IQ54

LIVE MUSIC INTELLIGENCE

Issue 54

An ILMC Publication. July 2014

THE STREAMING PUZZLE:

Finding a Path

Rock Werchter Hits 40, Family Guys, Australasia Market Spotlight, 20 Years of Oppikoppi

Contents IQ Magazine Issue 54

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News and Developments 6 In Brief The main headlines over the last two months 7 In Depth Key stories from around the live music world 16 Techno Files Revealing the hottest new technology in live entertainment

Features

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18 Living The Stream Ian Thomas navigates the complex live streaming landscape 24 A Land Down Under Lars Brandle updates us on business in Australasia 36 Belgium’s Best Rock Werchter prepares for its 40th edition 48 Family Guys Eugenia Durante guides our annual tour around the family shows sector 56 Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Nation) South Africa’s Oppikoppi Festival marks 20 anarchic years

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Comments and Columns 12 Juggling Genres Louis Bellavance reveals the programming challenges for the Festival d’été de Québec 13 The Barriers to Safe Events Cees Muurling ponders how attitudes have changed to the humble stage barrier 14 Structurally Sound Steven Corfield deconstructs the new CDM guidelines

48 56

15 Promoting Yourself Before Others Carl Leighton-Pope on how to make effective approaches to agents 62 Your Shout Can football and live music learn from each other?

IQ Magazine July 2014

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La Coupe Mondiale runneth over

With one eye constantly on the clock for kick-off time, Gordon Masson finds his summer dominated by music and the beautiful game…

I have to confess that I am not a big fan of international football. Any form of nationalism doesn’t sit well with me.

But, more selfishly, as the fan of a club with many international players in its squad (the mighty Arsenal; in case you’re wondering), the prospect of a World Cup (or worse, pointless friendly matches between countries), fills me with dread that one of our star performers will have his legs mangled by some rank amateur who turns out to be a part-time butcher.

Or postman. However, hats off to the people of Brazil because I am thoroughly enjoying this tournament and, judging by the daily conversations I have with people around the world, it would seem the same is true for most of the people in the live music industry.

So, with a fantastic summer of music and 31 teams to support (as a Scotsman) at the World Cup, my cup has indeed been running over, albeit with bedtime cocoa given the time difference for some games. And seamlessly linking into what we have in this shiny edition of IQ, we’ve devoted Your Shout (page 62) to your thoughts on what these two glorious entertainment sectors can possibly learn from each other.

Taking us to 2010’s World Cup host nation, we’ve got a great 20th anniversary feature on South Africa’s Oppikoppi festival (see page 56), which, courtesy of founder Carel Hoffman, operates under possibly my favourite festival rule of all time – and one that should be adopted in life as a whole. Check it out.

Back in Europe, we visit another world-class festival as Belgium’s Rock Werchter marks its 40th edition (page 36) by once again showing the rest of the industry that treating fans, artists and

IQ Magazine July 2014

crews in a manner that we’d all like to be treated can pay dividends over a long, long period of time.

Our Brisbane-based scribe, Lars Brandle, talks to the various Michaels et al who are still helping to make Australia and New Zealand such viable tour hotspots in this issue’s market spotlight (page 24) and reports that a growing number of local artists in the antipodes are beginning to make serious waves outside of their home territories.

Page 48 sees Eugenia Durante take on our annual look at the family entertainment sector, where the producers of shows, both large and small, are experiencing improved conditions internationally as economies around the world emerge from their prolonged recessions.

Last, but my no means least, we investigate the ins and outs, advantages and disadvantages of live streaming (page 18). Ian Thomas talks to those capitalising on the digital revolution that is allowing more and more fans to enjoy the live experience without actually being at the concert or festival.

And on a technology-related bent, this issue of IQ also introduces our new focus on gadgets and gizmos that have the potential to improve the live entertainment industry. If you’re one of the many delegates who pack into the New Tech panel session at ILMC each year, have a gander at Techno Files (page 16) to find out what some of the sharpest minds in the business are creating for us.

Personally, I’m hoping that someone will come up with an app to remind Scottish footballers just where the greatest nation in the world is, so that I can drop this grandiose stance against nationalism that I’m forced to adopt every four years…

Issue 54 LIVE MUSIC INTELLIGENCE THE ILMC JOURNAL, July 2014

IQ Magazine 7 Jeffrey’s Place London, NW1 9PP info@iq-mag.net www.iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 7284 8945 Fax: +44 (0)20 7284 8947

Publisher

ILMC and Suspicious Marketing

Editor

Gordon Masson

Associate Editor Allan McGowan

Marketing & Advertising Manager Terry McNally

Design

Martin Hughes

Sub Editor

Michael Muldoon

Production Assistant Adam Milton

Editorial Assistant Eugenia Durante

Contributors

Louis Bellavance, Lars Brandle, Steven Corfield, Cees Muurling, Ian Thomas, Carl Leighton-Pope, Manfred Tari

Editorial Contact

Gordon Masson, gordon@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 7284 8945

Advertising Contact

Terry McNally, terry@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 7284 8946

To subscribe to IQ Magazine: +44 (0)20 7284 8945 info@iq-mag.net Annual subscription to IQ is £50 (€60) for 6 issues.

5

News

In Brief...

MAY

Live Nation Entertainment announces lower net losses of $32.4million (€23.8m) compared to $63.2m (€46.5m) 12 months ago, for its first quarter of the year, while revenues increased 22% in the same period to $1.13billion (€0.8bn) [Q1 2013 $923.7m]. The company said concert attendance was up 11%, a trend it expects to continue through the remainder of 2014, resulting in concert revenue of $663m (€488m) in Q1, up 29% over the same period in 2013. Ticketmaster receipts in the same period rose 9% to $355m (€261m).

ID&T’s Mysteryland breaks new ground as its inaugural US event becomes North America’s first fully cashless multi-day music festival. The dance music festival, held at New York’s iconic Bethel Woods Center For The Arts (host of Woodstock), partnered with RFID provider Intellitix to deploy their Intellipay cashless payment system.

William Morris Endeavor Entertainment finalises its acquisition of IMG Worldwide thanks to an investment boost by financiers Silver Lake Partners. Monetary figures have not been disclosed.

Online ticketing platform Eventbrite, which claims revenues of US$3bn (€2.2bn) in ticket sales covering millions of events in more than 180 countries, opens an office in Melbourne. See page 9 for more.

Live Nation announces an alliance with Yahoo! that will see the web company stream Live Nation’s concerts live, with a gig a day for a year. The project will be funded by sponsorship.

UK promoter Stuart Galbraith sells a majority stake in his Kilimajaro Live operation to Peter Schwenkow’s DEAG for close to €4m, the purchase price potentially increasing by hitting future income targets. Both parties claim it will help expand their interests throughout Europe.

The Australian branch of the Event Safety Alliance announces its closure, citing “the disappointing support in the industry and consequent lack of finance to cover the operational costs.”

SFX Entertainment reports revenues of $33.3m (€24.5m) but losses of $63.6m

(€46.8m) for its first-quarter earnings.

However, the company says it will promote 76 festivals this year, up by one third on last year’s activity.

In a speech at The Great Escape conference and showcase event, UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s intellectual property adviser, Mike Weatherley, says Google isn’t doing enough to curb online piracy and reveals he is working on potential legislation that will help companies better protect themselves against it.

Liberty Media Corp reveals plans to acquire another 3.7 million shares of Live Nation Entertainment following the conglomerate’s decision to raise $250m (€183m) by issuing convertible notes.

Liberty’s stake in Live Nation currently tops 26% or 52 million shares Warner Music Group owner Len Blavatnik tops the The Sunday Times’ annual list of the UK’s richest people in music, with an estimated fortune of £10billion (€12.6bn). Former Zomba Records chief Clive Calder slips to second in the list with a paltry £1.4bn (€1.8bn), while theatre owner Cameron Mackintosh is third with £1bn (€1.25bn). Others on the list include Paul McCartney and Nancy Shevell with £710 million (€896m); Andrew Lloyd-Webber, £640m (€808m); U2, £428m (€540m); Simon Fuller, £382m (€482m); Simon Cowell, £300m (€379m); Mohammad and Kamaliya Zahoor, £300m (€379m); and Elton John, £260m (€328m).

Prince Rupert Loewenstein, former manager of the Rolling Stones, dies at the aged of 80 after a long battle with illness.

Loewenstein guided the Stones’ fortunes for nearly 40 years.

Primaverapro posts impressive 30%plus growth figures when the conference records 2,360 delegates at the late May event in Barcelona, with more than half of the attendees travelling from outside of Spain. The parallel Primavera Sound festival increased visitor numbers by 20,000 to 190,000 and featured acts including Arcade Fire, Pixies, Queens of the Stone Age, Haim and Nine Inch Nails.

Earth Agency, a new boutique booking outfit, sets up shop in London, with a focus on independent non-mainstream artists. See page 11 for more.

JUNE

The European Commission is asked to intervene on behalf of independent music companies after YouTube threatens to block the content of companies who refuse to sign-up to its new streaming service. Indie organisations such as the Worldwide Independent Network and Impala say YouTube’s offer involves “highly unfavourable terms” that are lower than those offered to major labels Sony, Warner and Universal.

Woodstock promoter Michael Lang confirms rumours that plans are afoot for a 50th anniversary festival in 2019 and that potential locations are being evaluated.

Beastie Boys © Terry Richardson

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IQ Magazine July 2014

The Beastie Boys win $1.7m (€1.25m) in damages following a copyright violation case against the manufacturer of Monster Energy drinks. Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond testified about their staunch opposition to the use of their music in commercial endorsements, while the late Adam Yauch stated as much in his will. Jurors found that Monster had used the bands’ persona without permission. Monster intends to appeal.

Michael Chugg’s record label, Chugg Music, signs its first international act, Down With Webster, for the Australian and New Zealand markets. The raprockers’ Party For Your Life was already No 1 album in the band’s native Canada.

In a senior management shake-up, SFX Entertainment’s COO Joseph Rascoff becomes chairman of live entertainment, while Ritty Van Straalen, Timothy Crowhurst, Richard Rosenstein and Chris Stephenson will head-up a newly formed management group, reporting to CEO Robert Sillerman. Jacob Smid replaces Van Straalen as MD of SFX North America, while Duncan Stutterheim, a founder of ID&T, is named head of SFX Europe and Dror Erez is placed in charge of SFX Australia.

Honda partners with Live Nation and Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio to launch a branded event and corresponding YouTube channel. The Honda Stage will be rolled out at events such as The Governors Ball in New York and Austin City Limits Music Festival in the US. The branded YouTube channel will feature live performances, behind-the-scenes content and exclusive artist interviews.

YouTube admits it has plans to launch a new subscription music service, following media coverage over its spat with indie music organisations.

SFX agrees a five-year deal with secondary ticketing powerhouse Viagogo, reportedly involving a $75m (€55m) sponsorship package and a branded resale marketplace for SFX electronic dance music events around the world.

Creative Artists Agency purchases experiential marketing outfit PGW, a specialist in sports and lifestyle campaigns and live event production. PGW manages more than $1.5bn (€1.10bn) of sponsorship rights deals.

IQ Magazine July 2014

Marek Lieberberg

News

Live Nation (LN) Australasia has inked a brand partnership with national airline Qantas that will see the two companies collaborate on a range of marketing opportunities. See page 10 for more.

Lollapalooza promoter C3 Presents completes its takeover of Australia’s Big Day Out (BDO) touring festival and immediately announces that the events will skip a year in 2015. The American company initially took a 51% stake in BDO in 2012. Last year, BDO co-founder Ken West sold his 49% stake to fellow Sydney promoter AJ Maddah, who claims C3 Presents paid him AUS$1 as part of a joint-venture agreement.

German promoter Marek Lieberberg may lose the right to the Rock am Ring name, after the owners of the Nürburgring, with whom he has a joint venture for the festival, cancelled the lease on the June event.

See page 9 for more.

The Canadian government has eliminated its controversial tour tax after complaints that it was hindering foreign artists from performing at small venues in the country. Expensive work permits were not required by arena acts, leading to accusations that the regulations discriminated against small businesses.

AEG Live takes a financial hit by honouring tickets sold via a special weblink intended only for the companies’ friends and family for the British Summer Time festival in London’s Hyde Park. Passes for the July event were priced at upwards of £50 (€62.65) but when a link for £2.50 (€3.13) tickets went viral on social media networks, countless fans leapt on the deal.

Self-service ticketing platform Ticketscript secures a new backer, FF&P Private Equity, which will invest £7million (€8.6m) in the business to fuel further global expansion and the development of new services for existing clients.

Trade show and conference Midem announces it will move from its traditional January slot to the summer heat of the French Riviera in 2015. Organisers claim Midem 2015 will involve an “enlarged programme to support labels and their artists looking to export internationally, as well as new exhibition space and content devoted to Tech & Innovation.”

Irving Azoff buys 50% of comedy promoter and producer Levity Entertainment Group to add to the portfolio of his joint venture with the Madison Square Garden Company, Azoff MSG Entertainment.

Levity runs its own network of comedy clubs and produces comedy content for TV and online.

Live music events will return to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, for the first time in a decade following a deal between the site’s owner, John Spencer-Churchill (the Duke Of Marlborough) and music company Neapolitan Live Events, led by one-time Universal Music executive Ciro Romano.

A report on Australia’s live performance industry by trade body Live Performance Australia says the industry generated AUS$2.5bn (€1.7bn) in 2012, up from AUS$2bn (€1.4bn) in its last study in 2008.

Lady Gaga and her manager, Bobby Campbell, join Artist Nation, Live Nation’s artist management division.

The Welsh Music Foundation, the development body that has supported the music industry in Wales for nearly fifteen years, announced it will suspend operations after failing to negotiate new funding from the Welsh government.

JULY

Secondary ticketing outfit Stubhub announces the layoff of 100 staff, 15% of its workforce.

German promoters’ association BDV announces a €500mn increase in the value of the national live entertainment market in its 2013 report. The report shows increased turnover of €3.82bn and a 9% rise in the number of people attending events (to 32.9 million).

To subscribe to IQ Magazine: +44 (0)20 7284 8945 info@iq-mag.net Annual subscription to IQ is £50 (€60) for 6 issues.

7

News

Movers and Shakers One of IQ’s 2013 New Bosses winners, Danielle Russell (née Buckley), has been promoted at Wembley Stadium and will take on the role of partnership development manager, music & new events. The promotion recognises “two years of outstanding performance and consistent delivery for our event owners” according to Jim Frayling, the stadium’s head of business development, new events.

Agent Matt Andersen has joined The Agency Group’s office in Los Angeles, bringing with him a roster of more than 25 artists including Motionless In White, Attila, For Today, The Word Alive, and Chelsea Grin. Andersen was previously at The Pantheon Agency, where he rose to the rank of vice-president.

The SSE Hydro in Glasgow hosted the latest meeting of the European Arenas Association.

As part of the programme, representatives of the organisation’s 32 member venues were treated to an evening performance of Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion, while the daytime agenda included a panel session entitled Building Content

Into Arenas, chaired by IQ editor Gordon Masson and featuring advice from MTV Europe Music Awards executive producer, Richard Godfrey; Triple G Music promoter, Donald MacLeod; Commonwealth Games head of venue management, Charles Quelch, and Cirque du Soleil production manager, Mike Newnum.

Crime Slashed at Download Festival Download Festival’s organisers are reporting a 70% reduction in crime-related incidents across Donington Park during this year’s edition, which took place in June.

A key factor in this positive outcome, they say, was the introduction by security specialist Showsec, of a specific crime reduction strategy, which resulted in closer cooperation with the police throughout the festival.

The strategy’s objective was to create a safer and more enjoyable environment for the customers, introducing information hubs in each campsite and deploying regular patrols to assure a more visible presence by the police.

Martin Lewis, Showsec’s area manager for Wales and the South West and crime reduction manager for Download 2014, observes,

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Venue sales director Stephen Richards has announced his departure from The NEC in the UK. LightGeist, specialists in cloud-based audience engagement products for live music and sport events, has appointed Simon Hicks as director of software products. He was previously technical director at Pharos Architectural Controls.

Mike Docksey is the new general manager of sound, light and visual production solutions provider Adlib, and has been tasked with overseeing its fast expanding lighting and AV divisions.

Docksey was previously at HSL Group.

Ticketing platform Eventbrite has hired April Chang as VP of engineering, consumer & infrastructure operations. Her previous experience includes stints at PayPal, Yahoo!, and Sun Microsystems.

Bertil van Veen has rejoined the XL Video team as country manager for the Netherlands. He left the company in 2010 to “This is the first time there join ACS as manager for its Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam has been a co-ordinated locations. Now back at XL, he will be located at the company’s approach to tackling spe- new office in Amsterdam where he will be responsible for the cific aspects of crime and it management of the Dutch sales team. has certainly made a massive difference that we have been able to work so closely with Leicestershire Police.

“We have 1,000 pairs of eyes Online ticketing platform here on the ground. We have around the site at any one time, Eventbrite has opened a new seen incredible growth in this whereas the police have maybe office in Melbourne, with the region on Eventbrite. This only 100 pairs of eyes on duty, San Francisco-based com- announcement underscores our so we can cover so much more pany, which claims around commitment to bring powerful through this link-up and there- US$3billion (€2.2bn) in ticket technology and experiences to fore act on anything suspicious sales covering millions of the people of Australia.” much quicker.” events in more than 180 counLast year in Australia, around Detective Constable Kevin tries, revealing it had cho- 3 million tickets were proWalker from Leicestershire sen Australia because of the cessed by Eventbrite, coverPolice’s intelligence division nation’s fast growth and experi- ing more than 54% of the total notes, “Having representatives ence in organising live events. events held in the country. Havfrom Showsec in our briefings Eventbrite CEO Kevin Hartz ing opened its new Melbourne twice a day was just one aspect comments, “Eventbrite is office on 12 June, the company of how working together about bringing people together is hoping to exceed those numunderpinned the success of the through live experiences, and bers in the next 12 months. whole operation and made the we are thrilled to officially event so much safer for every- plant roots in Australia and one who was attending.” support the local community

Eventbrite Enters Australia

IQ Magazine July 2014

News

Legal Battle Over Rock Am Ring Rights The news that Rock Am Ring will no longer take place at the Nürburgring prompted nationwide media coverage in Germany, as shortly before this year’s 5-8 June festival opened its gates, stories began leaking that the new owner of the race circuit, Capricorn, had ended talks with promoters MLK regarding staging the 29th edition of the weekender in 2015.

The site was previously operated by Nürburgring GmbH, but that operation filed for insolvency in July 2012. The company was owned by the German district government of Rhineland-Palatinate and financially collapsed after its political stakeholders failed with an ambitious plan to redevelop the site into a tourist hotspot. The financial loss to tax payers is estimated to exceed €500million.

Following a tender process for the Nürburgring in March 2014, the administrators declared car supply company Capricorn had the winning bid – a reported €77m. However, the whole insolvency

procedure was spiked with many legal obstacles, some of which still linger. Indeed, the European Commission has launched an investigation regarding a questionable declaration for €486m in subsidies for the site.

Amidst this legal spiderweb, Capricorn had begun early negotiations with MLK as promoter of Rock Am Ring regarding the lease conditions for the site in 2015. Capricorn, then, according to media reports, cancelled the lease contract, with MLK founder Marek Lieberberg claiming the car giant was demanding a higher profit participation, which he felt was unjustified.

Rubbing salt into the wound, Capricorn then teamed up with rival promoter DEAG to develop a successor event in 2015 on the same dates that Rock Am Ring has historically booked. The new festival will be called Grüne Hölle (Green Hell).

The public spat intensified on 12 June when the administrators of Nürburgring GmbH

issued a press release stating that they had filed an interim injunction against Marek Lieberberg and MLK regarding statements Lieberberg had made to news magazine Spiegel, claiming that he had the idea for Rock Am Ring and the name and that the brand was not bound to the Nürburgring. The administrators counterclaimed that Nürburgring GmbH co-owned the brand rights for the event.

On 30 June, the District Court in Koblenz ruled in favour of Nürburging GmbH and said that all of its assets would be handed over to Capricorn. In its verdict the court stated that neither of the opponents could proceed with the Rock Am Ring brand without the agreement of the other party. However, as the administrators only filed an interim injunction, MLK can appeal and take the case to the next level of jurisdiction.

At press time, Lieberberg had not responded to IQ’s queries, leaving the future of the Rock Am Ring event in question.

However, according to media reports, Lieberberg is considering the launch of a new festival to replace Rock Am Ring and is examining sites in Mönchengladbach and Mendig.

More than 1,000 people were given shelter by the Kombank Arena in Belgrade, after catastrophic flooding during May destroyed hundreds of homes in and around the Serbian capital city. The venue’s general director, Đorđe Milutinović, reports, “Villages around Belgrade and some suburbs do not exist any more. If you see any way that you can help those people, please do, as the damage is huge and recovering will last for years.”

IQ Magazine July 2014

Evenpro on the Move Veteran promoter Phil Rodriguez is rebranding his Evenpro organisation with an expanded operation called Move Concerts.

Headquartered in Miami, Move will have a network of offices in Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and, for the first time for Rodriguez, Argentina.

Rodriguez reveals that the catalyst to expand his interests was a direct result of Evenpro selling part of its business to Brazilian advertising giant ABC to establish promoting outlet XYZ Live.

“That project did not go as well as everyone envisaged,” Rodriguez admits. “We spent some time negotiating our way out of the live entertainment division of XYZ – a process that we completed in early April.”

The Evenpro founder was determined to continue operations in Brazil, in particular, prompting the creation of Move. “we are in the process of rebranding all of the Evenpro offices as Move Concerts, and in addition, bringing our affiliate office in Puerto Rico fully into the company. “In the next three months we will also open an office in Argentina.

We helped build the highway down there and now we are finally there with a physical presence” Rodriguez reports Move is already on sale with shows for Thirty Seconds To Mars, Michael Bublé, Queens of the Stone Age, Ghost, Placido Domingo, the Z Festival in Brazil, and later in the year, Arctic Monkeys.

“We’re not discarding copromotes in Argentina but we want to be able to have a presence there so we can deliver the service that the artists and agencies we have a relationship with expect from us,” Rodriguez adds.

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News

Live Nation (LN) Australasia has inked a brand partnership with national airline Qantas that will see the two companies collaborate on a range of marketing opportunities. Thanks to the agreement, brokered by Live Nation’s joint venture partner, mixitup Australia, any international artists LN promote will fly with Qantas throughout Australia and Asia in exchange for marketing projects and campaigns across Live Nation’s events and online platforms.

It is not the first time Qantas has collaborated with companies within the music industry: last January the airline signed a naming rights deal for the Sydney Entertainment Centre, now known as the Qantas Credit Union Arena.

Michael Coppel, president and CEO of Live Nation Australia and New Zealand, comments, “Utilising Live Nation’s network of concerts, ticketing and online assets will enable Qantas to fully tap into the power of live music and its intimate connection with millions of fans. We are looking forward to a fantastic and mutually successful partnership.”

Qantas’s executive manager, group brand & marketing, Tim McColl Jones, adds, “Live Nation provides us with the opportunity to further increase our international sales reach, as we fly more and more international music and entertainment acts to and around Australia and New Zealand. It also means more benefits for Qantas Frequent Flyers with preferential access to ticket offers and special promotions through Live Nation’s extensive portfolio of tours and shows.”

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Glownet Leverages Funding for European Expansion RFID specialist Glownet is ramping up its presence in Europe thanks to more than £1million (€1.25m) in new funding. The company, which was formed in New Zealand

by Rhythm & Vines promoter Scott Witters and his CFO Nicholas Crouch, is already securing impressive contracts and given the system’s ability to operate offline, Glownet is increasingly being brought in by events at the 11th hour.

“Our unique selling point is that we are one of the only companies that can truly work offline, we are confident that we have the right strategy in place to grow the company in Europe and the Middle East,” says Madrid-based Witters.

While other RFID solutions require truckloads of equipment, Witters says he can pack what he needs for Glownet into suitcases and jump on a plane. “We have been working with RFID for 11 years now at our festival – long before most people in the live music business had even heard of it,” he

says. “There have been a number of high profile RFID failures, so we designed Glownet to work even when there is no network coverage. For us it’s all about mobile, so we have deliberately avoided the strategy of tethering hardware to our needs.”

Scott Witters

Live Nation Agrees Deal With Qantas

Glownet’s latest contract involved a ten-day turnaround for an electronic festival in Turkey, where it rolled out a cashless solution plus a few add-on services. “Events in places like Turkey and Croatia appear to have more of an appetite for RFID, but we’re really looking to showcase what we do in key markets such as the UK and the Netherlands,” Witters continues. “We understand pre-

cisely what our clients want because we’ve been promoters ourselves. We’re especially looking at groups with multiple events who we can offer more favourable terms to. It’s an exciting time as we have agreed a number of significant deals for later in the year.”

Among its early successes are seven fully cashless events delivered in New Zealand, Taiwan, the Netherlands and the UK, including Standon Calling, which was nominated in the Best Use of New Technology category at last year’s UK Festival Awards.

“We have not used cash at our festival in New Zealand for seven years,” Witters adds. “RFID revolutionised our business by increasing the customer spend, reducing our staffing costs and most importantly getting great feedback from the customer regarding the improvements to their festival experience.

We look forward to delivering similar success to promoters here in Europe.”

Glastonbury Splashes Out on Stink-Free Loos Flush with cash, Glastonbury Festival has spent more than £600,000 (€750,000) on thousands of new technological ‘stink-free’ loos.

The event’s new long-drop composting toilets, which account for 2,088 of the festival’s facilities, will also collect waste water from washing up and campsite showers, while the resulting compost will reportedly fertilise Worthy Farm for two years. Ultimately, the plan is to replace all 5,000 on-site toilets with the compostable long-drops.

Glastonbury founder, Michael Eavis, admits that the state of the toilets is an aspect of the festival he

has long wanted to change.

“We’re always improving stuff but the great thing for me, funnily enough, is the loos,” Eavis says. “We have 31 units now. They cost £20,000 (€25,000) each, which is a

lot of money, but they don’t have to be touched during the whole week of the festival.”

He adds, “There’s no smell, a huge capacity – it’s a fantastic achievement. It’s fundamentally a huge improvement.”

IQ Magazine July 2014

News

New Agency Stays Earthed A new global booking agency, bringing together a group of agents who represent independent, left field artists, has been established in London.

Earth Agency will focus on a roster of indie acts that push musical boundaries.

Conceived and run by a collective of like-minded and experienced live agents – Claire Courtney, Isla Angus, Naomi Palmer and Rebecca Prochnik – alongside operations expert Luke Williamson, Earth will concentrate specifically on interesting independent artists who sit outside of the mainstream channels.

The Earth team have joined forces with a commitment to create a fresh agency environment for both artists and agents. With all five founding agents sitting somewhat

outside the box with regards to taste and approach, Prochnik explains that it became evident that there remains a gap to be filled by a new kind of agency service that can both reflect indie artists and retain a boutique sensibility, whilst delivering to the quality standards of a more major enterprise.

“I had worked at Elastic Artists for ten years and although that was a pretty forwardthinking company, I thought that my roster had outgrown the agency,” Prochnik says. “I didn’t know where to go where I could represent my artists in the way I want to rep them, but I started talking to some other agents who also wanted to do something bigger without joining a bigger agency and that’s how the idea to form some-

thing new came about.”

Among the acts on the Earth roster are Theo Parrish, Actress, Austra, Perfect Pussy, New Pornographers, Deerhunter, Omar Souleyman, The Swell Season, Cate Le Bon, Merchandise, Jackmaster, Black Lips, Glen Hansard, James Holden and Floating Points to name a few.

“We want to provide a different environment for our agents as well – to give them the support and secure cultural environment they deserve,”

continues Prochnik. “Agents work all the hours and need to be recognised for the hard work that they do, so although we have offices, our approach is the agents can work from anywhere with their laptop. Ultimately, the people who work at Earth are quite independent and forward thinking and that suits the artists who we represent.

And if you can build a community of like-minded people, then that can help that market develop and grow.”

Comment

Juggling Genres Louis Bellavance, programming director at the Festival d’été de Québec, talks about the challenges of putting on an event that attracts more than 1 million people annually…

W

ith 47 years in the industry, Festival d’été de Québec is the largest outdoor music event in Canada. For 11 days at ten venues throughout the city, there’s music for everyone from rock to French songs, hip-hop to electro, jazz to world music and much more. Over the years, such big names as Stevie Wonder, Bruno Mars, Tiësto, Bon Jovi, Skrillex, The Black Keys, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Arcade Fire, Rammstein, Black Eyed Peas and Elton John have all played its major venue – the historic Plains of Abraham.

All located in beautiful downtown Quebec City and within easy walking distance, each of the festival venues has its own charm. World music fans can dance all day and into the night to the festive rhythms at Place D’Youville. If you’re into blues, electro and still have the energy for the after-hours shows, the clubs in the lower part of the city will keep you up till dawn.

If you’re looking for the trendiest up-and-coming bands, join the crowd inside the historic Impérial concert hall or go to Parc de la Francophonie for music under the stars. And for huge gatherings and world-class stars, the stage on the Plains of Abraham will blow you away!

The all-inclusive transferable pass gives people 11 days of performances for just CAD$78 (€53). Every year, 150,000 passes go on sale and more than one million people attend the event.

Programming an event of this size is definitely a challenge for anyone. Even more so if you try to avoid artists from similar genres playing at the same time. We spend a tremendous amount of time just playing with the grid to make sure that when mainstream pop is on the main stage on one specific night, different genres will be showcased on the second and third outdoor stages and even in the indoor venues. If you look at this year’s schedule, for example, this year on 4 July we have mainstream pop on the main stage (Lady Gaga), French folk on the second (Daniel Bélanger), soul rock on the third stage (Vintage Trouble) and indie rock indoors (St Vincent).

We play the same game on each stage, in terms of not doing the same genre night after night, so rock fans, for example, can rest for at least a day between each rock night on a given stage. Doing it this way sure ain’t easy, but it’s worth it! We can see it in the attendance numbers, which we want to keep as high as possible.

The way this festival has grown in the past ten years brings an even greater challenge; to beat yourself (or at least try to) year after year. The pressure is high to keep that flow of oversized artist coming on the main stage. And the more we succeed, the higher the expectations. This is definitely one of the hardest things to deal with from a programming standpoint. But we keep the faith; new acts are blooming each year, and a few well-established ones are

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becoming arena acts every year too. We are competing with the rest of the world for the same top 20 acts that every festival on the planet in July (the busiest month of the year for the festival business worldwide) is trying to attract.

“We spend a tremendous amount of time just playing with the grid to make sure that when mainstream pop is on the main stage on one specific night, different genres will be showcased on the second and third outdoor stages and even in the indoor venues.”

Our production added value helps us, so does our general hospitality experience, but our ultimate weapon is our main stage capacity of 80,000, combined with our unique business model that allows us to offer the biggest audience an act can hope for. We do get to fill that 80,000-cap site every year at least a couple of times. For many artists, we are one of the best shots they have to play in front of so many people. All we want is that it stays that way.

On a yearly basis, 28% of our festivalgoers come from Canada, the USA and France. The event is presented in a highly visited city and the fact that our venues are located in the main touristic areas brings us many visitors. We also have artists with dedicated fans ready to travel around to world to see their favorite artist on stage: with Rammstein in 2010, for example, nearly 40% of the festivalgoers were tourists.This year, we expect many of Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters to travel to Québec to see the show.

Since we don’t want to keep this fabulous event for ourselves, we invite international reporters and agents to discover it.

Notoriety is important to help us staying at the top.

This amazing adventure began in 1968 with a group of businessmen and a bunch of young, talented artists taking over the city’s public areas with their music. First showcasing Québec’s local artists and street performers, the festival broadened its horizons by adding major international musicians to its programme in the early 80s.

Today, this non-profit event is a major cultural enterprise and a vigorous driving force behind the region’s economy, generating more than CAD$25.4million (€17.3m) in added value for Quebec City. With its stellar lineup, huge crowds and thousands of passes sold, the Festival d’été de Québec is now in league with the top American and European festivals.

For full details of this year’s Festival d’ete de Quebec, visit www.infofestival.com

IQ Magazine July 2014

Comment

The Barriers To Safe Events MD of Netherlands-based Mojo Barriers, Cees Muurling, shares his thoughts on how attitudes have changed to the humble stage barrier, as the company reaches the grand old age of 25....

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ack in 1988, I took my first job in the music industry working as local crew in the Netherlands and putting up stage barriers. Designed by Mojo Concerts’ founder John Mulder, Mojo barriers had only just been introduced, and were originally only for use during their own concerts. Before that it was plywood, scaffolding, bike racks…you name it, it was probably used.

The first sign that John was onto something special was when we started getting enquiries from artists who’d used the barriers in the Netherlands and wanted them on their tours: the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, U2, Tina Turner, the enquiries kept on coming.

Now 25 years on and the stage barrier plays a vital role in any festival or concert’s infrastructure. Although the actual product has remained fundamentally unchanged (apart from the switch from steel to aluminium in 1998, and the subsequent second generation aluminium barrier in 2012), it’s the science behind its use that is ever changing.

When designing a barrier layout, everything is taken into consideration: capacity, audience demographic, ground type, culture, genre of music, and the scheduling of acts. We now collaborate frequently with experienced, qualified professionals in the field of licensing authorities, crowd management and health and safety.

A decade ago, we introduced our Barrier Load Monitoring System (BLMS), a barrier system with integrated sensors used to measure real-time pressure. Used at festivals including Reading, Leeds and Roskilde, we ran an intensive research programme with Bucks New University in the UK, gathering data that helped shape subsequent configurations.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to layout, and event organisers should engage their suppliers early on in the planning stages to ensure that the safest barrier configuration can be decided upon, for audience, crew and artists.

Most production personnel understand this now. There is, however, a small number of people that still see the barriers as simply a piece of metal, and perhaps don’t realise the significance of the science behind their layout. That is, of course, until something negative happens. Unfortunately, as is often the case, incidents need to happen before actions are taken and before focuses are shifted.

Then there are tragic incidents such as the one that took place at Roskilde Festival in 2001 and which shocked the industry. To their credit, the organisers have been incredibly diligent in their efforts to learn and to minimise future risks.

Accidents are a combination of factors, and often the result of

IQ Magazine July 2014

unexpected human behaviour. It’s important to try and foresee these problems and put preventative measures in place. An event can be safe for years, but crowd safety is all about what could happen; planning for incidents and for audiences and artists doing something unpredicted.

“There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to layout, and event organisers should engage their suppliers early on in the planning stages to ensure that the safest barrier configuration can be decided upon, for audience, crew and artists.”

In the UK, there was a barrier movement in 2005 at Manchester City’s Eastland’s Stadium when Oasis played. The incident was discussed right across the industry, and everyone took a lot more interest and raised questions on the importance of barrier layout, especially, of course, licensing and local authorities. I believe that was a catalyst in accelerating the use of secondary barriers, as the aerial footage of the pressure wave building through the crowd from a surge at the back of the pitch pointed directly towards the use of an additional barrier line.

Most event professionals are now very much aware of these issues and what needs to be done; front of stage barriers, secondary and even tertiary lines, the need to have thrusts. All of these are now accepted configurations.

But our work is far from over. The past 25 years have been a whirlwind and the attitudes and standards of health and safety across the live events world have improved immensely. We need to continue to be transparent and communicate honestly with each other to ensure we minimise any future incidents.

There is also still some educating to be done, particularly when it comes to new promoters and artists coming through.

Listening to clients, we are currently focused on creating a global availability of compatible barrier, so that emerging markets can implement the same levels of safety. This also minimises the need for tours to carry full systems, reducing transport costs and reducing their carbon footprint. It’s a step we’ve proactively taken, securing an office in Australia with distributors in Malaysia, Japan and Spain, to name just a few.

We are very aware that we need to keep evolving along with the industry, developing products such as our Gatekeeper, which enables other new (access control) technologies, and keeping ahead of the wider understanding of crowd dynamics and crowd management.

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Comment

Structurally Sound As the Construction Design and Management (CDM) regulations come into full force in the UK, Steven Corfield, managing director of Serious Stages, talks us through the launch of the new guidelines...

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s this edition of IQ Magazine goes to press we are drawing to a close the consultation period for our industry-backed Guidance for Best Working Practice for Staging and Temporary Event Structures. It’s the product of 18 months of research and collaboration with Julian Spear of Symphotech ltd, an event safety company specialising in temporary structures. The guide has involved extensive editing (20 versions at the last count!) and is available free from June 2014.

But why do we need yet more guidance? Well, when it comes to ensuring that audiences, crew and performers are kept alive and uninjured, I believe there can never be enough advice.

But it needs to be cohesive – not conflicting – and it needs to be practical and cost effective to employ whilst meeting the myriad of expectations from the governing bodies that oversee our industry.

“Senior representatives from respected and trusted businesses have sat around many a table and worked with us to create a guide that we believe will work for all parties, covering everything from wind speed to the ever-important working at height.”

The main reason for launching it this year is the involvement of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) into the events sector. The HSE came into force during the London 2012 Olympics, where it introduced a heightened requirement for suppliers of stages and other demountable structures to comply with complex CDM regulations.

What followed was extensive research by the HSE into exactly how the events industry was conducting itself. Subsequent reports were not hugely favourable, especially in terms of varying practices in relation to work-at-height regulations.

Post Olympics, the HSE now takes responsibility for live event builds and de-rigs, with local authorities’ licensing departments taking responsibility for show days. With this change, there was an urgent need for clear, consistent standards that suppliers, organisers and enforcers can refer and adhere to.

CDM isn’t easy to integrate into live events, especially when the build period is days, not months, and when budgets, let’s face it, are a lot less. We knew we needed to work closely and be transparent with the HSE to show them how our own industry worked. With the HSE under CDM 2014 proposing to abolish Approved Codes of Practice (ACoPs)

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we were advised that our industry had to self-regulate. The alternative? Face having regulations imposed that might not fit the way that the event industry works.

For us, this process started during London 2012 when we invited the HSE onsite to see our working processes firsthand, and to compare the differences between event builds and permanent construction. The relationship we have shared since has been fruitful, mutually beneficial and has shown that the regulations being put into place are more than workable as long as you have planning, and, here’s that word again – guidance – in place.

We’ve led and authored the resulting document from our Somerset-based premises, but have engaged extensively from the outset with the other big players in the global staging market: Stageco, Star Events and Acorn Structures.

Senior representatives from these respected and trusted businesses have sat around many a table and worked with us to create a guide that we believe will work for all parties, covering everything from wind speed to the ever-important working at height. We’ll all be adhering to this guidance from now on, across every single project, globally.

The HSE has also been consulted on every aspect of the guide and their team of inspectors will now be using it as a reference. Throughout the initial drafting, and when we opened it up for consultation, we liaised with safety professionals, trade associations and organisers to create concise, fit-forpurpose guidance.

It is hoped and expected by all involved that this will become the common way of working for the staging sector, initially in the UK, although it is hoped that it will also form the basis of similar documents for international markets.

Indeed, at this year’s ILMC Production Meeting during the Lost In Guidance panel, the authors of the US Event Safety Guide expressed interest in adding our guidance as a chapter in their guide. This is, of course, the aim: to have global tours, festivals and events all working to the same standards. After all, we have the same responsibility for safety, no matter where we are in the world.

I’m incredibly proud of what we have managed to achieve and I speak on behalf of all involved when I say that I hope it will serve as a valuable reference point for suppliers; event and production managers; promoters and organisers; licensing and enforcement authorities; the HSE (and international counterparts); insurers; and, ultimately, for legal reference.

To receive your free copy of the guide or if you have any questions or feedback, please contact info@stages.co.uk.

IQ Magazine July 2014

Comment

Promoting Yourself Before Others Struck by the failure of new players to break into the business, referenced during ILMC’s Emerging Markets panel, veteran agent, Carl Leighton-Pope, offers advice for aspiring promoters on how to make effective approaches to agents...

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any young people dream of becoming a promoter, but how do they go about getting into the business?

For many, they will start by emailing agents, “I am a promoter in xxxx. I am in the city of xxxx. It’s nice here!

Will xxxx come and play a concert? How much? Please send me your price list, I have money.”

As an agent, I get many of these – too many. They warrant no response; why would I take them seriously?

Dating right back to the 70s, I have been a great supporter of new talented promoters breaking into our industry – we all started somewhere.

There are many ways into the business: Some, including a number of today’s leading promoters, gained experience working for an established promoter, eventually starting their own business; others form relationships through good initial approaches to agents.

If you want to take the second route, get your facts and figures straight before sending any emails. We aren’t interested in the view from the hotel, or how close the venue is to the beach. We want a clear proposal with as much relevant detail as possible: city, venue, capacity, proposed ticket price,

potential gross, estimated costs.

Don’t tell me how the food tastes – tell me how much it costs. Make me your best offer in a ‘sensible currency’, e.g.

US dollars, Euros or sterling. Tell me the best time period to sell tickets: summer or winter? Is it indoor or outdoor?, etc.

It is these details that will get my attention, and I will begin to take you seriously.

Money is not always the most important factor – it’s half the deal. What’s also important is if you have promoted before and, if so, who with? Will other agents or someone locally give you a reference?

I need assurance that you can do the job and have the finance in place before you start selling tickets. If I decide to work with you, my personal approach is to partner you with one of my local guys who knows my artists and can ensure you are up to the task and that finance, production and marketing are all in place. This is a proven way forward, I advise you to use it.

A professional approach will be taken seriously. Get all your facts in place before you make your first move – and good luck!

INTRODUCING A NEW PAGE TO HIGHLIGHT SOME OF THE GADGETS AND GIZMOS BEING TRIALED OR DEPLOYED

Techno files Gig Gadgetry fr om the Fr ontline...

With the growing success of the regular New Technology meeting at ILMC, this IQ sees the launch of a new regular page highlighting some of the most wonderful, weird or wild advances in live music industry tech…

Crowd Connected

How do you set up a crowd-sourced projection screen without using real screens? By using the crowd’s mobile phones, of course. Crowd Connected is the latest (patent pending) technology to allow event creators and designers to control smartphones as if they are pixelmapped LED fixtures. It uses the Bigger Picture, a cloud-based service that allows images, video and graphics to be pixel mapped onto wireless mobile devices and controlled from any internet-connected device using Crowd Connected’s webcontrol application. The firm recently came first in a Live Nation-sponsored festival tech competition, winning a development grant of £25,000 (€31,500).

EE Power Bars

Aermonix

Aermonix is an app that allows concertgoers to stream the concert audio on their mobile phones directly from the sound mixer, live at a show. The technology has already been used at UK festivals Wireless and Barclaycard British Summer Time to rave reviews, and the application is free and can be downloaded from iTunes. Finally there’s an app to cut out that annoying guy to your left at a festival who’s had a few too many and bellows the wrong words in the right order...

The worst nightmare for the modern festival-goers is no longer the rain. Having their smartphones run out of power is infinitely worse, and involves endlessly queuing at charging stations. Until now. Thanks to network operator EE and its ingenious EE Power Bars, this year Glastonbury Festival, among others, made strides to prevent the dreaded dead battery symptom from striking. The device is a small, and relatively cheap, it cost just £20 (€25) to buy, and once used, could be swapped for fully charged bars at an exchange booth on site. And judging by the constant queues for a power refill, the Power Bar was the musthave accessory of Glasto ‘14.

Fezzee

Fezzee is a new real-time platform with an app designed for fans at music festivals and built for organisers to engage fans all year round. The app is free for fans to download and lists the hottest UK and European festivals in 2014. Fezzee works for the full event lifecycle: publish your line-up early as a list, then later by stage and time, and push last minute changes to fans.

The technology also allows organisers to have conversations with fans using its instant messaging service and realtime buzz features, while fans can be rewarded for contributing content. The company allows festivals to publish their line-up at no cost in the Fezzee app, or to choose from a premium or white-label option.

Catchbox

It might be a bit of a gimmick, but what about a shock-proof, watertight wireless microphone for those impromptu audience sing-along moments? Its Finnish creators claim Catchbox is tough enough to survive being dropped from a three-story building. Still, whether it would survive the mosh-pit at Tuska Open Air festival is another matter…

Do you have a new product or technology to contribute to this page? Email gordon@iq-mag.net to be considered for the next issue…

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IQ Magazine July 2014

THE STREAMING PUZZLE:

Finding a Path

The arrival of the digital revolution and its devastating impact on recorded music sales has been very well documented. But while the live music industry has always lived by the adage that the live experience cannot be replicated, the use of live video streaming is exploding. Ian Thomas investigates.

Living the Stream The live-streaming of concerts fills a number of gaps. It helps in the marketing of an act or a festival; it allows fans who can’t get to the venue or festival site to watch their favourite performers; and it brings in sponsorship money and, perhaps, affiliate click-through sales of downloads or merchandise.

The one thing, however, it is struggling with, is turning itself into a viable subscription or pay-per-view model. For now.

Compared to a decade ago, the cost of live-streaming has fallen, but it is still not cheap and, as satellite, broadband and 4G mobile connections become more ubiquitous, there is a knock-on effect for the level of picture and audio quality that audiences expect on their digital devices.

Melvin Benn, MD of Festival Republic, whose Reading, Leeds and Latitude festivals are streamed in partnership with the BBC in the UK, notes, “Streaming costs are coming down, and will continue to come down, but the issue is more about the cost of capture for the pictures [because of the rise of HD].”

According to Benn, while Festival Republic has been involved in live-streaming for several years, it has taken time for the output itself to finally deliver on the technology’s initial promise. “It is really only now that the quality is up to speed. The ability to watch good quality streaming – even on your mobile – is there.”

This move to higher output quality is something Grant Calton, founder of Omniverse Vision (who streamed Muse’s show from Rome Olympic Stadium into cinemas globally last November), says is also impacting on live-streams into cinemas. “That was the first ever rock concert shot in 4K [aka super-HD],” he says of the Muse show, noting how most cinema screens are now equipped for such high-quality feeds. “The most important thing has been the speedy rollout of digital cinema technology. It has gone quicker than the industry anticipated in 2010 and about 80% of cinema screens are digital now.”

Developing Market The sector is now an interesting mix of established broadcasters extending their offering and a new wave of specialist start-ups looking to make an impact and grab a part of this growing market.

The Øya Festival in Norway has been live-streaming for the past three years and has done so in partnership with NRK, the country’s biggest (and government-owned) broadcaster.

“NRK records the sound for us and we employ a crew to do the filming and then we both share the rights,” says the festival’s Birgitte Mandelid. “That is a cheaper way to do it but also a more complicated one – especially if you want to do anything with the recordings afterwards.” (More of which later.)

With a whole raft of new services such as Moshcam, LoveLive, LiveFi, Omniverse and Mixify’s Clubcast (for the dance sector, active here, there is a huge amount of choice for events, artist managers and record labels that are looking to live-stream. While Benn admits that “you don’t need a broadcaster at all,” he adds that they bring with them a high level of experience and can adapt to concert filming and streaming easily. “What the broadcasters bring is a tremendous amount of skill,” he says. “What you get with a great broadcaster is the top end and then everything moves down from there.”

Mark Mitchell, MD of LiveFi, says the new generation of services can rise to the challenge and also put those

IQ Magazine July 2014

commissioning the content in a greater position of power.

“We will live-stream the event and allow [the label or artist manager] to become the broadcaster rather than them going through a different broadcaster and giving away certain rights as we have seen with TV or other platforms other than livestreaming,” he explains.

Mitchell says that when his company launched two years ago, they anticipated doing two-camera shoots for events, but demand has grown to the point where they have done ninecamera set-ups at venues such as The O2 arena in London.

“The major acts are increasingly demanding this as it is being tested a lot more,” he explains. “The prosumer and consumer market have made it all worthwhile.”

As this area has grown, record labels are looking to exert greater control over both the quality and the quantity of streamed output for their artists, as well as take a more active role in the commercial negotiations.

Beggars Group is arguably leading the way here with the establishment in recent years of a dedicated live music division, which is headed up by Ruth Barlow. “We decided to bring it closer in and centralise it because we realised there was such a proliferation of recording requests happening,” she says of the setting up of the live department. “We were very aware that having multifarious different qualities of recordings of our artists [out there] ultimately eats into what we are trying to achieve – selling recorded music – but we are also trying to control the quality and the quantity that people do. It really has got out of control.”

What this has meant for Beggars, and could be a presage of what other labels do as they move more into this area, is saying ‘no’ perhaps more often than they say ‘yes’. “We tend not to turn down one-off live-streams, but will push back on archiving on third-party media partners and branded partners,” Barlow explains. She also says that Beggars taking a more proactive role has brought greater clarity to the processes and, as a result, all links in the chain stand to benefit.

Barlow says that, “Having a modicum of control over where our artists’ material goes,” is one of the key reasons for Beggars leading the label charge. While other labels may not be as far down the road as her company is, she feels it is important for them to anticipate change and be prepared for significant developments coming to the overall business model. “We think we are future-proofing our business by doing this,” she asserts.

Rob Challice at Coda Music Agency concurs, nominating Beggars as an outstanding example of a label that is adapting to the changing times and weighing up the challenges and opportunities properly. “Beggars is a shining example of a label that just gets on with it, reads the contracts and looks at it pragmatically,” he says.

Show Me The Money While some labels are rolling their sleeves up and getting into the midst of things here, the sector is still divided over what, exactly, the benefits are. Is it all about promotion? Or is there a real and sustainable revenue stream here for those licensing their rights? And if so, what is the best way to monetise it all?

Challice is somewhat critical of the current state of play and says greater clarity is needed if all parties are ever to properly consider the pros and cons. “What we are not actually

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Living the Stream LoveLive’s streaming coverage captures crowd excitement © Marc Seth

“We will live-stream the event and allow [the label or artist manager] to become the broadcaster rather than them going through a different broadcaster and giving away certain rights.”

Mark Mitchell, LiveFi

Holding back the flood gates While record labels arguably moved too slowly to react to the threat of digital piracy, ironically it’s those same companies who are fighting to prevent the floodgates opening when it comes to growing numbers of interested parties who are keen to record and broadcast live footage of concerts and festivals.

The trusty adage of ‘You cannot replicate the live experience’ is under threat from the same digital revolution that hammered recorded music’s revenues, with festivals in particular requesting multiple licenses for live recordings and streaming for themselves, sponsors and other broadcasters.

Individuals tasked with care taking such requests, such as Beggars Group’s Ruth Barlow, report that while live recording and streaming queries from bricks and mortar venues and tour promoters are relatively simple – involving usually one trusted media partner, such as a national service broadcaster – festivals are becoming ever more demanding with their requests.

Its now the norm that festivals, IQ learns; are asking if they can live stream footage on the festival’s official site. Additionally they seek permission to broadcast the same live stream on the website of the festival’s sponsors. Where those requests became very complex is when multiple social network platforms are included. And those requests are made for dozens of bands on any given festival’s bill: 90 seconds of songs by artist X to stream as news footage; one to three tracks of artist Y to be streamed in full by multiple local broadcasters; the entire set of artist Z to be live streamed by national broadcasters, plus multiple repeats throughout the next year.

The debate over whether such exploitation is good marketing for an artist or good marketing for a festival will rage long and hard, but it hasn’t proved to be beneficial for record sales long term and given the number of festivals generating live material on multiple platforms, it begs the question, what will live streaming do for festivals and their ticket sales long term ?

“What we are not actually being told is what the monetary value is. Is there money? Should we be having a more open conversation about what it is worth to carriers to have that live content?”

Rob Challice, Coda Agency

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being told is what the monetary value is,” he argues. “Is there money? Should we be having a more open conversation about what it is worth to carriers to have that live content?”

Barlow adds that some fees are offered for certain uses from certain venues – but this is far from the norm. “There are a handful of festivals that do offer fees for content and archiving rights,” she says.

Benn is adamant that, in financial terms, the upsides have still to be proven and there is an element of faith being invested in how it all pans out. “It is not being monetised at the moment,” he states. “Everyone lives in hope of increased monetisation of things. But it remains to be seen if that would happen.”

The idea of pay-per-view subscription streaming is, for most, a non-starter, with the possible exception of streaming into cinemas. But even that comes with slim margins. Calton says that tickets for cinema screenings are usually about 20% higher than for a standard film, but how that is carved up means they, as the producer, take a cut of the box office and then share a percentage of that with the artists/rights owners.

That means only a handful of mega-acts really have a chance to make the numbers add up.

Richard Cohen, CEO of LoveLive, has worked on a number of pay-per-view shows. Most notably with Florence and The Machine, PJ Harvey, and McFly. But he accepts the model has not grown wings yet. “At the moment, the subscription model for live-streamed music video hasn’t yet been proven,” he says. “We have done some pay-per-view events and some have worked better than others. [The Florence show] actually worked really well and the feedback was phenomenal; but when you start to look at the commercial returns, some of those we have done have worked better than others.”

Barlow is equally unconvinced of pay-per-view’s viability in an age when consumers are used to free concert streaming on Apple (for its annual iTunes Festival), YouTube, the BBC iPlayer and others. “We would probably shy away from [payper-view] mainly because there are so many people in the marketplace trying to do it but not one is really doing it very successfully,” she says. “The majority of those deals tend to offer profit shares but it’s really not in our best interests because we are talking about such a small amount of profit.”

The Branding Model There is an additional complication with pay-per-view, namely that it adds another layer of complexity to the alreadyByzantine contract negotiations that can go on between a live

IQ Magazine July 2014

Living the Stream Omniverse Vision streams Muse live from Rome

CEO of the Bundesverband der Veranstaltungswirtschaft (German Promoters Association), says, “As far as I can see, in Germany at least, it is not a big subject. That’s because we make sure they come to the concerts and don’t watch the streaming later.”

Currently, GEMA (representing music publishers in Germany) has blocked lots of content on YouTube until the video-sharing site offers better licensing terms. Michow suggests this hard-line attitude to licensing could also impact on live-streaming, should it ever take off in Germany.

“We have a big bundle of rights that you have to take care of,” he explains. “You have to get the agreement of every artist taking part and clear that in the primary contract you have with everybody. It is quite an issue because usually we are used to agreeing that an act performs for, say, 20 concerts and that’s it. So this [streaming] is a new thing that has to be taken care of in the contract.”

Building Fan Bases “We tend not to turn down one-off live-streams, but will push back on archiving on third-party media partners and branded partners.”

Ruth Barlow, Beggars Group

event organiser and a performer/rights holder. “I feel the model where the viewer is offered it for free and there is advertising is probably the best,” Øya’s Mandelid suggests, adding that the process of clearing the rights to charge for it is complicated and protracted. “We just decided it is too much work for too little.”

The monetisation wrapper here really lies within brand partnerships. “What I have found, especially with the major labels, is that the main thing people talk about is brand sponsorship,” Mitchell says. “It is such a unique opportunity for a brand to [get involved]. The brand will either part-fund or fund entirely our production costs and then pay additional royalties to the artists for the association. That is a really good model, in my opinion.”

Clearing rights for streaming is complicated, and different events take different approaches. Øya, for example, negotiates afterwards. “It is not in the contract and we have discussed if we should put it in there but we haven’t got that far yet,” Mandelid says, adding that different levels of usage require separate approval such as screens at the side of the stage, a live-stream only or archiving of performances for on-demand playback.

Cohen argues that, as this area grows, the licensing process needs to be simplified. Extending this into international rights is even more complicated and even more pressing, given that the web is, by its very nature, global. “When you do something on the Internet and want to stream it, if you want the best commercial return, you’d like it at least to be international,” he says. “But you also really need to be able to exploit more in multi-territories and multi-platform and it would be nice if it wasn’t so painful to secure the rights to make that happen.”

Yet some markets have proven impervious to the streaming of concerts – most notably Germany. Jens Michow, president and

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On that international theme, streaming can fill a gap by allowing fans in markets off the main festival and touring circuit to watch their favourite artists. “Geographically, if people aren’t able to attend then the next best thing is to have the live-stream,” Cohen says.

Meanwhile, according to Carlton, based on Omniverse events, the streams into cinemas are feeding a particular and country-specific demand, notably in South America and Eastern Europe. “You generally get a particularly good takeup in markets where that artist might not tour,” he says.

Mandelid adds that Øya finds it easiest to clear on-demand rights for local artists who regard the festival stream as an international marketing window for themselves. “Some content is available on-demand [after the festival], but it’s mostly the Norwegian artists as it is easier to get the rights for them,” she says. “The Norwegian artists are always willing and happy to do it because they see they get international exposure from it.”

Ultimately, however, the more artists that participate in live-streaming, the less special it will be. Therein lies the difficult balancing act for those looking to grow the sector. It needs eyeballs to bring in the sponsorship money, but if every event is being live-streamed then they lose their USP. “We are late in the summer (August) and sometimes the bands have played 10 or 15 festivals before us and have been asked about streaming and on-demand and they are probably fed up with it by that point,” comments Mandelid, on the risk of overkill.

This is also something that Barlow says she is conscious of when processing requests. “We pick and choose what we agree to,” she states. She feels that too many festivals are just doing it because everyone else is. “Because they have seen the success of things like Coachella and think that that, as a festival, is what they should be offering,” she says. “But some festivals realise that it is actually not cost-effective and doesn’t gain them much reach. For the majority of festivals, all this content that exists out there is like a waste of everyone’s time as there are not many eyes on it.”

That is not to say that the whole thing is a futile pursuit: quite the opposite. There is a demand, and meeting that demand is key, but over-saturating it negatively affects everyone. With live-streaming, less, it appears, is more.

IQ Magazine July 2014

Australasia

A Land Down Under

Australia seemingly has it all: a hungry, healthy live market; a growing digital music business; a healthy fraternity of home-grown artists; and now, finally, a wave of acts smashing international sales charts. What led to this point, and what happens next? Lars Brandle investigates.

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he late social critic Donald Horne summed-up Australia in the title of his 1964 book, The Lucky Country – a country down there with space, a great climate, chatty people and low crime rates. Dig a little deeper, though, and there’s a devil in Horne’s detail. His Australia was “run by second-rate people who share its luck.” That luck was in the ground, in the form of valuable natural resources. Horne’s summation was controversial, harsh, but perhaps accurate, certainly in part.

Australia remains a lucky country, an affluent one largely untouched by the GFC. Its mining boom, economists say, is the fuel behind its two-speed economy. The country’s wider music industry is enjoying its own embarrassment of riches with a conveyor belt of international artists to Australia that is seemingly never-ending, and a multitude of local acts that are finding favour in their homeland and abroad. The live circuit is maturing, expanding into regional areas, into Asia and beyond.

However, festivals, like elsewhere, are under acute pressure.

Ticket prices are a sticking point. Promoters across the live market are risking a bunch on wafer-thin margins. Digital is up, CD sales are down and dragging the entire recorded music market south. Has the luck run out? Far from it.

A long touted ‘golden generation’ of Australian artists is knocking at the door of international success. Whether that door has truly been kicked in, time will tell. In years to come, music historians may well identify Gotye’s smash Somebody That I Used To Know as ground zero in the latest push from Australia, and indeed neighbouring New Zealand. Since the song scaled sales charts worldwide in 2012, the likes of 5 Seconds of Summer, Vance Joy, Iggy Azalea, Courtney Barnett, Tame Impala, Birds of Tokyo, Boy & Bear, Flume, and (from New Zealand) Lorde, have either broken through or are at the tipping point.

Mushroom Group chairman Michael Gudinski is a passionate, life-long supporter of Australian music. He’s not boldly declaring an Australian invasion just yet, but “it feels good to me,” he tells IQ. “When Midnight Oil, Kylie Minogue and INXS [were breaking in the 80s] that was the closest to Australian music being capitalised on. If two or three more artists break through, then it’s fair to say the Australian invasion is on the way. But there’s been a lot of frustration over the years.”

Pop-punk outfit 5 Seconds of Summer (5SoS) and Iggy Azalea are at the vanguard of rare Australian success in the

US. 5SoS debuted at No 2 in the US and No 1 on the UK chart with She Looks So Perfect, and the Sydney-siders’ debut fulllength album is due out this July. Hip hopper Iggy Azalea had a Beatles-esque chart performance in the US with a 1-2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in May (with Fancy and Problem). Vance Joy’s Riptide went top 10 in the UK and topped Australian radio network Triple J’s annual Hottest 100 poll in January.

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Promoters

ustralia’s hottest months are like a long, sweaty party, so it’s no surprise live is the music industry’s strongest suit. The ‘big four’ music promoters are still the kings of the land – Michael Chugg, Michael Coppel, Michael Gudinski and Paul Dainty.

However, currency fluctuations, a smörgåsbord of concerts, and financially mindful punters make it a seriously tough market out there for promoters. “The margins are very tight. It is a tough business,” notes Gudinski senior. He also warns of the “disease” that is ‘heavy discount’. Forget 2-for1, Gudinski says he’s seen a 5-for-1. “This is something destroying [the business],” he warns. “It reminds me of what the big record labels did to themselves.”

According to the most recently available Ticket Attendance & Revenue Survey published by Live Performance Australia, rock and pop concerts, on the whole, had a tough year in 2012. Gross revenue from contemporary music declined by 10.6% to AU$482.18million (€125.58m) while total attendance shrunk by 7.7%. The average ticket price for a concert fell by 3.1% to AU$100.27 (€69.12) in the period.

Across the live entertainment sector, more than 16 million people attended live events, down 6.2% year-on-year. And, in value terms, ticket sales were down 8% to AU$1.205billion (€83m). Still, it’s a vibrant sector. Rock and pop concerts do punch hard and contemporary music accounted for 40% of all live entertainment revenue.

The outstanding tours of 2013 included Pink’s The Truth About Love tour, a 46-date run organised by Live Nation Australasia, which set a string of venue records (Pink’s previous tour here was also orchestrated by Michael Coppel prior to his bringing his company Michael Coppel Presents into the LN group). Gudinski’s Frontier Touring Company put Taylor Swift’s Red tour into stadiums in 2013, a first for a

Frontier Touring’s Bruce Springsteen show at Allphones Arena, Sydney © David Youdell

IQ Magazine July 2014

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Live Nation promoted Coldplay at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre in June © Ashley Mar

Australasia

“ What all Australian promoters are seeing is that that the AAA attractions are still doing great here, but anything that isn’t as strong needs be carefully routed and conservatively priced.”

Michael Coppel, Live Nation Australia solo female artist since Madonna’s Girlie Show in 1993. FTC also brought Bruce Springsteen out twice in a year, and the Melbourne-based company will host the Rolling Stones later this year, having postponed the band’s earlier tour due to the sudden death of Mick Jagger’s girlfriend L’Wren Scott.

Also hitting the road Down Under in the second half of 2014 are Katy Perry, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Robbie Williams, Miley Cyrus and Bob Dylan.

Dainty comments, “The live market continues to be buoyant and grow for the major acts, we have seen record breaking sales with all of our recent tours. Katy Perry’s tour in November/December has sold 25 Arena shows out and there is huge demand for more. We are hoping for big things with Miley Cyrus – her Bangerz tour will be here in October.

Australia continues to kick above its weight at the box office.”

Michael Coppel agrees, but observes that below the superstar

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acts, others tours aren’t finding things so easy. “What all Australian promoters are seeing is that that the AAA attractions are still doing great here, but anything that isn’t as strong needs to be carefully routed and conservatively priced,” he says.

As the figurehead leading Live Nation’s development Down Under, Coppel’s plans for expansion are so far hitting target.

“Live Nation Australia has made huge strides since I joined in 2012: last year was the most active and profitable year we’ve ever had, both at MCP and at LNA,” he tells IQ. “We’re very pleased to have opened a super-successful comedy promoting division, headed by Bec Sutherland, and a recently formed family entertainment division, headed by Graham Kennedy, and we look forward to major growth in those areas.”

As for the future, Coppel reveals, “We are bringing other promoters into the company in the coming months and intend to continue to grow the LN business, both in Australia/ New Zealand, and also right through the Asian region. Our goal is to achieve major growth in the company’s turnover and market share within the coming 24 months. We have a fantastic array of headline tours under negotiation for 2015, 2016 and onwards, which we see as a hugely exciting period of growth for Live Nation Australia.”

As for the longer term plans for his company, Dainty hints, “We have a number of exciting large projects in the pipeline through 2015/2016 for both concert tours and theatrical productions and special events. High on our agenda is to continue to expand our footprint internationally.”

Outside of pubs, arenas (the Sydney Entertainment Centre has changed name and will be torn down and replaced with a new 8,000-cap facility) and open-air venues, Australia’s winery circuit is an attractive option for elite homegrown and international touring acts of a certain age. It’s typical for a veteran act’s arena or stadium itinerary in Australia to include stops for winery concerts. Roundhouse Entertainment’s A Day On The Green has expanded its network of venues with the addition of Mitchelton Wines in Goulburn Valley, 90 minutes drive north of Melbourne. Since Michael and Anthea Newton launched the brand in 2001, the promoter has hosted 350 shows with more than two million aggregate visitors.

Promoters say the live market’s growth may come from an obvious, but often overlooked place – regional towns. The metros – Australia’s five big cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide – are flush with choice, while Adelaide is regarded as a tough market for selling tickets and Brisbane has softened in the last two years. “We’re trying to break the upcoming Australian talent and the region is

IQ Magazine July 2014

WWW.BLUESFEST.COM.AU . WWW.BLUESFESTTOURING.COM.AU

Chugg Entertainment’s Laneway Singapore event

Australasia

“ There’s a perception that the entire [festivals] industry is not doing well. Well that’s not necessarily the truth.”

Peter Noble, Bluesfest

obviously an important market,” explains Mushroom Group executive director Matt Gudinski, the son of Michael.

The younger Gudinski guides the career of chart-topping domestic hip hop act Bliss N Eso through his exclusive business. Bliss N Eso toured 16 different regional locations in 2014, including a date in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales (population approx. 62,000). “There’re good venues in some regions. The market is there for the right line-up and the right price. We’re looking to do more of those shows.”

In the traditional touring market, there’s no obvious slowdown. The Stones, Katy Perry, Kanye West, Lady Gaga,

Justin Timberlake, and Robbie Williams are all coming in 2014, and 1D will play stadiums in 2015. The business and fervour around the boy band is at times surreal, so much so that many observers failed to spot that the band’s On The Road Again tour dates won’t involve one of the big four promoters.

The 1D tour will be helmed by Sony Music; Telstra Thanks, the customer-reward programme for the Telstra telco; and Nine Live, the events arm of media group Nine Entertainment. It’s another sign that big corporations are becoming more active in live music than ever before. Supermarket giant Coles (owned

by Westfarmers, the huge Perth-based group that counts more than 200,000 staff) has already tested the waters; the grocery firm rolled out a campaign for 1D’s 2013 arena tour and hosted a one-off matinee show for competition winners.

Scalping is a problem, but it’s a minor one when compared with a market such as the UK, promoters say. Likewise, the ticket resale market remains small, but an irritating concern for some working in showbiz. The ticketing business remains dominated by the big two – Ticketmaster and Ticketek. It’s understood that there are 20-30 smaller independent agencies jostling for position in the marketplace – it’s an evolving scene. In March, MTV Australia announced its entry into the business with the

Australasia launch of a ticketing website MTVTIX; just months earlier, MTV announced it would relocate the bulk of its Australian broadcasting functions to London.

It isn’t just the big corporations that are targeting Australasia for business expansion, as production suppliers such as eps and Mojo Barriers have a significant presence Down Under. Mojo MD Cees Muurling comments, “The Australian events market is constantly evolving and it is important for us to have a local base that can respond to market demands quickly, whilst having access to our international touring expertise. It’s an incredibly diverse market too, and as such projects can be quite complex: such as New Years Eve where we worked with the local police to deploy sightline barriers, and used stage barriers to create road closures and safe pedestrian zones in and around Sydney Harbour.”

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Festivals

he big action behind the scenes in 2013 included Soundwave promoter AJ Maddah coming onboard with Big Day Out and Michael Gudinski’s Mushroom Group adding the Future Music Festival brand to its portfolio.

Then there was Robert Sillerman’s SFX Entertainment acquiring Totem OneLove Group, promoter and producer of electronic music event Stereosonic.

First, the negatives. Festival promoters in Australia are facing a torrid time. Australia’s best-known festival brand, the Big Day Out (BDO), has been off the boil in recent times, and ran into strife ahead of its 2014 edition. Soundwave chief AJ Maddah

came on board to work alongside founder Ken West and partners C3 Presents, but the BDO ship is far from steady. The industry waits with bated breath to learn what will happen next.

Maddah cancelled Harvest, one of more than a half-dozen big brands that disappeared from the landscape in 2013; Peats Ridge was canned and won’t return; and the Homebake and Pyramid Rock Festivals nixed their 2013 events. More recently, Come Together fest scrapped its 7 June event in Sydney with organisers citing poor ticket sales.

Hip hop festivals remain a sore point. Live Nation’s inaugural Movement fest and its rival Supafest were canceled in April 2013, while Sprung Festival nixed its Melbourne leg in 2013 (the fest will return in 2014) while boutique minifest Rap City and a national tour featuring Pitbull and Ke$ha were scrapped. Eminem’s three-city Rapture tour in February for Paul Dainty was deemed a success but it was a festival in name only; the format was essentially a route of stadium shows with a bill of familiar urban music names.

“There’s a perception that the entire [festivals] industry is not doing well. Well that’s not necessarily the truth,” says Peter Noble, organiser of the award-winning Bluesfest in Byron Bay, a popular beach community in northern New South Wales. “Just because one or two bigger events aren’t getting the numbers doesn’t mean everyone else is suffering.

That’s all you hear about and read in the media, which makes it harder for the ones that are being successful to tell their own good story.” Noble certainly has a good story. In its 25th year, Bluesfest boasted attendance of 104,526 over five days in April – its best ever result (up from 104,244 last year).

Like any good promoter, Noble knows his audience: half are

Arcade Fire at Qantas Credit Union Arena in January

Australasia

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under 40, half are over 40. “I’m trying to do something for all of them,” he told IQ. His database is a gold mine and he’s already sold 35% of the tickets to next year’s fest, purely from Bluesfest’s mailing list.

Boutique fests are a growth area. “‘There’s room for other events in that market if they’re done well,” says Danny Rogers, co-founder of the Laneway Festival brand. “Personally, I hope it happens because it’s great for the industry to have forwardthinking promoters, music lovers trying to push boundaries and learning from stuff from overseas, how to make a festival better.” Rogers, head of Lunatic Entertainment and a renowned talent manager (Gotye, The Temper Trap, Chvrches), has taken his brand into Asia through a partnership with Chugg.

And last year, Laneway went where no other Australian festival has gone before – North America. That date in Detroit pulled in 9,000 people, says Rogers, who describes it as “a very successful delivery.” There won’t be a 2014 show in the US because organisers couldn’t get the right line-up.

“ The market is definitely still buoyant with the next year shaping up as one of the strongest periods in the venue’s history.”

Paul Sergeant, Melbourne Stadiums Laneway is one of a handful of entrepreneurial Australian festival brands looking abroad, away from the near-saturation of the space back home. Future Music Festival established an event in Kuala Lumpur in 2011, through a tie-up with the national tourism board. In its first year, Future Malaysia boasted 10,000 punters. Now a multi-day event, Future grew to 40,000 in 2013 and to 80,000 this year (though its show was soured by multiple drug-related deaths). “We are a very mature market over here, but over there it’s boom-time really,” says Jason Ayoubi, founder of Future Music Festival, which is now part of the Mushroom Group portfolio. “There’s definitely some hurdles to get past to get to do business in Asia. Also, you have to have a lower ticket price to get the locals to come along; it’s dependent on other revenue streams like government support and corporate sponsors. But it’s somewhere that makes sense to do, from an Australian point of view.”

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Venues

he concerts business is in good shape Down Under.

But there’s still a lot of work to be done. The spectre of ticket resellers have many in the biz spooked, and ticket discounting is causing some promoters to lose sleep.

The consensus has it that Australia needs more mid-size venues. And the live biz is coming to grips with the loss of two of Australia’s most famous venues to the wrecking ball: the Sydney Entertainment Centre (now known as the Qantas Credit Union Arena) is expected to be demolished at the end of 2015 as part of a billion dollar facelift of the Darling Harbour precinct – the 12,000-plus capacity arena currently operated

by AEG Ogden will be replaced with an 8,000-cap room); meanwhile, Melbourne’s iconic Palace Theatre closed its doors for good in May. A mezzanine venue in central Melbourne that has operated under various names since 1860, the Palace will be converted into apartments.

Many festivals are having a difficult time, but open-air and arena shows have – as usual – sold well, notes Paul Sergeant, CEO of Melbourne Stadiums Limited, operator of Etihad Stadium. “The market is definitely still buoyant with the next year shaping up as one of the strongest periods in the venue’s history,” he says. “Despite the negativity surrounding the tough times suffered by some sections of the festival market, the general touring business has pushed ahead.”

Most cities are “trending well,” Sergeant explains, though “some are softening with promoters bypassing those markets.

Reducing the number of shows they offer to an act means the numbers they need to achieve in the stronger markets are often stretched.” As for connectivity, venues are wrestling with Wi-Fi technology that can cope with demand. “It doesn’t come cheap and is still relatively unproven. Thankfully, major players like Telstra have now recognised the event-going consumer is massively important to them and are now turning their attention to find solutions to the connectivity problem.”

Rod Pilbeam, executive director at AEG Ogden, reports that contemporary music at the venue operator’s concert arenas “continues generally to be strong, apart from the odd one or two that are the exception.” Touring activity for next summer looks busy,” he explains. “There has been the usual temporary softness with ticket sales during the federal budget period, but this has returned to normal with recent on-sales.”

AEG Ogden manages the 15,500-capacity Perth Arena, which is still enjoying its honeymoon period since opening for business in 2012. The Western Australia capital has its nuances, and its party-goers are flush with cash thanks to the state’s mining boom. “It is a different market from the major east coast centres. A greater proportion of the population is looking to get out and party at concerts and, at the moment, they have the money to entertain themselves,” Pilbeam says.

Across the Tasman Sea in New Zealand, major venues are enjoying a similarly buoyant period. In Christchurch, which was severely damaged by an earthquake in 2011, the city’s economy is booming and consumer confidence is reaching new highs as the multi-billion dollar post-quake rebuild gets underway. That is proving good news for the city’s major venue operator, Vbase, which has seen ticket sales for events at its premier venue, the CBS Canterbury Arena, jump significantly over the past 12 months.

IQ Magazine July 2014

Australasia “The rebuild has brought lots of workers to the city from around New Zealand and the world and the economy is starting to boom. There’s a lot of people in the city with high disposable incomes and they’re happy to pay good money for quality entertainment,’’ says Vbase ticketed events manager Turlough Carolan.

The CBS Canterbury Arena has been in big demand since the quakes as some of the city’s other venues are currently out of action. The arena can be configured to accommodate a number of different sized events. In full mode it can cater for up to 8,900 people while in reduced mode it comfortably accommodates 1,200. “Our ability to reconfigure the arena for different sized events has been a huge plus and allowed us to host a diverse range of events, some of which would otherwise have circumnavigated Christchurch,’’ Carolan adds.

Stuart Clumpas’s Vector Arena in Auckland has become a regular stopping point on most major tours to this side of the world. “There is plenty yet to come from NZ, in particular Auckland,” British-born Clumpas notes. “The country, and Auckland especially, is on a real growth spurt, and emigration continues at a healthy pace. NZ in the past 20 years has really dragged itself up from being a bit of a sleepy backwater. Now it’s a place that the world wants to come to and visit and we’ve a whole load of new facilities and forward thinking people.”

From a venues point of view, the rise of ticket resale was once simply a nuisance, but has developed into a genuine problem.

“I am gravely concerned on behalf of concert patrons about the higher profile scalping activities establishing themselves in our country,” Pilbeam says. Generally, the Australian market has

“ NZ in the past 20 years has really dragged itself up from being a bit of a sleepy backwater. Now it’s a place that the world wants to come and visit and we’ve a whole load of new facilities and forward-thinking people.”

Stuart Clumpas, Vector Arena managed to hold a reasonable line against large-scale scalping, and the states of Queensland and New South Wales do have legislation “which assists, provided it is enforced,” Pilbeam states, adding that “Scalping drove the introduction of scaled prices in concerts in an attempt to at least return the money that keen fans were obviously prepared to pay to the artist. The ongoing drive to entice more ordinary players into this activity will eventually kill the legitimate market.” AEG Ogden is working on a project for ticket purchasers to resell tickets in association with Ticketek but with no uplift in price.

The likes of Viagogo are dramatically increasing venue issues with patrons turning up with invalid tickets, observes Sergeant. “It’s a time, resource and energy-sapping problem that the venue inherits on show night. Acts, promoters and venues – no one wins from disappointing a fan.”

Despite such issues, the future is looking rosy for Australasian acts looking to take their music elsewhere.

The ever-optimistic Michael Chugg has the last word. “I’m energised by the success Australian music is having overseas,” he says. “There’s plenty of reasons to be doing this.”

Werchter:

The Production Masterclass From a hand-built disco bar to one of Europe’s biggest and most successful festivals, Rock Werchter has an enviable reputation amongst agents in helping to break acts in mainland Europe. Gordon Masson learns about the highs and lows of the event as it gears up for its 40th edition...

The best ideas are usually the simplest, and with its three stages and straightforward layout, Rock Werchter certainly delivers in terms of allowing fans easy access to see their favourite bands. But arriving on-site one month before the festival opens its gates, the sheer scale of the behind-the-scenes effort is evident: a mini metropolis of 400 portacabins is assembled in the production and backstage area, hinting at the lengths Live Nation Belgium and its loyal crew of suppliers and contractors go to in making the four-day gathering the event of the year for its horde of faithful fans.

The impact Rock Werchter has had on Belgium’s live music scene cannot be overstated.

Perusing the festival’s promo posters, it’s easy to chart the rise of certain superstar acts as their prominence in the Werchter line-up becomes more obvious as the years pass. The likes of David Bowie, Talking Heads, Dire Straits, U2, Simple Minds, R.E.M., Depeche Mode, Pixies, The Cure, Placebo, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Coldplay and Muse have all played the festival multiple times in its 40-year history, while the same can be said for this year’s headliners – Metallica, Arctic Monkeys and Pearl Jam. Of course, the event hasn’t always been the behemoth it is today, and while visiting the nearby Rock Werchter Museum, IQ learns about the birth of the festival when museum volunteer, Victor Van Espen, reveals he was the youth group leader for Hedwig De Meyer when the teenager decided to organise an event involving music in the village of Werchter. “Hedwig built a disco bar,” Van Espen recalls. “It was a great success because more than 750 people attended, paying 40 francs each – the exact equivalent of €1. The following year he moved things to an adjacent field.

The audience numbers doubled and the accent changed from a disco bar to a stage, which I think was the first one Hedwig had ever built.” Since then, of course, De Meyer has designed and constructed numerous stages through his Stageco operation – a global business born out of the Werchter set-up.

The spin-offs also extend to other large-scale events such as Werchter Boutique and Werchter Classics, with the latter replicating the format of Rock Werchter’s early days with eight bands on the bill and which this year welcomed the Rolling Stones.

Youthful Ambitions

Rolling back the years to that first, small-scale gathering, De Meyer reveals the thinking behind putting on an event for his friends and neighbours. “It was a combination of things,” he says. “Like most young people, I loved music, but more than that, I really liked the whole lifestyle that went with rock & roll. On top of that, I had always been interested in the technical side of things – the sound systems, the lights and things, and when Woodstock happened I just thought WOW!, and I wanted to emulate something like that.

“We used to organise parties and through doing that I found there were two types of audience: one went to the big dance halls for their fill of Saturday Night Fever;

Vampire Weekend perform on Werchter’s main stage last year © Jokko

IQ Magazine July 2014

Rock Werchter

IQ Magazine July 2014

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Rock Werchter

Hedwig at his Flash Sound Experience in 1975

“ Rock Werchter is without a doubt one of the best festivals in the world, and Herman is one of the greatest promoters and can be 100% trusted to never let an act down. The festival is a key event for breaking new acts but also offers fantastic production and facilities for established artists too. We have seen so many memorable performances over the years and look forward to the next 40!”

Angus Baskerville & Charlie Myatt, 13 Artists

new bands to parochial little towns and villages – U2 did a gig in a 5,000 population village, while he also took the likes of Elvis Costello, The Cure and Dire Straits on the circuit.”

Learning from their own mistakes (because there were nobody else’s to learn from) many of the initial changes made to the festival were driven by problem-solving solutions. “In the fourth year, 1978, we were completely overwhelmed,” De Meyer sighs. “We had a really good bill, so we shouldn’t have been surprised, but the organisation was not ready for the large number of people who turned up. However, that prompted us to step away from the marquee and we decided to go fully outdoors with the stage.”

Delvaux comments, “1978 was a big year because 8,000 people turned up at Werchter, but they had no idea that would happen because there were no advance tickets. There was not enough beer and it rained non-stop, so it was a bit of a disaster. Because of the issues, the festival moved to its current location, and in 1979 it got some really good press, praising the organisation of the festival, and helped by both Dire Straits and Talking Heads being on the bill.”

Part-Time Promoters

and the other were the youths who were into more of an alternative scene – I was part of that side, into Jimi Hendrix, Rory Gallagher and the Rolling Stones.”

So, in the summer of 1975, Hedwig De Meyer organised something he called Flash Sound Experience and although it was a very small-scale, village affair, it did manage to pique the interest of at least one member of the press – a certain music reporter by the name of Herman Schueremans. But having already held his own fledgling event, Schueremans had a vested interest in checking out the competition.

“I had just organised a festival in the next village (Herent), which also attracted about 800 people,” Schueremans says. “I was the only journalist at Hedwig’s event and I suggested to him that we work together on a festival using his Werchter site, because it would be easier to get permission and licences. So in 1976, at the second edition, we were already working on Werchter together and we managed to attract about 1,500 people.”

Despite their youth, a year later Hedwig and Herman’s ambitions took another leap forward when they made a deal with promoter Noël Steen to work jointly with his event in Torhout, 120 kilometres across Belgium. “In those days, it was difficult to get bands to come to Belgium, so our plan was to offer agents two shows in one weekend by having two festivals. Hedwig and I ran the idea past Noël and because we were young guys with a shared dream, that’s how Torhout Werchter started.”

Jan Delvaux, Rock Werchter’s copywriter, museum archivist and the author of a book charting the festival’s first 40 years, pays tribute to Schueremans for the way he used the festival to create an alternative Belgian touring circuit.“Herman saw the festivals as an investment because he could get up-and-coming international acts to tour Belgium, as well as moving them up the festival bill the following year,” he tells IQ. “Herman built his reputation by taking hot

A visit to the Rock Werchter Museum, housed in part of Stageco’s yard in the village, is an eye opener. The building’s content-rich exhibits and touchscreen displays have some fascinating and entertaining images and one of the most impressive facts that emerges from an examination of the archives is just how De Meyer and Schueremans pulled off such a mammoth gathering when effectively neither of them worked on the event full-time, even when the audience numbers were topping 50,000.

Recalling how he split university with festival duties, De Meyer recalls,” I was studying in Brussels to become an engineer in sound and TV techniques – the electronics side of engineering; nothing to do with stages. Then, instead of going into the army, like Herman, I went into public service, so I found myself working in a hospital for two years. I remember Herman being in the “ Congratulations Herman and Hedwig! You are classy individuals and run an amazing event.”

Rob Markus, William Morris Endeavor

Herman and Hedwig on 1981’s Rock Werchter stage © Koen Dom

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Rock Werchter

Herman’s mother, Maria Verbist, assists with the festival clean up

“ R.E.M. first played Rock Werchter in 1985 on one of their first real tours of Europe, well down the bill in support of U2 and others that day. They loved it, as evidenced by the fact that for the rest of their career, they never missed Werchter. Every summer tour included Werchter as a highlight – seven times in all, which must be some kind of record. Thanks to Herman and his team, Rock Werchter is the perfect music festival. Long live Rock Werchter!”

Bertis Downs, manager – R.E.M.

army and not being able to contact him because he was on duty.”

Delvaux has other observations about the promoter’s national service. “When I was doing research for the museum, I came across Herman’s first press releases, which were more like lengthy apologies. There was one that apologised that he could not answer any queries because he was in the army, but he hoped his commander would allow him to attend his own concert, because he was on weekend duty.”

Post studies, De Meyer worked at Philips for a year as an engineer, but because the festival was demanding more and more attention, he made the decision to leave that secure job to start working full-time for Rock Werchter. Meanwhile, until 1982, Schueremans held down a day job at Warner Records while booking and promoting in the evenings. Offered the chance to become a label executive, however, Herman opted to become his own boss and concentrate on the live music side of the business.

Family, Friends and Neighbours De Meyer still calls Werchter his home and he believes being a villager played a huge part in the festival’s success.

“Involving the people of Werchter went hand in hand and meant we could avoid problems both with the festival and in the village,” he observes. “We had a big local base for help and we worked with all the local youth clubs, football clubs, you name it. They’ve played a big part in Rock Werchter.

Without their support, it would have been impossible.”

Villager Victor Van Espen suggests De Meyer’s ability to appease anxious residents was key. “There was friction in the early days. There weren’t enough toilets, there was no recycling and that had an impact. Also, people were coming to Werchter to party two days before the festival opened, and that put pressure on the local community. But people could talk to Hedwig about those issues and everything changed

when it became Werchter only, with multiple days and multiple stages.”

Leveraging the hard work of volunteers to help run the event, an organisation called Alt-Scene was created to coordinate the various clubs and societies, and to provide assistance – an organisation that’s still working its magic in 2014. Little has changed, in fact, with one villager cautiously confiding to IQ: “The dog club still helps out every year, but while only 30 of them have dogs, there are 150 members…”

Nonetheless, without such assistance, Werchter could not have grown as rapidly as it did and De Meyer insists the festival’s home-made roots are the reason for its longevity. “In the early days, we did everything ourselves with friends and family. So the catering was done by my wife – I remember her cooking for 150 people per day. Of course, at a certain point things got too big for us to do ourselves and we had to get in help, but I believe these are the things that gave Werchter a heart.”

It wasn’t just the young folk who mucked in to make the festival tick. Back then, when fans paid cash at the gates, the organisers faced a dilemma of finding someone trustworthy to process the box office receipts. “The parents of Hedwig and I would count the cash along with the local vicar. That was important. We could make sure the cash was correct, while still being welcomed into heaven,” Schueremans laughs.

Indeed, it wasn’t just the financial side of things that their parents would help out with, as one early photo in the Rock Werchter Museum shows Herman’s mother raking up rubbish (see photo left).

Twinning Pioneers Twinned festivals were virtually unheard of in the 70s, and with rival events viewing with interest the way the promoting partners went about managing Torhout Werchter, there were raised eyebrows far beyond Belgium’s borders. While the majority of twinned festivals swap acts overnight, Torhout and Werchter could only justify one-day affairs in the early days, creating one of the most remarkable overnight production turnarounds in the short history of music festivals, using the same equipment at both sites. Such adversity has become the stuff of legend among the production community.

Festival director Yo Van Saet has been working at the event since 1981 and confirms the tales. “We used to break down the sound, lights and other infrastructure at Torhout, transport it across the Belgian countryside to Werchter in the small hours of the morning and rebuild things at the sister site in time to open the gates to the public just four hours later,” she says. “We’d arrive at Werchter at around 8am with

Herman’s father, René, oversees cash counting backstage

IQ Magazine July 2014

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Rock Werchter U2 backstage before their Rock Werchter debut in 1982

“ It is an honour for us at ITB to celebrate these 40 years of Werchter with Herman and Hedwig. We have had many of our acts headline at the festival, like Aerosmith, Lenny Kravitz, Pearl Jam, Placebo, Robert Plant, Tool, and The Who, and we hope to have them play for many years to come. It’s one of the best festivals in the world and keeps getting better with all its years of experience. Thank you, Werchter.”

Rod MacSween, ITB

everything in the trucks and the festival started at noon. It seems unbelievable thinking about what we did now.”

That turnaround, which continued for many years between Torhout and Werchter, certainly got the event noticed by international visitors, while it also gave talented individuals in Belgium a fast track up the production ladder. Walter D’Haese has been working at Rock Werchter since 1984 and now leads the festival’s production management. “In the first year, I was doing site work; the second year, I was working on stage; and by year three, I was stage manager. There was only one stage, but there were two sites, so I had to learn quickly,” he says.

Detailing the challenges of that two-site set-up, D’Haese continues, “The first stage would be built at Werchter and then we’d go to Torhout and build the stage there. At the end

of the Torhout festival, we’d load out lights and sound. We’d get a police escort for the trucks and I’d have about 200 stagehands helping out. I remember a late-night discussion with Jake Berry when he was with Metallica. He was still loading out his lights at Torhout while we were already at Werchter soundchecking,” D’Haese says.

Breaking down major elements of the event equipment in those time constrained conditions has become fabled in production circles, but the urban myths can become somewhat exaggerated. Explaining why they set themselves such a task, Schueremans says, “Nowadays you’d say we were crazy and irresponsible, but that’s just how things developed.”

De Meyer comments, “It was a fantastic period when we had time to learn how to do things. But at the same time, we were forced to learn what we were doing. The overnight build... it looks a bit risky now, huh?!” he laughs. “Pretty early on we learned to duplicate certain parts, such as the amplifiers, so it was crazy, but not quite as insane as sometimes it is made out to be.”

Rock Werchter Hedwig and Herman relax before the 1991 festival ©Herman Voets

“ Werchter – the Rolls Royce of the European festival market, but please bring back the lobster!”

Mike Greek, CAA

Creating Industry The pressure that the Torhout Werchter organisers put themselves under inevitably led to some home-made opportunities for Belgium’s underdeveloped production sector. Unable to source sufficient quality equipment, they did what any self-respecting entrepreneurs would and created their own suppliers to meet demand.

The most obvious enterprise to emerge from Rock

Werchter’s wings is De Meyer’s Stageco, but it was not the only venture. “The Power Shop and EML also came out of Rock Werchter,” says Schueremans. “You could say we started out as hippies but grew up as businessmen, who, thankfully, still have a love and desire for music.”

De Meyer comments, “The Powershop is run by my brother, Jan. And EML was part of Rock Werchter at one point: because we could not find a good PA system, we thought it would be a good idea to buy the company. In the end we could not give EML enough attention, so in the early 90s we decided to sell it.”

For his part, Jan De Meyer says, “There were no real specialist rental companies in Belgium so in the early years we built a power system for the festival made of bits and bytes that we found and some leftover electrical equipment. After a while, we started realising there must be a better technical way of doing things. And then there became more and more work in events – some other festivals, commercial television – and Powershop was born.”

Documenting the launch of the spin-offs, Delvaux claims, “In 1985, the partners were somewhat forced to establish Stageco as a standalone company. The festival used the notfor-profit Alt-Scene entity for its volunteer organisations to run Werchter but the taxman would not accept stage building as a

Rock Werchter “ There are a lot of stories that could be told: the first overnights from Torhout to Werchter, the catering stories, the inventive solutions, the friendships that developed. Hedwig and Herman should be very proud of the RW festival and what it has become after 40 years: congratulations! Thanks to them we got the chance to become part of a totally new entertainment industry, and we are not the only ones.”

Jan De Meyer, The Powershop The festivals’ star studded line up in 1996

non-profit making activity, hence the creation of what has since become arguably the world’s biggest stage specialist, Stageco.”

Other circumstances also made 1985 a seminal year: the Heysel Stadium disaster, where 39 fans died following rioting and a wall collapse, kick-started Belgium’s authorities into action. And with an open-air festival taking place in the country just four weeks after the tragedy, rules and guidelines were hastily drawn up to improve safety. “For a time, Belgium led the way in health and safety as a result, with Werchter setting the standard,” Delvaux notes.

Festival director Van Saet points to other pioneering endeavours. “Werchter was one of the first festivals to issue wristbands to fans and more recently was one of the first events to incorporate RFID technology into those wristbands for access control,” she says.

When it comes to taking risks on talent, Schueremans has been no slouch either. “In 1993, Herman made the brave move of booking Metallica as a headliner – I think Werchter was the first mainstream festival to book a metal headliner,” Van Saet notes.

“Depeche Mode can tell the story of being booed offstage at Werchter in the early days. But 20 years later they were back as headliners. And the likes of Daft Punk and The Prodigy played Werchter very early on in their careers, so Herman has always been quite groundbreaking across the genres.”

Indeed, as capacities crept toward 60,000 fans, the promoters started to gain the confidence of British agents.

But for the artists, Rock Werchter was already a favourite.

Both U2’s Bono and Simple Minds’ frontman Jim Kerr recount tales of going on stage with shaking legs but walking off as rock stars, having realised their bands were more than capable of playing to huge crowds.

Tough Decisions As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But while to the outside world Torhout Werchter appeared to be the ultimate success story, at the end of the last century its founders came close to losing everything. “In 1996, we still had a good Torhout and Werchter but there was a feeling that if we continued in both locations, things might start to go wrong,” Schueremans admits. Sure enough, the next couple of years were torrid, particularly in Torhout.

“Setting up in two cities 120km from each other was becoming too expensive,” Schueremans states. “97 and 98 cost us a fortune in Torhout. Also, our Torhout partners made investments in hotels and other things, which did not work out well. So Hedwig and I paid their losses but also made the tough decision to shutdown Torhout.”

With just one site to concentrate on, De Meyer and Schueremans shifted up a gear. “We knew what the audience wanted – a multi-day festival at one site – and that’s what we gave them,” Schueremans says. “In 1999, we got back on track, giving people a festival with top billing for a reasonable ticket price. Moreover, they had a four-day festival at one site.

We sold-out in advance and it was a great success.”

That radical format change provided Schueremans with a lesson he has utilised across all Live Nation Belgium’s largescale gatherings. “My opinion is that festivals should undergo fundamental change every ten years,” he says. “There are changes in generations, as well as fans just changing their expectations about what they want from their festival experience. In saying that, we’ve never gone down that route of booking a fragmented

IQ Magazine July 2014

bill – I’ve always aimed to provide an eclectic mix at Rock Werchter and I don’t think that will ever change.”

Detailing some of the more memorable obstacles his crew has had to find solutions for, D’Haese recalls, “Paul Simon showed up with five drum kits. We had Sting the same night and the headliners would flip between Torhout and Werchter.

You learn a lot as a stage manager when you have to get five drum kits on and off stage.”

One of the most fundamental changes for Schueremans was the end of his partnership with De Meyer. Having developed Rock Werchter into one of Europe’s best-loved festivals, the company’s corresponding national promoting business had also risen to the top. So it was no surprise that suitors came knocking at the door.

“In 2001, SFX were originally interested in both Rock Werchter Festival and Stageco. But after a year of negotiations, they decided Stageco didn’t fit with the rest of their plans, so Hedwig remained there running that business while I became part of what eventually became Live Nation,” Schueremans explains.

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Rock Werchter

One month before the 2014 festival, there are more than 60 full-time staff on-site in Werchter, prompting Van Saet to recall her first year: “There were just eight or nine people working on the festival – the promoter, production, health & safety were all in one cabin and we had one phone line.” She adds, “I remember taking messages for people (someone’s grandmother had died, for example), and that message would have to be read to the entire festival from the stage.”

Forty years in, Rock Werchter enjoys an unrivalled reputation for its production facilities, with its biggest fans arguably being the Live Nation staff and their contractors, who spend two months on the build prior to the fans flooding through the gates. “It’s a bit like being in the boy scouts, where we all go camping once a year,” Schueremans smiles. “It’s an excellent feeling to take our group of Live Nation people into a field and observe the team-building exercise involved as they construct a small town for 87,000 individuals to come and live for five days.”

As people from around the world make their way to Werchter for the milestone 40th event, the village is being given a permanent landmark, comprising stacked shipping containers, which will pinpoint the festival grounds for visitors and passers-by. “The art installation, North West Walls

by Arne Quinze, looks spectacular. And because it will be there on a permanent basis, it should become a real landmark in Belgium,” Schueremans says.

Applauding Schueremans for the way he has developed the festival since his departure as co-owner, De Meyer states, “Herman’s trademark is his eye for detail and that comes across in the way Rock Werchter treats all the bands and the crews on-site. That reputation doesn’t come from nowhere: they have the biggest production area for a reason.”

D’Haese agrees. A freelance production manager, he works on various events but says Rock Werchter’s facilities are second to none. “The dressing room standard is so high.

There’s no swimming pool, yet, but it’s getting close,” he says. “During the last 25 years of Rock Werchter, every band has had their own dressing room for the day. That involves a lot of coordination and planning because overnight you have to change the furniture and even the colour of the rooms. And bands bring their own kitchens, washers and driers – some bands have two trailers of dressing room stuff, so you have to cater for all of that. The Rolling Stones bring their own pool table for Keith, and they need 25 rooms: the band each have their own toilet and shower, then there are rooms for families, guests, management, etc – but Rock Werchter can handle those requests easily.”

Schueremans takes great pride in the festival’s reputation among the live music industry’s foot soldiers. “Rock Werchter is the starting base for many production companies and we know how important production is in making the festival the success that it has become. We spend a lot of money on the production area, and it takes up a lot of space on the site, but the crews – and the artists – can see that level of investment works.”

When it comes to highlights, the founders have hundreds to choose from. De Meyer discloses, “The one show that really sticks in my mind was The Kinks in about 1983 or so. It rained like hell that day, but it was a concert I’ll never forget.

I also liked the days before the festival when we were setting

things up with all the other people that we came to know as friends. Although I still live locally, I don’t actually work on Rock Werchter any more because there’s too much other stuff going on with Stageco, but I still go to all four days of the festival every year as a fan. And I love it.”

Schueremans also nominates performances from the formative years as his favourites. “Booking Talking Heads really early on was amazing. Also, when we had U2 the first time.”

And turning to recommendations on how to get the best out of this year’s milestone weekend, it seems the event still sets out to achieve similar goals to its early editions. “My advice to anyone attending Rock Werchter would be not to drink too much, but to focus on the music and enjoy the weekend.

That should put them on track with what is happening internationally in music,” Schueremans concludes. “ I went to Rock Werchter many years on the trot but I haven’t been too recently. But we have a promoter there in Herman Schueremans, who is deeply ingrained into the local culture and, for my money, is one of the best promoters in Europe, along with Thomas Johansson and Leon Ramakers.

Herman is immersed into Belgium in all the right ways – he just puts on one of the best festivals possible.

That starts with the customer experience but goes through to the artists as well. The quality of what he puts into Rock Werchter speaks volumes. Herman’s view is that you have to spend money to make money and he’s not afraid to do that. As a result, the customers will come back and, as we know, the artists come back year after year.

Every crew that goes to Rock Werchter will tell you how well they are looked after, how well run the event is, and how efficiently everything is done. Herman and his team’s attention to detail is what has made Rock Werchter what it is.”

Neil Warnock, The Agency Group Nick Cave and Grinderman on stage in 2011 © Rob Walbers

The Legacy of Four Decades

Special thanks to Ria Verbergt for her assistance with photos and archive material

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IQ Magazine July 2014

GUYS

FAMILY Family Entertainment

With many markets finally emerging from years of economic recession, demand for family entertainment appears to be on the increase, prompting investment into the creation of new shows. Eugenia Durante reports…

Research for this year’s report on the family entertainment sector revealed that there is no question that 2013 was a good year for both promoters and creators of shows worldwide.

With Europe slowly recovering from the financial downturn, families have once again started to look for thrilling shows to attend and the market has never been more exciting. Despite all the challenges and problems that the industry still has to face, it finally looks like the sector is beginning to recover.

“Things have definitely improved since 2012. I think the recession is finally leaving us. We can still feel its aftermath, but people in this business are more willing to take risks,” says World Concert Artists’ Corrado Canonici.

Stage Entertainment CEO Henrik-Jan Rinner concurs: “People are finding a new economic stability and can afford

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to pay for family entertainment shows again,” he says.

Of course, the downturn has affected promoters and venue owners in different ways, depending both on the products offered and the markets in which they have played in the last few years.

According to Guy Dunstan, chairman of the UK’s National Arenas Association and general manager at the LG Arena and the NIA in Birmingham, 2013 was a decent year for family entertainment in Britain, both in terms of attendance and the number of shows.

Being sensitive, he says, is the key. “I don’t think the downturn has had a huge impact on the family entertainment sector. If a product is strong, people will keep on coming. Of course, you have to be more careful about how you promote the show and always keep an eye on costs and pricing, but I can’t say there has been a huge decrease in the attendance,” he reports.

IQ Magazine July 2014

Family Entertainment

Another important element is perseverance. “Last year was a bit of a struggle, but we managed a great profit anyway. We tried to keep on taking our shows into all the regions despite the downturn and not to reduce the dates,” says Robert McHugh of Feld Entertainment. “We have very strong shows such as Disney On Ice, so even if the economy is still down in some European countries, we had great returns. Disney On Ice, in particular, did great in Latin America, Japan, China, the Middle East and Australia, so we managed to balance the European situation in the rest of the world. I have to say, though, that Europe is starting to get better. We have a great line-up which features very strong brands that sell very well on a global basis,” he adds.

“Family entertainment is a very important part of the entertainment world as it crosses all age demographics and therefore opens up a wider audience for producers and promoters,” states Michael Durkan, whose company GFD Promotions tours a number of productions, including Celtic Nights , Jurassic Adventures, Gaelforce Dance, World of The Musicals, The International Tenors and Celtic Angels.

Harlem Globetrotters’ chief operating officer, Jeff Munn, meanwhile, stresses the importance of looking at overall results instead of focusing on single regions. “There are some countries such as Spain where we have had some difficulties due to economic challenges in the market, but we are doing well overall. The attendance and revenue numbers of our shows continue to grow in almost every market,” he says.

VALUE FOR MONEY The common denominator in the family sector is that, worldwide, the public has grown more demanding. Following the recession, people have become more aware of how and where they want to spend their money, especially when it comes to family entertainment.

“The offer is extremely wide, there are so many products and the market is more competitive than ever,” Flying Music’s Derek Nicol explains. “The market we are playing in is also a risky one. We are not dealing with huge pop stars on tour; family shows need totally different planning and organisation. We are talking about shows where at least three people from the same family buy tickets, so they are more reluctant to invest in a new show that may cost them a lot and is a gamble.”

Now more than ever pricing is a key factor in this sector. “I think the recession taught people to ask for value for money,” Canonici says. “We are leaving the recession, but people are still very careful about how they spend their money. We have to keep an eye on pricing and not do what they did in the music sector. Ticket prices sometimes are ridiculously high, we don’t want this. On the other hand, the family entertainment sector is different from music, it is much more flexible, families are looking for similar things all over the world. And this is exciting.”

GFD’s Durkan believes flexibility is crucial. “We can travel our productions into a different venue every single night and be set up for sound check at 3pm—so this is something we have to be mindful of when producing shows without compromising quality and at this stage I feel we have it nailed.

We play all types of venues from Stadhalles in Germany to theatres worldwide and beautiful Performing Art Centers across America. Our capacities range from 600 up to 5,000.”

IQ Magazine July 2014

Another important aspect is finding the right way of addressing the public’s needs. Munn explains: “Audiences today expect more and more – and rightly so. Recreating show content and the overall event experience is an ongoing priority, as well as engaging the best talent available for the performances. Moreover, we carefully review and address our feedback, positive or negative, and use this information to give our customers a better experience.”

“I think the main point regarding this sector is that the show has to be attractive to the whole family. It has to be entertaining, affordable and suitable for kids as well as their grandparents. It has to make them laugh and surprise them,” Rinner says.

Jonathan St-Onge of Canada-based Cirque Éloize stresses the importance of continuously reinventing products and shows. He tells IQ, “The public is so used to seeing spectacular things that we always have to surprise them. We have to be more creative. They are looking for a different experience: they want to be involved in the show, to participate, to immerse themselves and feel the artists. We now tend to do everything in the open so that the public can relate to the artists more easily.”

Ensuring that the shows are of an exceptional quality is a priority, as Rinner explains: “The competition is higher than before, the public has a much more varied range of shows and is more quality conscious. They want value for money, so the quality has to be impeccable. We usually manage to keep the quality very high. Our latest poll in Holland showed that the audience gave our Holiday On Ice show 9.1 out of 10.”

SHARING IS CARING With the world changing at such a fast pace, promoters and show creators have to be prepared to change their way of working. “Consumers are more educated now, especially thanks to social media and online. We are now working on a new Disney On Ice production, Frozen, and we have launched it on Facebook and Twitter. We had the best pre-ticket sales ever. People from all over the world called us to get more information about it,” McHugh says. “But,” he adds, “on the other hand, shows come and go really fast now. We had High School Musical for three years and for the first year we sold an incredible amount of tickets, while at the end of the third year, the show was already down because it wasn’t hot anymore. With Frozen, we have started showing teasers to create a sense of anticipation.”

Dunstan notes that online marketing is a key factor. “I think one of the best things we can do with social media is use the characters to create a real experience. For example, with Disney shows we always try to create an interaction with the audience and to use all our online channels to promote the shows. One problem with new products is that people are not sure what the show is going to be about, so video platforms like YouTube, Vine and Vimeo are great for us in this respect: we can create clips or broadcast parts of the shows so that people can see with their eyes what the show is about and get more engaged and excited about it,” Dunstan says.

Social media can help address one of the biggest challenges in the family entertainment industry: reaching different consumers. “Families have changed: we don’t just have traditional families, there are a lot of single parents who struggle to find the time to organise everything. Parents and kids are busier than before, so we have to reach them in a

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Family Entertainment Stage Entertainment’s dancehall of the 40s show

“ The competition is higher than before, the public has a much more varied range of shows and is more quality conscious.

They want value for money, so the quality has to be impeccable.”

Henrik-Jan Rinner, Stage Entertainment

different way,” McHugh states. “While traditional advertising media are now antiquated, social media is the centre of our marketing campaigns. Online is definitely the medium to promote a show.”

St-Onge explains that Cirque Éloize has been investing a lot in social media in the past few years too, focusing especially on videos. “We went to Chicago in 2011 and shot a clip in which an artist went around the city doing tricks with his bike, we uploaded it on YouTube and it went viral, so some partners asked us to do it in their city, too.”

When it comes to social media, Rinner is slightly critical of the industry. “I feel we have to integrate our offer with a better online media pack. The family sector is still a bit too traditional; we have to invest more into this because it will allow us to save a lot of money in the long run.”

THE PERFECT BRAND Despite having different marketing strategies, all companies and promoters feel that having a brand to sell is one of the most powerful tools for success. Companies such as Feld Entertainment, who promote high-profile shows such as Disney On Ice, Monster Jam and the new Marvel Universe Live, know the importance of promoting a brand; not just a show.

“A reason why we are doing so well is that we take popular stories from books and films and bring them to life. The Disney formula works well because people know it is a high-quality, safe brand. Children love to see the characters of the films they have been watching or read about in books come alive and they love being able to interact with them,” Feld’s McHugh explains.

“Marvel Universe Live is our biggest production so far. It will start on 6 July in Tampa, Florida and will tour for two years throughout the USA and Canada. After two years we hope to take it to Europe and then to Australia and Asia. I think it will blow the live entertainment sector away. It is a really amazing production and we at Feld are all very excited.”

Having a unique brand can also help overcome the issue of ticket pricing, which can otherwise undermine the outcome of a show, as Adolfo Galli of Italian promoters D’Alessandro e Galli explains. “We promoted the Violetta show in Italy and it went beyond our expectations, which were already high. At first we

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IQ Magazine July 2014

Family Entertainment Harlem Globetrotters’ Bull Bullard wows the crowds

should never forget it,” he says. “We are now presenting our new Holiday On Ice: Platinum show. It is exactly what our public is used to seeing: a great ice show which carries great emotions.

There are great skaters, great costumes, a great atmosphere and great music. What’s different is that we tried to get more into the heart of ice skating.”

But whilst having a strong brand is important, alone it is not enough. “Creating the best customer experience cannot be minimised on the list of priorities,” according to Harlem Globetrotters’ Jeff Munn. “There is increasing competition in nearly all segments. There are a lot of great shows out there, and if you are going to keep up and capture attention and revenue, you must keep your product updated, engaging, and customer friendly.”

THE BEST FORMULA

“ It is important to establish new partnerships and explore new markets.

Every market has the potential to be the best market.”

Jonathan St-Onge, Cirque Éloize

wanted to organise 28 dates but we ended up with 32 and sold over 160,000 tickets,” he says. “Violetta is the Italian and Spanish equivalent of Glee. It is a television product and television products always sell very well, despite the downturn. We were worried that the ticket price was too high, considering the target was a teenage audience and we had to count on adults to take the kids to the show, too. But in the end this didn’t affect the sales at all, because the brand was strong.”

According to St-Onge, the branding strategy is the key to Cirque Éloize’s long-lasting success. “We have been touring for 20 years now and the last two have been particularly hard, but we were able to develop a successful brand and now we are reaping the benefits from it. We put a lot of effort into enhancing our branding strategy on a global level.”

According to Rinner, one of the main challenges in the family sector is maintaining a strong identity while constantly evolving.

“Staying close to what you are is a key thing, and a difficult one.

Of course, developing new things is important, but I believe that we have to always maintain our identity. We have a brand and we

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All things considered, family entertainment is still an exciting field to invest in, whether creating new shows or promoting established ones. But what is the best formula for a successful family show? According to Nicol, there is no fixed formula.

“If a show is already established, you need good promotion, you have to get your numbers right, understand what the audience is looking for and get your costing right. When you are creating a new show, it is mainly a matter of instinct and experience.”

St-Onge believes that the best formula is not to have a formula.

“I think it is important to establish new partnerships and explore new markets. Every market has the potential to be the best market.

Every market is different so we need to have different recipes. We have to be flexible.”

A good marketing strategy is definitely a major ingredient in the recipe for a successful family show, Dunstan explains.

“Sometimes we have the greatest show and the marketing campaign is done so badly that nobody wants to watch it. I think we always have to be creative, especially in a market such as this, which changes on a yearly basis and is very sensitive to this kind of thing,” he says.

Planning long term is one of the areas where family entertainment differs most from live music promotion. “We are currently working on 2016/17,” says Durkan. “This is so necessary from marketing for the local promoters, as well as being able to get the availabilities to route tours in the most efficient manner.”

For his part, Canonici, believes one of the most exciting aspects of the family sector is its unpredictability. “Sure, you have to keep an eye on the price, but you can do a lot of things. This is a 3600 market. You have to target your audience and give them what they want. For example, we know that dinosaurs are always a good idea for a children’s audience.

And we keep reinventing our shows, as we did for Shaolin Warriors and Immortal Chi, our new product.”

At the end of the day, the family entertainment sector is all about creating emotions and building memories that will last a lifetime. And according to Munn, there is just one secret to success in this industry: creating the best customer experience possible... every time. “Regardless of market, location or size, we have one opportunity to make a life-long memory and that’s what we intend to do. It comes down to creating memories worth repeating. If you do a good job, they will be back…with others.”

IQ Magazine July 2014

Oppikoppi

Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Nation) From local band night to international festival, the organised chaos that is Oppikoppi has come a long way in its first 20 years. But it’s not just about the festival; Gordon Masson learns that the businesses built up on the back of the event have helped put South Africa on the tour map for numerous artists.

A

narchy. Mad Max. Mordor. District Nine. Usually not the kind of descriptions a promoter would like to hear associated with their festival. But the organisers of Oppikoppi positively welcome those nicknames, confident in the knowledge that the festival they have nurtured and grown has a reputation – which is developing internationally – as one of the most exciting weekenders in the world.

Everyone IQ spoke to for this celebratory feature voiced one word in common: fun. And while those who make the trek to Limpopo Province to be ‘on the hill’ (Oppikoppi’s direct English translation) are left with a sense of amazement – and often disbelief – at what they encounter, the one thing each of the 20,000 annual revellers leave with is an unforgettable musical experience.

As with so many great festivals, Oppikoppi started thanks to a deep-rooted love for music and a chance friendship struck up between a young mining engineer and local farmers, Tess and Boors Bornman. “I used to work as an engineer on the mine next to where Oppikoppi now is and I knew that the Bornmans, who owned the land, were big rock & roll fans, so we had a conversation and I started putting on one or two bands in the farm’s restaurant [which was called Oppikoppi}.

That organically grew into the festival,” explains festival founder Carel Hoffman, who now counts the Bornmans as his parents-in-law.

Thinking back to that original event, Hoffman says, “It was a thatch-roofed restaurant that seated 30-40 people, but when we did the band gigs about 300 people would come along. We charged for tickets, but it was not a business enterprise. In fact, it wasn’t until the fifth or sixth year that we actually broke even. But money was never a consideration: it was all about having a good time.”

Exploiting the previously untapped demand for live music,

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the first proper festival, in 1995, catered to about 1,000 people, while the 16 acts that played had to perform multiple sets to fill the three-day programme. By year six or seven, audience numbers had reached 10-12,000. “To be honest, it stayed at that level until about five years ago when we started to hit our groove with the international acts,” Hoffman says.

“If the authorities in Europe could have seen how we were doing things back in those days, they would have had a fit,” Hoffman laughs. “We made it up as we went along. One year we had the Hell’s Angels as security and they took exception to the national broadcasters because they were eyeing up their girlfriends. So, all the camera equipment ended up in the pool. But that was an exception – fights and skirmishes don’t really happen at the festival. People just come along to let their hair down for a few days. It’s a very friendly vibe, but it’s also very chaotic.”

That friendly chaos is neatly encapsulated by the festival’s only guideline: “There is only one rule at Oppikoppi and that is don’t be a cunt,” states Hoffman. “We don’t like anybody who pisses anybody else off.”

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Winds of Change

offman believes Oppikoppi would never have taken off had it not been for the radical political changes that swept through South Africa in the 1990s, following the end of apartheid and Nelson Mandela’s rise to power.

“Oppikoppi is located in a conservative, white farming area and, initially, residents thought that holding a music festival would be the end of the world – they saw us as cat torturers,” Hoffman says. “But the regime change created a vacuum of power and allowed us the opportunity to press ahead. Under

IQ Magazine July 2014

Oppikoppi

Oppikoppi sunset © Derius Erasmus

the old regime, Oppikoppi would never have been allowed.”

Of course, success brings money and the knock-on effect for the local populace means attitudes toward the festival have changed enormously. “It’s an economic God-send for the little towns nearby,” states Hoffman. “For example, the local KFC takes in four times its average monthly revenues over the weekend of the festival. People like us now,” he smiles.

On the back of that goodwill, and no small amount of hard work, Hoffman and his team have built a number of successful businesses over the years, using Oppikoppi as a base to develop skills and establish a reputation for excellence. “We have a fully functional events company that we set up on the back of the festival,” explains Misha Loots – Hoffman’s righthand man, who is now a 13-year veteran of the company.

“Hilltop Live now organises quite a few festivals and events and has a production company element that takes on projects for other promoters. We also have a sponsorship and rights division, which is probably the biggest in South Africa and plays a role in almost every festival here.”

“ There is only one rule at Oppikoppi and that is Carel Hoffman don’t be a cunt.”

But that’s not all. “The other side of the business is called Plankton, which is our ticketing platform and now has developed cashless solutions for events,” Hoffman says. “Across the group we employ around 60 people and there are some very exciting prospects. The live music industry is still very open here and the business in the rest of Africa really does not exist, which means there are big opportunities out there for companies like ours.”

Of course, the growth of Oppikoppi has also benefitted other suppliers and contractors, without whom creating a largescale event in the middle of the South African scrub would

IQ Magazine July 2014

not be possible. Lighting supplier Theo Papenfus, of Stage Effects, attended his first Oppikoppi (then called Bushveld Blast) as a fan in 1998. “I wanted to be a part of it, so in 1999 I laboured for another company as a lighting technician,” he says. “A couple of years later I started to supply on a small scale, but now we are at the point where we supply the whole festival with lighting and some LED screens.”

Papenfus adds, “Everybody who works the festival knows it is a tough one, but worth it. The stories, memories and experience afterwards stay with you for years. Carel and the team at Hilltop Live definitely opened a lot of doors for a lot of people and they should be congratulated for what they have achieved for the music industry in SA.”

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Nurturing Chaos

any people – especially those from outside South Africa – scratch their heads in bewilderment that Oppikoppi is even allowed to exist, but while the perception of a lawless utopia abounds, the festival’s organisers employ a secret network of staff to keep ticket holders, and the land, as safe as possible. “People won’t necessarily see them, but there are lots of fire marshals patrolling the camping grounds, as well as undercover security personnel. As for the cleaning, it does not happen during the festival, but we have about 100 cleaners who stay on site for four to eight weeks after the event to sweep everything up,” says Hoffman.

Although he revels in the festival’s reputation, he maintains that the lawless, Mad Max vibe developed by accident rather than any deliberate strategy. “We didn’t know what we were doing, so that kind of created the environment. And then people started bringing their living rooms and lounges to the camp with them – you see sofas and fridges strapped to car roofs when they arrive – so that just added to the flavour. It was only when we started visiting festivals in other countries,

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Oppikoppi One of Oppikoppi’s naked foot races © Robert Weedman

Douglas Adams wrote a book called The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. I would describe my Oppikoppi years as ‘the long bright tequila sunrise of the soul’. When I think of Oppikoppi, I see a glass of tequila sunrise flickering in and out of my vision, silhouetted against the backdrop of the green plains of the Bushveld stretching into eternity like a giant pool table. Those were my formative years.

Though I performed my last rock & roll show there last year, I will always treasure the memories of those heady days. Viva to all the good friends and the Bornman family who were closer to me than life itself. I hope this year is as huge as ever.

Koos Kombuis, singer songwriter that we realised we’d created something unique.”

Australian promoter Michael Chugg is a huge fan. ”It’s the most insane festival in the world – it just wouldn’t be allowed to happen anywhere else. I love it,” says Chugg. “I remember standing at the gate with Carel watching all these cars drive in with all kinds of shit tied to the roofs. Carel told me people recreate their lounge suites in the campsites and there was a prize for the best one with the winner’s lounge put on the main stage for them to watch the bands.” He adds, “They were way ahead of everyone else with a cashless event and that shows their forward thinking. The fact that people drive all the way from Zimbabwe says it all, and now they’re persuading agents from Europe to go to Oppikoppi, that can take them to the next phase. But they just have a laugh and love doing it and I take my hat off to them, the crazy fuckers.”

From the outset, Oppikoppi has attracted festival extremists.

“In the early days, people would arrive two weeks before the festival started,” recalls Hoffman. “The guy that lasted the longest ended up getting a job on the farm for a year and a half.”

Such levels of commitment from the fans has undoubtedly contributed to Oppikoppi’s surreal atmosphere. However, the organisers’ off-the-wall approach has been crucial too.

Netherlands-based Ruud Berends first met Hoffman and Loots in a bar at SXSW, resulting in an invite to Oppikoppi for Berends and his family. “It’s fucking crazy,” he declares. “There is no backstage area and only one bar that is open 24 hours a day, right next to the guesthouses, so nobody gets any sleep. We had Jägermeister for breakfast and that set the tone for each day.”

Berends adds, “The final night I was invited to the family section of the bar where the wives and girlfriends of the organisers walk along the top of the bar with bottles of hard liquor. There are no glasses, so when you want a drink you just raise your hand and they come along and pour straight from the bottle into your mouth. But as hosts they really look after you and they arranged all sorts of safaris and tours for us. They are great guys and since the day I met them they became friends forever.”

Expanding Horizons

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ersuading agents to allow their clients to make the longhaul journey to South Africa has been a labour of love.

But the long-term strategy Hoffman devised to achieve that ambition has worked tremendously and has been a major catalyst for South Africa and its neighbours in developing a live music scene.

“I always dreamt we’d get international artists to come to the

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festival, so a long time ago I set up exchange programmes with international festivals, whereby we would send South African acts to Europe and artists from those countries would come here,” Hoffman says of his long-term masterplan. “Because of the policies of the previous government, our entire country was in isolation for many years and nobody knew who to contact internationally to book acts. But through our exchange schemes, I gradually started to meet a few agents and persuade people to come.”

Living in the cultural bubble of 70s and 80s South Africa did have some advantages, as professionals from overseas testify that Oppikoppi’s unique environment – and the hospitality of its hosts – win universal approval. “Visiting South Africa for the first time, as guests of Misha and Carel at Hilltop Live, was an excellent adventure,” says The Agency Group’s Sean Goulding. “Where else can you go on a safari, see some great bands, meet great people, discover a beautiful country, and stumble upon unsigned talent like Kongos?! A few of my acts have said Oppikoppi was one of their best touring experiences EVER.” For their part, Johannesburg-based rock band Kongos say, “Oppikoppi was one of the most insane festivals we’ve ever played. The crowd was amazing, the setting was surreal, and the vibe was electric.”

But it’s not just the creative concepts in the Bushveld that have won overseas admirers. The Agency Group’s Geoff Meall says, “I’ve had four or five acts play at the festival and the great thing is that I know they are in massively safe hands when I send them down to South Africa. Misha has even taken a couple of bands on trips to local township schools to give music lessons, which the artists absolutely love. Carel and Misha also take everyone shark diving – that’s become the stuff of legend.”

Highlighting the work that Oppikoppi and Hilltop have done in boosting the Rainbow Nation’s standing among agents, Meall adds, ”South Africa is a massively difficult market to get to – it’s a very expensive proposition, and the economy in South Africa doesn’t help that situation. But Carel and Misha go out of their way to get an act as many dates as they can to make the journey worthwhile and help introduce our artists to a new market and new fans.”

Loots says the hospitality is a no brainer. “If someone else pays for a band’s flight to get here, we’ll make sure they have an incredible stay in South Africa,” he says. “We’ve had many Dutch and Belgian bands here over the years, in particular, and we’ve helped a number of those acts with record releases here, or found them distribution deals. This year we have artists from Australia, England, France, Israel, Canada, Holland and America.”

IQ Magazine July 2014

Oppikoppi Main stage, 2013 © Robert Weedman

Oppikoppi, that cold, dusty Bushveld long-weekend of August, is the most important cultural event of my year – and it has been so for all of my adult life. To me it’s a celebration of South Africa, of the people who live here, the creativity that blossoms from it, and of the new possibilities we can forge into the future. After 20 years of democracy and 20 years of Oppikoppi it feels to me like a place where I can take stock, where I can see things in perspective, whether that be rock & roll, the state of the nation, or my personal life. It’s a reunion with old friends, and a place to meet fresh new tunes face-on.

The sense of family I feel when I’m at Oppikoppi is something I’ll defend passionately – I love Oppikoppi in the fiercest, rightest way possible: with my heart.

Toast Coetzer, musician and journalist

hile the nature of the one-rule utopia attracts a hedonistic crowd, one of Oppikoppi’s extraordinary achievements has been in breaking down cultural barriers. “Although we began life as a rock & roll festival, we took the decision quite early on to introduce black jazz artists, despite worries about whether that would cause problems,” says Hoffman, referring to his country’s complicated racial history. “But the audience completely embraced it and we have been lucky that all the good things from the new South Africa have sort of come hand in hand with the audience that comes to Oppikoppi.”

Loots agrees, admitting that programming the festival fills him with pride. “Five years ago we were a bit anxious when we put Mafikizolo – a jazz afro pop act – on the bill. That was completely alien for our core fans, but it was amazing. During the set, the power to the lights went out, but the PA kept going.

People in the audience took out their flash lights and shone them onto the stage so that the band could continue – it was magical.”

Indeed, the emphasis on programming has developed a highly appreciative audience in the Bushveld. “People used to come to Oppikoppi and not see a single performance – they’d just stay in the camping grounds and get fucked up,” Loots says. “That doesn’t happen anymore. The bottom line is that the fans trust us. We can put on a Zulu act right after a death metal band and people will embrace that. The audience check out anything we throw at them, so that allows us to showcase lots of new artists at Oppikoppi.”

It also allows the festival to suggest collaborations that others wouldn’t even dream of attempting. “We have a big reputation for the cool sets we do when we team up artists on stage. Albert Frost, for instance, did an amazing unrehearsed set with Louis Mhlanga ten years ago now, and people still talk about that.”

One of the African continent’s finest guitarists, Frost has grown up with Oppikoppi and holds the distinction of having performed at every single edition of the festival. “I’m still sane and alive, which in itself is a miracle after 20 Oppikoppis,” says Frost. “I played the first festival when I was 17, so I’ve seen some big changes: they’ve created the biggest rock festival in Africa, with the best sound, best bands and best musical experience possible.”

Recalling his duet with Mhlanga, he says, “I met Louis quarter of an hour before we were due to go on stage. We come from completely different backgrounds and musical environments, but in the short chat we had, we found one common denominator: Jimi Hendrix. We played an impromptu

IQ Magazine July 2014

Working with Carel and Misha and Oppikoppi was a great experience. We tour all over the world and South Africa is very far from our home. The festival and its organisers made the trip easy and a place we will always want to come back to.

Cath Grenfell, writer and broadcaster How does one even begin to describe Oppikoppi? I think the legend of it precedes it. There is a special history to it that makes it stand out, you can feel it as you drive down the dusty road and through the gates. And that feeling stays with you until you drive out. You have remnants that remind you that you were there from your dusty boots, your dirty car and the dust stored deep inside your ears, to the awesome memories you leave with. The amazing music you have heard, to friends you have made and strange characters you meet along the way. I feel like I missed too many. Oppikoppi – you legend. I can’t wait to experience your 20th anniversary! Thank you!

Cath Grenfell, writer and broadcaster Oppikoppi – 20 years of music and dust. Carel, 20 words for you from us: (1) free, (2) spirit, (3) true, (4) self, (5) world, (6) traveller, (7) wonderful, (8) soul, (9) motivator, (10) inspiration, (11) music, (12) devotee, (13) long time, (14) friend, (15) fulltime, (16) people, (17) person, (18) DIY, (19) wiseguy, (20) R E S P E C T. Wablief?!

From your friends @ Pukkelpop (BE)

Oppikoppi campsite, 1975

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Tastemakers

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Oppikoppi

set based on Hendrix and it was amazing – people just loved it and on stage I just felt like I was tripping.”

As for the way the festival has developed from an artist point of view, Frost says, “The upgrades in infrastructure have been pretty remarkable. The set-up improves every year, as does the level of artists. In South Africa, people are not as educated on ‘good music’ as they are in Europe. But Oppikoppi is bringing that next phase of change, where local acts can mix with international musicians, and that is helping people understand that African acts are as talented as international artists.”

It’s those special moments that Hoffman lives for. “It’s 20 years, but there are still those performances at Oppikoppi that can blow you away with emotion,” he tells IQ. “Last year we had a South African band from the 1980s on, Mango Grove, and I was in tears, along with half of the audience, singing along to all the songs.”

Recalling that historic set, Mango Groove’s John Leydn comments, “22,000 amazing young South Africans going absolutely ballistic, and singing all our songs back at us… an incredibly moving, humbling and emotional experience for us.” He adds, “There is nothing quite like Oppikoppi, and it stands proud in the pantheon of the world’s great annual music festivals.”

Indeed, enjoying something of a cult status, it seems that everybody in South Africa has an Oppi story, even if they have never been to the festival themselves. Just check out John Langford’s recollections of his first visit to the farm.

“I attended as the general manager of 5FM (South Africa’s equivalent of BBC Radio One),” says Langford, who is now director of concerts, events and ticketing at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow. “Expecting possibly the VIP experience I had become used to, I arrived at the festival without any thought of how/where I would spend the night. Carel met me at the gate and whisked me straight to the bar. Within a few hours I was completely and utterly inebriated – but sufficiently focused to make a desperate attempt at finding a place to sleep that night with a beautiful blonde girl.

“I really cannot recall how the night progressed – if at all. But the memory of waking up in a dusty campsite, in the arms of someone who looked very different from the girl I had met at the night before will stay with me forever… and to top it off, I never got to see a single band that weekend. Fortunately, things could only get better in subsequent years. Carel, Misha and their team are top blokes with a penchant for rewriting the rules.”

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The Odyssey

icking a theme for each edition of the festival, The Odyssey was appropriately chosen for this year’s landmark 20th anniversary. However, when asked about plans for the future, Oppi’s promoters appear reluctant to entertain expansion for the August weekender. Mind you, they don’t have much choice. “We haven’t kept the maximum capacity at 20,000 to drive demand or anything else; it’s mainly to do with the supply of water on the farm,” explains Hoffman. “Over the years we’ve built some dams and a water network to cope, but the bottom line is that we can only supply water for 20,000 people.”

Finding it hard to believe that two decades have flown by, Hoffman says, “The growth has been amazing – last year,

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for example, we signed 158 entertainment contracts for Oppikoppi. Our approach has always been to remain eclectic and give people lots of choice, rather than rely on any one headliner to pull people in. We never want to rely on a single act, because that can put you in a bad position if that act has to cancel for any reason.”

With international acts such as Editors, Cat Power and Willy Mason jetting in for this year’s gathering, it’s no wonder that ticket holders are counting the days until 7 August. But other elements of the programming are equally as enticing and the organisers are expecting the number of visitors from overseas to continue to grow. “We are organising a big event for Hugh Masakela at the festival because it’s his 75th birthday this year and one of our policies is to do something special for a South African artist at each edition of the festival,” says Loots, who confesses that he cannot wait to see Willy Mason at the event.

Celebrating 20 years of Oppikoppi, the praise that Hoffman himself receives is deeply deserved. Guitarist Albert Frost comments, “Carel is a good chess player – he’s always five moves ahead. The most endearing thing about both Carel and Misha is that they are real music lovers. Oppikoppi is all about the music; they’re not in it for the money, as Hilltop makes so much more money than Oppikoppi ever could. For Carel it’s a real labour of love. What he, Misha, and Tess and Boors Bornman have done for South Africa is incredible.”

Loots states, “Carel is a guy with massive vision. The rest of us help make that vision happen and it’s a great atmosphere to work in.”

Ever humble, however, Hoffman concludes, “To get 20,000 people to drive two or three hours to the middle of nowhere is quite an achievement. But the way people have embraced the event is also the reason it is so unique and even though we’re now 20 years into it, the best thing for me is that people are more excited than ever about coming to this year’s festival.”

IQ Magazine July 2014

Your Shout

“What lessons could football and music learn from each other?” is a community of one, as opposed to two diametrically opposed factions, so the shared experience may not be quite as ardent, but fulfilment is assured.

Paul Latham, Live Nation

TOP SHOUT Live artists could learn some serious punctuality from football matches, that’s for sure! I can’t remember the last time the mighty Arsenal went on the pitch late... Rihanna, Bieber and Guns N’ Roses could learn a thing or two.

Glen Rowe, Cato Music Ltd

I think they already know enough about each other: most of the time both footballers and music artists share the same big ego and charge similar excessive fees.

Corrado Canonici, World Concert Artists

Brand loyalty? Bands and artists can be loved and lost within the space of a few months, whereas supporting a football club is for life.

Tom Hopewell, ILMC

The most telling thing is that unless you have a manager of the team that they believe in and can get the best out of the players, plus an agent that understands the long-term good of the players, you won`t get the best performance. In music, we are lucky that the passion of the crowd

I believe this may only be a UK issue because of legislation introduced to try to prevent crowd violence but if you can sit (or stand) with a beer to watch a band, then surely football stadiums (and British politicians) can sort things out so fans can do likewise. Times have changed and so have football crowds. On a similar note, perhaps the caterers that operate food and beverage concessions at concerts and festivals could tender for business at football stadiums where staff seem genuinely surprised that fans would like a half-time beer, and take forever to serve them, despite the fact that they only have about 15 minutes to consume that beer as they are banned from taking it back to their seat.

Gordon Masson, IQ

When it comes to marketing VIP seats, there is no comparison. In football, the packages are sold by the clubs (aka promoters) who also own the venues or control them. That way they keep all the profits. They pay a commission to providers but that does not detract from the model. Music can’t do this. Too many people want a piece of the pie!

But when it comes to lessons, I’d say bring back standing-only. We never see anyone sitting at a gig unless the artist is Paul McCartney or The Eagles! Why anyone should buy a seat and then stand either at football or at a gig is beyond me. Get rid of those bloody chairs, get more people in.

Ed Grossman, MGR Touring

It’s not football, but ILMC’s Outside Industries panel in 2013 was fascinating.

Edward Griffiths from [rugby club] Saracens had the room wrapt with tales of what he and Saracens were doing at Allianz Park, their new ground, including bespoke, event-specific product – at retail, they were selling individually branded match balls for each home game that season; and at food and beverage, Saracens branded pies and beers were on offer, with special products for each match. Also, he revealed 80% of the Saracens match-day income comes from just 5% of the tickets.

Jim Frayling, Wembley Stadium

Recently attending a gig at a large venue the spectacular stage show was only visible by 75% of the audience on the main floor (all of whom had paid £45 for the pleasure). Anyone who was under six-feet tall was unable to see the stage at all and most ended up talking to each other or taking selfies, which I’m sure is not what the band or the lighting director wanted. Get some big screens in for every show… just like the football.

Martin Hughes, M3H Creative

Three business lessons to learn from [Manchester United’s] Alex Ferguson: 1. Experience and the long view count.

2. Flexibility and the ability to change.

3. The value of values – no matter the money or titles he accumulated, Ferguson never forgot the people at the heart of the club – the fans.

An anonymous Liverpool fan

Footballers and musicians – there is no short cut. It’s 10,000 hours and then some. It’s practice, practice – with discipline. And the higher up the ladder of fame, the more important it is to remember to stay grounded.

A good band/team is generally a happy band/team.

Jonathan Morrish, PPL

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

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July 2014 IQ Magazine