascinated by the creativity of some of the old-school managers who strove for success in much harder conditions than exist today. The reason my band has tasted some success now is that we weren’t afraid of the challenges ahead, we learned patience, found approaches new to our region, learned to trust our gut feeling and to dream big. Suddenly, after a few years of work, doors opened and one of them led to an appearance at Eurosonic in the Netherlands via Tallinn Music Week and a successful participation in ETEP (The European Talent Exchange Programme) which led to dates at some YOUROPE festivals and media exposure via the EBU (European Broadcasting Union).

Now the band is touring Europe, soon to embark on their first-ever tour in the US, one of their songs has ended up in a McDonald’s commercial shown in France and Benelux countries and it all feels so good. But it also shows that access to success is there for a lot of bands today. Not everyone will become the next U2, but a whole lot more artists can live from their profession.

The reason for the ‘almost’ in the first paragraph is that no one can make it alone (no shit!). I have learned the importance of support from good colleagues who have always offered advice when needed. Such guidance confirms to me that music is not about competition – you can get an Olympic gold medal once in every four years, while music charts are being compiled every week, all across the globe. There is more room than ever and we can easily share information and tips because we can all be number 1 at some point without being afraid that someone else makes it instead of us.

Embracing Europe Christian Hald Buhl, founder of Hamburg-based The Rocking Factory, offers a positive approach to exploiting European talent throughout the Continent... the US-UK vs Europe comparison is becoming outdated.

We’re ultimately all Europeans and all in the same boat now having to redefine our industry following the digital paradigm shift. I see the export offices as very important catalysts that have played in getting things started, but having worked for one I can honestly say that without a committed industry behind it, the potential of most is seriously compromised. Initiatives such as ETEP are important, but we’ve got quite a bit of work to do and in order to truly exploit the full potential of the European music industry we need private Pan-European market solutions that pick up where the political catalysts leave off.

Luckily, this challenge is also a huge opportunity. We’re no longer just playing a game defined by capital and ownership.

Know-how, creativity and networks are today’s key drivers.

It’s in that regard no coincidence that we see so many truly European export success stories on the continent these days,

such as Agnes Obel (DK) with German management and a Belgian label. In 2012, we’re all players.

It has become crystal clear to me that many export opportunities fail to materialise simply because there are too few Pan-European tools A GSA, Benelux and France release would, for example, entail taking on five languages and more than six markets. At the end of the day, the task simply becomes too time consuming for the busy professional, who obviously also deals with major responsibilities at home.

I believe there’s a real need for private companies to offer quality Pan-European consulting solutions to support European export ambitions. Having joined forces with leading PR agencies in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands and Belgium we can be the spiders that create the right webs to successfully support, promote and develop the business plans and investments of music exporters in Europe.

18 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

Reality Touring

Taking TV on Tour

Marcus Collins, runner-up in the eighth series of the UK’s X Factor

The phenomena of TV talent shows has gripped viewers around the world for decades and in recent years associated tours have boasted big numbers. However, with high profile shows now cancelling their live element, Gordon Masson asks if the bubble has burst for instant pop stars...

Televised talent shows have been around almost as long as the medium itself, but in 2001, impresario Simon Fuller – the man who gave us the Spice Girls – devised the Pop Idol format in the United Kingdom and on the back of the success of other reality programmes, such as Big Brother, the public’s interest in discovering the next chart-topping artist soared and has arguably grown stronger year on year.

Of course, where there’s a hit, there’s a writ and while Fuller takes much of the credit for the international proliferation of the concept, it was, in fact, inspired by New Zealand programme Popstars, resulting in the rival producers going to court and the use of the word ‘Pop’ being awarded to the original creators. The upshot was that Fuller’s franchise spawned such offspring as American Idol, Arab Idol, Latin American Idol and Australian Idol, while its Antipodean predecessor sold the Popstars model around the globe. Both formats can lay claim to being among the most successful TV shows in history, in certain territories, but the knock-on benefits to the music industry – and live music in particular – haven’t been quite as consistent.

Recently, poor ticket sales forced Live Nation to cancel its proposed UK tour for BBC talent show The Voice, following a similar cancellation by the organisers of ITV show Britain’s Got Talent. The failure of those outings, despite the huge publicity generated by the television programmes, has prompted questions over whether consumer interest in reality casting shows is waning.

“You’re dealing with the public, so it’s difficult to know why one format works better than another,” observes National Arenas Association chairman Geoff Huckstep. “But it’s fair to say that TV talent shows have added a different production to the arenas’ tour schedule, which is great because the venues are always looking for new formats and shows to increase our footfall.” Huckstep adds, “It’s very hard to put your finger on why some things work, while others do not. For example, [at Capital FM Arena, Nottingham] we’ve already sold out one date for [another casting show] Jesus Christ Superstar and we’re thinking of adding a second date. But then shows like The Voice and Britain’s Got Talent cancelled their tours because of poor ticket sales. So it might well be that the recession is making people think twice about going to more than one TV talent show live performance.”

Mixed Fortunes The pattern of what is happening in the UK mirrors the experience of other markets. Promoters in territories such as Turkey and Holland report that viewing figures for talent shows have dipped, resulting in once-popular spin-off live tours for certain programmes falling by the wayside because of poor ticket sales.

Other television shows maintain public fervour, however, providing venues around the world with much-needed bookings to augment their other music related business. And while the majority of acts that appear on such shows have a limited time span, in a very few cases, the talent that is ‘discovered’ by such casting shows makes a connection with the public and is able to build a meaningful career, such as with international stars like Leona Lewis, Kelly Clarkson and Susan Boyle.

But there are notable singers who can enjoy major success in their home territories. “Globo TV had a talent show called FAMA that is a Brazilian version of Spanish Operacion Triunfo,” LuizOscar Niemeyer of Plan Music in Brazil tells IQ. “A few acts have been established after that, the most successful of whom is the Samba singer, Thiaguinho, who started as lead singer of the group Exaltasamba and now is on a solo career.” Niemeyer adds, “Thiaguinho is now a superstar, while there is also singer, Roberta Sá, who is very well established in the market and, as a result, most local promoters work with them on tours.”

In some territories, the idea of taking such TV talent show contestants on the road is a non-starter. “It doesn’t work over here as [Belgium] is a small country and the market is split into a Flemish speaking part and a French speaking part,” notes Live Nation Belgium’s Herman Schueremans Further north in Europe, the casting-based shows are viewed a little more favourably. “Some of the talent show artists have become massive here,” says Juha Kyyrö of Fullsteam Agency.

“Overall you could say it has been a good thing for the industry in Finland. Not so many [contestants] have succeeded as live artists, but a couple of the biggest live artists of the last years have actually first been found in a talent show.”

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 19

Winners of the UK’s X Factor, 2011, Little Mix

shows bring people on and “ Other off and you might not get to see the talent from one week to the next.

[American] Idol keeps the talent front and centre and that’s why it remains the number one show and helps us to sell out tour dates coast to coast.

“

– Debra Rathwell, AEG Live Elsewhere around the world, the story is somewhat repeated: the talent shows might enjoy success initially, as do the associated live shows, but as viewer numbers diminish, so do the opportunities to exploit any live performance aspects.

“Sony TV ran a TV show, Indian Idols, that was well received for the first two seasons and they did take the winners on tour, but subsequently it has not had much impact,” says Venkat Vardhan, managing director of DNA Entertainment Networks in India. It’s a similar tale in Russia, where TCI’s Ed Ratnikov reports, “Between 2007-10 we had a TV show called Stars Fabrique. A version of that show then toured Russia and was successful. It visited venues such as sports halls and theatres, between 1,000 to 4,000-capacity, but only some of the talent participated and the production was rather poor.” And in Turkey – another significant market for live music – Pozitif Productions’ Idil Belli reveals that although the TV shows have been popular, none of the talent has undertaken official tours, so far, although “a couple of concerts were organised by the producers themselves.”

Eastern Promise while some promoters theorise that broadcaster numbers might only translate to sustained success in the biggest markets for music – the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France – it isn’t just audiences in the West who clamour for their annual fix of pop star wannabes.

Indeed, in the world’s most populous country, the search for a new star has become a political hot potato. The TV show Happy Girl was cancelled by the Chinese government for apparently being too democratic. The hit format, broadcast by Hunan Satellite Television, was reportedly watched by a TV audience of more than 400 million viewers, but despite that popularity –

20 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

or perhaps because of it – officials pulled the plug, prompting speculation that the Communist Party had been unsettled by the idea of allowing members of the public to vote for a winner, especially when quarter of the country was watching.

No False Idols In the United States, the continued success of American Idol sees the top ten contestants from the 2012 series currently in the midst of a 45-date arena tour. AEG Live now handles the touring element for that show and company senior vicepresident Debra Rathwell tells IQ, “This is our eleventh year and both the TV show and the tour are phenomenally successful. We do about 40 arenas per year with the finalists, most of them sell-out shows.”

While American Idol remains a strong ticket seller, Simon Cowell’s rival upstart in the USA, The X Factor, cancelled its touring plans for 2012. Asked why Idol might be able to sell out arenas compared to competitors, Rathwell believes it’s all down to the format of the TV show. “If you watch American Idol then you see the talent performing on the show every week – often twice per show. So you watch Idol for the talent: you’re not really watching the judges. Other shows bring people on and off and you might not get to see the talent from one week to the next. Idol keeps the talent front and centre and that’s why it remains the number one show and helps us to sell out tour dates coast to coast.”

By contrast, in the UK, The X Factor remains the dominant force – and the darling of arena operators. Earlier this year, nine finalists undertook a 17-date arena tour, while tickets for next year’s X Factor tour are already on sale, with 18 arena dates booked throughout the month of February, despite the fact that the television series has only just started.

Another tour riding high on the back of its televised contest is theatrical production Jesus Christ Superstar, which is being promoted in the UK by AEG Live. Barney Wragg, managing director of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful reveals that, unlike other TV-based shows, the concept was somewhat reversed. “This was the antithesis of The X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent because we had a tour planned and then the TV show came on the back of that. The genesis was the tour, on which the company has been working for about three years.”

AEG Live president international touring, Rob Hallett

Reality Touring

what you’d expect for a show by an artist or band. I guess that’s because it’s harder to sell items when there are eight or nine acts on stage than when it’s Justin Bieber!

“

– Geoff Huckstep, National Arenas Association agrees. “We’re not here because of TV: TV is here because of us,” he says. “The production is as big as any rock show with Patrick Woodroffe (AC/DC, Bob Dylan, Depeche Mode and the Rolling Stones) doing the lighting and Mark Fisher (2012 Olympic Games opening and closing ceremonies, Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’, the Rolling Stones ‘Steel Wheels’ and U2’s ‘Zoo TV’) designing the set.”

Hallett adds, “The show was cast before the TV show, but the idea of using television to find Jesus was a real boost for promotion purposes. But unlike other shows it was not the raison d’etre for the show.”

While other shows such as The X Factor have weekly TV slots extending to several months, the search for Jesus, aired as Superstar, lasted barely one week with “a short, punchy night by night” format preferred by broadcaster ITV and Lloyd Webber.

“We had sold out the first couple of arena dates even before the TV show was announced,” reports Wragg. Originally set for 15 arena dates around the UK, a further six have been added to the tour, which begins with four shows at The O2 arena in London on 21 September. Asked whether there are any plans to repeat the exercise in other territories, Wragg is coy on the matter, but hints “it’s a definite possibility.”

New Productions, New Business Models “UK arenas have benefitted massively through the fantastic ticket sales on X Factor for the last eight or nine years now,” notes Huckstep. But the NAA chairman reveals there are markedly different models to consider between talent showrelated tours and the more conventional headline outings of artists and bands. “They definitely require a different mindset and a different approach toward marketing,” he says. “So the deal for venue hire could be based on a price-per-ticket or a flat fee, for the reality or talent show kind of tour.”

Huckstep also points to areas such as merchandise and food and beverage sales yielding different results – all of which has to be considered by the venue hosting the event. “Typically merchandise sales will be down by as much as 25-30% of what you’d expect for a show by an artist or band. I guess that’s because it’s harder to sell items when there are eight or nine acts on stage than when it’s Justin Bieber!”

The promoter of the UK’s highly successful X Factor

shows is 3A Entertainment and managing director Pete Wilson contends that talent dictates public demand for tickets.

“Everyone buys into the concept of the TV show, but when it comes to the live tour, it’s very much artist-led,” states Wilson. “For example, when Shayne Ward won [in 2005], we sold twice the number of shows in [Ward’s home town of] Manchester than we were able to in other years.”

Wilson admits sales are tricky to predict and very much depend on the interest in the various acts who contest The X Factor prize. “Ticket sales pick up once the TV show starts and they build as the series progresses – we sell the bulk of tickets around the televised finals. So you have to be cute with your hold dates,” says Wilson. “There are massive production costs involved: there are a dozen acts, who all get paid well, but the sound, lights and production are of the highest quality for the live shows and that doesn’t come cheap. So each tour is moveable and you try to plan according to who the artists are and where they are from.”

Same Concept, Different Formats The Britain’s Got Talent format is another global success for reality and talent show originators Fremantle, with spin-off franchises spreading almost virally around the world, taking in more than 50 countries from Albania to Vietnam.

And while there’s still a little of the golden goose left on the table, the latest franchise to appear in the reality show circus is The Voice, which has been developed by Big Brother originator Endemol. The British version of The Voice met with faltering reviews and ratings, leading to the cancellation of the planned contestants’ tour and providing ammunition to those critics who contend the public will only back one TV casting show sufficiently enough to justify a tour, no matter how strong the music market in each territory might be. However, the concept has found its place elsewhere. Across the English Channel/La Manche, Claude Cyndecki at Cheyenne Productions enjoyed impressive results earlier this year with his tour on the back of France’s version of The Voice.

Adding weight to the argument that success or otherwise centres around the standard of participating talent, Daniela Philippe at Semmel Concerts believes the winning act and

China’s Happy Girl contestants

merchandise sales will “ Typically be down by as much as 25-30% of

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 21

Reality Touring

“

The TV show defines who watches, but you can be targeting everyone from five-year olds to grandparents. Our job as promoters is to find that demographic and target them cleverly to entice them to buy tickets.

“

– Pete Wilson, 3A Entertainment

Learning From Others Bucking the trend of other markets where only one casting show seems to work in the live environment, Germany can boast two such productions. Meistersinger Konzerte & Promotion have the contract to take the winner of Deutschland Sucht Den Superstar (part of the Idol franchise) on tour and have done so with varying results. Company manager Reinhardt Grahl has been working with the winners of the show for six years, but providing an insight into maximising exploitation for other promoters, he says 2012 heralded a landmark in his approach to the show.

“Previously we were not fully capitalising on the interest in the winners. Basically by the time we had sorted out contracts we were too late to go on sale with tickets,” admits Grahl. “This year we changed things so we had contracts with all 15 finalists. That allowed us to book our summer shows much earlier than in the past. It also meant we could book the whole tour and release the tickets at the same time the winner was announced, making the most of the interest and public emotion in the show at its climax.”

Those lessons mimic the way in which the contracted record companies seem to act – releasing the winning single immediately after the final. But Grahl doesn’t mind any accusations of copying a successful formula. “We have sold more than 30,000 tickets for our tour in October, which is a lot for a talent show winner in Germany, and we expect to sell about 40,000 tickets in total,” he says. And by signing all the finalists up to provisional contracts,

22 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

Voice of Germany winner, Ivy Quainoo

the way they engage with the public is paramount. The Voice of Germany launched this year and the inaugural winner, Ivy Quainoo, has been a big success, with Philippe booking dates for the teenager. “The TV show only finished in February, so we didn’t have a lot of time before the summer season started. So in May we had a 13-date tour of venues that were between 1,500- and 2,500-capacity. And since then Ivy has had 26 shows,” says Philippe, adding that although The Voice has provided Semmel with an exciting young touring artist, they can only hope that the next series of the TV show delivers them someone equally as beguiling.

“Ivy is only 19-years-old, but she has an incredible voice and is wonderful on stage, so we would definitely like to do another tour with her. “It’s impossible to say what will happen with the next series of The Voice because you just never know who the winner is going to be – they might not be suited to the live environment, so we’ll just have to wait to see what happens.”

there was a surprise bonus. “In 2012, everyone expected another winner, Daniele Negroni, but in the final he came second to Luca Hänni, a young guy from Switzerland. Because of the interest in both, and because we could effectively go to two countries, we signed them both and it’s proved very successful,” says Grahl.

That unashamed approach to learning from the innovators of the genre is a sensible one. When taking what is essentially a TV show (which the public want to participate in) on the road, perhaps treating it like another concert or family show could be the reason why some tours have failed. But learning from the experience of the programme makers through the exploitation of their multiple revenue streams – SMS text messaging, premium phone lines, sponsorship, record sales, performance downloads, merchandise sales, magazines, etc – could make a difference when it comes to selling tickets and making a profit.

Recalling X Factor’s record live year to date, 3A’s Wilson reports that two years ago an incredible 550,000 tickets were bought by the UK public. “Ticket sales are all down to demographics and pricing strategy because you have to bear in mind that you’re going for repeat customers,” he concludes. “The TV show defines who watches, but you can be targeting everyone from five-year olds to grandparents. Our job as promoters is to find that demographic and target them cleverly to entice them to buy tickets. At the end of the day, you can have 5 million viewers of the TV show, but not all of them will be interested in buying tickets.”

L to R: Mike Marquis, Mark Walker, Jason Edwards, Oliver Hoppe, Xing Wang, Arnaud Meersseman, Matthias Schnakenberg, Ben Shprits, Claire O’Neill, Ed Poston.

This marks the fifth year that IQ has published its New Bosses list, where, thanks in no small part to our loyal readers (and our general harassment in prompting you to nominate the industry’s up and coming stars), we identify ten individuals who are making a difference in their particular sector or territory.

This year’s contenders are stellar – from computer whizz-kids to agents and promoters thinking outside of the box and even an environmental campaigner; I think you’ll find the list compelling.

As usual, the criteria for selection was simply that the participants should be aged 30 or under, have not been previously included in the list and are making a valuable contribution to

Mike Marquis (USA) Booking agent – Paradigm Agency

shape the future of the industry. No pressure there then.

But the shortlisted contenders span continents, work across every genre and genuinely inspire confidence that the industry will be in safe hands for decades to come. And as these ten youthful ambassadors now stand a good chance to be in the running for the title of ‘Tomorrow’s New Boss’ at the Arthur Awards ceremony during ILMC 25 in March 2013, now is as good a time as any to get to know them all and pick their brains about the health of the business.

Gordon Masson, editor, IQ Magazine

Age: 30

Starting off his career in 2001 at The Kenmore Agency in Boston, Marquis also worked as an independent promoter in the city. In 2005, he relocated to New York’s Ellis Industries and four years later made the switch to Paradigm.

Alternative Press Tour, Walk off the Earth, The Early November, The Dear Hunter. I am also involved with Photo Finish Records, where we have our eyes on a couple of new bands, hoping to sign them before the year ends.

How is the role of an agent changing?

As one of the ‘new bosses’, what would you change to make the business better?

You have to be more selective now when thinking about touring.

When I started there were less bands and less traffic. You could develop a career simply by hitting the road for three years and repeating markets. Now things seem over-saturated and it’s tougher to make a real impact unless you have everything else firing alongside touring: label, radio, press, etc.

What are you up to at the moment?

Working on fall tours: Mayday Parade & The Maine, The

24 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

There seems to be a new breed of young ‘industry types’ who have zero patience. I would change that mentality and urge these folks to do their diligence. I worked as an assistant for years, cutting contracts, doing ticket counts and answering phones.

That experience is the backbone of what I do. It takes years to gain knowledge in this business that you simply can’t read in a book, but it’s those skills that will make you stand out.

Mark Walker (UK) Promoter – Kilimanjaro Live Whilst at University in York, Walker started putting on shows at a local rock pub. After a stint booking in-house at Cardiff Barfly, he joined Live Nation and started to build a roster in the world of punk and emo. In 2007, he followed Stuart Galbraith to Kilimanjaro Live where he is now a national promoter for the likes of Katy Perry, You Me At Six, Alkaline Trio, Joe McElderry and Parkway Drive.

What’s the best lesson you have learned in your career?

People never forget! If someone is an arsehole to you then you’re not going to forget it and you aren’t going to want to work with them further down the line. It’s important to remember why you got into this game in the first place and to stay grounded.

Age: 28 Tell us about your proudest achievement?

That’s easy! Finally bringing The Vans Warped Tour festival back to Europe! I grew up dreaming of going to the States to see the Warped tour and all the amazing bands Kevin Lyman had playing. Now I’m working with Kevin to make it happen over here.

What is exciting you in the music business at the moment?

You have to come up with new ideas to make people want to come to your event. Obviously there will always be those people who just get the cheque book out to fend off the competition for artists but it’s the people thinking outside the box who are exciting.

Xing Wang (China) Chief technology officer – Caoker.com

Age: 28

Even at 28, Wang is a veteran of the online world. At the age of just 15 he was part of the Microsoft Whistler test team in China. Two years later he was chief technology officer of MYMNU, Beijing’s equivalent of Facebook, drawing oriental comparisons with Mark Zuckerberg.

audience. You don’t have to buy a physical record to listen to music anymore and so people prefer to spend money on live shows and music/cultural/entertainment events. At some point, this [the internet] will become a big push to the development of China’s music industry.

How important do you think it is for international acts to have an online presence in China?

How do you predict your business will develop in the next few years?

As audiences’ attention returns to live shows and events, presenting international acts online in China will positively enrich the quality of online information and inspire Chinese audiences and event holders.

As the CTO of caoker.com, I also get involved in the creative side and the direction of the site. My main focus is to make the site successful in the next few years. As internet technology and the music industry develop, the demand of high quality content, information and user experience is increasing constantly. Caoker. com aggregates information and creative video content from both China and overseas. We are trying to make it a new generation music/creative portal website that aids communication and sharing of music and information between China and overseas countries.

What impact on the music scene is the internet having in China?

The internet has changed China’s music scene in many aspects. It changed people’s consumption pattern: records are less important as a media, and more like a souvenir for the

Arnaud Meersseman (France) Promoter and booking agent – Nous Productions Early aspirations of a career in foreign affairs were thwarted for Meersseman courtesy of a radio show he ran in Lyon, where he interviewed artists at gigs. Following an internship at Pi-Pole Agency in Montpellier, the boutique promoter ended up hiring him. Five years later, and anxious to move to Paris, Meersseman was offered a position by Salomon Hazot at Nous Productions, where he has been now for two and a half years.

Is the internet making life easier in your every day work?

It has become easier to reach out and find new talent very early on. It’s also accelerated careers, allowing some unsigned acts to reach audience levels that some signed acts haven’t even reached.

What’s your biggest achievement to date?

Most recently, the launch of our EDM event in the South of

Age: 30

France, Club Riviera Festival, selling more than 20,000 tickets for its first edition.

If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be?

I sometimes really feel things should slow down a bit. Money and venue size are expected to always increase in very short time spans. That creates a double issue: careers cannot be built properly as fan bases are very volatile; and it risks causing an inflationist bubble which if burst could have negative effects on the entire industry chain.

Where would you like to be in five years time?

Still doing this job, but who knows, why not try other things?

I’m a huge cinema fan, so maybe at some point I’ll take a look in that domain and see what is happening?

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 25

Jason Edwards (UK) Booking agent – 13 Artists Edwards began his career as a press officer at a Glasgowbased Sony label, before moving into club promotion in the city. He took on Dananananaykroyd and Pulled Apart

by Horses for management which evolved into running his own management/booking/press agency until 2010 when he landed a job at 13 Artists.

What are the major changes you’ve noticed in the industry?

I grew into the industry at the same time the likes of MySpace and iTunes were beginning to alter the way music was being discovered and consumed. The extent to which all of these outlets are completely dominating the more traditional ones (both in terms of media and retail) is totally unprecedented. I find it both hugely exciting and equally intimidating.

Age: 25 How relevant is technology/social media to what you do?

Massively. I hear about most new music through blogs or my friends tipping something on their social networks. Also, realising the value of advertising through YouTube, Google and Facebook has completely changed the way we look at marketing shows and tours and the associated budgets.

Any low points? If so, what did you learn from them?

I’ve held a few grudges for a bit longer than I should have.

You can’t do that really in this business. You never know who you’re going to end up either wanting to, or having to work with at some point. Ultimately, we’re all in this to ensure the success of the artists we work with – not for personal gains or one-upmanship.

Matthias Schnakenberg (Germany) Promoter and booking agent – Creative Talent Having enrolled in a training course to become an event manager, Schnakenberg spent some time working as a stage hand at venues such as the Schleyerhalle, Porsche Arena and Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion. In 2008 he moved to Berlin and secured an internship at Creative Talent while he completed his training course. After a stint working freelance, Carlos Fleischmann offered Schnakenberg a permanent job in February 2010, as promoter and booking agent .

What’s the best thing about your job?

It may sound trite, but the best thing about my job is to meet new people and work with bands which you otherwise would have never known or listened to. My musical ignorance gave way to an interest in different types of music. At Creative Talent I have the opportunity to work with great bands and artists across several genres.

Who are you working with at the moment?

Currently I’m promoting shows for Deer Tick, JEFF the Brotherhood, Machine Gun Kelly, Punch Brothers, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Ringo Deathstarr, Tamaryn, Radio Dead Ones and many more.

What have been your most positive achievements?

I’m always happy when a band I work with ask for another tour. But this year’s Greenville Festival made me proud. It was the first time it took place and it was a lot of fun even though it involved working for over 20 hours each day. It’s definitely worth it when your boss says you did a really good job.

What advice would you give to others through your experience in the business?

Be careful who you trust. Sad but true. It’s an important lesson to learn in the beginning. Never give somebody the chance to rip you off!

Claire O’Neill (UK) Co-founder – A Greener Festival; general manager – AIF Graduating from university with a 1st in music industry management, O’Neill’s early career was as new media manager at Media Records. She co-founded environmental operation A Greener Festival (AGF) and in 2008 she added general manager of the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) to her résumé.

Are attitudes towards environmental issues genuinely changing, or are budgets still the overriding concern?

Improving efficiencies, minimising waste, etc, can all save money for organisations. Since AGF began there’s much wider spread knowledge, acceptance and supply for the environmental improvement of events. With droughts, floods, extreme winds, increasing fuel costs and waste disposal, environmental management is an essential part of our lives, whether we’re ‘green’ or just in the business of staying alive.

What things can people do to cut their carbon footprint?

Use refillable bottles/cups instead of disposables. Turn off drinks

26 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

Age: 24

Age: 29

fridges when not in use. Choose sites with good public transport access and encourage lift-share. Explore and utilise the most sustainable and efficient power sources. Reduce production miles by seeking local supply. Ban non-recyclable disposables and wasteful giveaways. Liaise with local environmental organisations when using outdoor space... the list goes on.

What would be your pitch to persuade a festival organiser to join AIF?

Many of our members comment on how being a festival organiser can be a lonely business. By joining AIF you are in the unique situation of sitting with fellow festival organisers on a regular basis and tapping into that invaluable resource of experience around the table. Coupled with market research, supplier discounts, free training & seminars, marketing and promotion opportunities and a strong representative voice to industry and government… what are you waiting for?!

Ben Shprits (USA) Booking agent – AM Only While studying at NYU, Shprits undertook internships across different areas of the industry. Convinced that management was the path for him, he asked Wayne Forte at Entourage Talent Associates to be his acts’ agent. Forte persuaded Shprits to become an agent and after eight years at Entourage, Shprits left in March this year to join dance music agency AM Only.

What advice would you have for anyone trying to break into the business?

Learn to do everything, meet everyone, find good mentors, ask questions, stay humble and always give 100%.

EDM is currently massive, has that benefitted acts on your roster?

Without a doubt. AM Only represents some of the most recognisable names in electronic dance music. The recent boom in the popularity of the genre has made household names of once underground icons. DJs who may have only played clubs or

Age: 29 raves are now playing mainstream festivals to tens of thousands of fans.

As one of the ‘new bosses’, what do you think needs to change in the industry?

Service charges aka “(in)convenience fees” need to be brought in check. For example, a $60 (€48) ticket on Ticketmaster can easily cost a fan $72 (€58). Fan-club ticketing is helping to circumvent some of these fees, but with a 10% cap on allotments to fan clubs, 90% of fans still have to deal with hefty surcharges.

How do you compete with bigger companies?

AM Only recently formed a joint venture with Paradigm so I guess we’re a big company now too. But I’d say the key to competing is to work harder, pay attention to the details, stay creative and care about the wellbeing of artists as mates and not just clients.

Oliver Hoppe (Germany) Managing director – Wizard Promotions Konzertagentur After freelancing for his father’s company while at university, Hoppe consulted at brands and music agency Miracle Music and Entertainment before working at LEDAVI Emotional Brand Building in Berlin. Now having travelled full circle, he’s back shaking things up at Wizard.

What are you working on at the moment?

Creating more of a service than just being a promoter. This has always been one of Wizard’s strong points and I’m trying to increase this on various levels, as we want to create a unique experience for every band coming to Germany – aside from a professional production environment and state-of-theart promotion.

What are the biggest current challenges in the live music market in Germany?

Mainly it’s an oversaturation of the market combined with a

Age: 28

steady increase in prices in the middle of an economic downturn.

Next year we will be looking at around ten stadium tours coming through Germany. I’m confident that many [of those tours] will have a serious setback.

What is your proudest achievement so far?

Not getting into a fistfight with my father and, first and foremost, bringing the amazing Lucy Rose to Germany this fall.

Has your family name made a difference to your career?

It’s almost impossible to talk to music industry people who do not know my father (especially in Germany), so it would be absurd to say it didn’t have any influence. Some things are easier, and some things are harder. Prejudice brings some people to underestimate or not respect you, but in the end I think I can convince everyone that I am my own man.

Age: 27 Ed Poston (UK) Executive, writer/publisher relations, Europe - Broadcast Music Inc Poston started promoting gigs as a teenager and, following a relocation to London, took on additional roles of artist manager and tour manager. As founder of TheLiveList emerging acts promotional service, his profile rose and he caught the eye of Kobalt Music Group where he worked until 2010 when he moved to BMI.

of everything we do. I continue to work with artists and managers on a day to day basis and it is apparent from previously managing acts and seeing others do it effectively that having the artists’ best interests at heart and getting a feel of how best to deal with each individual, is extremely important.

How different is BMI from working at Kobalt?

How is technology changing the royalties landscape?

Quite different. My time at Kobalt was very good and I learned a great deal that is still vital to what I do every day, however my role at BMI is much broader creatively, which has really opened up my skill set and allowed me to work on different levels with people across the industry.

How consumers and licensees use music as a result of changes in technology has had a mixed impact on the copyright and royalty collection side of the business over the last few years. New technology and services can create new challenges, but they have also opened up new right types for collection and could provide answers as to how the industry evolves over the next few years. However, the key remains to license effectively and work as a united front across the industry in order to maintain the copyrights that protect our artists and songwriters.

Does your experience managing acts help in your current role?

Any experience of understanding the needs of an artist is always positive; after all they should be at the centre

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 27

Laszlo Hegedus

28 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

Laszlo Hegedus

The Man Who Opened The Iron Curtain Putting on shows has always been a risky endeavour, but for industry veteran Laszlo Hegedus, working in the former Soviet Bloc literally put him in constant danger of incarceration. Gordon Masson hears some of Laszlo’s extraordinary tales, as he celebrates 40 years in music…

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hen artists plan world tours, nearly every outing, these days, makes at least one or two stops in Eastern Europe, where, despite having only been open to foreigners for a couple of decades, there is a vibrant – and well equipped – live music industry. That a professional industry exists at all is down, in no small part, to Laszlo Hegedus, who in 2012 marks his 40th year in music and the 30th anniversary of his company, Multimedia Organisation.

The affable Hungarian’s stories sound almost like a Cold War spy novel at times, with the central character working under false pretences to avoid imprisonment; secret service agents monitoring his movements; and the ingenious creation of a pseudo black market economy trading in everything from wine and timber to pianos and luxury yachts.

But it could all have been so different had Hegedus pursued early ambitions to become a journalist. “I became interested in journalism at school and at the same time Hungary’s first youth magazine, with the very original name Youth Magazine, was started by the young communists,” he tells IQ. “It was horribly boring except for a page devoted to music. It was 1964, so I was translating the lyrics of bands like The Beatles, The Kinks and the Rolling Stones.”

Youth Magazine became hugely popular, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. “There really was nothing else in the market, so it was a little light in the dark sky for the people,” says Hegedus. “In 1968, I asked readers to vote for their favourite musicians to make up a super group. I remember my mother’s kitchen table being covered in letters – there were more than 200,000 votes and it took us weeks to count.”

Thus began his fledgling entrepreneurial moves and soon he evolved that idea to launch a chart based on readers’ votes, as well as reprinting data for the likes of the UK charts and

the charts in Germany, so that people knew what was popular elsewhere. “I’d also review records, although there were very few being released in Hungary at that time.”

A Canny Move

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iberal thinking in the strict communist regime didn’t go unchallenged for long. “It was a constant fight with the authorities – they didn’t like anything too exciting or Western. When I was 20 I got a job at The Hungarian Nation, which was the only non-communist paper, even though it was also under the control of the dictatorship. But when I made a political mistake, they kicked me out and, as punishment, I was given a job writing for a trade publication about the canning industry.”

What was canning’s loss turned out to be the music scene’s gain, when in 1973 he turned his back on journalism to take on the perilous role of managing a band. “They were called The General and they’d didn’t know what a manager was. And neither did I. But being an artist manager was a crime against the socialist republic, because it was seen as capitalist. So the band had to find an umbrella job for me: on paper I was a sound engineer.”

Thus began Laszlo’s career in music. Two years later, another band, Locomotive GT, poached two members of The General to replace two of their own who had emigrated to the USA. “Locomotive GT asked me to take over as manager, but again, under the guise of sound engineer, for legal reasons.

The band was huge. They were playing major arena shows and stadiums and I was able to travel abroad with them.”

That freedom of passage allowed Laszlo to meet

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 29

Laszlo Hegedus

Laszlo with German rockers, Scorpions

“Thankfully, I had my free passport so I was able to escape to West Berlin, where a promoter I knew arranged quick access to a resident’s permit.”

The initial years in Berlin were difficult, but Hegedus landed a job with Joe Schmidt’s Top Tour Berlin. “Joe became my mentor,” smiles Laszlo. “He introduced me to [promoter] Fritz Rau and Fritz encouraged me to use my East German connections to take concerts there. He believed that if we could bring shows to the east, life for the people would be a bit better.”

With his newfound freedom, Hegedus started to make friends with agents and promoters in London. “I met Harvey Goldsmith and Barrie Marshall and we talked about taking Western acts to the east. Their support was incredible. They helped me understand the business and taught me a lot.”

Police Violence

T international agents and promoters and, with their help, he found and exploited a legal loophole that allowed him to promote Western artists in the Eastern Bloc through Swiss company, Capricorn. As a result, in 1978 he undertook his inaugural tour as a promoter - Osibisa, via the Bron Agency – and shortly afterwards Suzy Quatro with Dick Katz.

Grassed Up by a Spy

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hat first tour with Osibisa prompts particular memories: “The band spotted a certain type of grass at the side of the road – they were enchanted by what a wonderful country Hungary was that this was growing by the roadside.

The ministry of interior spy on the bus informed on the band at the next town and a local science teacher was brought in to examine the grass, which of course didn’t turn out to be Indian marijuana, but a harmless local weed. But the band still paid a chef at the hotel for the use of his pizza oven to roast the grass to make cigars, only to be very upset at the outcome.”

A few months later, Hegedus himself was under investigation, but his privileged passport situation and dealings with foreign promoters proved to be his saviour. In 1979, he agreed to sign Locomotive to a record contract with EMI in London. Unfortunately, the Hungarian state-owned label also wanted the deal. “The government was informed I was an illegal manager, but a friend tipped me off,” he says.

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he early years could be brutal though and Hegedus recalls the intolerance of the authorities as particularly severe. He continues, “Working with Harvey, I initiated contact with the Polish government, who wanted to book Eric Clapton for three shows. But at the first show in Katowice, there were no crowd barriers, just a line of policemen standing across the front of the stage. When Clapton came on, people stood to dance and the police started beating them. Eric left the stage with his guitar and got his driver to take him straight to the airport in Warsaw 200 kilometres away. And that was the end of that.”

Other artists also struggled with the police brutality.

“I had a similar thing happen with The Boomtown Rats in Bucharest, but Bob Geldof jumped down from the stage and started fighting the police. They wanted to arrest him but we sorted it out.” He adds, “That was unfortunate, but it made promoters and agents realise that putting shows on in the Soviet Bloc was not easy.”

Getting talent out of trouble is a Hegedus speciality, as agent Rod Weinberg bears witness. “When we were on tour with Eric Burdon, sax player Pat Crumly mooned at a statue of Lenin in the centre of Budapest. Because we were followed everywhere by the secret police, two of our guys were arrested. Not only did Laszlo step in to get them out of jail, but he was also able to make sure the show went ahead,” says Weinberg.

“On the same tour, Eric had been drinking liqueur all night long on a journey from Budapest to West Berlin and when we were crossing Checkpoint Charlie, he decided to get out of the car. There were a whole load of snipers on turrets, aiming at him, but once again Laszlo managed to diffuse the situation and talk our way out of it.”

Despite running the gauntlet, such early tours behind the Iron Curtain persuaded Hegedus to go into business for himself and, in 1982, he started his own company, Multimedia Organisation. “It was an extremely important moment for

me and I had a lot of encouragement from people like Harvey [Goldsmith], and Bill Graham in America,” says Hegedus. “People promised to provide me with artists and those people kept their word.

“Multimedia provided solutions. I obtained permission from governments and started to control the shows, while trying to bring technology and equipment up to Western standards. I knew most of the decision makers in the communist governments and persuaded them of the advantages they could gain by bringing in Western stars. In return I had to guarantee there would be no problems – no political messages from the stage, for example.”

Georg Leitner of Georg Leitner Productions in Austria is a long-time friend – indeed, Laszlo was best man at his wedding. “The communist party was extremely sensitive about any Western influences, but Laszlo created a bridge between them and us and if it wasn’t for him, it could have taken many more years for artists to tour in the east,” observes Leitner. “Although Laszlo always hated the communists, he managed to have very good relationships with the people in the party. I’ve often compared it to a medieval court, where everyone was scheming against each other, but in the middle there was one person who everybody liked and that was the joker – Laszlo. There were concerns on both sides, from the government point of view, but also from the artists and agents. Laszlo worked hard to keep everyone happy.”

Luck also played a part and Laszlo’s timing in launching his own company could not have been planned any better.

“Talking Heads was one of the first major acts to visit Budapest and they considered it a major PR opportunity so there were articles everywhere – Melody Maker, Paris Match, the NME – and the media all wanted to speak to the promoter, so six months after I launched Multimedia, I was in the international press,” says Hegedus.

Trading in Goods

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ultimedia’s springboard to fame meant the phones were red hot, but Hegedus found himself restricted because of communist policies involving cash flow. “Lots of acts wanted to play in the East, but there was limited access because of the hard currency problem. So in 1983 I worked out a system where we could exchange local currency for goods and services and I obtained permission to buy and export goods.”

That bartering system has become the stuff of legend. “East Berlin in particular was quite flexible,” says Hegedus “For instance, I got a 15-metre sailing yacht in exchange for seven John Mayall shows in East Germany. That yacht then paid for some James Brown gigs I did with Georg Leitner in Vienna.”

Among the stock traded through Multimedia’s barter model was balsa wood, Yugoslavian red wine, Polish Fiat 600 cars, Hungarian goose liver, Czech glass products and even tourist vouchers for spa holidays. “There were lots of musical instruments made in the east, which were great for

Laszlo with Queen and their touring party relaxing on the River Danube

Laszlo Hegedus

people learning how to play. Those could be easily exported to make money,” says Hegedus. “Fritz Rau once got six pianos for a Springsteen show. Fifteen years later they were still in the courtyard of his house,” he laughs.

Former Multimedia colleague Tim Dowdall recalls, “Payment in hard currency was often a problem in the commie times. On one Polish tour – Elton John, I think – we received part-payment in convertible Polish Airlines tickets, which we used to fly around Asia for three weeks on Singapore Airlines.”

Weinberg says, “I know he used to barter goods to raise money, but that was not without its dangers and I recall a promoter in Poland being arrested for smuggling soap, while another was jailed for buying currency on the black market.

But there were never any problems getting money from Laszlo, despite the issues he would have in getting his hands on hard currency.”

Hegedus names managers, agents and promoters like Jim Beach (Queen), Stewart Young (AC/DC), Dick Alen, Neil Warnock, Steve Hedges, Bob Gold, Ian Flooks, John Jackson, Rod MacSween, Barry Dickins, John Giddings, Chris Dalston and Marcel Avram among the pioneers who opened the Iron Curtain to international live music. With their backing, Multimedia built teams in each country and Hegedus boasts that almost all of his former colleagues became successful in some shape or form after the fall of communism, either as business people, politicians or working in the arts.

Aside from currency issues, another major problem in the early 80s was a lack of production equipment. “If Western bands brought their own equipment, it made the shows very expensive. So I started a business to buy PA and lighting second-hand from London, as well as barriers and proper security equipment. I also had to educate local people to read artist riders, both on the technical side and personnel side.”

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Laszlo Hegedus

Hegedus with Hazel O’Connor

which was basically a movie shoot in Hungary with the premise of a huge bear terrorising festival goers. “We had Nazareth and others playing to 80,000 people and we brought in American production people, such as Michael Ahern who later became the Stones’ tour director. He became another mentor. In 1984 we had an Iron Maiden show for 40,000 people in a car park and we had a roof that was hung from a crane, which I completely learned to do, thanks to Michael. I learned everything about festivals from him and worked with him all the way up to when the Stones played Prague in 1990.”

Expansion and breakthrough

I The riders also proved tricky for Laszlo, at times. “I had to travel to Vienna for shopping because you simply could not buy anything in Hungary,” he says.

Political lows

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urther complicating his capitalist ideals, politics in the east constantly provided challenges. “In December 1981, the Polish government introduced martial law. An 8pm curfew was imposed and the leaders of the Solidarity movement were arrested,” says Hegedus. “The following year those prisoners were released, but Solidarity urged a boycott of all government events. I wasn’t deeply knowledgeable about the situation when I took one of my first orders from the Polish cultural agency for a Bo Diddley six-arena tour.

All the tickets sold out, but at the first show, the arena was empty, apart from a couple of hundred police and local party officials. And because Solidarity’s boycott was successful, it was the same for the whole tour.

“Bo is a wonderful guy, but he didn’t understand what his relation was to communist policies. When Bo and his manager got the money, they were so suspicious they kept it in their pockets instead of transferring it from the bank, so when they got to the border to leave the country, they were arrested. But it was quickly sorted out.”

Building on his early success, 1983 also helped put Multimedia on the map for touring acts. “I got one of the first major names when, through Bill Graham, Santana came to the Budapest Arena. He was a megastar because his albums were released by communist record labels,” recalls Hegedus.

“The same year, we had ten dates with Elton John. I stayed with him in Sarajevo for two weeks during rehearsals and it was an amazing experience. Elton’s technical staff were highly professional and I was able to find out the levels of discipline that are necessary to make such a big show happen day after day.”

1983 also saw Laszlo organise his first festival, Predators,

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t wasn’t just the communist countries that Laszlo opened for live music. “In 1985 I started an office in Athens and opened Piraeus Arena with three Dire Straits shows to 39,000 people. It was one of the most difficult deals I’ve ever done. Greece had never had a major rock act before and getting power, rigging, barriers, security, etc was a major job.

In the same year we also had a Depeche Mode stadium show in Budapest, the Scorpions on tour, OMD, Keith Jarrett and Dave Brubeck.”

Multimedia’s real breakthrough, however, came in 1986 when Laszlo put on Queen at Budapest’s Nepstadion (an event still available on DVD and set for re-release in movie theatres this month). “Freddie Mercury learned a Hungarian song for the crowd and it became one of Queen’s classic moments. It was also great financially and gave me the right to licence and establish my company here in Hungary.”

Another landmark was the Peace Festival in Russia in 1986, supported by Steve Jobs and Bill Graham. “I met the wife of President Gorbachev, Raisa, who was in charge of the Peace Committee. Through that connection, I started working in Russia.

One of the first events was Uriah Heap who did ten shows in Moscow and sold 180,000 tickets – a really big deal.”

Political highs

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here have been other seminal moments, one being a Joan Baez show in Bratislava just after Václav Havel was released from jail. During her performance, Baez greeted members of a dissident group, which saw her microphone switched off by local police. “It was an arena of 3,500 people and Joan just started singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ without any amplification. It was very moving,” says Hegedus. “When she came back when Havel was president, she did the same again. It was fantastic.”

The fall of the Berlin Wall transformed the live music landscape. Hegedus moved Multimedia back to his home town, Budapest, where he also took the opportunity to diversify as capitalism blossomed. He started commercial station Radio Calypso, a sound and light rental production company, and the first private international record company in Hungary, MMC Records.

Laszlo Hegedus

when my contract expired. Besides, from their point of view I was the guy in the room who always disagreed and was seen as controversial.”

Dowdall notes, “Our partnership was based on the fact that we were opposites in terms of temperament, stature, the EastWest divide, even hair and eating habits. Somehow this gave us a versatility, which would otherwise have been missing.

Laszlo taught me that it’s better to praise one’s associates than put them down. Apart from creating a harmonious atmosphere, it has a buoyant effect on the ‘praiser’ as much as on the praised.”

After leaving Live Nation, Laszlo was locked into an agreement not to operate in the entertainment business. “I had a very relaxing 2008 and 2009,” he laughs. However, it provided him ample time to indulge hobbies such as his love of travel, art and gastronomy.

He has since relaunched Multimedia Organisation, albeit on a smaller scale, and has also created a new operation, Bonart Kft, to promote tours in Central and Eastern Europe.

“I cannot compete with Live Nation, but I try to do special things rather than go up against their power. Thank God there are a lot of new artists and indie acts out there. But there are other areas of the business I find satisfying such as several exhibitions per year and special interest shows – Bodies, Tutankhamun, CSI and Dino, to mention a few.”

Feld Entertainment’s Bob Hannigan is a long-time collaborator on family shows. “Laszlo was the first promoter to bring Disney on Ice to Budapest back in 1989,” he reports.

“80,000 people saw Disney on Ice during the six days that Laszlo scheduled shows. We couldn’t have done it without him.”

BudapestArena managing director Lajos Borbely is another fan. “No matter which decade we are talking about, Multimedia has been the company to try out new ideas and give a chance to smaller bands to grow. Laszlo is the one who brought the very first bands behind the Iron Curtain. If it wasn’t for him, BudapestArena and the Hungarian audience could not have enjoyed artists like Ozzy Osbourne, A-ha, Placebo, Elton John and Ringo Starr live.”

Christoph Scholz of Semmel Concerts in Germany worked Tutankhamun – His Tomb and His Treasures with Hegedus. “If you want the best food in Budapest and the ability to find the secret places for authentic and fantastic Hungarian cuisine, Laszlo performs his best man duties at the marriage of Georg and Brigitte Leitner

The end of the Cold War prompted a scramble amongst Western corporations to get a foothold in the East and, given his stature in the music industry, Hegedus was persuaded to head up operations for one of the biggest companies in the business. “The record business took me over in 1993, as I was running Polygram in Eastern Europe, but the promotions company still ran under Tim Dowdall for the next ten years and we operated two companies – Multimedia International for shows outside Hungary and Multimedia Concerts inside the country.”

Laszlo’s leadership at Polygram – which subsequently became part of Universal Music Group – made him many friends in the larger music industry. “When I moved to London as president, continental Europe for PolyGram, I met some fascinating new colleagues. One was larger than life,” recalls Rick Dobbis. “Laszlo was our partner, yet he reported to me. He was an employee, yet he was our landlord.

We were new to Hungary and he had been a force before the changes and after. Who else would have an office that was a direct escape route by tunnel from the government offices?

“He wasn’t always on top of his game though,” adds Dobbis. “We had a business/social function at my flat in London. All of our colleagues were there. Where was Laszlo?

Sound asleep in my guest room. I guess he was a better host than me. A fine man. A classic!”

Another label colleague, Richard Constant, general counsel for Universal Music Group International, tells this tale: “Much will be spoken and written about him, but I have been on a holiday with Laszlo – to Transylvania in the late 1990s,” says Constant. “A strange but enjoyable experience: typically a leisurely two-hour breakfast with Laszlo expounding on the history of the places we were to visit that day; a short drive to some historic town where Laszlo would survey the town square – and then head for the nearest restaurant, where we would spend the next three hours watching him eat another flock of geese.”

In 2003, Hegedus left Universal and resumed his career at Multimedia. A year later, he was back in the corporate hotspot when he sold the company to Live Nation. Between 2004-07 acts such as Robbie Williams, Phil Collins, Sting, Queen, Anastasia, Shakira, Cirque du Soleil, Mamma Mia!, Depeche Mode, Peter Gabriel, The Rolling Stones and George Michael had shows promoted by Messrs Dowdall and Hegedus in Eastern Europe.

Hegedus left in 2008, while Dowdall remains part of the Live Nation empire. Looking back with mixed emotions, Hegedus says, “I’m very grateful to Live Nation because they bought the company and the finance was very good for us.

But the nature of how they do business did not suit me. The continuous central initiatives – which are important for a big multinational company – were often directly clashing with the culture we have in Eastern Europe.

“The art of promoting is to find small doors everywhere to try to save costs,” states Hegedus. “Lower income and lower profit were never going to be as important for Live Nation’s international management, so I just didn’t want to continue

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then Laszlo is not just a great friend and colleague of promoters and agents, he is also a friend of the best restaurateurs,” says Scholz. “Everyone at Semmel Concerts wishes him another successful 40 years in the business.”

Detailing his roster, Hegedus adds, “Of course I’m still trying to get some of the big acts from competitors of Live Nation, but that’s not easy because they get the big acts by being even more expensive than Live Nation. But some old contacts are proving loyal: I did a few shows with Elton John last year and some deals with the likes of ITB and The Agency Group, such as Ozzy Osbourne, A-ha and Placebo, as well as artists like Jeff Beck. I’m also doing some symphonic concerts, jazz shows and folk and world music.”

Looking to the future, Hegedus hints at ambitious plans when the global economy recovers. “Right now we’re in the middle of a financial crisis, so I’ve deliberately scaled things down. I’m doing exhibitions and concerts in a limited manner because the consumption power is in a very deep point. Most shows lose money. Some markets are still ok and others are

TESTIMONIALS Barrie Marshall – Marshall Arts, UK Laszlo is one of those gung-ho guys who only thinks about winning: where, how and why are all major considerations for Laszlo. He knew how to build artists into stars and in Hungary, in the pioneering days, he was outstanding against all the odds. His efforts built Hungary into a major force and Budapest became a must. He also worked all the other territories around Hungary to ensure that people came to him. A larger than life character. Much respect.

Claudio Trotta – Barley Arts, Italy Laszlo is one of the few real pioneers in our business and I’ve known him for a very long time. He has always anticipated most of the key issues in the music industry and this has an extra value considering the tough market he is working in.

Allan McGowan – ILMC, UK When I was working as an agent with companies like Chrysalis, Virgin (yes - they had an agency!) and Sherry Copeland in the early to mid-70s, Eastern Europe was a complete mystery and apart from access to the odd State-run promoter, everyone would say that the only man to approach was Laszlo. All these years later he is still the man who knows and is generous with his knowledge and experience.

When he chaired the Emerging Markets panel at ILMC a couple of years ago, he involved and introduced as many young promoters from the region as possible.

Tim Dowdall – Live NATION, HUNGARY Laszlo was always very generous, but he expected the same in return. He once asked to borrow my BMW convertible while I was away, to drive around West Berlin in my absence. When I returned, I found out that he had driven to Budapest and back, during which the car roof had been knifed by thieves.

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Hegedus with Depeche Mode

Laszlo Hegedus

pretty bad. Romania, for instance is a lot worse than Hungary.

But I’m doing some shows in the Czech Republic, Serbia, Croatia and Romania with the help of local partners. I think if we wait one or two years we will be out of the crisis and then I think I’ll be ready to go for expansion again.”

Daniel Miller – Mute Records, UK It’s a mystery to me how Laszlo operated and it’s amazing that any bands were able to play in Hungary at all at that time.

But he definitely helped Depeche Mode build a following there – there were Depeche Mode tribes and Depeche Mode clubs. Much of that was down to being able to bring the band to the market so early in their career and that wouldn’t have been possible without Laszlo – he was an exceptional host.

Barry Dickins – International Talent Booking, UK Laszlo Hegedus: the man that Ironed out the curtain.

Richard Constant – Universal Music Group, UK A great man, Laszlo. I love him for his intellect, for the fact he’ll be late for his own funeral, for the sense of calm that surrounds him, for the meetings where he falls asleep because there’s nothing of interest being said, for his loyalty, for his catastrophically bad driving and for his great kindness.

Martin Hopewell – ILMC, UK Laszlo is one of the originators of our business, and someone who has not only survived the course, but always managed to stay at the head of the field. That’s not something you can say about too many people. He’s managed to achieve all of that in a territory which was ‘off the map’ in the earliest years – when he was almost a one-stop shop for the whole of Eastern Europe. That market owes much of its current status to Laszlo and a handful of other characters like him.

Leon Ramakers – Mojo Concerts, Netherlands Laszlo was one of the protagonists of the ill-fated ‘European Promoters Association’. He was the host of a meeting in Budapest and seeing so many colleagues (including Laszlo….) in the baths of the Gellert Hotel, dressed in just a towel, is a sight one never forgets.

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The High Fliers

EFM staff load staging and set into a chartered B-747F aircraft for an event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Air cargo journalist of the year, Will Waters, takes a look at the highly competive air charter and freight sectors and discovers that operators are having to get more inventive to lure in the high-flying stars…

You’ve got a container of tour gear stuck in New York after an x-ray by US customs spots an undeclared chandelier and they think you are smuggling diamonds. Meanwhile, a charter aircraft filled with another band’s gear has broken down in Bulgaria, en route to the Isle of Wight Festival. And, following a gig in Turkey, a prominent US female singer has decided to do a one-off private show in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – the next night. Elsewhere, the air temperature in Dubai is so high that aircraft are not allowed to uplift any cargo, so you need to find a way to move another set of tour gear – fast. The show must go on.

These are the kinds of daily (or more often nightly) challenges that face the freight companies that serve the international live entertainment business. But that’s what makes it such a specialist sector of the freight-forwarding business and why it remains dominated by people that understand the touring game, and not by big corporate multinationals.

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 39

The High Fliers Guns N’ Roses pallet build at EFM UK warehouse

Charter Service, observes, “You look at a tour and wonder, why on earth are they playing Spain one day and Finland the next, and then Italy? Why don’t they go straight from Spain to Italy? But of course it’s all down to who will pay the most money for each night that they’re available to play, weighed up against the cost of moving stuff around.”

Martin Corr, MD of freight forwarder Sound Moves UK, concurs. “Every tour is like a small business; it has a daily running cost. So they have to average a set number of shows a week to break even and go into profit. So if you want to keep it tight and maximise the number of shows in the amount of time, air freight is the way to go. It’s 40 days to Australia by sea…” Corr continues, “The other thing is, if the band is hot, they can get offered dates that start very quickly and that are tightly packed together, and if you want to appear and to maximise the opportunity, air freight is often the way you need to do it.”

“

It’s all down to who will pay the most money for each night that they’re available to play, weighed up against the cost of moving stuff around.

– Justin Bowman, Air Charter Service

But over the last few years, in response to the decline in revenues from recorded music, the ‘bean-counters’ have come into the live music industry in a big way, trying to maximise tour revenues by squeezing logistically challenging dates into the tour schedule, while also increasingly trying to reduce costs wherever they can – all within the context of a major global recession. And meanwhile, the cost of aviation fuel has sky-rocketed in recent years, and the costs and hassles of security continue to increase.

Yet despite all this, those involved in transporting missioncritical tour equipment by air are surprisingly upbeat.

A quick look at certain tour and festival schedules illustrates why the expensive option of air freight or air charters remain as much a part of the live entertainment world as ever, in spite of the increased focus on costs – as well as further illustrating the kinds of challenges that freight companies face. Justin Bowman, group commercial director at aircraft broker Air

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Air freight is generally used for intercontinental moves or back-to-back shows, with trucking companies otherwise being more than capable of moving the gear, although in certain regions (like South America or Asia) where the road network doesn’t allow it, air is still also essential for shorter, intra-regional movement. “There are professional trucking outfits that do a great job and we want to be complementing them, not competing with them,” says Corr. “Once you’re talking more than 400 miles, you have issues with driver hours and just covering the physical distance in a truck. We work closely with the guys that do trucking and it’s not unusual for us to call the trucker and say what part of this can you do comfortably and what part of this can we do comfortably?

Does introducing double or triple drivers into the scenario make it more or less likely to be a road movement?”

One recent trend that has been affecting air freight and trucking companies is for bands to do less of their own shows and more headlining of festivals. “So, for example, they might headline in Helsinki one night and Lisbon the next and that obviously can’t be driven,” says Corr. “So from our perspective, we are seeing the benefit of that as a trend, and the trucking companies are seeing the complete opposite of that.”

Facilitating these movements by air is made affordable as bands will generally avoid having to move a full stadium set around. “If a band is going festival to festival, generally it is a cut-down package, because the infrastructure is already there; the lights, the sound, the stage,” says Corr. “They might take key elements, and obviously the bigger the artist, the more they might take, but there are physical limitations at festivals in terms of how much of their own production staging and lighting a band can use. So with that trend, we have seen an increase in air freight, mainly on festivals.”

Bowman adds, “In the summer, especially in Europe, there’s a lot of music work from the festivals. All the charter activity starts on Friday and you fly Friday night, Saturday night, and then in the week they tend to be trucking it around, unless the distances are very big.”

Cargo charters include anything from a small Metro aircraft carrying a couple of hundred kilos of instruments, drums and a few speakers, all the way to bands touring

Sound Moves load up a chartered aircraft

A 747-200 freighter aircraft chartered by Chapman Freeborn

The High Fliers

“

If (production and tour managers) want to freight less, they need to factor in the costs of hiring local backline, which can be expensive and not always the same quality the bands are used to with their own equipment.

– Chris Palmer, Rock-it Cargo

in Europe during the festival season with upwards of 35 tonnes of gear, “which they are lugging literally night after night to different countries to play shows,” says Bowman, who has seen little sign of the recession reducing demand for charters from the live music sector. “It is as buoyant as ever,” he states. “What I would say is perhaps the amount they are touring with [is reducing]. Maybe they are looking to take slightly smaller loads to keep the cost of the aircraft down.

But they are still looking to charter.”

But Steve Botting, vice-president of freight forwarding specialist EFM Management USA, has noticed a recessionary effect. “Recessions don’t normally hit our industry, but this one has,” he says. “In the last few years, it is a combination of the bean-counters coming in and the recession, as well as

saturation in some countries, such as Australia.”

In the US, Botting reports that people are bundling tours together, which also means bundling of gear together to save costs. “There is definitely a sharing of resources going on,” Botting observes. “For example, you have things like the Vans Warped Tour, where a lot of young acts are getting a big reduction in costs by sharing, while also giving cheaper tickets to the punters. There is also a lot of downsizing going on, and the equipment itself is getting smaller.” Monitoring equipment, for example, now all fits into one rack, and Botting says there are also a lot of bands that are now getting two or three rigs together, so they can send one or two of them by ocean freight.

“I think it is the result of the recession and the moneymaking aspect of the tour these days,” Botting says. “Ocean freight is so much cheaper, although I have to say, so much less reliable, so you have to cover yourself with a back up.”

EFM has been working with a number of acts that now own two or three sets of gear. This is something that has been happening for some years, but has been more apparent recently, according to Botting. Linkin Park, for example, has three sets of gear and is also putting together “an economy set”.

But Botting says the best way for tours to reduce their logistics costs is to consult a freight specialist early on in the planning process, something that he estimates happens with about 50% of the clients EFM works with. “The booking agent is not thinking about moving gear,” he says. “We get involved with a lot of acts and we advise them on how they can route the tour. That is good for them and for us.

Sometimes the best routes are not possible because there are anchor dates that can’t be moved or the venue may not be available. Normally at the quote stage we can make some suggestions, while others just do the tour without thinking about the logistics. Sometimes the logistics means it is impossible for them to move all the gear in time and they have to hand-carry and rent equipment.”

Chris Palmer, business development ‘dude’ at Rock-it Cargo, agrees. “The best way to minimise costs is advanced planning,” he says. “In some recent cases we have been in direct conversations with booking agents for the bands so that when they are actually arranging and eventually booking the shows,

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 43

The High Fliers

they are aware of the logistics involved and the costs involved, which is interesting for all of us because in the past, shows have been booked up, and only then are logistics considered – but hopefully for everyone, this is slowly changing.”

Palmer says the quicker he knows about shows and dates, the more chance he has of booking in advance to secure economical pricing. “If things are left until the last minute, costs tend to be slightly higher because of demand, although we all know that in this industry, it is not always possible to plan things months in advance – which is why we are always ready to move at the drop of a hat!”

Palmer says one of the ways bands are trying to save

“

We use our experience and can work closely with airlines that may have the time to create a diversion from their scheduled route. The savings compared to a full charter can be almost half the costs of a dedicated aircraft.

Rock-it Cargo pallet build for Mamma Mia!’s air freight

– Jamie Peters, Hunt & Palmer Cargo Charters

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money, especially bands who are ‘up-and-coming’ and therefore new to freighting, is by using ‘fly packs’ – so only flying the absolute essential items and hiring the larger, heavier equipment in the country of the show.

“Production and tour managers are having to work a lot harder to compare all of the different scenarios. If they want to freight less, they then need to factor in the costs of hiring local backline, which can be expensive and not always of the same quality that the bands are used to with their own equipment,” he explains. “So, we are all working harder to make sure that the bands maximise revenue without ever compromising the quality of the live show.”

The cost of air charters means that forwarders always attempt to avoid them, where possible, and Sound Moves’ Corr estimates that charters make up only around 5% of the company’s moves on behalf of touring clients. And with the cost of fuel increasing and charter aircraft tending to be older, less fuelefficient beasts, the argument to avoid charters is a strong one.

Palmer agrees that is always the aim of freight forwarders, just as they will always use surface transport where feasible: “If scheduled air freight is a possibility for a move, then we will always use this as a first choice, as long as we have sufficient time to get the band’s equipment to the show. Once we have explored all scheduled options, and if there are no feasible and safe choices, then we will start to explore the possibilities of a charter. Experience allows us to quickly determine whether a

Sound Moves load equipment onto a 747-400 from Taiwan to South Korea

The High Fliers

“

Tour managers and organisers simply do not have the budget to move cargo around like previously – there is a great pressure to move away from charters back to scheduled uplift.

– Robert Jubb, Chapman Freeborn

charter is necessary or not – which is a discussion we will take with the tour or production managers.”

Jamie Peters, director of Hunt & Palmer Cargo Charters, says one option to look at during the quotation process is ‘part charters’ solutions. “We use our experience and can work closely with airlines that may have the time to create a diversion from their scheduled route,” he says. “The savings compared to a full charter can be almost half the costs of a dedicated aircraft.”

Unusually for a charter broker, Chapman Freeborn often works directly with tour promoters and organisers, rather than through a freight forwarder. Robert Jubb, Chapman Freeborn’s key account manager in cargo, says there is definitely increasing pressure on charter suppliers to find cheaper solutions. “The cost increase for tours is simply driven by the cost increase of aviation fuel,” he explains.

“This was seen at the highest point in 2008 and 2009 and has since returned to more ‘sensible’ levels. However, the tour managers and organisers simply do not have the budget to move cargo around like previously – there is a great pressure to move away from charters back to scheduled uplift where possible.” Jubb says brokers, therefore, have to be “ruthlessly efficient” at sourcing aircraft, claiming that his company’s global buying power gives it, “in many cases, an edge”, and the ability to link flights together and make one-way prices that its competitors cannot achieve.

Rock-it’s Chris Palmer believes the recession affects different people in different ways and that it is difficult to assess its impact accurately without having a lot of data and statistics to hand. “But I haven’t really noticed a huge difference over the past five years in terms of people stopping touring or the public stopping going to shows,” he notes.

“The recession will have hit businesses such as airlines and fuel costs have been going up to some pretty incredible levels over the past five years or so, which will have, of course, affected costs. But there are a lot of airlines and suppliers still vying for our business, so we are still able to offer the most competitive prices to the bands that we work with.”

Corr concurs, insisting that Sound Moves has not been negatively affected by any recessionary trends. “We don’t see it in our side of the business because the bands have to move to make revenue. If the band is only playing one show at Wembley instead of five, the cargo will still move. So if there is a recessionary impact on the band or if they do an eight-week European tour instead of a three-month European tour, the theory is the gear would still need to move – maybe as a reduced package, but it would still move.” He says there is pressure on price, “but that is caused by competition and things beyond our control – airline fuel and security surcharges – which have increased the cost to the end-user dramatically.

But we don’t control those; we just pass those on.”

On the upside, bands and artists still want to go to emerging markets and perform there. “Ten years ago, very few people went to Russia, but now everybody goes,” says Corr. “Fifteen years ago, few people went to Turkey; everyone goes to Turkey now. And we are seeing Eastern Europe opening up. So the emergence of these markets makes up for any recessionary effects or saturation of the more-mature markets.”

Palmer is also positive about the outlook, in light of the habit over the last few years for bands to tour more and for longer periods of time. “Obviously, this is good news for the live music industry, and for live music fans – but with this also comes more pressure on all suppliers to the live music industry, and to tour and production managers,” concludes Palmer.

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 45

The Middle East: The shifting political face of the Middle East could help open new markets to live music. But while events such as the Arab Spring are providing such hope, in the meantime, opportunities to tour are scarce, as Adam Woods discovers‌

46 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

The Middle East

Introduction Taken as a region, the Middle East has had more on its mind this past year than growing its live music business. But amid the upheavals of the Arab Spring, markets that were tentatively emerging have entirely retreated, and while a lack of live music is the least of the Middle East’s current problems, there is a sense of promising beginnings snuffed out.

The most startling reversal has come in Syria, where scarcely two years ago Gorillaz and Bryan Adams became the first major western acts to play in Damascus.

In Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, all of which have welcomed international artists in recent years, regime change has been a disruptive and sometimes immensely bloody process. And even in countries such as Morocco, Jordan and Algeria, where protests never escalated into full-scale conflict, there has been a political shift right and a profound air of tension. Needless to say, musical imports have ground to a halt in such circumstances.

“You are going to have trouble programming Western live music anywhere there is an internal struggle between liberals and conservatives,” says veteran Lebanese promoter Nagi Baz. “That means you are basically unable to stage any show anywhere in the Arab world at the moment, with the exception of the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. All other territories are in terrible trouble now.”

All the same, within the contentious boundaries of the Middle East, there do remain relatively healthy markets. In Abu Dhabi this year, live music has seldom been stronger as acts such as Madonna and Metallica have dropped in. Dubai and Lebanon, while sometimes struggling to balance local audiences and incomes with Western fees, remain meaningful destinations that can drum up keen crowds for the right events.

Israel, which operates in isolation from the rest of the Middle East, almost as a south-eastern outpost of Europe, maintains probably the strongest market in the region, albeit while juggling distinct geo-political problems of its own.

Other nations, such as Egypt, are hopeful of a quick return to health for their nascent live music scene. Moussa Abu Taleb, of local event company and promoter Event House, concedes that a lack of sponsorship and low average incomes are big obstacles, but Julio Iglesias played before the revolution and hopeful negotiations were in progress to bring Lionel Richie to the country for a secure, private show at press time.

“I don’t say it’s very unsafe, but it is not appropriate at this time to do any large public events,” says Abu Taleb. “For Lionel Richie, we are hoping to stage a very small, 3,000- or 4,000-capacity show in a compound.”

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 47

The Middle East

All promoters who once operated across the entire Middle East have been pegged back by the events of the past two years. Like a number of others, Baz’s Buzz Productions has promoted shows in every nation in the wider region, but he concedes those times are currently on hold.

“We have had four or five Western acts performing in Egypt, and that has just stopped,” he says. “Just before the revolution started in Syria, I programmed artists like Bryan Adams and Gorillaz. So it was the beginning of something there, even in spite of the dictatorship.”

Buzz remains the key promoter in Lebanon, its Byblos International Festival is the country’s main showcase for major overseas acts. The country has had its share of strife over the years, with 15 years of civil war concluding in 1990 and 16 years of Syrian occupation after that, but today, it has resumed its status as ‘the Paris of the Middle East’.

Peaceful though it now is, Baz estimates that receipts are down by 25%, as the closure of Syria has cut off roads that could generally be expected to bring holidaymakers from the Gulf. “We can’t complain much, because given what’s happening in the whole region, the simple fact that we can still stage shows safely here is enough for us.” The arrival of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in September, as a Beirut leg of Byblos, is being touted as the biggest show ever in Lebanon.

Israel, meanwhile, celebrates an undeniable boom period even as a steady chorus of voices continues to call for a cultural boycott akin to that of South Africa during Apartheid. Oren Arnon, head international booker at Shuki Weiss Promotion & Production, knows plenty about both.

The promoter’s summer season began with the opening date of Madonna’s MDNA tour at Tel Aviv’s 35,000-seat Ramat Gan Stadium and will end with Red Hot Chili Peppers at Yarkon Park in September, with shows by the Afghan Whigs, Morrissey, Chris Cornell and Cirque du Soleil in between.

There has been no notable repeat of the rash of cancellations that hit Israeli promoters a couple of years ago, when Elvis Costello, The Pixies and others pulled bookings in response to heavy internet campaigning by pro-Palestinian groups accusing the Israeli government of “policies of racism, apartheid and occupation”.

Shuki Weiss transformed a chickpea field to stage a Roger Waters show in 2006

48 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

Linkin Park at Yarkon Park, Tel Aviv in 2010

Promoters: The Mediterranean

Shuki Weiss promoted those two shows, and Arnon says a promoter’s only available response is a patient and methodical one. “We have been talking to a lot of managers and artists about this the last couple of years, and the fact that it’s not a matter of what you believe or don’t believe,” he says. “I don’t believe in what my government is doing here; it doesn’t necessarily represent what fans believe in, and it shouldn’t come between the artists and their fans.”

Troubling conflicts aside, as Israel’s tourist economy has boomed in the last few years, so it has snuck onto an increasing number of tour itineraries, often as the beginning or end date of a European tour. “There is communication [between Middle Eastern promoters], but for the most part we are still considered part of Europe, for better or worse,” says US-born promoter Hillel Wachs of 2b Vibes Music. “Israel is a bit more eclectic than the rest of the Middle East. We are on the radar for a lot of bands that would never go to Dubai or Saudi Arabia or Oman.” Accordingly, 2b Vibes’ shows have lately included jazz piano great McCoy Tyner, reggae and dancehall star Barrington Levy, singer-songwriter Janis Ian and Chicago post-rockers Tortoise.

An influx of major names, starting with a symbolic 2008 show by Paul McCartney, has taken the Israeli market (which by and large revolves around Tel Aviv) to what some promoters believe may be near-saturation. Nonetheless, tickets still sell well and the relatively infrequent appearance of big international stars tends to guarantee enthusiastic crowds when they do come.

Jeremy Hulsh, a promoter who runs Oleh! Records, an export office for Israeli music, believes Israel’s homegrown music scene deserves more international recognition. “There is still a Middle Eastern mentality here when you are talking about live music as a business, he says. “Just basic things like getting an artist visa, developing a brand, which festivals are out there – bands don’t know sometimes.”

To facilitate cultural exchange, Hulsh is launching the Jerusalem Music Conference, an ILMC-style conference with showcases of 30 or 40 Israeli and Palestinian bands and a promising list of delegates.

The Middle East

Promoters: the Gulf

“

Israel is a bit more eclectic than the rest of the Middle East. We are on the radar for a lot of bands that would never go to Dubai or Saudi Arabia or Oman.

”

Hillel Wachs, 2b Vibes Music – Israel

As a region with strong cultures of its own, the Gulf is not a prime front for corporate expansion from Western music giants.

Live Nation is present through its six-man office in Dubai, which books artists into Lebanon and Abu Dhabi and organises shows of its own. However, AEG Live only spent a couple of years in the emirate before offloading its interests to its executive there, Thomas Ovesen, who now operates as Done Events.

One Turkish promoter, who declined to speak on the record, illustrates the challenges for outside entities across the Middle East. “Like any other emerging market, they have their own dynamics and it is very difficult to survive if you are a stranger. Basically, being a smart, decent, experienced promoter is not enough to be able to do business in these territories – you need to have established relations with police, municipalities and government.”

The seven United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai and Abu Dhabi are the two most populous, are nonetheless relatively insulated from trouble in the region. Of the two, Abu Dhabi is well known as the emirate that pays the best and is dominated by Flash Entertainment, which takes an estimated 70% of the market.

A licensed company within Abu Dhabi’s governmentbacked media zone, Twofour54, Flash has brought in shows

by Madonna, Metallica, Elton John and Coldplay. Flash managing director John Lickrish insists concerts are not subsidised by Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s central investment vehicle, but are obliged to turn a profit through ticket sales, sponsorship, F&B and merch, like anywhere else.

“There’s a million-and-a-half people here and a lot of different cultures, not all of whom care too much about Western entertainment, to be blunt,” says Lickrish. “We try to create must-see events. And because of the quality, we get a lot of people travelling in from the region to come to the shows – from Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain, Doha, Lebanon.”

Flash launched in 2008 – just as Live Nation was acquiring the assets of Dubai-based Mirage to make its first move in the region. Lickrish says the infrastructure and accessibility of Yas Island, the man-made island on which Flash’s du Arena sits, account for some of the difference in the neighbouring emirates’ ability to draw talent.

“We can bring people in and out very quickly because Yas Island was designed for mass gatherings,” he says. “We have considered doing events in Dubai; with Madonna, we thought maybe we would have one show here and one there. But we have got a venue we have invested in, and it’s easy for people from Dubai to get to, so we will probably stick with that for now.”

Promoters in Dubai, whose oil wealth is relatively limited compared to that of its cousin 90 miles down the coast, can only envy Abu Dhabi’s pulling power. Done Events operates

as part of Arab Media Group, Dubai’s own governmentcontrolled media structure, and Ovesen regards Abu Dhabi’s larger pockets as one more fact of life in an emirate that isn’t quite as booming as it was a few years ago.

“Some artists will expect to be paid very well to come here, because they have managed to get extremely high fees [in the region] in the past and in some cases still can,” he says. “For us, it’s a matter of picking the right acts at the right time and increasingly saying ‘no thanks’ if the artist insists on picking up a golden fee.”

In spite of the aura of wealth that has progressively accumulated around the UAE since the discovery of oil 50 years ago, the blockbuster live music equation is not always an easy one to add up, mostly due to the relatively small population and the fact that most of those people aren’t in the market for even the biggest Western acts.

“There’s fewer than 4m people living in the UAE and fewer than one million that are remotely interested in concerts,” says Ovesen. “80% of our community is sub-continent expats and the majority of those are very low-income workers in construction and the like. If you have a Latin artist like Shakira or Jennifer Lopez, more or less everyone likes it. If you have a hard-rock act, it’s much more narrow; an indierock act, narrower still.”

And because a territory like Dubai depends on surrounding countries and emirates for part of its audience, Ovesen points out, many fans need to factor a set of air fares and hotel nights into their ticket calculation, making concert-going an expensive pastime. All the same, Jennifer Lopez will play the only Middle Eastern show of her Dance Again tour before 14,000 people at Dubai Media City Amphitheatre, promoted by Done Events, who earlier this year brought The Eagles to the same venue.

Promoter numbers have dwindled since the gold rush of a few years ago, partly due to the lack of high-spec venues. A promoter needs to approach each large show like a festival, finding a green-field site and building everything he requires.

“The risk a promoter takes in setting up an event is not just opening the doors and setting up the PA,” says Live Nation Middle East managing director Tyler Mervyn. “It’s a significant undertaking.”

Richard Coram of The Talent Brokers may very well be the longest-serving promoter in the Gulf, having moved to the region as a broadcast journalist in 1979 and brought the Bootleg Beatles out in 1983. Subsequent shows have included Sir Elton John, Roger Waters and AR Rahman. These days, The Talent Brokers finds Bollywood stars a bigger, more dependable draw than western acts, partly due to a strong Indian connection in the UAE. India remains the nation’s biggest trade partner and before the introduction of the dirham, the Indian rupee was the de facto currency. “Indian film star shows are growing globally and can do very good business all over the world,” Coram says. “They sell more tickets than the international acts here, only because of the international mix.”

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 51

The Middle East

Madonna at Tel Aviv’s Ramat Gan Stadium earlier this year

Cultural differences

In 2009, Live Nation booked Beyoncé to play at the opening ceremony of Port Ghalib, a new resort community on the Red Sea, and the show, while successful on its own terms,

illustrates some of the challenges faced by Western pop acts in the Middle East. Attacked by one Egyptian MP as “an insolent sex party” that would “encourage vice and debauchery”, the show was opposed by 10,000 people on Facebook and demonstrated that what counts as mildly raunchy in the permissive west may cause considerable offence in a conservative Islamic nation.

Promoters of Western acts throughout the region thoroughly brief their artists, both on the expected code of conduct in an Islamic state, and on the penalties if they don’t take that code seriously. “As promoters, we need to be very mindful of where we are,” says Mervyn. “It’s not London.

We supply a list of performance guidelines: no cursing, no nudity, no drinking on stage, no urging the audience to drink, no references to religion, government or the ruling family.

Other promoters have had problems, but generally we are very careful to brief the artists.”

In the desert lands around the Arabian Gulf, artists might want to be forewarned of certain other things too. Sand storms are a genuine hazard, while between May and September, stifling desert temperatures keep live music at bay, except in the most exceptional circumstances. “Generally, we don’t do concerts after the first week of May, but when Madonna offers you a date in June, you don’t say no,” says Mervyn. As predicted, temperatures hovered around a sweltering 44°C on the night of the show, which illustrates the good sense of the general rule.

Festivals Small territories such as the UAE, however wealthy, can struggle to support festivals, as recent years have proved. Center Stage Management’s Dubai Desert Rock brought hard rock to the region for a number of years, but it finally abandoned the project after the 2009 event, headlined by Motörhead.

Still healthy, however, are Live Nation’s dXb Beach Festival, now in its second year, and the du World Music Festival at Burj Park in Dubai, where performers this year included Salif Keita and the Gipsy Kings.

On the Mediterranean coast, Lebanon’s Byblos is the star, this year bringing Slash, BB King and Snow Patrol to a purpose-built outdoor theatre in the ancient town of the same name. “It was a good line-up,” says Nagi Baz, “but the year before was good too – we had Scorpions, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Moby, Jamie Cullum. We try to have at least two sexy rock headliners a year.”

85km from Beirut, the Baalbeck International Festival is reputedly the oldest cultural event in the Middle East, leaning towards classical, jazz and world music, with Zucchero, opera diva Jessye Norman and Arab star Saber Rebaï on this year’s bill, on a breathtaking site between two Roman temples. The Beiteddine Art Festival operates on similar musical terrain, 50km from Beirut.

Tunisia, too, has had its share of well-respected festivals, including the Tabarka Jazz Festival, which has brought world-

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I don’t believe in what my government is doing here; it doesn’t necessarily represent what fans believe in, and it shouldn’t come between the artists and their fans.

”

Oren Arnon, Shuki Weiss Promotion & Production – Israel class talent to North Africa over the years, including Buena Vista Social Club and Italian jazz trumpeter Enrico Rava. However, the festival’s planned return in July this year was cancelled a month before, apparently due to obstructive officialdom. On a small scale, the Tunisia Electronic Music Festival brought around 1,000 clubbers to Hammamet’s Delphina Beach for its third edition in July.

Israel, however, has the region’s strongest festival line-up, including jazz events in Tel Aviv and Eilat; the mini-Montreux of Tel Aviv newcomer, the White City Festival; alternative event In-D-Negev; and Jerusalem’s Woodstock Revival Festival. Jeremy Hulsh says Israel still has certain issues to overcome, including one with sponsorship, which is largely absent. “That is why it is very difficult to put on festivals with multiple headliners,” he says. “It’s not like in Europe, or even other countries in the Middle East, where a brand will throw money into a festival for naming rights.”

Dubai Trade Centre Arena hosted Moby in July 2011

The Middle East

Venues

“

Some artists will expect to be paid very well to come here, because they have managed to get extremely high fees [in the region] in the past... it’s a matter of picking the right acts at the right time and increasingly saying ‘no thanks’ if the artist insists on picking up a golden fee.

”

Thomas Ovesen, Done Events – UAE Not only do high temperatures make outdoor summer shows all but impossible, they also drive large parts of the expat community out of the country for the peak summer months. And if an indoor show might seem a good alternative, the fact is that Dubai and Abu Dhabi have a profound lack of indoor venues. “The biggest challenge in Dubai is the lack of indoor venues,” says Mervyn.

“We don’t have a proper, purpose-built arena like The O2 or Wembley Arena. I know there are plans to build arenas around the region, but unfortunately, as yet, nothing is built.”

In May, UAE telecoms operator du signed a four-year sponsorship deal with Flash Entertainment that saw the emirate’s 22,000-capacity concert venue Yas Arena rebranded as the du Arena. The venue is the default for Western stars and was the location of Madonna’s show. Also in Abu Dhabi, Global Spectrum

manages the recently renovated, 42,000-seat Mohammad bin Zayed Stadium, which tends to focus on sporting events.

Another Abu Dhabi complex, Zayed Sports City, likewise hosts major football, tennis and ice skating events in its 43,000-capacity stadium, 5,000-seat tennis arena and 1,000-capacity skating rink. In February, the tennis complex welcomed WWE for its first Abu Dhabi visit, and director of sales and marketing, Maria Gedeon, says there are big plans for music too. “When it comes to music and entertainment, we would like our buildings to become the UAE promoters’ venue of choice,” says Gedeon. “We are encouraging regional and international promoters to bring more events to Abu Dhabi by providing them with our local expertise in commercial rights, marketing and operations, as well as turnkey solutions for their events.

“The biggest challenge is the heat, given that our most popular entertainment venues are both outdoors and can only be used from October to May. Otherwise, the challenges here are no different to anywhere else in the world.”

For some venues, that is unfortunately very clearly the case.

The Palladium, a 5,500-capacity theatre in Dubai Media City that drew acts including Akon, Backstreet Boys and The Merchants of Bollywood in its original incarnation, is currently on ice. Acquired for $100m by the Lebanese Pragma Group in 2010, it is now standing idle.

Sept 2012 IQ Magazine | 55

In Focus...

Do you have a photo for inclusion? email info@iq-mag.net 1

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1. M ojo Barriers trialled a new touring system on Madonna’s MDNA European tour leg. The new design barrier is slightly lighter than Mojo’s standard system to enable a saving of 20% on truck space and storage. Pictured are Mojo MD Cees Muurling & Appi Thörig fitting the system at Madonna’s London show.

2. T in the Park promoter Geoff Ellis and Tennent’s Lager head of sponsorship George Kyle officially launch this year’s festival backstage at the Balado site.

3. Conference organiser Informa took a select group of intrepid industry journalists and production people along the new Up at The O2 skywalk atop the venue to mark the launch of Live Production Network – a dedicated conference and exhibition for the live production industry set to debut at The O2 arena next April. The event will run alongside PALME Europe.

4. Athlete Jessica Ennis is welcomed by tens of thousands of fans at Hyde Park after her Olympic heptathlon victory. A series of free concerts took place at the park throughout the Games.

5. Plaster Creative Communications chief Graham Brown shows off his festival chic by cornering Nile Rodgers backstage at Camp Bestival in July.

6. EXIT Festival in Serbia hosted the first managerial meeting of Central and Eastern European performers. Pictured at the event (which was organised in conjunction with Eurosonic Noorderslag and Sziget Festival as part of the Central and Eastern European Talent Exchange Program ), are artist manager Ionut Sandu, Makarov Muusik’s Juri Makarov and Multimedia Organisation’s Laszlo Hegedus.

7. Big Concerts’ CEO Attie van Wyk and COO John Langford welcome The Eagles before the band’s debut show in South Africa at Cape Town Stadium.

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56 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012

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Your Shout

TOP SHOUT!

“ What is the best lesson or piece of advice you have learned from a boss?”

Georg Leitner, Georg Leitner Productions I was in my early twenties and used to have constant arguments with James Brown – who really had his very peculiar way of seeing things (“Mr. Leitner – last night we had over a million people at the show…”) Anyway, Jack Bart then gave me two important pieces of advice in dealing with James Brown: “Don’t ever argue with your artist – if you don’t want to lie – just say ‘I hear you, Mr.Brown’; and “Don’t get close to your artist. If you do, he will only reach in your pocket…”

Anonymous When I was an agent, I was told “never book an act unless you have seen it, except if it is a name act.” And, “never make enemies when you can make friends!”.

Thomas Oveson, Done Events The same advice as I will give any of my team members – “sometimes saying ‘no’ to an agent/artist is the best thing to do even when pressured”; AND “don’t ever claim my events as yours.”

Sam Heineman, Sam Heineman Events “Working in the entertainment industry is a privilege, not a right.”

– Sid Payne, Electric Factory Concerts Andy Lenthall, PSA “Always let other people write the last page of editorial.”

Frank Suepfle, ITM Agency “Bumps only hurt your own head.”

– Ewe Block Akiko Rogers, William Morris Endeavor 1. Did you get the money?

2. Make sure you have the money.

3. Where’s the money?

Ed Grossman, MGR The best piece of advice I’ve learned from a boss was when my first boss was advising a client in the next room by phone and I overheard the conversation.

I decided that his advice was wrong and interrupted his call to tell him. He thanked me and suggested I closed the door on the way out. Later on he called me in and thanked me for my initiative and advised me on two very important things: “One: never, ever do that again, and two: don’t be shy to use initiative, but if you get it wrong, don’t get upset if you get a slap!”

Andy Lenthall, PSA “Never spend too much time thinking about a ‘Your Shout’ response.”

Juha Mattila, Live Nation Finland “Go to sleep, it does not go away overnight.” (This refers to good and bad things.)

Bryan Grant, Britannia Row Productions Don’t touch THAT wire.

Jean-Louis Schell, SpeakEasy Matt Bates (Primary Talent) proposed I could promote Babyshambles in Paris. I was at Alias at the time. I knew that there was a risk, so I immediately went to see Jules Frutos, the head of Alias, to get his opinion. He answered me immediately: “Jean-Louis, it is our work to take this kind of risk.” Since then, I got my own company, SpeakEasy, and still promote Peter Doherty/Babyshambles.

Steve Jenner, Festival Awards Ltd I could not have hoped for a better mentor than Stuart Galbraith at Kilimanjaro Live. One lesson that sticks out concerns a national arena tour we were promoting which had sold out fast except for the cheapest up-in-the-Gods seats, which had stalled at one venue. The obvious suggestion to shift these last tickets would be to run a discount or special offer scheme. So Stuart’s idea to do the opposite and increase their price baffled us, not least during these austere times. Sure enough, they all sold-out very quickly after doing so, with the equity of the ticket and act increasing rather than decreasing in the process. The strategy paid off because Stuart knew that the demand for the act was regionally strong enough to fill the arena once the correct parameters had been established for customer value perception, which is the true art of being a successful live promoter.

Andy Lenthall, PSA “Never send more than two ‘Your Shout’ responses.”

If you would like to send feedback, comments or suggestions for future Your Shout topics, please email: info@iq-mag.net

58 | IQ Magazine Sept 2012