LIVE MUSIC INTELLIGENCE
Issue 57
A n I L M C P u b l i c a t i o n . Ja n 2 0 1 5
European Festival Report 2014
ILMC 27 SUPERGUIDE
STROMAE TOUR REPORT
THE GAFFER: WOB ROBERTS
LATIN AMERICAEuropean PARTEFestival DOS Report 2014 2014: YEAR IN REVIEW DRALION - BEST IN SHOW
ILMC 27 BLACK AND WHITE VERSION REVERSED OUT
ILMC 27 2 COLOUR LOGO REVERSED OUT
Suffering industry issues! It’s time to call on the
Intergalactic League of Music Crimefighters…!
Super-powered by the galaxy’s mightiest sponsors
Eight-page Registration Special • Eight-page Registration Special • Eight-page Registration Special • Eight-page Registration Special •Eight-page Registration Special • Eight-page
ILMC 27 MAIN LOGO
AND IT BEGINS... Holy
hijinks, ILMC is back! The world’s favourite live music conference returns with a galaxy of events, meetings, networking and fun. Thinly disguised as our alter ego, the Intergalactic League of Music Crimefighters, we’ll be welcoming over 1,000 would-be industry superheroes to our ‘Fortress of Platitudes’ for a truly supercharged edition of the conference. This registration guide contains information on key events, booking information and a host of useful tips on getting the most from the conference. We’ll also be keeping you up to speed in our regular eNews, but for a complete rundown, head to 27.ilmc.com. ILMC 27 has mutated! Not through the intervention of a radioactive spider or exotic space rock, but in response to the
4
AT REGISTCE.R COM 27.ILM
wishes of you, our members. The biggest change will be to the timing of the conference schedule, which will run from Thursday evening to late afternoon on Sunday. It will feature more events, more meeting space and more panels than ever before, with a new workshop programme and Tech Laboratory thrown in for good measure. However, like the best spandex outfits, space is at a premium at ILMC. The conference always sells out in advance, so it’s advisable to sign-up quickly to avoid missing out and being forever banished to the Phantom Zone. So dig out your old Marvel comics, start figuring out how to fit your underpants over your trousers, and we’ll look forward to seeing you – and all the heroes and villains of the live music world – in London, in March 2015!
JOINING FORCES?
The
ILMC Networking Scheme is one of the many ways that ILMC facilitates dialogue between its members, in addition to the raft of events taking place over the weekend. The scheme allows all registered delegates to access a secure area of 27.ilmc.com to contact fellow delegates and arrange meetings before the conference starts. To take part, please tick the relevant box when registering or contact registration@ilmc.com to receive the code and link. For first-time delegates, ILMC can be an overwhelming experience, so the New Delegates’ Orientation (Friday 6 March at 10:00) is a must. The 30-minute session is a quick orientation about getting the most from ILMC, and a chance to make a few introductions (and compare underpants.)
BECOMING A HERO To
register for ILMC, sign up online at 27.ilmc.com where you’ll of course they will, it’s a flipping website find up-to-date information about the conference, including event schedules, the networking scheme and details on how to get to the Royal Garden Hotel, along with the most important part of the conference – the agenda, when it is published in February. Please note, that if you haven’t attended before, ILMC is an invitation-only event. All new delegates must be nominated by two existing ILMC members, who have attended on more than one occasion. Please refer to 27.ilmc.com/registration for more details.
Agents of I.L.M.C. PRODUCER Lou Percival +44 (0)203 743 0305 lou@ilmc.com
AGENDA Greg Parmley +44 (0)203 743 0306 greg@ilmc.com
AGENDA Gordon Masson +44 (0)203 743 0303 gordon@ilmc.com
REGISTRATION MANAGER Kane Leighton-Pope +44 (0)203 743 0301 registration@ilmc.com
MARKETING & PRESS Chris Prosser +44 (0)203 743 0302 marketing@ilmc.com
AGENDA Allan McGowan +44 (0)7966 446226 allan@allanmcgowan.com
AGENDA & NETWORKING Tom Hopewell +44 (0)7739 316518 tom@ilmc.com
TRAVEL Christine McKinnon +44 (0)141 353 8800 christine@thetourcompany.co.uk
5
A ‘Night on the Tiles’
Gala Dinner & Arthur Awards…
If
you’re in the contemporary live music business, then there’s one night of the year you shouldn’t miss. The heart of every ILMC and the pinnacle of the live music calendar, The Gala Dinner & Arthur Awards welcome the great, the good, the heroes and the villains of the international business to meet, dine and celebrate its most super. The capital’s finest hotel, The Savoy, will be transformed into the usual hangout of every superhero – the rooftops of New York (oh ok, London). Guests will be treated to a champagne reception followed by a four-course feast with fine wines, as well as some excellent entertainment. More details will be revealed shortly, but with ILMC’s current superhero theme, expect anything from chandelier-swingers to mind control, or more…
After the champagne, music, food, wine and entertainment, comes the climax of the night, The Arthur Awards. During this spectacular annual ceremony, the live music industry’s Oscar equivalents are handed out to those most deserving. The awards honour this year’s industry favourites in the fields of promoting (Promoters’ Promoter), festivals (Liggers’ Favourite Festival), agency (Second Least Offensive Agent), venues (First Venue to Come into Your Head), new business talent (Tomorrow’s New Boss), professional services (Most Professional Professional), ticketing (The Golden Ticket), production services (Services Above and Beyond) and assistants (The People’s Assistant). Finally, the pinnacle of proceedings is The Bottle Award, where we honour one special hero for their outstanding contribution to the live music industry. Any prior ILMC delegate or IQ subscriber is eligible to vote for The Arthurs (at 27.ilmc.com/arthur-awards), with voting open until 6pm GMT on Friday 20 February. Tickets for The ‘Night on the Tiles’ Gala Dinner and Arthur Awards are £160. To attend, tick the relevant box when registering for the conference itself, or email registration@ilmc.com.
The ‘Avengers Assemble’ Opening Party
ILMC
starts with a ‘BANG!’ (and no doubt the odd ‘POW!’ and ‘WHAM!’) on Thursday 5 March when live music avengers from around the world gather to kick off the weekend in style. With ILMC now beginning earlier, the Opening Party marks the official start of the conference. The party is a must-attend event as members reunite to swap 12 months of crime-fighting tips, daring tricks and heroic tales from the music universe (and avoid the Friday morning rush by arriving the night before). Come and enjoy a complimentary drink (or three) courtesy of hosts Dot Tickets, who have some spectacular surprises planned for the evening… more will be revealed shortly.
6
Energising the weekend
As
anyone who’s attended before will know, ILMC is a long way from a conventional music business conference. Due to the fact that only invited professionals can attend, and with the ever-colourful live music business as its backdrop, there’s always something to talk about on the Monday morning once the headache clears, the bruises go down, or that photo has gone viral… However, it’s not all outlandish exploits and fun…there’s business to be done too! And to ensure that members get the most from the ILMC weekend, each delegate place includes: • Access to all panel, meeting and social areas • Five-star buffet lunches on Saturday and Sunday • Tea and coffee service • Annual postal subscription to IQ Magazine • Participation in the Networking Scheme • A copy of the ILMC Globetrotters Guide featuring contact info of all delegates • An ILMC delegate bag • Wi-Fi throughout the Royal Garden Hotel 27.ILMC.COM • The opportunity to hang out with superheroes of the global live music industry
IT’S ALL ONLINE AT
Pollstar’s Tech Laboratory
What
New Recruits...
This
year, ILMC has introduced a Bursary Scheme for young professionals and start-up companies. The scheme is intended to provide a route for those who would otherwise not be able to attend, to participate in ILMC for the first time. Patrons of the scheme are Robertson Taylor W&P Longreach. If you’re employed by, or own, a company that employs less than 10 people, and have not previously attended an ILMC, you may well be eligible. The closing date to apply is Friday 30 January 2015 and more info is online at 27.ilmc.com/features.
Saving the Planet
Saving
the earth is a mission that most superheroes have attempted at one time or another, so in keeping with this year’s theme, ILMC is implementing a staged three-year plan to become more environmentally aware, and introducing several new initiatives this year as a result. These include: • Voluntary carbon offset for all delegate travel • Reviewing all print and manufacturing around the event
was once a simple cyber café is being transformed this year into a Tech Laboratory. Open and online 24-hours a day throughout the ILMC weekend, the space will host some of the most innovative tech companies in the industry who’ll be showcasing their wares to delegates. With hot tea and coffee on tap, and cakes and snacks also available, it’s one of the best areas for private meetings over the course of the weekend. So if you have a product, gadget or gizmo that you’d like to showcase to delegates, please contact marketing@ilmc.com. • Recycling bins placed throughout the hotel • Paper waste reduction • Suppliers issued with our environmental policy and asked to consider their own • Working closely with the Royal Garden Hotel to reduce all waste Anyone who’d like to find out more, or just needs something to help them sleep better at night, can find a copy of our environmental policy at 27.ilmc. com/features.
7
EVENTS FOR DAREDEVILS AND NIGHT OWLS... Thursday 5 March... ILMC Production Meeting The seventh annual IPM will see production professionals from across the globe converge for a day of panel sessions, discussion and networking. Delegate numbers will again be expanding this year, but with a strict 200-capacity in the room, the event is likely to be oversubscribed. IPM includes a five-star buffet lunch, refreshments, and a closing drinks party. Sponsored by eps, EFM, Fly Victor and Megaforce, registration is separate to the main ILMC conference but ILMC delegates benefit from a discounted rate. See 27.ilmc.com/ipm for more info. 10:00 - 18:00.
ITB Showcase Our friends at ITB kick off the ILMC’s showcase schedule with some of the best new music you’re likely to hear this side of next Christmas. And with it all taking place directly opposite the Royal Garden Hotel, it’s a great event to twin with a visit to the ILMC ‘Avengers Assemble’ Opening Party, which also takes place that night. The line-up will be revealed closer to the time… 18:30 – 22:00.
Green Events & Innovations Conference (GEI) Presented by A Greener Festival, Bucks New University and the Association of Independent Festivals, the GEI – now in its seventh year – is a leading conference for sustainability at live events. GEI will continue to demonstrate the latest solutions and technologies for practical event management and in 2015 will be exploring social and cultural sustainability of events, in addition to solely environmental factors, and how these issues intertwine. Registration is separate to the main ILMC conference but ILMC delegates benefit from a discounted rate. See 27.ilmc.com/gei for more info. 10:00 - 18:00.
ILMC ‘Avengers Assemble’ Opening Party ILMC starts with a ‘BANG!’ (and no doubt the odd ‘POW!’ and ‘WHAM!’) on Thursday 5 March when live music avengers from around the world gather to kick off the weekend in style. With ILMC now beginning earlier, the new Opening Party is the official start of the conference weekend. Taking place in the Royal Garden Hotel, hosts Dot Tickets will be laying on some complimentary drinks and there are plenty more surprises to be announced. A definite diary date for any self-respecting crimefighter (or super villain)! 20:00 - Late.
Friday 6 March... Crime-Fighters’ Super Snack
The World ‘Just-Ace’ Texas Hold’em Poker Tourney
With the ILMC now starting earlier than ever, the CrimeFighters’ Super Snack will keep delegates energised for a full day of conferencing. Enjoy two hours of tasty super treats, located on the mezzanine floor of the hotel. With everything else happening during the first day of ILMC, it’s a chance to rub caped shoulders with fellow guardians of the music universe before the afternoon sessions begin. 12:30 - 14:30.
The World ‘Just-Ace’ Texas Hold’em Poker Tourney is an annual favourite at ILMC, and a great way to make new friends, lie to their faces and win the capes off their backs. Seats are issued on a first-come, first-served basis. It costs £20 to enter, with all proceeds going to charity. Sign-up when you register, or if you feel like a gamble, swing by on Friday night and enquire about any last minute places. 21:30 - 00:00.
Captain Netherland’s Impact Party
The Sidekicks Table Football ‘Coupe du Monde’
Music, drinks, presentations, snacks, competitions...Friday night at ILMC would not be complete without a swoop across Kensington High Street to see the best new Dutch music. Dutch Performing Arts’ annual meet and greet takes place across the road from the Royal Garden Hotel. There’s a Eurosonic registration up for grabs, as well as some of the nation’s hottest new stars to check out. 18:00 – 21:00.
With ILMC’s new customised Bonzini table being unveiled in 2015, anticipation surrounding the annual Coupe du Monde competition will be at fever pitch by Friday night for this annual battle for international glory and the world’s smallest cup. Be in the bar with your chosen teammate by 10pm to sign-up and then feel like a true superhero as you and your chosen sidekick control 12 tiny football players in your quest for fame and glory. 00:00 - 03:00.
The aXs-Men’s Super Jam What happens when you mix a room full of concert business mystery men, a few special potions, and a worldclass backing band with a small galaxy of songs? Just as Friday night at ILMC gets properly underway, our friends at AXS are hosting an evening to remember. There’ll be complimentary cocktails, party mementos, and of course the Super Jam itself, where the most daring delegates can front their very own rock band and truly kick-ass (or suck ass) in front of their peers. 21:00 - late.
8
REGISTER 27.ILMC. AT COM
Access All Areas !!?! Saturday 7 March... Complimentary Lunch Lunches at ILMC are not to be missed, as the Royal Garden Hotel’s chefs showcase their own superpowers and lay on a buffet menu to remember. With everything from light sushi to super filling hot meals on offer, and more opportunities to mingle whilst you recharge your special powers. 12:30 – 14:30.
Feld’s Marvel-Ice Cream Break Even the toughest and roughest heroes and villains need to take a break now and again. Fortunately, our friends at Feld Entertainment are on hand with their Marvel-ice creams: some welcome relief after a long night saving the planet or a hard day’s conferencing. 16:00 – 17:00.
Match of the Year Football This galactic annual showdown sees the fearless UK take on the Rest of The World in a match of epic proportions, as these giants of the world of live industry face off and kick a ball at each other once more. Places are limited and must be booked in advance, so if you want to to get involved, contact peter@aikenpromotions.com. 19:30-21:30.
The ILMC ‘Night on the Tiles’ Gala Dinner & Arthur Awards The Gala Dinner & Arthur Awards welcomes the great, the good, the heroes and the villains of the international live music business. Over 300 of the industry’s finest will descend – by complimentary coach, or just fly direct – on London’s top hotel, The Savoy, for an evening of fine dining, champagne, entertainment, and of course the Arthur Awards, as the industry’s top honours are handed out. For more, see page 6.
The Access All Areas programme gives delegates a chance to catch some of London’s hottest shows using just their delegate pass from Thursday 5 to Sunday 8 March. The listings of all available shows is published in the Globetrotters Guide, and while some venues are quite literally across the street, for others you’ll need to get on the road for the show. Entry requirements differ, so please check at the Help Desk before heading out. With the whole of London on your doorstep, there’s an abundance of live music to get stuck into and enjoy…
Sunday 8 March... Complimentary Lunch Lunches at ILMC are not to be missed, as the Royal Garden Hotel’s chefs showcase their own superpowers and lay on a buffet menu to remember. With everything from light sushi to super filling hot meals on offer, and more opportunities to mingle whilst you recharge your special powers.. 12:30 – 14:30.
Nikos Fund Grand Prize Draw Be in the Park Terrace restaurant in the Royal Garden Hotel for the chance to win some colossal prizes as our chosen charities Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy and International Committee of the Red Cross benefit. But don’t forget – you must be in the room to win. 14:45 - 15:15.
Stragglers’ Bar Time ILMC may have wrapped up for the year, but delegates still have exclusive use of the Royal Garden Hotel’s bar. Crime-fighters who just can’t face the flight home yet, can join the stubborn few for a final cheeky tipple (or three) before Monday dawns and we all Zod off back to our own galaxies, until next year. 18:00...
Sonic Boom Karaoke Hosted by the awesome ID&C, Sonic Boom Karaoke is a latenight melting pot for anyone who can attempt a tune, shake a tambourine or who just fancies a giggle. With boxes of props and original 90s costumes for inspiration, this late night karaoke mayhem and zone of bad fashion sense will keep you amused for light years. It all takes place in The Phantom Zone of the Royal Garden Hotel. 22:30-02:00
9
Provisional SCHEDULE... LL IT’S AE AT ONLINC.COM M
27.IL M
“What does it mean to be a superhero? We’re all fighting for the better good. But, at the same time, I think what stands out is, as superheroes, you don’t give up; you don’t surrender. I think that’s what makes a superhero.” – Ellen Wong
Thursday 5 March 2015 09:00 - 17:00 10:00 - 18:00 10:00 - 18:00 11:00 - 18:00 13:00 - 21:00 13:00 - 18:00 18:00 - 20:00 18:00 onwards 18:30 - 22:00 20:00 - late Various
IPM Registration ILMC Production Meeting Green Events & Innovations Conference Association Meetings (invitation only) ILMC Early-Bird Registration Travel Desk IPM Closing Drinks Party Park Terrace Table Reservations ITB Showcase ILMC ‘Avengers Assemble’ Opening Party Access All Areas
Friday 6 March 2015 09:00 - 20:00 09:00 - 18:00 10:00 onwards 10:00 - 17:00 10:00 - 10:30 10:00 - 18:00 12:00 onwards 12:30 - 14:30 18:00 - 21:00 18:30 Various 21:00 - Late 21:30 - 00:00 00:00 - 03:00
Registration Desk & Help Desk Travel Desk Pollstar’s Tech Laboratory opens Association Meetings (invitation only) New Delegates’ Orientation Conference Sessions AEG’s Heroes & Villains Bar The Crime-fighters’ Super Snack Captain Netherland’s Impact Party Dinner in The Garden Access All Areas The aXs-Men’s Super Jam The World ‘Just-Ace’ Texas Hold ‘em Poker Tourney The Sidekicks Table Football ‘Coupe du Monde’
Saturday 7 March 2015 07:00 - 13:00 09:00 - 18:00 09:00 - 19:30 09:30 - 10:30 10:00 - 13:30 11:00 - onwards 12:30 - 14:30 13:00 - 19:00 14:00 - 18:15 16:00 - 17:00 19:30 - 21:30 19:30 - 00:00 Various 22:30 - late
Breakfast Available Registration Desk & Travel Desk Help Desk Coffee Break & Bars Conference Sessions AEG’s Heroes & Villains Bar Lunch Buffet & Pay Bar Robertson Taylor’s Pow! Wow! Suite Conference Sessions Feld’s Marvel-Ice Cream Break Match of the Year Football The ‘Night On the Tiles’ Gala Dinner & Arthur Awards Access All Areas Sonic Boom Karaoke
Sunday 8 March 2015 07:00 - 13:00 10:00 - 11:00 10:00 - 16:00 10:00 - 16:00 10:30 - 14:00 11:00 - onwards 13:30 - 15:30 14:45 - 15:15 15:30 - 16:30 18:00 - home
Breakfast on the Mezzanine Coffee Break & Bars Travel Desk Help Desk The Breakfast Meeting & Conference Sessions AEG’s Heroes & Villains Bar Lunch Buffet & Pay Bar Nikos Fund Grand Prize Draw ILMC Autopsy Stragglers’ Bar Time
The Not-so-Small Print
a full list of terms and conditions can be found online, but please note: • ILMC conference sessions may not be videoed or recorded • Children are not allowed in the conference areas
10
• Conference passes must be worn at all times • Lost passes will incur a replacement fee
Contents
European Festival Report 2014
IQ Magazine Issue 57
News and Developments 14 In Brief The main headlines over the last two months
3
16 In Depth Key stories from around the live music world 24 Techno Files Revealing the hottest new technology in live entertainment
Features 3
ILMC 27 The Intergalactic League of Music Crimefighters…!
26 Year in Review Allan McGowan takes a look back over the live entertainment business in 2014
26
34
34 Best in Show Dralion chalks up 15 amazing years for Cirque du Soleil 42 Festival Report The conclusions of IQ’s seventh annual festival survey
European Festival Report 2014
52 Stromae The international breakthrough of Belgium’s dance maestro 56 Latin America – Parte Dos Our second and final market report on the Latin American live industry 64 The Gaffer 2014 Wob Roberts’ journey from backline tech to stadium tour production guru
42
Comments and Columns 20 Save our Small Venues Artist Frank Turner urges support for grass-roots clubs 21 Hello Wembley John Drury believes the renamed arena is more iconic than ever 22 Encouraging Emerging European Acts Fabien Miclet champions the Liveurope project 23 Touring with Odd Hugo The Estonian duo talk about life on the road
52 56
64
80 Members’ Noticeboard Members get their festive moves on at the IQ/ILMC Christmas party 82 Your Shout What mad invention would you like to see come to fruition? IQ Magazine January 2015
11
Mild-mannered reporting
Issue 57
Gordon Masson searches for a superhero cape to try to slow down time after another momentous year in live music
THE ILMC JOURNAL, Jan 2015
Once again a year has flown by at the speed of Glastonbury Festival ticket sales and we find ourselves in December wondering where all the time went. But it’s not been a bad 12 months and there are genuine signs that territories around the world are emerging from the deepest recession in living memory. That’s not to say that the good times are back everywhere, as a read of Adam Woods’ final part of our Latin American market focus (see page 56) will attest. Speak to promoters and other execs, internationally, however, and there’s a sense of optimism about the business. Or maybe that’s just the positive nature of the industry that we work in. One significant victory to talk about is the ruling in Spain that found performing rights collection society, SGAE, has been abusing its monopoly position in the market by charging promoters 10% of box office gross (see story page 16). While the society is appealing the ruling, Spain’s promoters’ association is pushing for a situation whereby the PRS tariffs for international acts on tour do not exceed the rate they would have to pay in their own country. For example, if a British act plays Madrid, then the promoter would have to pay 3% to SGAE, in line with the PRS tariff in the UK. It’s an interesting proposition, and one we’ll be keeping our eyes on as the debate develops, rest assured. For a round-up of all the major developments during 2014, Allan McGowan’s annual review of the live entertainment industry can be found on page 26 and makes for interesting reading – if you’re anything like me, a reminder of which companies and individuals did what, and when, is an invaluable tool at this time of year (and in the months ahead). The IQ team is also delighted that
IQ Magazine January 2015
our production manager of the year, The Gaffer (page 64), is none other than Wob Roberts. We’ve known Wob for many years, primarily through his work on tours for Coldplay and Robbie Williams, so it’s particularly pleasing that his guidance on the One Direction stadium tour has landed him The Gaffer award. The fact that he describes the tour as the most difficult he’s ever dealt with highlights the skills he has amassed over the years, and have helped the boy band shift more than 3.4million tickets in 2014. Truly remarkable! Another award winning tour is Dralion, which is IQ’s Best In Show for 2014 (page 34). The Cirque du Soleil show comes to the end of its 15-year run in early 2015, so it’s a fitting way to say farewell to a production that has entertained millions around the globe, and that even with its final bow will break into yet another new market for Cirque. Also breaking borders is Belgian act Stromae (page 52), who has enjoyed an amazing 12 months, being one of the very few non-English speaking acts to sell concert tickets both in the UK and the North American markets. Our American correspondent, Emmanuel Legrand examines Stromae’s journey and talks to some of the promoters who have played a part in this international success story. And if all that isn’t enough to see you through to 2015, our Superguide to ILMC 27 (page 3) might have you stealing curtains for your makeshift cape and donning a lycra mask, as the theme for our annual extravaganza is revealed. With that in mind, let me, on behalf of the teams at both IQ and ILMC, wish you a relaxing and peaceful holiday season and all the best for 2015 – hopefully, we will see you in March at the Royal Garden Hotel, if not before.
LIVE MUSIC INTELLIGENCE
IQ Magazine
Unit 31 Tileyard Road London, N7 9AH info@iq-mag.net www.iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 3743 0300 Twitter: @ilmc
Publisher
ILMC and Suspicious Marketing
Editor
Gordon Masson
Associate Editor Allan McGowan
Marketing & Advertising Manager Terry McNally
Design
Martin Hughes
Sub Editor
Michael Muldoon
Editorial Assistant Susanna Moro
Contributors
Chris Austin, John Drury, Rando Kruus, Emmanuel Legrand, Fabien Miclet, Greg Parmley, Nicola Riches, Manfred Tari, Frank Turner, Oliver Vare, Adam Woods
Editorial Contact
Gordon Masson, gordon@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 3743 0303
Advertising Contact
Terry McNally, terry@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 3743 0304
To subscribe to IQ Magazine: michael@iq-mag.net An annual subscription to IQ is £75 (print) or £60 (electronic).
13
News
In Brief... OCTOBER
Live Nation Entertainment smashes analyst expectations in its third quarter, with net income of $105.2million (€84.7m) from revenues of $2.5billion (€2.0bn), compared with $2.3bn (€1.6bn) one year ago. Rock in Rio USA announces bookings for No Doubt, Metallica, Linkin Park, Taylor Swift, John Legend, Deftones, Bruno Mars, Joss Stone and Ed Sheeran for the inaugural festival in Las Vegas on the weekends of 8-9 and 15-16 May, 2015. The events will take place across three themed streets on the Vegas Strip. The Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, is put up for sale. The 19,000-capacity venue is just two years old, but developers Forest City Ratner seem keen to cash in on their 55% stake in the building. TPG becomes the new majority shareholder of Creative Artists Agency (see page 18), taking its stake from 35% to 53% with an additional $225m (€181m) investment. The European Talent Exchange Programme (ETEP) reports another recordbreaking year with 102 acts sharing 321 festival slots across the continent. Top of the pile were UK act, Jungle, with 15 slots, while fellow Brits, Royal Blood, performed at 14 festivals.
The 30th anniversary version of the Band Aid charity single, Do They Know It’s Christmas, raises £1m (€1.3m) within minutes of its debut on UK TV show The X-Factor. The song is raising funds to fight the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. Lollapalooza announces a raft of acts, including, Calvin Harris, Kings of Leon, Robert Plant, Skrillex, Smashing Pumpkins, Jack White and Pharrell Williams for next year’s festivals in Argentina (21-22 March), Brazil (28-29 March) and Chile (14-15 March). ArenaNetwork announces plans to launch TheaterNetwork to market North American venues in the 2,000- to 4,000-capacity range. TheaterNetwork will go live in January 2015 and will act as a booking agency for those venues, but intends to limit membership to 20 in its first year. Irving Azoff says he could remove 42 of Global Music Rights’ song catalogues from Google’s new streaming music service on YouTube because licensing deals have not been agreed. Those clients include the Eagles, Pharrell Williams, Boston, Chris Cornell, Foreigner, Smokey Robinson, John Lennon, and George and Ira Gershwin. PT Java Festival Production signs a joint venture deal with Live Nation to promote concerts in Indonesia. Ticketmaster acquires the operating assets of secondary ticketing outfit
Seatwave, giving it access to markets in Germany, Italy and Spain. Financial details are not disclosed. Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport is confirmed as the site for Lollapalooza’s debut in mainland Europe. Lollapalooza Berlin will take place 12-13 September 2015, adding to the brand’s existing editions in the United States, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. The Rolling Stones’ insurers are contesting the band’s claim over their cancelled Australian tour, apparently unconvinced that the suicide of Mick Jagger’s former girlfriend, L’Wren Scott, was unpredictable. Ticketing agency Eventim signs a deal with London venue Troxy to become its official ticketing partner and provider for all live events and music concerts. Troxy is one of the few remaining independent venues in the capital and hosts more than 200 events annually. Rumours begin circulating that Robert Plant has turned down an offer worth “hundreds of millions of dollars” from Richard Branson for Led Zeppelin to tour. The Virgin entrepreneur reportedly offered Plant, Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones £190million (€243m) each, to reform Led Zeppelin for 35 shows, but Plant refused. Ticketmaster adds a 20th country to its portfolio with the expansion of operations into Poland. The new Warsaw
NOVEMBER
Crossover country/pop star Taylor Swift pulls her catalogue of songs from Spotify, proclaiming that she doesn’t believe that music-streaming services appropriately value her art. Coalition Talent Agency is acquired by The Agency Group, delivering the everexpanding company with an impressive list of celebrity and radio DJ talent. Coalition’s clients include BBC Radio One DJs Nick Grimshaw, Greg James, Scott Mills, Aled Haydn Jones, Alice Levine, and Ally McCrae. Slipknot’s first ever Knotfest Japan sells-out all 50,000 tickets for the twoday event at the Makuhari Messe convention centre in Tokyo. Slipknot
14
IQ Magazine January 2015
News
Taylor Swift
office will be led by ticketing and media expert Iwona Żuber-Fiuczek, who will assume the role of managing director of Ticketmaster Poland. Spotify’s Daniel Ek responds to Taylor Swift and other critics in a lengthy blog post reigniting the debate prompted by Swift pulling her catalogue from free streaming services. Ek claims Spotify has paid out $2bn (€1.6bn) to the music industry since launching in 2008, $1bn (€0.8bn) of which was in the last year. The Agency Group acquires electronic music agency Bond Music Group, which represents Moby and Dirty Vegas, amongst a roster of about 100 artists. Bond CEO, Kristopher Krajewski, will assume the title of VP and head of electronic music at The Agency Group.
DECEMBER
The UK’s House of Lords passes a vote to force better transparency in the ticket resale market under a special clause in the
IQ Magazine January 2015
Consumer Rights Bill. If the amendment becomes law, secondary ticketing operators would have to reveal the identity of the ticket seller, the face value of the ticket and the seat location in the venue. Live Nation appoints Jimmy Iovine to its board of directors. Perhaps best known as the co-founder of Interscope Records, more recently Iovine’s name has been associated with Beats Electronics, now a division of Apple. Spotify announces that singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran is the year’s most streamed artist with more than 860 million tracks streamed through the service, half of which were for his album X. Pharrell Williams’ song Happy was the most streamed track globally. Ian McLagan, keyboard player for the legendary Small Faces and Faces, dies aged 69, due to complications from a stroke. Live Nation reveals plans for a new indoor/outdoor venue in Irving, Texas. The Pavilion will be located at The Music Factory complex and will be capable of hosting capacities of up to 4,000 for both indoor and outdoor shows when it opens in spring 2016. The state of Rhode Island grants permission for a memorial to be erected at the site of the Station nightclub, where a 2003 fire killed 100 people. Campaigners need to raise $2m (€1.6m) to build and maintain the memorial. Organisers of Parklife Festival in Manchester, England, are fined £70,000 (€88,760) after an SMS texting campaign backfired. Intended as a humorous text, the messages appeared on consumers’ phones from ‘Mum’, upsetting a number of recipients
whose mothers had passed away. America’s love affair with new arenas continues unabated with plans approved for a new $250m (€202m) facility in Virginia Beach, to be funded, owned and operated by United Statements Management LLC. A handful of British politicians call for a new management team to be allowed to take over the infamous Madame Jojo’s nightclub in London. Jojo’s had its licence revoked by the local council following a violent incident outside the premises, allegedly involving the venue’s security staff. Electronics manufacturer NEC unveils a new facial recognition system that could be used by ticketers in their battle against touts.
Robert Plant
To subscribe to IQ Magazine: michael@iq-mag.net An annual subscription to IQ is £75 (print) or £60 (electronic).
15
News
Historic Fees Victory for Spanish Promoters Spain’s National Commission for Markets and Competition (Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia – CNMC) has fined performing rights collection society SGAE a whopping €3.1million and stated that it has abused its monopoly position by overcharging promoters. The case, brought by the Music Promoters Association (Asociación de Promotores Musicales (APM) in 2005 could have far reaching implications in other territories across Europe, with the CNMC finding that the 10% tariff on box office receipts was excessive. The Commission may have taken more than nine years to reach the decision, but the result is an outstanding victory for the APM, as SGAE has also been instructed to “cease its behaviour within three months” and, that in future it should “refrain from such practices as those sanctioned and any other that may impede competition.” Spain’s Office of Competition has been tasked with overseeing the fulfilment of the historic CNMC ruling. In its judgement, the CNMC noted that the 10% tariff was much higher than that charged by similar collection societies in other European countries, forcing Spanish promoters to pay more than their compatriots around the continent. The long and complex court case is testament to the APM’s tenacity. The original case was dismissed by the Defence of Competition Service and ratified by the Court for the Defence of Competition (the predecessor to CNMC). APM launched an appeal in the courts, which, in April 2010, came down on the side of the APM. This was
16
then ratified in the Supreme Court, allowing a new case to proceed against SGAE in April 2013. Neo Sala, of Doctor Music, tells IQ that SGAE is appealing the ruling, but, no matter what the outcome, promoters will not be receiving any kind of refund. “SGAE and APM have to talk, but it’s unlikely that the rate will change in the inmediate future,” continues Sala. “It may take one year or more for a reduction in the rate to be put into practice. APM is pushing for a substantial reduction and also to avoid situations where the SGAE rate in Spain is higher than the PRS rate in the country of origin of the performer/ composer. So if a British artist performs in Spain then the SGAE rate should be 3%.”
A gig by Michael Bublé officially opened the Barclaycard Arena (formerly the National Indoor Arena) in Birmingham, England on 2 December. Marking the occasion, NEC Group’s head of commercial services, Stephen Walton, and Live Nation promoter Toby Leighton-Pope, presented Bublé with a lyrically appropriate memento of the occasion. The arena has been through an 18-month, £26million
(€33m) refurbishment that has extended the venue’s capacity to 15,892 and has added nearly 6,000 square metres of pre-/post-show space. The upgrade allows promoters to use the arena for shows of 2,466-capacity upward, while brand new retail and merchant spaces have been included in the project and contactless payment technology is being utilised to create a best-in-class customer experience.
Movers and Shakers Finn Taylor has taken on the post of executive vice-president at North American entertainment trucking specialists, Truck’N Roll. Taylor spent 14 years at Cirque du Soleil, latterly as senior VP for touring shows, before making the move down Montreal’s Autoroute 40 to his new workplace. Prolyte Group has promoted Ralph Stockley to the position of commercial director. Using his experience as managing director of the company’s sales division, Stockley will develop and implement the commercial strategy for the group. Music Group has appointed Karan Kathuria to the post of senior manager, professional division for Asia Pacific, which includes the key markets of China and India. Formerly employed by Harman, in his new role, Kathuria will be responsible for growing brands such as Midas, Klark Teknik and Turbosound, as well as taking an active role in managing the distribution networks across multiple countries. PRS For Music has named Paul Clements as its new commercial director, and Karen Buse as executive director of membership and international. Both appointments are internal promotions – Clements most recently was director of public performance sales, while Buse was interim director of membership and rights. Czech Republic-based lighting manufacturer Robe Lighting has appointed Craig Burross as regional sales manager of the Western United States. Based in Austin, Texas, Burross was previously with Barco/High End Systems as the national sales manager for North America. UK motion control specialist Kinesys is continuing to expand its Kinesys USA Inc. operation by welcoming David Bond to the team in the role of head of sales for North America. Bond has worked with a long line of A-list artists and high profile events. After managing numerous projects and rigging contracts for Star Events Group, he went on to form his own rigging sales and consulting company in Canada.
IQ Magazine January 2015
News
AUSTRALIA MIGHT be renowned for its addiction to sports and sporting events, but it could well be that the tide is changing in favour of live music. It transpires, according to surveys conducted by Sydneybased Roy Morgan Research, that live music attendance has overtaken, albeit by a slight margin, professional sporting events for the first time ever. Around one in eight Australians over 14 (that is 12% of the population, or almost 2.4 million people) go to at least one concert within an average three-month period, compared with the 11% who rock up to a sporting event. And it turns out that ticket pricing has little to do with it. Live Performance Australia has just issued its 2013 report showing that despite a hike in the average price for
a concert ticket – a 10.2% increase over 12 months from AUD$100.27 (€67.53) to AUD$110.50 (€74.41) – there appears to be a preference for music over sports. AUD$628.13m (€423m) was generated by the contemporary live music business in 2013 (data is collected from the largest ticket sellers), while some 6.27m people purchased concert tickets, up from 5.48m in 2012, but trailing the highest attendance year on record (2010), which saw footfall rocket to 7.03m. Contemporary music shows accounted for 42% of tickets sold to any live performance in Australia. The report also included analysis of the theatre, comedy, opera and festivals businesses. Festivals accounted for an attendance share of 4.4%.
Pink broke Australian box office records in 2013
Live music steals limelight from Aussie sporting events
AUD$1.48billion (€1bn) was generated overall. The contemporary music category continues to be the biggest sector in the live performance industry. However, the annual variability of this category strongly reflects the number of big-name artists that tour in any given year, particularly the number of stadium tours. Major tours in 2013 included Beyoncé, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, One Direction and Pink. In particular,
Pink’s tour was extended to 46 Australian shows, including 18 shows in Melbourne, contributing to strong growth in Victoria. Other big-name international artists that toured Australia included Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Ricky Martin and Justin Bieber. On a separate, but related note, it is rumoured that Nine Entertainment is looking to offload Ticketek, its ticketing business, although the company is yet to confirm the rumours.
News
Moody’s Rates CAA’s Loan Facilities Venues Day R Moody’s Moody’s consider the outlook has given the $610million for CAA as “stable”, although Celebrates (€497m) of debt in American its credit quality evaluation conglomerate Creative Artists scheme states that the meaning Success Agency (CAA) a so-called of a B2 rating is “being specuATING
AGENCY
“B2 corporate family rating”, effectively giving the company the label of a high credit risk. However, the deal is not dissimilar to rival agency William Morris Endeavor’s acquisition of IMG, which reportedly leaves WME servicing about $2.4bn in debt. Moodys evaluated CAA’s first lien credit scheme, which consists of $100m (€81m) revolver credit with a run time of five years, and a $510m (€415m) loan lasting seven years. Both loans are supposed to be used mainly to finance payments to key company executives of about $400m (€326m) after investment company, TPG Capital, increased its share in CAA from 35% to 52% at the end of October.
lative and a high credit risk”. TPG further agreed to provide CAA with a stand-by financial injection of $150m (€122m) to fund potential takeovers, potentially raising TPG’s stake to 60%. CAA reported annual revenues of $613m (€499m) for its latest financial year that ended in June. Moody’s expects CAA to seek a stock market listing through an IPO in the future. TPG, also known as Texas Pacific Group, controls investments worth a staggering $66billion (€54bn) across a wide swathe of industry sectors, ranging from biotech, energy and transportation to media and entertainment. TPG’s acquisitions are often financed by the target compa-
nies themselves, due to high volume debt imposed on the acquired company. One such TPG success story was its investment in Burger King, which together with Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital, it purchased for $1.5bn (€1.2bn) in 2002. However, the trio invested only $210m (€171m) of their own money, with the remainder financed by debt. In 2006, Burger King undertook an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. Four years later, its acquisition consortium sold its 76% stake for $3.2bn (€2.6bn) to another investment company. With this in mind, perhaps the future of CAA is rosy indeed.
Eurosonic Set for Epic Year THE ORGANISERS of the 14-17 January Eurosonic Noorderslag event are gearing up for one of the busiest years in the event’s 30-year history, with the addition of a second conference to run alongside the existing programme. “Last year we did a small version of the European Production Innovation Conference – EPIC – and the feedback was so good that this year we are planning a full three-day schedule to explore innovation in the international production business for both festivals and clubs,” explains Peter Smidt, creative director at Eurosonic Noorderslag. The EPIC event will be hosted in SummerLabb, a purpose-built village dedicated to sustainability, located at Ebbingekwartier in the heart of Groningen, just a short walk
18
from Eurosonic’s main hub in the city’s Oosterpoort complex. The keynote speaker for the event will be Alec Macleod, tour manager for such iconic acts as Guns N’ Roses, Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana. More than 350 acts from all over Europe are being lined up for Eurosonic’s showcase schedule, which will use dozens of venues across the city, including the rebuilt Huize Maas, which missed last year’s event after a devastating fire. Chief among the talent will be a contingent of artists from Iceland, which is the country focus for the forthcoming event. Elsewhere, the gathering will also host the likes of the European Border Breakers Awards and the European Festival Awards, the latter of which is gaining greater
prominence year-on-year, thanks in no small part to the 400-plus international festivals that are represented by delegates at Eurosonic. Voting for the likes of best new, small, medium and major festivals is now open, as well as for categories such as indoor festival, newcomer of the year, best headliner and anthem of the year. A jury of industry experts will decide on the awards for best line-up, artists favourite event, promoter of the year and greenest event, while other accolades include the lifetime achievement award.
DESPITE OPENLY admitting that they fight amongst themselves, are generally suspicious of each other and rarely communicate, the UK’s grass roots and independent venues found an energised and cooperative voice during the inaugural Venues Day which took place in London this month. Organised by the Music Venue Trust, the day-long event welcomed 300 delegates representing close to 200 venues with principal discussions revolving around noise legislation and licensing; funding and support for the grass-roots sector. “Why should my club nights be constantly subsidising the live shows?” asked promoter and venue shareholder Steve Tilley. “We do it because we want to, but making profit and being allowed to make money shouldn’t be dirty words.” Brighton and Hove MP Mike Weatherly raised the idea of tax breaks for small venues. “We need to start looking at subsidisation for touring in the UK,” he said. ”The local councils and the Government need to get behind it.” Other ideas raised included collectively sharing expertise and legal costs for fighting noise complaints. During the final session of the day, UK Music CEO, Jo Dipple, said she would welcome “the voice of the independent venue sector” within the umbrella organisation, and Music Venue Trust head Mark Davyd agreed, saying, “There’s a clear need to speak with an authoritative voice and a need to be represented.”
IQ Magazine January 2015
Comment
Save Our Small Venues! Musician Frank Turner explains why he has taken a leading and active role in the work of the Music Venues Trust, and urges the industry to show support for the plight of many small venues.
“I’m proud to work in an industry that doesn’t require state support, and we aren’t asking for money – we’re just asking for a fighting chance to protect our livelihoods and our culture.”
T
hough I’m not a football fan, I happen to live within spitting distance of the Emirates Stadium. On match days, the street outside my flat gets pretty apocalyptic – it’s noisy, chaotic and rowdy. On occasion it can be a bit of a pain getting to and from the tube station, and the noise seeps through my windows. But it’s all part and parcel of living in the area of North London that I love, it’s part of the local culture, and it would never cross my mind to complain about it. After all, the Arsenal Football Club has been around a lot longer than I have. And I doubt the local council would pay any attention if I did (and rightly so). Unfortunately, it seems that the same rules do not apply in the live music business. I started out playing in a lot of small venues up and down the country, known affectionately as ‘the toilet circuit’ – often the back rooms of pubs, or little places that hold a few hundred people, on a good night. I spent years dragging amps and guitars through backstage doors on rainy weekday evenings to play for a small but passionate audience, to express myself, and to have a good time. When I wasn’t playing, I was usually in the crowd. In recent years, an increasingly large number of such places have been struggling to survive thanks to complaints about noise. In case after case, buildings near long-established venues have been converted into flats or other housing, new tenants have moved in, complained to the council, and seen the venue threatened with closure, either directly, or through the massive cost of fighting the allegations, improving sound proofing and so on. Running a small venue is a hand-tomouth operation at the best of times, a labour of love, and this kind of thing makes it that much harder. The live music circuit is an established part of our national culture and a strong and growing part of our economy, as well as being my passion, my love, and my life. There’s something
20
tangibly unjust about seeing the places where this culture exists, where new talent is nurtured, being disregarded and overlooked by our legal system. I was contacted recently by the Music Venues Trust and asked if I would front a new petition to try and redress the situation. I happily agreed. The Agent Of Change principle simply states that the party that changes the situation is the one that has to bear the costs of that change. If a new venue is built in an area, it’s up to them to ensure that they don’t disturb the pre-existing environment. But by the same token, if someone moves in next to a venue that has been there, providing an outlet for creativity for thousands of people for many years, the onus is on them to be aware of the risks and problems they might be taking on, and take appropriate precautions. I’m a big supporter of the petition for a number of reasons. It’s simple, it has a limited and achievable objective, it’s eminently just, and it’ll help protect the industry I work in and the music scenes that have given me my career, as well as continuing to give me fulfilling evenings full of art and music. I’m proud to work in an industry that doesn’t require state support, and we aren’t asking for money – we’re just asking for a fighting chance to protect our livelihoods and our culture.
“If you give a damn about rock & roll, about live music, and about culture in general, not to mention justice, I hope you’ll take a moment to get involved and sign the petition.” All the people I know who run small live music venues care deeply, not just about the music and the punters, but about their community and the people around them. To see them ground into the dust by incoming corporate developers and inconsiderate tenants is saddening and depressingly all too common in recent years. If you give a damn about rock & roll, about live music, and about culture in general, not to mention justice, I hope you’ll take a moment to get involved and sign the petition. I really firmly believe we can make this change and make the world a fractionally better place. https://www.change.org/p/sajid-javid-mp-adopt-the-agentof-change-principle
IQ Magazine January 2015
Comment
Hello Wembley! John Drury, general manager of the newly renamed and renovated SSE Arena, Wembley, explains why it’s better to play the venue now, more than ever.
W
e’ve just changed our name for the first time since 1978. Over the last six months we’ve become The SSE Arena, Wembley, as the venue has been upgraded and refurbished. Our challenge is to balance our new era against the great heritage that has made us the iconic arena we are. We’re proud to be one of the few globally known indoor arenas, and we aim to maintain that hard won reputation. The building was opened on 25 July 1934 (which coincidentally makes it 73 years older to the day than my twins Zac and Daisy) and notably hosted swimming, diving and boxing during the 1948 Olympics – yes, boxing, with the ring perched on boards over the still exposed pool waters: these were the austerity Olympics, after all. We started to build a reputation for hosting concerts at the end of the 50s; the Record Stars Show in March 1959 was the first, featuring among others Shirley Bassey, Petula Clark and Vera Lynn. We had to wait eight years for the first band to headline the Empire Pool in their own right – The Monkees – who played five shows across three days in 1967 on the back of their hugely successful TV shows. From then on, Wembley was the place to play – there were 12 NME Poll Winners Concerts between 1960 and 1973, featuring all the biggest names of the day, with Wembley notably being the venue for The Beatles’ last ever UK concert appearance in 1966. Look at any list of top-selling artists and pretty well all of them will have played Wembley – The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Madonna, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Prince, Whitney Houston, AC/DC, Queen, ABBA – they’ve all appeared at the venue. As proud as we are of that heritage, we’re also immensely pleased when artists step-up to play us for the first time. That list goes on and on – in more recent years we’ve added the likes of Oasis, Blur, Elbow, Biffy Clyro, Queens of the Stone Age, Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Sigur Rós and Frank Turner. Already one of our biggest shows for 2015 is 5 Seconds of Summer who will play three shows in June. As I write, we have nine sell-out shows in the diary and we want to keep building on that success. Our new and most striking reincarnation as The SSE Arena, Wembley, is a multimillion pound renovation that has given us a stunning foyer display, 20 screens along each concourse, LED screens in the auditorium, a new VIP entrance, new lounges, and a new gable end screen outside the venue. This an upgraded screen that functions throughout the day as well as at night and that will be seen by approximately five million
IQ Magazine January 2015
visitors to the Wembley Park estate every year. This brings the venue in line with the completion of the first phase of our landlord Quintain’s Wembley Park development, which houses the London Designer Outlet and offers customers access to the only designer shopping outlet within the M25, as well as 20 new restaurants and coffee shops, a nine-screen Cineworld cinema and two new hotels have opened on site. Still, why play Wembley now, even with all these additional improvements?
“The renovation and rebranding has made the venue feel even more special and has given us additional marketing ability on-site.” One big reason is the market reach we have to the north and west of London – adding that to the Greater London area gives us a total market of around 16 million within close proximity. It’s possible to amortise marketing costs by putting two shows on sale at the same time in London – at SSE Arena and at The O2 – aiming at two distinct core markets and giving the fans the chance to choose the most convenient venue to them. In doing so, the reach is very wide indeed. Comedy promoters often do this as a matter of course. Lee Evans plays multiple dates at both venues this year, and Michael McIntyre next year. So do major shows like Strictly Come Dancing and Disney On Ice. Alternatively, if you’re just playing Wembley, you have London’s most accessible arena, giving your audience all sorts of travel options with three underground lines, two overground lines and five motorways all close by. The partnership we have with SSE now enhances all of this. The renovation and rebranding has made the venue feel even more special and has given us additional marketing ability on-site, thanks to new screens inside and a new giant gable end screen outside. SSE customers benefit from the ability to buy presale tickets for most events, and crucially, SSE make a point of aiming to enhance the experience at the venue for all of our customers and not only their own. So for me, there have never been more reasons to say ‘Hello Wembley!’
21
Comment
Encouraging Emerging European Acts Fabien Miclet, coordinator of the Liveurope initiative, explains how the project came about and outlines its aims and aspirations.
I
f you ask me, the past year has been quite a ride. In November 2013, The European Music Office (EMO), which had been advocating for better EU programmes and policies for music for more than 15 years, closed its doors due to a critical financial situation. This sad outcome sent a negative message to the whole European music sector, at a very crucial moment. It happened exactly when all other cultural and creative sectors were beefing up their presence in Brussels, as the new generation of EU funding, the Creative Europe programme, was being unveiled. This also meant the end of a four-year story between me and EMO, which, despite its limited resources and its sometimes nebulous mandate, had done a lot to raise awareness for the music sector at EU level. Especially in the months before its collapse, when EMO had been involved in early discussions about a new initiative, which was still very much in the works at the time – Liveurope.
“We rallied a group of likeminded live music venues with a strong emphasis on European music in their programmes and a solid commitment to promoting emerging acts. Soon we convinced 13 concert halls and clubs in 13 different countries to participate in the venture.” The concept was to create an ambitious European fund to support the programming of European acts in live music venues across the continent, using the same model of the very successful Europa Cinemas scheme. EMO had been contacted not long before by Ancienne Belgique, a top-flight concert venue based in Brussels, to lobby the EU on the idea. Soon, the Rockhal in Luxembourg was also in the loop. But without a structure like EMO to provide a launch pad, the initiative was facing a serious hurdle. That’s when I convinced myself to persist and keep working on the project. After all, the idea was really exciting: creating an EU-funded incentive mechanism benefiting concert venues
22
in order to support the programming of emerging European acts, in the form of a progressive ‘bonus’ system. The more emerging European acts that a concert hall booked, the more money they would receive at the end of the season. Simple, direct, no-nonsense and having the potential to become a big thing if we succeeded. Next thing we needed was a network of partners. We rallied a group of likeminded live music venues with a strong emphasis on European music in their programmes and a solid commitment to promoting emerging acts. Soon we convinced 13 concert halls and clubs in 13 different countries, such as the Melkweg in Amsterdam, A38 in Budapest, Vega in Copenhagen and Nouveau Casino in Paris, among other firstclass European venues, to participate in the venture. (Visit the Liveurope Facebook page for the full list of members.) Then we had to find financial support to turn this idea – to create an incentive support mechanism – into a reality. A whole different challenge indeed! The Creative Europe programme had just made its first call for proposals in December 2103, and we only had three months to draft and submit an application, while facing tough competition. But, as coordinator, I was lucky enough to count on the hard work and commitment from all the Liveurope members. A dossier was successfully put together and the Liveurope initiative was selected by the EU this summer. Thanks to this support, Liveurope will provide all members with a financial incentive to help them programme more emerging European acts. But it will also help the promotion of these acts through dedicated communication tools. Our objective is not only to support concert venues, but also to help emerging acts bring their music across borders – and hopefully create opportunities for the Coldplays and the Daft Punks of tomorrow to bring their talent to new audiences. A launch event was organised at Ancienne Belgique on 10 October to introduce Liveurope to the public (available on YouTube for those interested) in the presence of all Liveurope members, a good media crowd, and representatives from the EU. The enthusiasm we’ve encountered so far has been really encouraging and we’ve got a strong feeling that this platform can grow; attract more members; find sponsors; and establish itself in a lot more countries over time. To quote Karel Bartak, the boss of the Creative Europe programme, who spoke on behalf of the EU during our press conference, the Liveurope initiative can become “a true European success story”. We sure hope it does, so we invite all live music enthusiasts and professionals out there to get on board with us and help us fulfil the promise.
IQ Magazine January 2015
Comment
East to West: Touring with Odd Hugo Oliver Vare and Rando Kruus, of Estonian band Odd Hugo, give us an idea of what it’s like for a band touring in foreign territories.
O
dd Hugo has been active for over two years, and the progress we have made is most noticeable in touring outside Estonia. In our hometown of Tartu there are really only a few venues for us to perform – suitability and size wise – in addition to the occasional gigs we do in other towns in Estonia and of course in Tallinn. But bar a few festivals that have bigger capacities, Odd Hugo’s venues in Estonia have been largely on the same scale. There have been some incidental gigs outside Estonia, noticeably in Latvia, our closest neighbour, but our break into foreign territories, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands, is largely due to booking agencies, one in each country, and these contacts have been acquired thanks to showcase festivals – Tallinn Music Week being the most crucial one to date. The local booking agent books the dates, we confirm them, and off we go. It needs mentioning that the performance fees that we receive don’t come close to covering all the costs of travelling – van rental, fuel, food, the occasional hostel, so we apply for financial support from state institutions such as the Ministry of Culture. We are currently concentrating on touring in the Netherlands
and Germany – we’re on our third tour of these countries this year. This pans out as follows: it takes us two days to drive from Tartu to Utrecht (our base in the Netherlands); from Utrecht we drive to different venues in different cities each day (the country is similar to Estonia – distances are short); after a week or two, when the Netherlands’ gigging reaches its end, we move into Germany. In Germany we travel from venue to venue, the distances can vary from 300 to 600 km a day; the sleeping accommodation is either provided by the venue or we have to come up with something on our own – this is all agreed beforehand. A large amount of our time in Germany is spent on the autobahn, really. From the last venue in Germany we drive straight back to Tartu, which usually takes us about 20 hours through Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. During our extensive travels, we’ve come to realise that people are in many ways similar in every country. The band care can vary from venue to venue, but people are mostly friendly and considerate – in some places we’re treated to incredibly good local food, in others we’re sent to a pizza place, for example. But, in our experience, we’re always taken care of – and that’s what counts.
Techno files Gig Gadgetry fr om the Fr ontline... Snoozebox ALREADY A HIT in the motorsports world thanks to its president being former racing driver David Coulthard, portable hotel concept Snoozebox already has a debut planned at Glastonbury Festival 2015. The high-end hotel rooms are prefabricated in units of four, although the minimum booking for any event is 40 rooms. Transported on flatbed lorries, the Snoozebox rooms can be operational within 48 hours of arriving on-site, and because they do not rely on existing
water or power supplies, the hotels can be erected anywhere internationally, making them ideal for film and TV crews; the military; and disaster and emergency relief situations. Each room features beds, a wet room, Wi-Fi, personal safe, flat screen TV, climate control and power sockets. The units can be individually branded and offer hospitality packages to suit all budgets, including entertainment, if required.
Bottoms Up Beer WE MIGHT BE SIMPLE folk here at IQ, but show us any kind of technology that involves pouring beer and we’ll be very impressed indeed. Step forward the Bottoms Up system, whose marketing speil proclaims it “the most revolutionary beer dispensing system in the world.” And to paraphrase the Eurythmics, who are we to disagree?! As the name suggests, the Bottoms Up technology fills up the glass from bottom to top courtesy of a hole in the bottom of the glass, which is sealed shut by the system’s rubber magnets. The hands-free system can also increase advertising and branding opportunities on the Magnetic Advertising Graphic. But, for us, the coolest thing about this little piece of American ingenuity is actually watching a pint pour – spill free and at nine times the speed of traditional beer taps (Google it for the video; you will not be disappointed!).
Sparkplug
Jaunt virtual reality app CALIFORNIA-BASED virtual reality content company, Jaunt, recently hit the headlines when they created a free app featuring a 360-degree recording of a Paul McCartney concert in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. The app, available currently on Android smartphones and soon to be available for iPhones, can use Google’s Cardboard virtual reality goggles (which can be made at home) and is being developed for use with the Oculus Rift headset. The Candlestick Park footage involves a 360-degree view of McCartney’s performance of Live
and Let Die from his point of view on stage, allowing viewers to look around at Macca and his band on stage, as well as the crowd, with stereoscopic 3D sound that alters depending on what the viewer is looking at. Although other acts are also experimenting with 3D virtual reality technology, McCartney is thought to be the first high-profile star to make such footage available on a free smartphone app, paving the way for other acts to exploit the possibilities for fans and sponsors alike.
HOW MANY MUSICIANS have found themselves in a strange town having to deal with a faulty piece of equipment, or worse still, a broken instrument, with stage time looming? Finally, a New York City-based start-up, Sparkplug, has been developed to leverage P2P transactions among the artistic community. In a nutshell, Sparkplug has created a secure online community where people looking for a specific piece of equipment, or rehearsal space, can tap into a network of their peers who have that item, or room, for rent. Searches can be conducted via type or brand as well as location, and users can further evaluate listing details like pricing and availability. Owners are then sent a formal reservation request and have 24 hours to respond before the request expires. As for the question of insurance, Sparkplug asks owners to set a deposit amount reflective of their gear’s value. When a reservation is confirmed, Sparkplug takes 30% of that deposit from the renter’s credit card and holds it until 24 hours after the successful completion of the rental.
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…
24
IQ Magazine January 2015
2014 in Review
IQ’s Review of the Year
26
IQ Magazine January 2015
2014 in Review “What’s that Mr Editor? Time for the Review of the Year?!” sighs Allan McGowan. “But I just delivered the 2013 opus, didn’t I? Oh well, I suppose it just goes to show how fast and furious things are in the ever evolving world of the live music industry... Last year’s review considered a year that overall “…seemed to have a bit of sparkle about it,” following on from 2012 when many were voicing concerns about the future for festivals, arena touring and new talent. Of course, the big artist news over the last 18 months or so has been the incredible success of One Direction – new, young talent breaking all sorts of records, as you’ll see from the figures. So, bearing in mind, as usual, that as I write this, the year still has a few weeks to go (so if anything momentous happens you’ll have to factor it in to the Review for yourselves). But how did 2014 stack up? Well, as ever, with only so much space and that fast moving commodity – time – let’s take a brief look. Bear in mind, of course, that your no doubt carefully archived copies of IQ will cover areas that we may appear to gloss over, but I’ll give the occasional pointer to earlier issues as we progress. One thing stays constant from year to year, and that is the fact that we’re in a risky business and for all that goes right, many things go awry because of the unforeseen. Two quotes from the Open Forum session at ILMC 26 in March illustrated the varying fortunes perfectly. When asked how the previous year had been, John Reid, president, Live Nation Europe Concerts, replied: “The whole business had a great year and we had a good chunk of it. Audience satisfaction was better and the weather was nicer to us.” All well and good. However, in response to the same question, Cem Yegul, head of Pozitif Live in Turkey, said: “The uprising started the day after our Rihanna concert and we had to cancel around 20 concerts. We lost millions. It was a rough situation and something we had not experienced before.” Pozitif were not the only ones to suffer under similar circumstances – more of that later. 2014 was certainly a year of expansion, and our European Arenas report in Issue 52 indicated that the concert business, in Europe at least, had emerged from recession with a 9.5%
increase in both ticket prices and in the numbers attending concerts. Although there were casualties in the festival market, many new events, particularly in the US, appeared to fill the year-round calendar and in some cases, to vie with the traditional touring market. Meanwhile, promoters and agents were busily adding to their portfolios, and it wasn’t just the usual shopaholics, like Live Nation, AEG and the EDMinvigorated Bob Sillerman. Companies such as The Agency Group and FKP Scorpio were out there with the cheque book – or debit card – or some form of cashless payment perhaps (?), growing their businesses and moving into new territories, and generally reshaping the landscape of the industry. “Most marked is that television and the Internet have failed to replicate the exhilaration of the live event. This was supposed to mean death to concerts, theatres, lectures, football matches, even restaurants. Instead, these activities have fed off the web, growing and prospering. The money is ever more ‘at the gate’’.” Simon Jenkins – The Guardian For a business that was originally based on instincts, gut feelings, technical improvisation and back-of-an-envelope calculations, it was interesting to note that, yet again, one of the most enthusiastically attended panels at ILMC 26 was the New Technology session, where data capture and social networking were both high on the list of discussion topics. “The great thing about social media is that people tell you exactly what they want. And the worst thing about social media is that they tell you exactly what they want.” John Probyn – Live Nation (UK) I think we can say that, generally, we’ve been through a year of business on the move – so let’s try and catch up… “You need to be aware how extortionate it is to go out touring – It’s bloody expensive!” Ellie Gould – Jigsaw Management (UK)
DECEMBER 2013
JANUARY
• The two remaining members of Russian punk group Pussy Riot are freed from jail. Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova are released thanks to an amnesty bill, three months before the end of their two-year sentences. • Ian Watkins, the former Lostprophets singer, is sentenced to 35 years in prison for child sex offences, including two counts of attempting to rape a baby. His two female codefendants, aged 21 and 25, are also jailed, with mother ‘A’ receiving 14 years and mother ‘B’ 17 years. • Talent agency William Morris Endeavour acquires IMG Worldwide in a $2.3billion (€1.7bn) deal backed by private equity group Silver Lake. • SFX Entertainment pays $16.2m (€11.9m) for a 75% stake in Dutch ticketing operation Paylogic, which counts 2,000 clients across its offices in Groningen, Amsterdam, Berlin and Antwerp.
• Construction firm Balfour Beatty wins a £154m (€188m) contract to transform the Olympic Stadium in London into a ‘venue that can host both sports and cultural events’. The stadium will become West Ham United Football Club’s permanent home from 2016. • Lady Gaga’s new album, Artpop, is given the green light for release in China, three years after the country’s Ministry of Culture placed her songs on a blacklist for being “vulgar”. • Sensible Events chief Andrew Zweck is named as the new European tour coordinator for the Rolling Stones. Zweck takes the role on a consultancy basis for AEG Live, which is handling the Stones’ touring business for the rest of the world. • The Ministry Of Sound nightclub’s future is assured, as its owners reach an agreement with property developer Oakmayne over a new block of apartments to be built opposite the iconic London venue.
IQ Magazine January 2015
27
2014 in Review
The Numbers
According to Billboard, Bon Jovi returned the highest grossing world tour of 2013, playing to more than two million fans during 90 sell-out shows and grossing $205million (€167m). This is the third time the band has topped the list, hitting No.1 in 2008 and 2010. Cirque du Soleil`s Michael Jackson The Immortal World Tour was second on the list, followed by singer, Pink. The highest placed Brits, at number six, were, of course, our favourite pensioners, the Rolling Stones, gathering $126m (€103m) from 23 shows. Mick and the old boys came in behind Bruce Springsteen & The E Street
Band, who raked in $147m (€120m), although this income was returned from 53 shows, one of the anomalies of the way these lists are compiled. A few British acts featured in the top 25 tours: Depeche Mode at number nine, Roger Waters (11), One Direction (12), Paul McCartney (16), Fleetwood Mac (well, partly British) were 17th, and Iron Maiden at 25. Creative Artists Agency must have considered 2013 a good year as they represented six of the artists in the top 20 worldwide tours. As for the year we are actually highlighting, we will again refer to some half-yearly figures and comment, but this year, courtesy of Pollstar, we do have some third-quarter returns to consider, bringing us right up to October – Hooray! Data analysis for the first half of 2014 indicates that business is good, but in comparison with past years, the total number of shows at the arena level is down. Many observers, including Pollstar and IQ, consider that this is due to the increasing number of acts choosing to play festivals rather than embarking on their own headline arena tours. As more and more festivals are added to the international market with a particularly marked growth in the US - the increasing demand for headliners, and more, will possibly make further inroads to the traditional touring markets. More of this, perhaps, when we come to consider the year in festivals… Much as there seems to be a general quietly confident mood to the business at the moment, some of 2014’s half-year figures may be considered a little worrying, but there you go, one man’s drop-off is another man’s success. Anyway – the top 50 worldwide tours saw a $200m (€163m) or 10.8% drop as the total gross sales fell from $1.85billion (€1.51bn) to $1.65bn (€1.51bn). The total tickets sold dropped by 14.3%, which meant 3 million fewer seats than the 21 million sold in 2013. The average ticket price jumped $3.68 (€3.00) or 4.2% to $91.71 (€74.84). The Pollstar figures for the top 100 tours show the same trend, with total gross revenue falling 9.8% to $2.12bn (€1.73bn), while the total tickets sold dropped 11.8% to 26.1 million. The average ticket price increased $1.90 (€1.55) to $81.35 (€66.38). However, indications were
FEBRUARY
MARCH
• Live Nation and AEG begin trialling a new ticketing initiative that allows fans to try out the music first. The corporate giants are reportedly both testing an advertisingfunded service called DeliRadio to stream music by acts set to play at their venues. • The Event Safety Alliance makes its Event Safety Guide available for download. The manual outlines best practice standards for the live event industry and is modelled on the UK’s Purple Guide. • German prosecutors indict ten people on charges including involuntary manslaughter in relation to the Love Parade tragedy that claimed 21 lives and caused injury to 500 others. Four employees of the event’s organiser and six city workers reportedly deny the charges over the incident, which happened in the city of Duisburg in 2010. • RFID technology provider Intellitix wins an exclusive contract with Swisscom Event & Media Solutions, whereby it will supply RFID services to Swisscom’s live events business.
• Global Citizen Tickets opens a new division in Australia. The company, which was launched in North America in 2013 last year by Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis and Global Poverty Project CEO Hugh Evans, has already received support from more than 100 Australian acts that have donated concert tickets to reward fans that undertake social change services. • In the UK, Birmingham City Council announces that it is selling the NEC Group, which includes The National Exhibition Centre, LG Arena, National Indoor Arena and The Ticket Factory. • New York-based New Age Media Management says it will start using online currency Bitcoin for transactions such as artist fees, stating that the company could make significant savings on banking costs by dealing in the virtual money. • Four people die when a drink-driver collides with pedestrians and other road users during SXSW in Austin, Texas. • Live Nation Australia and New Zealand launches a family entertainment division, headed by Graham Kennedy.
Leapfrogging my usual attempts to qualify the complete accuracy of the figures, in fact the data (the sort of information that so many at ILMC 26 were keen to get their hands on) that our industry uses to keep an eye on our performance and development, I’ll just go straight to the thanks for the hard work put in by our colleagues at Pollstar and Billboard in their diligent gathering of the sort of box office returns that I shall refer to in a moment or two. In the meantime, I will again point you to the extremely useful facts and figures gathered by our own equally hard working and diligent team at IQ for our regular Venue, Ticketing and Festival reports – although I assume you’re all already aware of these… So, here we go with the numbers, they are indeed important: In last year’s review, we depended, as usual (due to our timings), on half-year figures for the top grossing tours etc, so it’s worth noting the final figures for 2013 as these became available early this year: “…But not all tours are equal when studying box office results. Some acts play more shows while others play far fewer gigs but charge more money for tickets. Many variables come into play when building the statistical charts that will be studied, cited and quoted during the decades ahead.” Pollstar half-yearly Report – 2014
28
IQ Magazine January 2015
2014 in Review
Robert Sillerman’s SFX was no less aggressive in its acquisition strategy this year
It was interesting to note the number of ‘package’, or at least ‘twinning’ tours doing the global rounds in 2014. Paul Simon and Sting; Lionel Richie and John Farnham; Rod Stewart and Santana; Journey and The Steve Miller Band; Cirque du Soleil and Michael Jackson (perhaps not quite the same)… is this a safety-in-numbers thing?
Promoters and Venues
that business in the theatres and clubs was up on last year. This either indicates more up-and-coming acts playing these venues or some acts playing smaller venues than usual out of the festival season. The half-year figures showed that all that worry about a lack of new younger headliners was unfounded, as the unstoppable One Direction grossed $131.5m (€107.3m) from just 31 international stadium shows in 17 cities, the boy band (at what age do you become a man-band?) sold 1,630,502 tickets at an average price of $80.65 (€65.81), outselling The Stones by nearly a million. (Ah, but will the boys still be around in another forty years doing the business? I don’t know, and it’s academic anyway because I won’t be around to see it!). But more was to come! The third-quarter figures indicated a leap across three more months of touring to a staggering 3.28 million ticket sales for 1D. This was way ahead of the second most popular tour, Disney on Ice, with a mere 1.4 million tickets. Luke Bryan came in third, and the old boys and girls, The Stones, Cher and Bruce settled for 13th, 15th and 18th, respectively.
The third-quarter figures further emphasised just how way ahead of anybody else the world’s biggest promoters, Live Nation, are in their operations, (and still so little profit – I’m sure I’ll understand some day…) By September, the giant had apparently shifted 21.2m tickets – eclipsing the other big boys, AEG Live, who ‘only’ shifted 7.8m tickets. The best-performing European promoters were led by the UK’s SJM with 674,000 sales; Marek Lieberberg, Marshall Arts, and FKP Scorpio all made it into the top 13. The UK again had the two most successful large venues, by ticket sales, with the O2 London and the Phones 4u Arena in Manchester. Amongst the world’s club and theatre venues, only only Belgium’s Ancienne Belgique made it into the top ten at number three, and the UK’s IndigO2 was 35th in the listings. Right, that’s probably enough of these lists and rankings, overall I think we get the picture. Interesting, though, to note how high Mexico features in pretty much all of these 2014 tables. “The live business continues to have a robust outlook as artists are reliant on touring as their main earnings driver and the best means to engage and connect with their fan base.” Michael Rapino – Live Nation CEO
APRIL
MAY
• UK ticketing operation See Tickets agrees a deal that will allow consumers to pay for tickets using PayPal. • The Agency Group inks a strategic partnership whereby select artists on its roster will access the PledgeMusic platform to create album and touring campaigns. • Energy giant SSE buys the naming rights for Wembley Arena in a ten-year deal with venue operators AEG. The building will now be known as the SSE Arena, Wembley. • Live Nation assumes absolute control of Live Nation Japan by acquiring Japanese promoter Creativeman’s minority stake in the company. Financial details were not disclosed but Frank Takeshita leaves Creativeman to become the Live Nation Japan managing director. • Ireland’s Oxegen festival is cancelled for 2014 with promoters MCD citing a lack of suitable headline acts and other financial issues. • The UK’s Association of Independent Festivals’ ethical ticket exchange, The Ticket Trust, agrees a strategic alliance with free fan-to-fan exchange Twickets in a bid to combat profiteering in the secondary market.
• ID&T’s Mysteryland breaks new ground as its inaugural US event becomes North America’s first fully cashless multiday music festival, partnering with RFID provider Intellitix to deploy their Intellipay cashless payment system. • 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 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.” • Earth Agency, a new boutique booking outfit, sets up shop in London, with a focus on independent non-mainstream artists. • William Morris Endeavor Entertainment finalises its acquisition of IMG Worldwide thanks to an investment boost by financiers Silver Lake Partners. Monetary figures are not disclosed.
IQ Magazine January 2015
29
2014 in Review
Paul Simon and Sting were among the headline acts who toured on the same bill this year
Some of the Markets In the UK, the British music industry’s economic contribution to the country grew 9% to £3.8bn (€4.8bn) in 2013, thanks to the strength of live music and songwriting revenues, according to new figures released by trade body, UK Music, in its @measuring Music survey. Live music sales climbed year-on-year, totaling £789m (€1bn), compared to £662m (€843m), the previous year. PRS reported a 4.9% increase in performance returns in 2013 from the previous year. The Annual Ticket Attendance & Revenue Survey report published by Live Performance Australia in August 2014 revealed that live entertainment proved to be a hot ticket down under in 2013, with revenue reaching an all-time high of nearly AUD$1.5bn (€1bn). Thanks in part to successful international tours from Beyoncé, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, One Direction, Pink, and Cirque du Soleil. Overall attendance across all live entertainment events rose by 10.2% to more than 16 million paid tickets, up from 14.1 million in 2012. In Germany, according to a study drawn-up on behalf of the Federal Association of the Events Business (BDV) and the industry magazine Musikmarkt, the turnover of the industry as a whole rose by 15% to a total of 3.8bn, which corresponds to an increase of €500m. Overall, music events tended to have a higher share of turnover than non-music events; according to the study, music events made up more than 70% of events in 2013, with concerts and similar events experiencing an increase of 13% to 24.3 million attendees. Average ticket prices grew by 5%. The trend towards an increasing number of local acts appearing on festival and concert stages and to more German-language music continued in the last year. The official German charts at one point showed nine German artists in the Top Ten album charts – the highest proportion of German music in the history of the Top Ten album charts.
“With the end of 2012, the events market in Germany put a difficult year behind it. A return to growth has been confirmed by the 2013 figures: more turnover, more visitors, more tickets sold.” Stefan Zarges, chief editor – ‘Musikmarkt’
JUNE
JULY
• 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. • Woodstock promoter Michael Lang confirms rumours that plans are afoot for a 50th anniversary festival in 2019 and that potential locations are being evaluated. • 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. • 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 Canadian government eliminates its controversial tour tax after complaints that it was hindering foreign artists from performing at small venues in the country. • 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.
• Secondary ticketing outfit Stubhub announces the layoff of 100 staff, 15% of its workforce. • The Agency Group opens a new office in Miami, Florida, with the appointment of Jeremy Norkin, who will be director of Latin operations. • Belgium’s Tomorrowland festival reveals plans to expand into Brazil in 2015, when the SFX-owned brand confirms rumours of an event in São Paolo. • IrvingAzoff’s new performing rights organisation, Global Music Rights, persuades both Pharrell Williams and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder to sign-up to the collection service. • 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). • London’s Camden Crawl event goes bust due to poor ticket sales, leaving suppliers and artists unpaid, and prompting an avalanche of criticism on social media. • The Dave Matthews Band becomes the first act to perform on Live Nation’s new channel on Yahoo Screen. The 15 July show takes place at Jackson Veterans Memorial Arena in Florida. • Neil Young becomes CEO of Pono Music, which describes itself as a start-up, high-fidelity audio player and associated online store that will offer top quality audio files to users. Young replaces experienced technology executive John Hamm.
30
IQ Magazine January 2015
2014 in Review
Further Observations Well, we’re nearly running out of time and space. As usual, it’s pretty much impossible to cover all aspects of a year in live music – even ILMC’s time travel theme a couple of years ago didn’t help, and as yet, the super heroes lined up for next March have yet to step forward to help me out! So what shall we look at now? Perhaps we should look at the way political problems can, and did, interfere with our business.
shows in Israel. Many of these cancellations, it seems, were to do with artists avoiding danger, as much as protest at Israeli action in Gaza, while police also refused to grant permits for outdoor gatherings. In Hong Kong, promoters in the former British Colony told IQ that the events of September and October had a real impact on gigs and ticket sales. “Lloyd’s of London will sell it (insurance) to you, but it’s so expensive it’s not worthwhile. There’s always a Russian roulette element to concert promotion, but this is like playing with two bullets.” Carmi Wurtman – promoter (Israel)
Social & Political Unrest
At ILMC, the Emerging Markets Place panel took politics and international acts willingness or otherwise to play in certain countries as a major theme, discussing Russia and Israel in particular.
We saw the effects of social and political unrest, and that hard-todefine term, force majeure, in various areas throughout the year. Cem Yegul’s Pozitif were not the only promoters to suffer losses. In early March, Eric Clapton cancelled a concert in Bangkok, due to violent demonstrations in the city. The Gaza conflict raised security fears, with big names including Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Megadeth, Cee-Lo Green and Backstreet Boys scrapping
“Acts get conflicting messages from fans in these controversial markets – some asking them to play as a statement of defiance, while others say such appearances underwrite the governments’ activities. That freaks out the acts. If they do play, the backlash tends to be from the minority, but it tends to be very harsh.” Steve Zapp – ITB (UK)
Contributors (left to right): Cem Yegul (Pozitif Live), Clothide Fery (Live DMA), Ellie Gould (Jigsaw Music Management), John Probyn (Live Nation), John Reid (Live Nation), Marty Diamond (Paradigm Agency), Michael Rapino (Live Nation), Simon Jenkins (‘The Guardian’), Stefan Zarges (‘Musikmarkt’), Steve Zapp (ITB), Tom Windish (The Windish Agency)
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
• Four people are killed and at least eight others injured after a flash flood rips through a festival in the town of Refrontolo, Italy. • The African state of Guinea observes a week of national mourning after a stampede at a seafront concert in the capital, Conakry, kills 34 people, including 11 children. Four people are arrested: two of the event’s organisers, a public official in charge of managing the beach site and the head of the government agency for public events. • Live Nation sells its merchandising operation Musictoday to Delivery Agent. The deal involves such accounts as Bonnaroo, the House of Blues and country superstar Tim McGraw. Delivery Agent plans to expand the Musictoday business through a high-tech system that allows television viewers to purchase goods directly from adverts and TV shows through web, mobile and TV applications. • Live Performance Australia reports that the country’s live entertainment sector smashed records in 2013, with nearly AUD$1.5bn (€1.1bn) in revenues – an increase of 22.7% on 2012’s total.
• Philippines-based Music Management International Corporation agrees a joint venture deal with Live Nation to promote shows in the country. • CTS Eventim announces that it has won the business to be the exclusive ticket-seller for the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil. • Manchester Arena’s naming rights partner, Phones 4U, goes into receivership less than 18 months into its fiveyear deal. • Ticketmaster Germany agrees a strategic partnership with Dusseldorf-based Mehr! Entertainment Group and Eintrittskarten.de, giving it access to more than 2,500 new events and six venues across Germany. • Accent Media wins the right to operate the new .tickets Internet domain, dedicated to the sale of tickets. • Rock in Rio confirms Metallica, Linkin Park, Taylor Swift, No Doubt, Deftones and John Legend as the first acts for its debut in the United States. Rock in Rio USA will be hosted on the Las Vegas strip over the 8-9 and 1516 May weekends in 2015.
IQ Magazine January 2015
32
Dralion © Daniel Desmarais
2014 in Review
“The only way we can make things better during difficult times is by working together. That’s why we will keep developing collaborations and supporting the projects that started at our conferences. These are our principles.” Vladimir Kravchenko – Colisium (Russia)
Agents
One Direction enjoyed a phenomenal year on the road in 2014
I always intend to deal more with the agents every year, but again, we’re out of space and time, so I refer you to Adam Woods’ comprehensive report on agents in Issue 52. The title ‘The Big Fish’, pretty much summed up the way that the balance of power has swung in favour of the agent. The union of Paradigm in the US and Coda in the UK, as well as The Agency Group’s several expansionist company takeovers and partnerships, plus the growing strength of non-UK and nonUS agencies indicates that the sector is still perhaps going for superpowers (another smart allusion to the theme of ILMC 27!) “We are leading strategy for a lot of artists, and I think artists are going to develop without having a label. The shows and the festivals will be how the artist develops, and I can see them releasing new material around those appearances. When I started this 20 years ago, I was told where to book the bands and on what days. And now it’s the opposite – the label is asking me what I think is happening.” Tom Windish – The Windish Agency (US) “For us, it’s about having deeper roots in Europe. We are no longer in the day and age where a single coming out in the UK is an isolated incident. Everything travels virally now, and success in the UK breeds success in America and around the world, and vice versa.” Marty Diamond – Paradigm Agency (US)
OCTOBER • A group of European venues sign a pact to help emerging acts across the continent. The likes of Ancienne Belgique (BE), Amsterdam Milkweg (NL), Copenhagen Vega (DK), Paris Nouveau Casino (FR), and Village Underground (UK) will benefit from European Union funding of €1.5m over the scheme’s first three years. • MAMA Group co-founder Dean James and former Shazam exec Matt McCann launch a new operation called Sixth, which aims to acquire and work with “mid-level” promoters, management companies, venues and festivals internationally. • Sixteen people are killed at an outdoor concert in South Korea when a ventilation grate they are standing on collapses. A safety officer at the festival in Seongnam, near Seoul, becomes the 17th victim a day later when he commits suicide. • A group of nine artist managers, led by Guy Oseary, form a new company called Maverick that will operate as part of Live Nation’s management division. • Four people die during Amsterdam Dance Event. Two men and a woman die in drug-related incidents, and 41-year-old music publisher Felix Hines also passes away, but police say the Phoenix Music International exec’s death was not drug related.
IQ Magazine January 2015
So, I think that’s it for another year – although I’d like to finish by urging you to read the comment pieces in this issue on the efforts being made in the UK and Europe to protect and develop the small venues. These are, of course, the roots, sometimes known as the toilet circuit, but still the essential breeding ground for future talent. We will, of course, discuss this topic and all included and overlooked in this review (festivals, ticketing et al) at the Royal Garden Hotel over the first weekend of March. Be there and speak your piece – as you have probably noticed the most interesting items in this review are the quotes from professionals like yourselves that attend ILMC and read and contribute to IQ! “These venues are the place to be if you want to discover new and upcoming artists. It is here that the audience gets the feeling they are experiencing a concert, right at the front of the stage.” Clothilde Fery, co-ordinator – Live DMA Oh – what’s this – just as I’m about to pack up, Bob Sillerman buys into another company! Amsterdam-based EDM promoter Alda Holding B.V. The company will apparently become SFX’s touring division… It never stops, does it?! Allan McGowan
33
Dralion
As one of the world’s best-selling touring productions, it’s fitting that ‘Dralion’ is this year’s winner of IQ’s Best in Show award, just as it begins its countdown to closure. Christopher Austin discovers just what made this Cirque du Soleil show such a success. The huge international success of Dralion has never been as obvious as in this, its final year. Although creator, Cirque du Soleil, is winding down the show, it is going out with a bang – marking the company’s debut in yet another new market and meaning that while the Dralion set will soon be mothballed, the cast is working as hard as ever to wow an audience that has never before seen a Cirque production. An enchanting blend of Eastern philosophy and acrobatic tradition with contemporary Western circus, Dralion has proved a huge hit in no less than 31 countries. After 15 years on the road, which has seen Dralion sell nearly 11.5million tickets across 3,853 big top and 1,101 arena shows, the production’s remarkably successful run will finally come to an end in Anchorage, Alaska, in January 2015. Fittingly, Dralion’s final arena show will see it break new ground for Cirque du Soleil; it is the first time the company has visited Alaska. Over the years, Dralion has continually acted as an ambassador for Cirque in previously uncharted territories, such as Guatemala and Panama in Central America; Spain’s Gran Canaria; and Wroclaw in Poland. Rock-it Cargo has been providing logistic support to Cirque du Soleil since 2002, moving its touring shows around
the world. Senior logistics manager Anne Cecile Croucier recalls Dralion’s visit to Venezuela as being particularly challenging. The show was due to play Caracas in April 2013 amid widespread street demonstrations following the death of former president Hugo Chavez. With the two main ocean ports hugely congested, the ground support system was sent in three weeks early. “Finally, we were able to retrieve the containers and bring them to site the day before the load in,” says Croucier. Production Manager Mikey Newnum also has lasting memories of the Caracas show, which was attended by freshly appointed Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro. “They literally had to build a tunnel so that we could get the equipment into the venue. Then Maduro announced that we would stay for an extra show, which would be free. We had little choice but to do it,” says Newnum. Dralion premiered in 1999 under the big top and toured around the world before its transition to arenas in October 2010. Company manager Clare O’Connell has been with Cirque du Soleil for the past seven years and following a long stint with Alegria, began overseeing Dralion’s international progress in January 2014. O’Connell looks after 100 people including 63 artists and a technical team of 24. In each show location, 80 local stagehands
PasdeDeux © Joshua Mowczko
IQ Magazine January 2015
35
Best in Show Jongleur © Ryuichi Oshimoto
“[Siberia during the winter] was a difficult leg that was tough on the troop, but it is an incredible team – I’ve never seen a team work so beautifully together.”
Clare O’Connell, ‘Dralion’ company manager. are employed to help load in and out from the tour’s 20 trucks. The Cirque du Soleil arena tour model consists of ten weeks on and two weeks off. But O’Connell was straight in at the deep end with Dralion. “We did a 30-week leg where nobody went home and in that time visited some amazing markets including Venezuela, Dubai, Doha, Beirut, South Africa and finished up in Siberia, Russia during the winter. It was a difficult leg that was tough on the troop, but it is an incredible team – I’ve never seen a team work so beautifully together,” says O’Connell. Every territory brings unique challenges and in Russia it was the local’s lack of enthusiasm for Chinese circus. Dralion is a portmanteau of ‘dragon’ and ‘lion’, with the symbols combined in the title to represent a fusion of Eastern and Western circus. “Chinese circus does not have the greatest reputation in Russia. While we have a troop of 26 Chinese, it is just an element of the show and it was up to the Russian team to really sell the performance as a highend production. They did an incredible job in marketing it,” reports O’Connell. Dralion outsold Alegria in Russia, one of the highest selling Cirque du Soleil shows in the region. Its two-month
Best in Show Clown © Joshua Mowczko
“ We examine the particularities of each market and in Majorca that meant focusing on the high population of second home-owning German and UK nationals.”
Paco Martinez, Live Nation Spain. Russian run commenced 21 January in Saint Petersburg and culminated 16 March in Moscow. Visiting Kazan and Chelyabinsk along the way, Dralion sold 170,000 tickets. Overseeing operations in Russia was Natalia Romanova, director of Cirque du Soleil Russia. “Elsewhere in the world, the show was positioned as East meets West, which was not going to work for a Russian market still cautious about everything ‘made in China’. So we positioned it as an ethnic show that presents a battle of the elements that ends harmoniously,” reveals Romanova. In Belarus, local promoter Andrey Alekseev of LLC Atom Entertainment was hugely impressed by Dralion’s result at the Minsk Arena in March. “We sold 40,000 tickets, it was incredible,” he says. Tor Nielsen at Live Nation Sweden has worked on Cirque shows since 2008 and continues to be amazed by the way its team helps to overcome issues. “They are always professional,” notes Nielsen. “Although there are always challenges with a Cirque du Soleil production, they make it fairly easy for us.” In Spain, Live Nation’s Paco Martinez has been promoting Cirque shows since 2007. Dralion’s 12-week Spanish run
Best in Show
Dralion © Daniel Desmarais
“ We adhere very strictly to the integrity of each show as it was originally produced, both from a technical and creative standpoint.”
David Pitman, Cirque du Soleil. included 14 shows in Barcelona and a visit to the island of Majorca. “We examine the particularities of each market and in Majorca that meant focusing on the high population of second home-owning German and UK nationals,” says Martinez. Cirque du Soleil director of arena tour planning, David Pitman, joined the company in 2010, at the time Dralion was transferring to arenas. When considering taking Dralion to a new city, Pitman first assesses the quality of the local arena and whether the population is sufficiently dense and affluent. “The biggest challenges are found in the logistics and handling of transport expenses when visiting the more remote places. Even if you think you will get a strong result in a new market, if it is expensive to get to, it can present a real problem,” says Pitman. Despite demands to stage the show outside arenas, the original creative vision has remained unaltered. “We often get asked to present our shows in a big theatre or open air environment, both situations would require us to adapt the show technically and artistically, which we have chosen not to do,” Pitman tells IQ. “We adhere very strictly to the integrity of each show as it was originally produced, both from a technical and creative standpoint.” Every major arena production has its own technical challenge and for Dralion it is two huge set pieces rigged over the main performance stage. Designed by Tate Towers,
40
Dralion’s metallic set piece is 60 feet wide and 26 feet tall and features a giant wall spanning the length of the stage. Meanwhile, three concentric aluminium rings are suspended above the stage, with each being used in interesting ways to transport performers and set elements. “They are two heavy pieces but we can either hang both at the same time or we can build one first, drop it, and then build the other. That gives us the additional flexibility to go to venues that are not able to hold our full weight,” says Newnum. Aside from rigging issues, Cirque du Soleil has become adept at shifting kit swiftly in and out of venues. Newnum says it usually takes ten hours to load in and build, three hours to load out. Caterer Red Radish worked simultaneously on the European tours of both Dralion and Quidam and its owner Wayne Brown admits to being astounded at the speed and efficiency with which Dralion’s stage and equipment was rigged and de-rigged. “It was a bit of a worry in the first few weeks when they were packing their 20th articulated lorry within hours of the show finishing and we were still packing our one small truck. They are really a company to aspire to when it comes to organisation,” says Brown. After 15 years and having played 114 distinct markets in North America alone, Dralion’s last arena show is drawing closer. O’Connell says the show is being wrapped purely because it has literally played everywhere. “There was a time when we ran the risk of cannibalising our own shows. That has settled down and we carefully examine how many shows each territory can support,” she says. “We have been everywhere with Dralion; the Middle East, Europe, South America, North America, South Africa – there is nowhere left for us to go.”
IQ Magazine January 2015
European Festival Report 2014 We won’t say it too loud, in case we jinx it, but Europe’s emergence from years of recession seemed to bolster the continent’s festival sector in 2014. Fans booked more tickets for multiple days and promoters resisted the urge to hike prices, creating a generally positive vibe in the marketplace.
I
t’s been quite a year in the European festivals marketplace. As you’ll read in the following pages, the data we gleaned from the events that took part in our 2014 survey is largely optimistic. What our stats do not convey, however, is a move by some of the bigger players in the marketplace to consolidate their business. For example, Germany-based FKP Scorpio continued to grow with key acquisitions in Finland and Denmark, as well as new events in Sweden. Elsewhere, the international juggernaut that is Lollapalooza announced its plans to visit Europe for the first time in 2015, no doubt prompting consternation among other festivals who report they are already worried about the level of competition in the market. One of the frustrating things about compiling IQ’s annual European Festival Report is that events that have had a bad year are under no obligation to share their data with us. Although all data remains confidential, certain promoters might want to keep sensitive data private, which is entirely understandable. But 2014 appears to have been a good year for Europe’s major events, as our annual survey of the business attracted 89 respondents, compared to 82 a year ago. Unlike a year ago, everyone who took part in the 2013 poll also held their event this year, so although a number of festivals do inevitably fail, those who participate in IQ’s annual health-check seem to fair well – so we’ll be hoping that, with that knowledge, we can attract even more events to participate 12 months from now. Despite the turnover we experience with respondents, in order to provide you with the most accurate statistics that we can, all event organisers that participated in the survey were asked to provide numbers for both 2014 and 2013 to help us identify any trends that are taking place across the business. Also helping us sift through the data this year is economist Chris Carey, whose newly launched company Media Insight Consulting, is already working with a number of major players across the music industry, providing vital analysis of consumer
42
trends both in the live music and recorded music sectors. “Taking a quick look across the headline data from this year’s European Festival Report survey, it looks as though promoters are doing a sterling job in keeping the fans happy, as the market throughout Europe looks very healthy,” Carey tells IQ. And with that hint of what’s to come, let’s crack on with it. Carey’s observation of a healthy marketplace is echoed by a significant chunk of event organisers. Including those who described the market as ‘fantastic’ or ‘healthy’, were 44% of our respondents, while adding in the ‘static’ description, which arguably should not be seen as negative in economies which are still to fully start growing again, boosts that ratio to a whopping 70%. Indeed, our category for ‘others’ included a slew of FKP Scorpio events, where company executive Jasper Barendregt states that the festival scene is “healthy in Germany, not healthy in the Netherlands.” Looking back on previous European Festival Reports, two years ago, just 28% described the festival landscape as healthy. In 2013, confidence started to return, with 46% using the term ‘healthy’, while an impressive 78% described the market as either ‘static’ or ‘healthy’. When it comes to crystal ball gazing, our question regarding the long-term future of the business highlights promoters’ fears that artist fees will keep climbing year-onyear as competition gets ever more fierce, and a perceived lack of headliners will leave events stretching their budgets to attract the A-list stars. But more on that later. In terms of staffing, those respondents that revealed their personnel numbers, told IQ that they relied on a total of 74,236 volunteers and 42,919 professional staff to run their festivals, or a ratio of 63% volunteers to 37% pros. Those percentages perfectly match those of our poll in 2013, compared to 59% volunteers in 2012 and 52% in 2011.
IQ Magazine January 2015
European Festival Report
Other
Festival Capacity and Attendance
E
urope’s festivals are continuing to grow in size year-onyear. Across our surveyed festivals, the average capacity for 2014 was 34,770, compared to an average of 33,655 in 2013. That represents a 3.3% growth in capacity, allowing promoters to count on increased revenues from larger audiences, in theory at least. Of course, increasing the size of your festival does not guarantee that you can attract those extra fans. But it seems our plucky gang of respondents achieved just that feat. When it came to attendance by capacity, the average across our surveyed events was 79%, which is exactly the same percentage achieved a year ago. When it comes to sold-out events, there was another indication that the good times are returning to the music festival business, with exactly half of our respondents selling out in 2014. Comparing that with last year’s numbers, where only 43% sold out, then the shoots of growth are encouraging. Of course, there are a number of events, such as Glastonbury Festival, T in the Park and Wacken Open Air, that sell out as soon as tickets go on sale. But for the most part, our surveyed events work extremely hard on their marketing campaigns, with many still selling walk-up tickets when the event opens. Yet another indication that confidence is returning to the European economy was an upward shift in the duration of festivals... The trend among promoters was to add dates, rather than consolidate downwards. Only three of our surveyed festivals were one-day affairs, a significant decline on last year’s respondents, while the number of two- and three-day festivals being organised rose, with two-day gatherings in particular proving more attractive. Three-day festivals remain the most popular format, making up 42% of our total respondents, but with many people now treating their festival breaks like full-on holidays, the proportion of summer gatherings now taking place over four or five daysplus is also on the rise, making up 21% and 16%, respectively, of the overall market. That trend seems to be continuing, as Provinssirock (Finland), Jazzopen Stuttgart (Germany), Paleo (Switzerland) and DCode in Spain are all adding days in 2015. “The increases in capacity and number of sell-outs on the up all point to a healthy market,” comments Carey. “And the fact that event organisers seem to be adding extra days to their festivals also suggests that promoters are feeling more confident about demand and ticket sales.”
Average Festival Ticket Prices
2014: €146.11 2013: €144.31
IQ Magazine January 2015
11% Worrying
Fantastic
3% Healthy
41%
19%
How would you describe the European festival market?
Static
26%
Ticketing
T
he all-important issue of ticket pricing – where some promoters come in for criticism over perceived inflated numbers – reveal some prudent strategies among Europe’s festival promoters. With a range of anywhere from €10 to €850 for their events, our 89 survey participants charged, on average, €144.31 for their full festival passes in 2013, but despite the ongoing economic recovery and signs that consumer spending power is once again on the rise, event organisers remained cautious about pricing this year, with average prices being €146.11 – a rise of just 1.2%, a little below inflation across the Euro zone. FKP Scorpio founder Folkert Koopmans comments, “Most promoters do care about ticket prices and I personally think that we’ve reached a level where ticket buyers are struggling to finance these. Therefore we kept the prices as they were last year.” In the Netherlands, Friendly Fires’ Rense van Kessel agrees, “With the economy still only seeing small signs of recovery, and customers having a lot of choice on what to spend their money on, pricing is key.” However, Paleo Festival’s Dany Hassenstein believes ticket prices will start to rise again in the year ahead. “This moderate 1% increase in 2014 was due to a general fear of saturation which has not been confirmed,” he says. “I think we will see a bigger increase in festival tickets prices in 2015.” For his part, Carey says, “Festivals don’t appear to be charging extra, but what they are doing is increasing capacity to generate more revenue. One of the obvious benefits of that is that more people on-site will help bolster at-event spend – the likes of food and beverage sales. Presumably, this will also allow festival promoters to charge their concessionaire partners more, as they will have more customers to sell their goods to.” Koopmans reads the data differently, telling IQ, “It’s more that we are offering better services (through our concessionaires), which is giving us the possibility to increase turnover.” Elsewhere, NorthSide Festival in Denmark has taken
43
European Festival Report
Mobile
1%
Ticket sales by type
Walk Up
7%
Call Centre
3%
Online
75%
Box Office
14%
advantage of its growth in audience numbers to set higher demands regarding service, sustainability, and organic food. The event’s John Fogde reveals that organisers have created “a bonus plan, which has actually made it cheaper and more profitable for vendors to sell food at NorthSide.” He adds, “The higher level of organic food you sell, the better deal you’ll get with the festival, which has not only moved vendors to think more about organic products, but also helped increase their profits.” One interesting move, from arguably the daddy of all events, was Glastonbury being granted permission to gradually extend its capacity to 198,000 over the next ten years. Ticket sales for the event will remain capped at 135,000, but staff and volunteer numbers will increase from 37,500 to 63,000, meaning that there will be an additional 22,500 mouths for concessionaires to feed and water. Pointers to improved economic conditions are everywhere. In the survey’s ticketing structure section, it appears that more promoters are cutting the availability of day tickets to their events, suggesting that fans are more willing to buy passes for multiple days again, now that their disposable income is
What proportion of your audience is from abroad?
8%
15%
0-5% 6-10% 11-20% 21-40 41+
18%
14%
44
45%
growing once more. The number of events offering day passes in 2014 decreased by one-third, while weekend-only tickets increased by a similar ratio, hinting that those same events have simply replaced one form of passes with the other, as the number of festivals that offer both day-tickets and whole-event tickets to fans remained steady at 79%. Examining ticketing data more thoroughly, the number of festivalgoers who bought day-only tickets to our surveyed events in 2014 made up 24.9% of the total audience, whereas in 2013, that figure was 34.7%. Weekend-only tickets proved more popular with last year’s 20% of the audience increasing to 25% in 2014, while whole-event tickets (which can encapsulate one-day events, weekend festivals and those events which last more than three days), also rose from 46% of the audience last year to 50.1% in 2014. Those results appear to back up the strategy put in place by promoters to reduce the number of day tickets available for sale. “This is really good news for the sector as a whole, because with the data on capacity showing that events are growing in size, and the fact that festivals are selling more whole-event passes, things are looking good,” says Carey. However, Koopmans believes one-day tickets also offer significant opportunities for growth. “We are actually offering one day tickets right from the start to encourage those people who haven’t been to a festival yet to take part in the festival experience,” he says. “Events are clearly demonstrating that promoters are offering fans value for money, which is a good news story for the promoters, who are doing a hell of a job,” says Carey.
Attendance From Abroad
R
eading back across IQ’s previous reports, it’s interesting to note the significant movements in people travelling to other countries to experience the festival scene. Events such as Sziget Festival in Hungary rely on foreign visitors for the majority of their audience (60%), but our questionnaire this year delivered some mixed results when it came to festivals attracting fans from abroad. Split into percentage slots, those events who reported that 0-5% of their overall audience came from other nations, grew impressively. In 2013, 31% of our participating festivals had small numbers of foreign visitors, but this year, that number was 45%, hinting that fans are becoming more adventurous and are travelling to more events than ever. However, numbers fell across the 6-10%, 11-20% and 2140% brackets. But, in the 41%-plus category, those festivals reporting significant foreign traffic doubled from 4% a year ago to 8% in 2014. With such conflicting data, it’s difficult to imagine a definitive reason for the various cross border activity, except perhaps to suggest that a small number of events have had very successful marketing campaigns in other countries. However, Media Insight’s Carey comments, “Looking at these numbers, I imagine that a lot of events are doing better at winning over fans in their domestic market, as the growth of events must be coming from domestic sales at the majority of festivals.”
IQ Magazine January 2015
European Festival Report
New Technology and RFID
VIP
O
ne fascinating trend that emerged from this year’s survey responses was a tail off in the number of festivals that offered fans the chance of a VIP upgrade in 2014. That may be because previous experiments with VIP packages have proved disadvantageous, but given that many VIP packages are the domain of third party providers, this is not conclusive. While 2013’s questionnaire revealed that 45% of our report’s community were offering some sort of value-added upgrades, that number fell to 39% in 2014. The figure in 2011 was 75%, so there has been some significant movement, but whether promoters view the VIP offers in the same way as they did four years ago is probably something we need to factor in to next year’s survey... Getting deeper into the VIP statistical data, it emerges that 58% of the festivals with VIP offers do not believe that the packages affect profitability. That number is up 10% on last year’s 48%, while those events that view VIP as somewhat important, have slipped from 37% last year to just 27% in 2014. Talking of which, it’s perhaps not coincidental that 58% of events did not sell-out their VIP upgrades. When it comes to the audience take-up of VIP packages, results were mixed. No fewer than 62% of our surveyed events report that between 0-5% of fans upgraded their festival experience to some level of VIP. In the 6-10% of audience total, almost a fifth (19%) reported upgrade levels, while a handful of events (7%) reported that more than 20% of their entire festival audience had paid for VIP experiences.
“ Complaining about competition is boring. We feel there is plenty of room for good new events and we are eager to create them. The lesser ones will struggle and hopefully go away.” Rense van Kessel, Friendly Fires (Netherlands) Very Important
4%
Doesn’t Affect Profitability
58% Somewhat Important
27%
How Important are VIP Packages?
Important
11%
46
T
he speed of technological development is forever increasing, with the email inbox at IQ Towers groaning at the seams with daily press releases from a slew of companies, old and new, proclaiming breakthroughs that will transform the way the live music industry operates. But, with so many systems, gadgets and, in particular, apps to choose from, the task of the festival organiser to sort the wheat from the chaff can be tricky. Nonetheless, the majority of festivals across Europe appear to be brave enough to take the plunge, as 56% of our participating events disclosed that they had introduced new technology in 2014. Last year, those tapping into new tech amounted to just 41%, suggesting that event organisers across Europe are having positive experiences with the tech they are deploying in their fields and venues. The importance of having some kind of festival app is very apparent. In last year’s survey, 12% of participants said they had launched a new festival app. This year, that number nearly doubled to 23%, as more and more promoters exploited the communication possibilities that software can provide them – allowing fans to easily navigate around the festival site, find out about stage times and even receive safety instructions should the likes of a storm hit the site. Festivals utilising some kind of social media for the first time totalled 4% of our participants (hardly surprising, as most events have been running such services for years), while the magical ‘Other’ tech category attracted 16% of our class of 89. Among those ‘Other’ events were Norwegian pacesetters Slottsfjell, which debuted ingenious bottoms-up beer taps (if you don’t believe us, check out the profile in Techno Files on page 24). Slottsfjell booker Per-Christian Rae reveals, “The beer tap system is the idea of some random dudes from Indianapolis that we met a while ago. They do it at Indy 500 and some baseball stadiums, I think, and now they’re trying to get into the European market – we liked it so much we bought the rights for Scandinavia and my colleague Christoffer Rød does this now instead of running the festival!” At December’s UK Festival Conference in London, Live Nation’s John Probyn revealed that at least one of the festivals under his remit will be going 100% cashless in 2015. And from the cashless feature in IQ issue 56, we know that many others are examining cashless systems. This was borne out in our survey, where 10% of respondents adopted cashless technology in 2014, compared to 8% a year ago. The usage of RFID technology throughout the European festivals business continues unabated, with more than a quarter (27%) of the events that filled out our 2014 survey now incorporating at least some sort of the contactless tech. Those that introduced RFID technology in 2014 accounted for 3% of participants, compared to just 1% in our 2013 survey. The most prevalent use was by promoters utilising cashless payment systems on-site for their audiences, with 17 events offering the cash-free option. RFID access control was used across 12 festivals, while a similar number took advantage of the social media applications the technology allows. Elsewhere, five festivals set-up information touchpoints around their sites, while Lowlands in the
IQ Magazine January 2015
European Festival Report
Lowlands and Spotify W
e all understand that playing a festival can drive great exposure for bands. This summer, Spotify teamed up with Lowlands festival and Chris Carey (Media Insight Consulting) to begin to measure the impact playing a festival has on a band’s performance on streaming and social media. With a capacity of 55,000, Lowlands is one of the biggest festivals in the Netherlands. Spotify is the biggest streaming service in the Netherlands, with one in ten of the population using the service. A survey carried out by Lowlands and Spotify showed that over two thirds of festival attendees used the service. When we look at how they used the service, before the event 70% of those Spotify consumers used the service to listen to bands that were playing the festival that they had not listened to before. During the event, they kept their focus on the stages, with only one in three Spotify users engaging with the service onsite. After the event, 48% used the service to catch up on bands they had missed out on seeing whilst on-site. Looking at behaviour on Spotify, the acts playing the festival saw a healthy increase in streams in the build up to the event and a large spike after the festival, as people went home and continued to listen to the bands they had enjoyed during the event. From an artist perspective, Swedish band First Aid Kit were the biggest Spotify breakthrough of Lowlands festival, with streams increasing 135%. Perhaps more interesting was the massive jump in people listening to the band, which grew 80%, demonstrating that the band had really connected with a new audience. All of this starts to put a measure on the ‘good’ that a festival can do. It also shows that Spotify can be a great enhancement to the festival itself. For aiding with the discovery of bands and artists before, during and after the event; and in the build up to the event, helping people plan which bands to see. And for prolonging the festival experience once it is over. Netherlands ran a fascinating project in conjunction with Spotify (see Lowlands breakout, above). Of course, the most successful events tend to be the festivals that continuously work to improve the experience for fans, be that by introducing new technology, adding new stages or, as was the way for a fair number of our respondents this year, moving to a new location to develop their brand. In addition to events like Lollapalooza and Tomorrowland expanding into new markets, the likes of T in the Park (Scotland) are moving site, while Øya in Norway, ARTmania in Romania and Arezzo Wave in Italy moved location this year. Meanwhile, Bestival organiser Rob da Bank is planning two additional festivals in 2015 and the likes of FKP have merged Chiemsee Reggae Summer and Chiemsee Rocks to a five-day event combining reggae, rock and electro in one festival. Of our participating events, 81 responded to the question over improvements made this year, with a third (27) saying that they had not made any improvements in 2014, but two-
IQ Magazine January 2015
thirds (54) saying that material things had been done to make their festivals better. While a number of events reported that they had changed layout, quite a few did so to help with food and beverage outlets, with an emphasis on many new restaurants across festivals throughout the continent. Cristina García at Festival PortAmérica in Spain was typical of that trend, reporting that there were “12 Estrella Michelin chefs cooking for the public.” Demonstrating similar moves in the catering sector, Stefan Breitenmoser at SummerDays Festival in Switzerland reveals that they had a successful new site layout for F&B stalls, while in Finland, Mikko Niemelä at Ruisrock Festival notes, “Layout design updates, and bar and restaurant upgrades.” Also in Finland, Markku Pyykkönen at Ilosaarirock says, “We are improving our restaurant services and upgrading our camping facilities.” Cristina Calejo at the Nos Alive festival (formerly Optimus Alive) in Portugal, tells IQ of a novel addition to that event in 2014. “The Future Moms Area,” she says. “It was an area for pregnant women to see the concerts at the main stage.” Elsewhere, at Nos Alive, organisers added a new stand-up comedy stage, built a vintage barbershop, and established a new project that aims to promote the social economy and stimulate the creation of youth employment. Denmark’s innovators looked toward the catering side of things to improve the F&B offer to ticket holders. John Fogde at the NorthSide event in Åarhus reports that the products stocked by stalls were 70% organic (perhaps taking a leaf out of the neighbouring Way Out West in Sweden which went entirely vegetarian in 2013), while the festival also introduced an organic beer in 2014. Even the continent’s most established and popular weekenders are working hard to make sure they are making the experience more enjoyable for the audience. “The festival ground was bigger than last year, but we kept the same capacity to provide better comfort,” states Yo Van Saet at Belgium’s 88,000-capacity Rock Werchter. And noting that events can also be bolstered by moves outside of the venues, Lea Hapig at ELBJAZZ Festival in Germany says, “We strengthened the transport and logistic system with bigger barges and buses.”
Competition
25%
Economy
37%
Reasons festivals suffered a decline
Lack of Headliners
19%
Weather
19%
47
European Festival Report
Improvements for 2015
A
sked if they were already working on projects to improve their events in 2015, the results, albeit asked at the tail end of the 2014 season, proved that organisers already have a raft of ideas in mind for next year’s edition of their festivals. The professionals behind Sweden Rock festival are planning free Wi-Fi and free printed programmes for audience members next year, for example. Joe Gibbs at the Belladrum Tartan Heart gathering in Scotland reveals that he is planning an extra headliner for the first day of the festival, as well as a new VIP area. Provinssirock festival in Finland is adding more days, as is the Jazzopen event in Stuttgart, which is expanding from eight days to ten. Also in Finland, the Tuska Open Air Metal event’s Eeka Mäkynen says it has a programme to improve customer experience by, “Updating food and other services at the location and involving the audience to create future years’ festivals.” The Main Square festival in France reports that it is trying to inject more fun on-site and is looking to introduce free make-up and a free photo booth next year, while Tibor Holoda at the Wilsonic Festival in Slovakia is employing a simple strategy to boost numbers. “We will improve the festival venue,” says Holoda. “That will allow us to have a wider programme and bigger capacity, so that the tickets can be cheaper.” Meanwhile, keen to capitalise on foreign visitors, Ivana Jelaca at the InMusic festival in Croatia reveals that 2015 will involve, “More promotional focus on international audiences and marketing activities abroad.”
Potential Pitfalls
O
f course, not every festival can boast year-on-year growth and while economic recovery is somewhat taken for granted in most territories, there are parts of Europe that are still suffering, with promoters in parts of southern Europe particularly bemoaning the financial situation in their countries. While 78% or our respondents either grew or remained flat, 22% reported a decline on revenues compared to 2013. Asked for their opinions on why their festivals had suffered declining sales in 2014, the responses were bluntly honest – and largely the same as those events who experienced similar disappointments in our 2013 report. The economy was the biggest bugbear, with 37% of those whose numbers decreased pointing to the lack of cash in the pockets of their target audience. Competition from other events was the reason given by 25%, while ‘lack of headliners’ and unfavourable weather each grabbed 19% shares of the blame. Jorge Gosálbez from Bona Nit Barcelona notes, “We expected more people than 2013, but the crisis in Spain is terrible.” And at the eastern end of the continent it appears there was a similar story this year, with Ivana Jelana flagging up the overall economic crisis in Croatia, adding, “[There is] low purchase ability and increased impoverishment of local audiences.” However, with the majority of promoters apparently cautiously optimistic after a decent season in 2014, one of
48
Environmental costs
1% Legislation Weather
5%
Artist Fees
40%
4%
A Lack of Headliners
9% Production Costs
9% Declining Sponsorship
7% Other
3% Competition
22%
What will affect the industry over the next 5 years? the annual gauges we use in the European Festival Report to take the temperature of the industry is our query about what issues keep festival organisers awake at night. Unsurprisingly, as it has been the primary concern for a number of years now, artist fees was the top issue identified by events, with 41% of our respondents ticking that box. And fees also top the poll of the second most important factor, meaning that those events who had a particular issue with the likes of the weather or a lack of headliners this year, still believe they are paying over the odds for talent. Comparing our chart (see page 50) with that of last year, one emerging trend that jumps out is the competition from rival festivals, which our gang of 89 reports is getting more and more fierce. Talking of the increase in competition, Koopmans highlights what is happening in Germany, where DEAG is introducing Grüne Hölle and Rockavaria, while C3’s Lollapalooza is also coming in to the market. But competition isn’t something that worries van Kessel in the Netherlands. “Complaining about competition is boring,” he tells IQ. “We feel there is plenty of room for good new events and we are eager to create them. The lesser ones will struggle and hopefully go away.” And Paleo’s Hassenstein comments, “The true danger is not the growing number of events but the competition from events who are financed by a brand or a private patron, capable of offering high end fees without economical ambitions.” On a similar note, the fact that the number of promoters that view competition from the touring sector as an issue is negligible, but given that many festivals insist on exclusivity clauses when booking talent, that particular stat, may not come as a surprise.
“ We will improve the festival venue. That will allow us to have a wider programme and bigger capacity, so that the tickets can be cheaper.” Tibor Holoda, Wilsonic Festival (Slovakia)
IQ Magazine January 2015
European Festival Report Also creeping into promoters’ recurring nightmares are rising production costs and the lack of festival headliners, while the economy remains a significant concern, but less so than 12 months ago. And while the ‘Others’ category attracted a significant number of votes, these were mainly country specific, such as the observation that the Spanish market is hampered by the nation’s 21% VAT levy on the cultural sector, or the 15% tax imposed on foreign acts performing in Germany. Taking an overview of the factors that affected European festivals in 2013, there appears to be a common thread linking the main concerns, namely a lack of headliners that competing festivals are battling to book, leading to escalating artist fees. Without wishing to end on a gloomy note, we also prompted our surveyed professionals to vote on which issues they believe will have a negative effect on European festivals. It appears that nobody believes the cycle of escalating artist fees is going to be broken anytime soon, as nearly 40% stated that artist fees will be the biggest threat to their business. Underlining the feeling that the market is oversaturated, 22% of event organisers highlighted competition from rival festivals as their perceived biggest threat - coincidentall (perhaps) the sam ratio of festivals that suffered a decline in 2014. But, on a more positive slant, it appears that the improving economic situation is boosting confidence in
certain areas, as the number of people who think that declining sponsorship revenues will harm the market has halved from a year ago to less than 7%. So, there we have it. A positive observation on what has largely been an upbeat year in the European festivals business, or at least for those events that chose to take part in the 2014 survey. Of course, there were a number of festival failures throughout the continent this summer, with major events such as Oxegen (Ireland) and Rock Ness (Scotland) cancelling their 2014 editions. But from a market point of view, there were certainly fewer news stories about fans being out of pocket in 2014 than there have been in previous summers. With countries such as France, Germany, the UK and even Greece now officially out of recession, it is hoped they will continue to build financially in the year ahead, which would also help their European neighbours who are still victims of the economic crisis. But with even those nations with the strongest financial foundations walking a thin line, optimism within the live entertainment sector as a whole, remains cautious. Thankfully, music fans are a passionate lot and despite us all living through the deepest recession in living memory, the demand for festival escapism has helped savvy promoters weather what has hopefully been the worst of the storm.
35
What are the first and second most important factors affecting the festival industry currently?
30 25
First most important Second most important
20 15 10
fet Lic y l en eg si isl ng at of ion sa
pe t ar ition tis f t t ro ou m rs Tic ke tp ri c es
er th
m Co
Co s on c ti du
Pr o
W ea
r he Ot
ko he f su ad ita lin ble er s
lac
Ec o Cl nom im i at c e A
Co
Ar ti
st fee s
m ot pet he itio rF n es fro tiv m a ls
0
ts
5
Participating Festivals A Campingflight to Lowlands Paradise (NL), Appelpop (NL), Arezzo Wave Love (IT), ARTmania (RO), Belladrum Tartan Heat (UK), Best Kept Secret (NL), Blaj aLive (RO), Bloodstock Open Air (UK), Blue Balls (CH), Bona Nit Barcelona (ES), Bråvalla (SE), Cactusfestival (BE), Chiemsee Summer (DE), Cornbury (UK), Cully Jazz (CH), Dcode (ES), Down The Rabbit Hole (NL), Ejekt (GR), ELBJAZZ (DE), EXIT (RS), IN-SOMNI Barcelona - Girona (ES), Week-end au bord de l’eau (CH), FIB Festival De Benicàssim (ES), Frequency (AT), Gent Jazz (BE), Haldern Pop (DE), Heineken Jazzaldia - San Sebastian Jazz (ES), Hellfest (FR), Highfield (DE), Hurricane (DE), Ilosaarirock (FI), Indian Summer (NL), INmusic (HR), Into The Great Wide Open (NL), Jazz Fest Wien (AT), Jazz Middelheim (BE), Jazzopen Stuttgart (DE), Jelling Musikfestival (DK), Latitude (UK), Leeds Festival (UK), M´era Luna (DE), Main Square (FR), MasterCard Balaton Sound (HU), Melt! (DE), Metal Hammer Paradise (DE), Mighty Sounds (CZ), NorthSide (DK), NOS Alive (PT), OpenAir St.Gallen (CH), Paléo (CH), Pinkpop (NL), Popaganda (SE), PortAmérica (ES), Positivus (LT), Primavera Sound (ES), Provinssirock (FI), Pukkelpop (BE), Reading (UK), Riverboat Jazz (DK), Rocco del Schlacko (DE), Rock for People (CZ), Rock Werchter (BE), Rolling Stone Weekender (DE), Ruisrock (FI), Shambala (UK), Skanderborg Festival (DK), Skive (DK), Slottsfjell (NO), Smukfest (DK), Sonisphere (IT), SOS 4.8 (ES), Southside (DE), SummerDays (CH), Summerjam (DE), Sunrise Celebration (UK), Sweden Rock (SE), Sziget (HU), Taksirat (MK), Taubertal (DE), Øya (NO), Tuska Open Air Metal (FI), Umsonst & Draussen (DE), Urban Art Forms (AT), Volt (HU), Wacken Open Air (DE), Wilsonic (SK), With Full Force (DE), Wychwood (UK), Zomerparkfeest (NL).
50
IQ Magazine January 2015
THE DANCE
MAESTRO
Already a superstar across mainland Europe, S tromae is now b eginning to b reak through in the U nited K ingdom and America. Emmanuel Legrand finds out more about the Belgian artist’s phenomenal year touring the glob e. Stromae may have been labelled “the most famous pop star you’ve never heard of” by US magazine Time Out New York, but the Belgian-born artist is on the verge of simply becoming the most famous pop star in the world who doesn’t sing in English. Hailing from the country that gave the world Jacques Brel and Plastic Bertrand (of Ca Plane Pour Moi fame), the artist is having, at the age of 29, the most successful year in his career. His second album Racine Carrée has sold in excess of two million copies in Europe, won countless awards, spawned two huge hits – Formidable and Papaoutai – and his international tour has taken him from small- and mid-size venues to arenas and festival headlines around the world in less than 18 months. “In simple success terms, and considering today’s music industry’s context, Stromae is without any doubt a phenomenon, and most certainly one of the biggest successes to ever come out of Belgium,” comments Patrick Printz, who runs Wallonie-Bruxelles Musique, the Brussels-based promotion office for French-speaking Belgian artists. “And to my knowledge, he is also the first Belgian artist to experience such a wide success with his live performances, in so many territories and in such a short period of time.” Stromae (the two syllables of ‘maestro’ inverted) was born Paul Van Haver in a suburb of Brussels and raised in a mixed race family – his father is from Rwanda and his mother is Flemish. This cultural mix is reflected in his music, which borrows from electronic music, African rhythms, Latin music, French chanson, hip hop and pop. He came to prominence in 2009-2010 with the pan-European hit single Alors On Dance, released on an indie label, which subsequently landed him a global recording deal with Universal Music France, on their Vertigo imprint. He could have been, like Plastic Bertrand, a one-hit wonder, but alongside his long-time friend and manager, Dimitri Borrey, Stromae has a long-term plan based on quality songs, eye-catching videos and an attention-grabbing show. His 2010 debut album, Cheese, did well in French-speaking countries, as well as Germany, Netherlands and Denmark, but it was his follow-up, Racine Carrée, that propelled him
to global stardom. A brilliant songwriter in his own right, Stromae also came out as an artist with a strong sense of his own image, exemplified by very creative videos. In the wake of the release of his second album, Stromae took to the road for an intensive schedule of concerts around the world, including 15 dates in the US, 14 of which were soldout, in venues ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 seats. Elsewhere, he played from mid-size venues to arenas, and headlined a few festivals during the summer such as Printemps de Bourges, Eurockéennes, Vieilles Charrues and Paléo. The tour culminates in December 2014 with a series of five soldout shows at the Paris-Bercy arena. His global live potential can be measured by the fact that there are close to 100,000 fans tracking concert alerts for Stromae on Songkick, on par with Steely Dan and Yes. Stromae’s international tour, which started in 2013, was coordinated out of France by Paris-based Auguri Productions, while booking in Europe is handled by London agency 2 For The Road. His live performances are earning him a huge following around the world, but also much interest from live music professionals, including Anglo-American countries. “I was invited by Clementine [Bunel] from 2 For The Road to see him at Scala,” recalls Steve Tilley, from London-based promoter Kilimanjaro. “The whole Scala was dancing, bouncing rather. It was an entirely French crowd and I sort of scratched my head and tried to figure out if this could work in the UK. But I enjoyed it so much that I thought ‘yes it can’. And I understood why he was such a smash across Europe, where he is ginormous.” Following his London debut at Scala in 2013, Stromae was booked to play Koko, and eventually Kilimanjaro took him on for yet another London date, in partnership with Live Nation, at the 5,000-seater Eventim Apollo in London’s Hammersmith on 9 December. “The show at Hammersmith will be our first show with him,” says Tilley. “Going from Scala and Koko to the Apollo is a massive jump and one you would not normally take. But we were quite confident. We put the show on sale in May and by the end of June it was sold out.”
Stromae performing at the Best Buy Theater, New York, in June
IQ Magazine January 2015
53
Stromae
Contributors (left to right): Manuel Schottmüller (SSC), Steve Tilley (Kilimanjaro), Valeriya Novikova (SAV Entertainment), Patrick Printz (Wallonie-Bruxelles Musique)
Tilley adds that while the two previous shows were mostly packed with French and Belgian expats, the Apollo date reflects a wider reach to an English-speaking audience. He believes, however, that if UK radio stations – especially BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6 – had picked up on Papaoutai, Stromae would have become a household name in the UK. “This is such a great song, with a catchy hook, perfect for mainstream radio,” he enthuses, “The first time I heard him play that song the place went bonkers. But English audiences are inheritably very conservative when it comes to Europeans singing in other languages, save maybe for Rammstein.” While singing his entire set in French, Stromae has the ability to crossover to audiences speaking other languages, according to Swiss promoter Vincent Sager, managing director of Nyon-based Opus One. Sager says his potential can be highlighted by his success in Zurich, in the Germanspeaking part of Switzerland. In November 2013, at the start of the tour, he sold out the 1,800-capacity X-tra, and his following concert in Zurich, in December 2014, is at the 13,000-seater Hallenstadion – and has, again, sold out. For Sager, Stromae has the ability to cater for an extremely diverse audience – an unusual feat for a francophone artist. “He is unique in that he pleases audiences of all ages, all genders and [fans] of different music styles,” says Sager. “His reach goes beyond the French community and touches the German-speaking audience or the anglo-saxon public. I can’t remember a French-speaking artist with such a reach.” Sager reveals that radio played an important role in breaking Stromae, but he credits social networks for spreading the buzz. “His videos went viral and created a lot of word-of-mouth and expectations, so when his concerts were announced, a lot of people just went for it,” says Sager, who notes that the 30,000 tickets for his show at the Paleo Festival during the summer sold in ten minutes. Another factor in his success, according to Sager, is
54
his deliberate decision to set ticket prices between a very reasonable €40-55. “Since a large part of his audience is very family-oriented, this went down very well. He tries to keep the prices at an acceptable label, and the public, which sees how much some headliners are asking for, is very appreciative. That’s also how he builds a very solid fan base.” Manuel Schottmüller, booking agent at Dusseldorf-based SSC, concurs. He has booked Stromae for two concerts in Germany, in Berlin and Munich in 3,500+ venues, respectively, Columbiahalle and Zenith. “We sell him as an international artist – that’s what I found exciting about him,” enthuses Schottmüller. “I saw people who can’t speak French sing along in French. His music is international and well produced. It has good beats. People just love the music and the fact that it is in French is not a problem.” A similar situation happened in Russia, where Stromae’s audience is mostly made up of locals, but as Valeriya Novikova, talent buyer at SAV Entertainment in Moscow, points out, not just any locals. “He is trendy and popular with hipsters,” says Novikova. “But our goal is to broaden his audience. We hope that we will be able to get him to do some promotion like the year-end show broadcast on New Year’s Eve, and that millions of people watch. But his time is scarce.” So scarce indeed that even though SAV had offers for shows in Kiev, Minsk, St Petersburg and other Russian cities, they had to make do with only one date on Stromae’s busy agenda – his 12 December concert at the 4,000-cap Crocus City Hall. “We are going to see, with his manager and agent, if we can have him around in 2015 for more than one date,” she explains. “We are absolutely convinced that he has a lot of potential here.” Like Novikova, Schottmüller is already looking forward to the future development of Stromae’s career in Germany and elsewhere. “We are discussing with festivals that I can’t name and we are talking about headliner or co-headliner slots,” he reveals. “These festivals see him as an artist who can play to 20-30,000 people. Festival promoters usually have a good feeling about their audience.” And when asked what will happen if Stromae – as he hinted in an interview – goes on a long-term holiday, Schottmüller laughs, “I hope he did not mean it. I want to work with him for as long as possible. I believe that we are going to see much more of Stromae in the next few years. It is just the beginning. There is so much more to him that we have not seen yet.”
IQ Magazine January 2015
IQ Magazine January 2015
LATIN AMERICA Parte Dos
n the final part o our t o part spe ial eature on the li e entertainment business in atin meri a Adam Woods dis o ers that the ontinent’s biggest mar ets although neighbours are poles apart and are dealing ith ery di erent issues BRAZIL AND ARGENTINA, as any sensible promoter will tell you, are the engines of the South American live business. Sell well in those markets, and your Latin American jaunt ought to do alright overall, other factors permitting; flop down there, and you’re unlikely to find another market on the continent lucrative enough to save your blushes. But as critical as these two vast countries are to the South American circuit, they operate largely in isolation from each other, separated by language, by culture, and by the 30-hour drive between their key music cities of São Paulo and Buenos Aires. And appropriately enough, in a year that has been equally odd and unstable for both countries, each has had entirely different problems. Indeed, anyone looking to make money in South America in the coming months or years needs to know about them.
Argentina, as followers of economic shockwaves know well, is entrenched in the latest of its periodic financial meltdowns – its currency very weak against the dollar, its rate of inflation expected to reach 40% this year, and its borrowing ability greatly compromised. Where international deals are concerned, Argentine promoters run a big risk: book an overseas act, and just trust that some unforeseen currency fluctuation won’t drive your end of the deal deep into negative equity, irrespective of ticket sales. Consequently, with certain exceptions, such as the resounding Lollapalooza festival and a steady smattering of visitors including Arctic Monkeys and Ricky Martin, this has been a year of retrenchment in Argentina, and another good time for local acts to shine.
Live Nation promoted Metallica in March at the Estadio Único Ciudad de la Plata in Argentina
IQ Magazine December 2014
57
In Brazil, the rampant growth of a few years ago has been slowed, partly by a natural process of correction, and partly by the double whammy of the World Cup and the presidential election, which resulted in a win in October for incumbent Dilma Rousseff. “It has been a strange year, as it always is with elections, right?” says Rock in Rio vice-president Roberta Medina, whose father, Roberto, founded the massive travelling festival. “Everything stops at least for half a year, but this year was even crazier because of the World Cup: six months for the World Cup, six months for the election.” Those two events between them created a mood of uncertainty and distraction, and on the political front it is one that persists until the industry sees signs that Brazil will once again offer fertile soil in which to invest. “The new challenge will be the second run of our president starting in January,” says Bianca Freitas of Enjoy Experiences, promoter of Brazil’s Club NME shows. “She won the elections last month and half of the country are pretty pessimistic about the economy, so everyone is a bit conscious about what is going to happen in the next six months.” With the Workers’ Party recently re-elected for a fourth term, and the strong possibility of former president Lula returning to relieve Rousseff next time around, Move Concerts’ Phil Rodriguez says Brazil is already on a path that could spook investors for quite some time. “There’s the possibility of six terms of the Workers’ Party, and that scares a lot of people, and it scares a lot of the business world,” he says. Argentina, meanwhile, with its election still ahead, may or may not take a decisive step against its current woes. “In Argentina right now, you have a government whose credibility is zero, in terms of its ability to deal with the economic issues,” observes Rodriguez. “So you have a lot of money being held back. But there is an election next year, and with a new president, with a new speech, a lot of money is going to flow into the country.” For his part, Rodriguez is opening an office in Argentina for Move Concerts, in the belief that things will improve. “I’m betting on the future,” he says, though he freely concedes that the political class has let the region down before. “I’m not a big fan of politicians in general, but we have some doozies down here,” he sighs.
PROMOTERS BRAZIL, FOR ALL its high international profile this year, exists in remarkable isolation from the rest of the continent, which isn’t to say that its live scene doesn’t thrive mightily, given the right conditions. “We have never really known what’s happening in the rest of South America,” says Brasil Music Exchange’s David McLoughlin of the country’s music business. “We have more contacts in France than we have in Argentina. You have Latin America, and then you have Brazil; Brazil doesn’t really regard itself as part of Latin America. Different cultures, different planets.” One functioning link between Brazil and Argentina is, of course, Live Nation, present in both through its partnership with South American giant Time4Fun, which in turn maintains powerful offices in both territories. Bruce Moran, president of Live Nation’s Latin American division, freely concedes this year hasn’t been a classic. “It’s been an unusual year,” he
58
Pop Art’s Ricky Martin gig at the Parque de la Ciudad in Buenos Aires
Latin America - Parte Dos
“I’m not a big fan of politicians in general, but we have some doozies down here.”
Phil Rodriguez, Move Concerts says. “The second half, in particular, has been more quiet than anyone would like. But, you know, we actually had a pretty nice first half of the year; between One Direction and Metallica and Paul McCartney, we were quite busy. And then things slowed fairly dramatically. Not as many touring artists graced us in the second half of the year as we would have liked.” The touring circuit, as Moran notes, “takes on a life of its own”, and its interconnectedness means tours will tend to come through when they want to, regardless of local distractions. All the same, he concedes there may have been a general recognition that Brazil’s attention would be elsewhere in the football-mad summer. “I think the World Cup hurt us somewhat,” says Moran. “For an assortment of reasons, we just didn’t see the volume of talent that we are accustomed to. There were artists that we expected to see, and for various reasons their tours have been moved to 2015. I think 2015 will be quite busy,” he adds, citing Latin American tours by the Foo Fighters, Steve Hackett, Kaiser Chiefs and Neil Diamond. With the dissolution of XYZ Live, local veteran Phil Rodriguez has rebranded his own network as Move Concerts, with offices in, among other places, São Paulo and Buenos Aires. As well as its own tours and festivals – this autumn including Arctic Monkeys, Michael Bublé and the pop-driven Z Festival in Brazil – Move Concerts is booking Rock in Rio next year in Rio and Las Vegas. For the big shows, Brazil and Argentina both have solid, experienced promoters with decades of experience. In Argentina, promoters such as T4F and Planmusic have long
IQ Magazine January 2015
Latin America - Parte Dos “It has been a strange year, as it always is with elections. Everything stops at least for half a year, but this year was even crazier because of the World Cup: six months for the World Cup, six months for the election.”
Roberta Medina, Rock in Rio since made their mark on the market; the Argentinian cohort includes Pop Art Music, Daniel Grinbank’s DG Entertainment, Ozono Producciones and Fenix Entertainment Group. Besides a rumoured superstar visit or two – such as the Stones, widely mooted but still not confirmed, at press time, to be hitting the continent in 2015 – promoters have understandably been pulling in their horns on international acts in Argentina this year. Pop Art, for instance, which staged Buenos Aires’ biggest ever run of shows with Roger Waters less than three years ago, brought Ricky Martin and Damon Albarn to the country this year, but otherwise has been focusing on controllable shows by local acts, of which it has the country’s largest roster. “We are changing the culture of the company a little bit,” says Pop Art’s Matias Loizaga. “The economic turmoil makes it hard to do huge international shows, but we have a long history with local rock acts, which are huge here, so we have been working harder on that.” To that end, local boys Tan Biónica were down for Buenos Aires’ Hipódromo de Palermo in early September. No Te Va Gustar, another local act with stadium appeal, will hit the road in April. Ska-P, founded in Spain but a major Latin American draw, played the popular rock venue Estadio Ferro in the city’s Caballito district in November. The significant advantage of local acts in both Brazil and Argentina is that they can tour parts of the country most international acts cannot. International shows outside Buenos Aires – or Cordoba at a push – are rare. In that respect, Brazil is a unique market in South America in offering potential for self-contained tours by major acts. So even if 2014 hasn’t been the best showcase, Brazil remains a vital touring spot for international agents. “For the longest time, major talent would only see São Paulo and Rio, but more and more we have shows in Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Brasilia,” says Moran. “It’s fantastic – Brazil is an enormous country, and if the will is there, we can find more shows in Brazil.”
FESTIVALS ARGENTINA’S HISTORY of medium-sized sponsored festivals didn’t entirely prepare the market for this year’s Lollapalooza event, promoted by Fenix, which brought 33 acts and more than 100,000 fans to Hipódromo de San Isidro outside Buenos Aires. A second event is planned for March, with a bill featuring Jack White, Pharrell Williams and Calvin Harris, and
it will come, too, to São Paulo, where T4F does the honours. Otherwise, some, but not all, of Argentina’s regular events took place. Miami’s electronic Ultra festival enjoyed a successful event and will be back in February 2015. Personal Fest, also organised by Fenix, brought Arctic Monkeys, MGMT and many others before enthusiastic audiences at Buenos Aires’ Estadio GEBA over two nights in November. Quilmes Rock, meanwhile, which brought Blur to headline in 2013, had this year off. Another South American fixture, the T4F-powered Planeta Terra festival, which takes place in both Buenos Aires and São Paulo, was aiming to change its tack in the year of football and elections, with a scaled-down, more regionalised approach for Brazil and no Argentinian event. But even the “more intimate format” proposed by Global Terra CEO Paulo Castro proved a stretch, and it was cancelled in October. As Lollapapolooza and Personal indicate, 2014 hasn’t entirely been a wash out for festivals, however. The two-day Popload Festival in São Paulo, with a credible indie line-up, took place 28-29 November, with Metronomy, Tame Impala and The Lumineers all on board. In May, São Paulo and the western city of Goiania also shared Brazil’s first Sub Pop Festival, as Mudhoney, METZ and Obits swung through after stops in Santiago, Chile and Buenos Aires, ending up in Goiania as part of the city’s Festival Bananada. Rock in Rio, the South American daddy of them all, endured challenging times late last year as recently arrived part-owner, Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista, suffered a financial meltdown of historic proportions. Subsequently, it was announced that SFX would pick up 50% of the brand, which remains under the leadership of founder Roberto Medina, with Batista ‘s IMX venture retaining a small stake. As dramatic as that might all sound, Rock in Rio has powered into its new corporate era, laying down a marker that could establish it on a new continent. As well as its sixth Lisbon festival in May, it will return to Rio next year, and perhaps more significantly still, it has announced a major US push centred on its first Las Vegas event, which takes place in May 2015 at City of Rock, a $20m purpose-built venue on the Las Vegas Strip, under development by Rock in Rio’s local partners the MGM/Yucaipa/Cirque consortium. “We are going into a new country, and we know exactly what this means,” says Roberta Medina. “It was always one of our objectives. We didn’t plan to do it so fast, but we were working with Cirque on another project and they urged us to go to Vegas, and with this scenario, it wasn’t possible to say no. It is something we have always wanted to do.” The space available in the City of Rock will allow, Medina reveals, for three Rock Streets – themed avenues that capture the culture and sounds of Brazil, the UK and the USA, with shops, restaurants, stages and a steady stream of artists, bands and performers. More significantly, perhaps, is the fact that Rock in Rio is, apparently, successfully bringing a new emphasis on sponsorship to the US. Historically, the festival has raised
“For an assortment of reasons, we just didn’t see the volume of talent that we are accustomed to. There were artists that we expected to see, and for various reasons their tours have been moved to 2015.” Contributors (left to right): Bruce Moran (Live Nation), Matias Loizaga (Pop Art), Phil Rodriguez (Move Concerts), Roberta Medina (Rock in Rio), David McLoughlin (Brasil Music Echange), Bianca Freitas (Enjoy Experiences)
60
Bruce Moran, Live Nation IQ Magazine January 2015
Latin America - Parte Dos more than 50% of its revenues through corporate sponsors, and Medina junior indicates that the Las Vegas event is already breaking American records in this regard. Not for nothing did former AEG Live chief executive and Rock in Rio consultant, Randy Phillips, tell the New York Times that Medina Sr “understands better than anyone I’ve ever met how to activate sponsorship at a festival.”
VENUES NEEDLESS TO SAY, in a year of elections, venue construction hasn’t been the first thing on Brazilian minds, particularly with a bevy of new and refurbished stadiums, constructed for the World Cup in cities right across their giant nation. What Brazilian promoters need, however, aren’t necessarily stadiums but indoor arenas, which are in legendary short supply right across the continent. São Paulo added a new post-World Cup venue in November with the opening of Allianz Parque, in the city’s Pompeia Village. Managed by AEG and inaugurated with two shows by Paul McCartney, the
“We have more contacts in France than we have in Argentina. You have Latin America, and then you have Brazil; Brazil doesn’t really regard itself as part of Latin America. Different cultures, different planets.”
Michael Bublé performed a show for Move Concerts in São Paulo’s Via Funchal venue
David McLoughlin, Brasil Music Exchange
new Palmeiras ground has a capacity of 55,000 for concerts, though it also has a 12,000-cap amphitheatre. Latin America’s biggest promoters are among its larger venue operators. T4F has Credicard Hall, Citibank Hall and Teatro Abril in São Paulo and Citibank Hall in Rio, and owns Ópera Citi in Buenos Aires. Clubs in São Paulo include the Audio Club, which hosted the ‘pocket festival’ spin-off of Popload in late-November, and Cine Joia, where visitors that month included Thurston Moore, Rodrigo Amarante and Icona Pop. In Argentina, where the elderly Luna Park can take 8,000 punters – and still does so, on a regular basis – there is a need for a larger indoor venue to draw shows during the winter season. Loizaga at Pop Art, which already owns Buenos Aires’ La Trastienda club, indicates that a number of new things are afoot. “We have an open-air venue in Vicente López, near Rio Plate Stadium, for between 8,000 and 12,000, that we are going to open next year,” he says. “And then we are working on another big project that I can’t speak about.” The Estadio GEBA, in central Buenos Aires, fills a gap below the mega-gigs of River Plate, with space for 25,000 standing or 18,000 seated. Over the years, numerous parties have spoken of their intention to give Buenos Aires the indoor arena it needs. Stones promoter Grinbank covets a venue along the lines of Chile’s 15,000-capacity Movistar Arena. Last year, he spoke of being in negotiations over sites for a similar venue in Buenos Aires, though there is no apparent construction timetable at this stage.
62
IQ Magazine January 2015
The Gaffer Like so many veterans of the live music business, Wob Roberts had aspirations of being a rock star. Having realised early on that his talents lay elsewhere, however, he has spent the last decade overseeing some of the biggest touring productions the world has ever seen. Gordon Masson talks to The Gaffer 2014 about his career and how he achieved the status of ‘go-to’ PM for stadium shows. THE CRITERIA FOR BECOMING IQ’s production manager of the year, or The Gaffer as it is known, is relatively simple: we study the list of the biggest selling tours internationally and the winner is the PM who has been in charge of the show that has entertained the most people. This year, that task was very straightforward. With sales of more than 3.4million tickets in 2014, One Direction’s Where We Are tour eclipsed everything else on the road this year, tripling sales by the likes of Justin Timberlake and country star Luke Bryan. The boy band’s 2014 itinerary included 69 shows in stadiums across Europe and both North and South America. The audience numbers are extraordinary, but not as extraordinary as the schedule that production director Wob Roberts had to deal with, having been brought in late in the day to organise things. “One Direction has been the most difficult tour I’ve ever been involved in, purely because of the way it works,” admits Wob. “The act works non-stop and the schedule is just the craziest I’ve ever worked on.” Wob’s reputation for organising smoothly run stadium shows owes much to his relationship with the likes of Coldplay and Robbie Williams, the latter of whom he’s production managed since he embarked on his first solo shows around the UK’s club circuit. The meteoric rise of his latest clients, however, is astonishing and is prompting many industry stalwarts to compare them to another boy band from half a century ago. “I didn’t realise how big 1D was when I said yes to the stadium tour,” reveals Wob. “Management told me it was bigger than The Beatles. But how many times have I heard that?! But it’s enormous. I can’t compare it to The Beatles, but I do know that I’ve never worked on anything remotely as big as this.” Indeed, Wob reports that the scale of adoration around One Direction really hit home when the tour travelled to Latin
IQ Magazine January 2015
America. “In Argentina, some of the kids had been camping outside the venue for 47 days! It was unbelievable. The queue of tents was three-and-a-half miles long.” Of course, such frenzy can cause PMs sleepless nights and Wob discloses that, for safety reasons, the tour tried to ban camping outside venues. “In Spain it went to court and ended up with a judge ruling that it was illegal for the promoters to prevent people from queuing. But in one venue, at least, the stadium was at the side of a motorway with all these kids lined up next to the road. It was really dangerous. In America, it was easier because everyone had an assigned seat, meaning nobody had to queue.” Returning to the fervour in South America, Wob brought in Liam Wheatley who organised security for the band’s UK tour. “He really looks after the kids in the audience and built some clever queuing systems.” Effectively being the guardians of tens of thousands of youngsters on a nightly basis, Wob states that dealing with such responsibility is one of those tasks that many people overlook when considering the remit for concert organisers. “Some of the things you have to think about as a production manager can be pretty dark,” he notes. “On the 1D tour there have been conversations about child trafficking in production planning meetings. What we have to look at to put on these gigs is a complete eye opener.” And he recalls, “When Robbie played those three nights at Knebworth in 2003, there were plans drawn up to deal with what might happen if there was a terrorist attack. We had serious conversations about how we could deal with an anthrax attack or a suicide bomber.” Thankfully, nothing so drastic has cast any shadows over Roberts’ career, which next year marks its 35th year. And with a reputation as one of the best in the business, the fact that he is The Gaffer for 2014 has been universally welcomed by
65
The Gaffer Wob on stage at the Stairways venue in Birkenhead circa 1980
colleagues and clients around the world – many of whom are proud to call themselves Wob’s friends. “I have always enjoyed working with Wob. On top of being a wonderful person, he is a fantastic production manager,” comments Live Nation Denmark’s Signe Birkedal. Applauding Wob’s professionalism, Leon Ramakers from Mojo Concerts recalls, “He once arrived with a five-truck tour at tiny venue 013 in Tilburg. Everything was so well prepared by him that by 2pm, the entire show was set-up and he and his crew could sit down and watch Formula 1 on TV.” PRG’s Scottie Sanderson says, “I first met Wob on a Boyzone tour, around 1993. I was a young lighting tech; he was the keyboard tech. He was as friendly and helpful then as he is now.” Promoter Rob Ballantine at SJM Concerts in the UK states, “Wob is one of the few production managers who can operate at the highest level on huge productions touring around the globe, often overseeing three builds at the same time as they leapfrog each other, with various countries and time zones adding to the complexity.” That sentiment is echoed by Susanne Robinson at TAG Global Touring, who says, “Wob’s experience, professionalism and knowledge of touring is clearly why he has been chosen to work with the calibre of bands that he has, both in the past and presently with 1D.” And Juliette Slater, tour director for Queen, adds, “He’s a consummate professional with a cheeky grin to boot!”
Backstage Destiny BORN IN ST HELENS near Liverpool, in 1960, Jonathan Roberts didn’t become ‘Wob’ until his late teens and cannot actually remember how the nickname came about. “I tried to use Jonathan again, but I started losing work because people didn’t have a clue it was me,” he laughs. “In fact, when banks still had people as managers, I was able to convince them to cash the cheques made out to Wob Roberts. But that’s not so easy these days.” Now living in the Brasilian city of Florianópolis (wife Sylvia’s home town) he’s a long way from where he grew up, but Wob believes a career in showbiz was almost inevitable for both himself and brother Chris, who has also risen up the ranks to become a production manager. “Dad (Gordon) was a baker and mum (Dorothy) was a teacher, but dad played bass in a band called The Nameless. He was also a magician – Balzar, Prince of Mystery – as a hobby and mum was his assistant, so we grew up knowing a bit about live entertainment.” Encouraging his sons to learn an instrument, Gordon sold his bass and amp to buy the boys acoustic guitars. “The irony was he found me, one day, connecting mics to the guitar, which I’d tuned down to play as a bass. He bought me a bass guitar for my next birthday, while my brother Chris went in a different direction – drums! Our first band was called Carnaby with a guy called Mike Grady on guitar – he still plays in a band called Coghlan’s Quo. “When I moved to London, Chris continued to be a musician but I stopped playing when I started work – it was New Year’s Eve when I got a job in The Strand Theatre,” continues Wob. And he reveals that giving up his aspiration of becoming a star wasn’t too difficult. “When I was playing in bands I always
66
loved the technical side of things. I built our own PA and lighting rig at one point, which we’d hire out to other bands, so I always had that involvement away from performing.” He adds, “Besides, having worked with some stunning musicians who, for whatever reason, have not made it, I’m glad I moved into the backstage side of things.” Wob’s expertise in helping musicians maintain their instruments doesn’t come from any manual or college course though. “I’m self taught,” he tells IQ. “I studied for a degree in electronics and electrical engineering at Liverpool Poly, but I dropped out after two years because I was learning more hanging around the clubs and studios. During the day I’d drive the bakery van for my dad and I’d play in bands at night. It’s a slight regret that I didn’t finish my degree; while I can understand electronics, I’m not a boffin. Mind you, when I was a backline tech, I was classified as a boffin. But I have no formal qualification, except from the school of life.”
All Rounder HAVING WORKED BACKSTAGE in the theatre for a number of years, Wob was looking to expand his horizons and the opportunity arose through what was a familiar route for artists, back in the day. “There was an advert in Melody Maker for a sound engineer and I consequently met Bob Lopez and started working for his company Ashcan PA, driving around London for a whole load of bands,” he recalls. “That’s how I got into the music business and out of the theatres. “I got my grounding moving gear around and setting up PA. I’d work front of house on the PA for gigs, while I did a lot of work with a guy called Eric Simpson and a band called The Truth,
IQ Magazine January 2015
The Gaffer Wob, like every 80s musician, had a hairy moment or two...
where Eric was front of house and I’d help with the backline. It was great and allowed me to become a complete backline tech.” With several years of experience playing bass, Wob quickly decided that learning about other instruments might come in handy. “I already knew about guitars, so with Gary Wallace as the band’s drummer, I learned about that side of things and I also learned how to look after Hammond keyboards. And that was me for about the next 15 years.” Nevertheless, working with specific artists allowed Wob to hone his skills. “I was Nick Kershaw’s guitar tech and that’s how I got into programming guitar sounds. But I got bored with replacing strings, so I moved into keyboards and became really interested in making systems work. I remember working on early emulators with Feargal Sharkey and samplers with all sorts of bands.” With his reputation growing, Wob got picked up by Australian rockers INXS as their guitar/keys tech and that led to work as a keyboard tech for the likes of OMD, Depeche Mode and Bryan Ferry. “But I never did just keyboards; I’ve always been hands-on and itching to work, so I’d be there loading in the gear from the truck to the back door as well, and that’s what led to me doubling up as keyboard tech and stage manager,” says Wob. That enthusiasm also led to one of his biggest breaks. “David Enthoven and Tim Clark had just picked up Robbie Williams as a client and Chris Adamson suggested to them that I might make a good production manager for Robbie going on the road.” Wob began working on Robbie’s live shows in 1997 and has been with the artist every step of the way as his popularity as a solo act has seen him work his way up from clubs to theatres, theatres to arenas, and, on the most recent tours, arenas to stadiums. “From 1997 to 2001 was just crazy; Robbie just got bigger and bigger and never stopped. I remember vividly his first outdoor show at Slane Castle in Ireland. The year before he’d played a festival there and was third on the bill, but he’d just blown away the Manics and R.E.M. who were headlining. 12 months later, the festival had become a standalone headline show for Robbie and we used our first Stageco stage.” Such incredible growth also prompted the realisation of what exactly he was in charge of. “I had Steve Iredale from U2’s production crew helping me and as we looked down on the site at Slane, he said, ‘You’re having that feeling I had when I first went outdoors with U2, aren’t you?!’ It was a real eye opener. The channels were all dug into the ground for the multi cores and there were a load of trucks on-site and the stage was being built – and I was in charge of it all!”
Highlights and Heroes WHEN IT COMES TO SEMINAL MOMENTS, Wob cites Robbie Williams’ triumphant Knebworth shows: “but only in hindsight. I remember waking up on the Saturday morning to discover kids still trying to get out of the car park from the Friday night,” he sighs. As for other highlights, two in particular spring to mind. “Standing at the back of the Hollywood Bowl watching Genesis, one of my favourite childhood bands – Mike Rutherford was my hero. Also, working with Queen, who are the reason I got
IQ Magazine January 2015
into the industry in the first place: in 1976 I watched Queen load out of the Liverpool Empire. I was 17, it was my first gig and I remember watching the crew and thinking ‘what a great job; I want to do that’.” And what about the flip side? “I’ve never had a disaster or a tragedy, but we had a video screen fall over on a Robbie tour which nearly hit someone. It was a near miss and thankfully nobody was injured, but it was a scary moment,” he says. “I’ve nearly lost shows – on a Coldplay tour in 2010 we were in South America and had cancelled shows in Chile because of a volcano that erupted. But what we didn’t think through was the Chilean charter aircraft we planned to use to get from Argentina to São Paolo, which was then grounded in Santiago because of the eruption. But thankfully, Adam Hatton at Global Motion was able to conjure up another plane from somewhere which meant we didn’t lose the Brasilian shows.” Ironically, one of live music’s biggest tragedies was the scene for Wob meeting his wife. “I met Sylvia when she was working on The Cure as Martin Hopewell’s assistant. It was at Roskilde Festival in 2000 when there was that horrific accident during the Pearl Jam set. The Cure were due to go on after Pearl Jam,” he recalls. “Within a week of meeting we were dating.” Although he describes himself as self-taught, Wob is quick to credit a trio of individuals who helped give him a foot-up in the industry. “Craig Sherwood, who was the production manager for Depeche Mode; Lee Charteris, who was the PM when I worked on tours for Seal; and Steve Iredale, who is actually filling my shoes on Robbie’s tour while I’m out with One Direction.” He continues, “The other big person in my career is Andy Franks. We were the men in black working for Robbie and we know each other inside out. He’s my best mate.”
69
The Gaffer Wob’s work with Coldplay included a number of festival appearances
Indeed, Franksy played a major role in one of the biggest days of Wob’s life. “I went out to Brasil in 2003 to be best man at his and Sylvia’s wedding in Florianópolis,” he tells IQ. “I remember waiting anxiously to do my speech, but after three hours it became obvious that wasn’t what happened at Brazilian weddings. But I’d had a pair of Union Jack and Brazilian shorts made, which I was wearing underneath by trousers, so I made sure that I gathered everyone to unveil those!” Shorts are something of a recurring theme amongst Wob’s friends and colleagues. “In the days when cycling shorts were, thankfully, not that common, seeing Wob on stage in something so tight was a bit much to take,” laughs Live Nation’s Phil Bowdery. Lucky Frog’s Richard Turner has a similar memory. “I first met up with him during pre-production for Depeche Mode’s Devotional tour in spring 1993, and very fetching he was too in cycling shorts and utility belt.” Lee Lodge, creative director and producer for One Direction and Robbie Williams, shares this insight: “I trust Wob’s opinion, his confidence and support. Only thing I don’t trust are those moments when he turns up, or is about to leave rehearsals. In these fleeting moments the professional we know and love turns into a vacuum-packed-beetroot of a man, as he goes into cyclist mode. The image of the lycra-clad limbs of Roberts will never leave my scarred imagination!” Franksy, too, has recollections of the offending garments. “I’ve know Wob since 1987 or 88 when I was tour manager for Depeche Mode and we were playing the Rose Bowl, where Wob was backline tech for the support act, OMD,” says Franksy. “We were touring with one of the first emulators and Wob was just one of those guys who knew his shit, so he helped us out and we struck up a friendship. In those days he liked to sport a very tight pair of spandex shorts – it’s a wonder he ever had any kids!”
70
Franksy adds, “To be honest, it was the first time I’d met such a brilliant tech. The fact he also turned out to be a lovely bloke was a bonus, so I got him in to be our keyboard tech on Depeche Mode’s 1990 tour. And when Wob was PM for Robbie, he returned the favour by bringing me in as tour manager. But I remember him calling me to say he’d been offered the PM gig for Robbie and he was really nervous. But my advice was that it was so fucking easy, that even I could do it!” Now at the top of his game, Wob Roberts still has the commonsense not to take anything for granted and tries to remain grounded by spending time, when he can, hands-on with his crew. “It’s a strange experience when you become production manager,” he observes. “People that used to ignore you start taking notice of you; vendors doing the backline begin calling you and all kinds of people start inviting you to dinner to talk about such and such.” But not everyone is so shallow. “Bryan Grant at Britannia Row and Robert Hewitt at Stage Truck, in particular, were both a tremendous help in getting me to find my feet. The biggest thing you have to get your head around is the scale of the picture – when you’re just part of the crew it’s very different: the sound guys don’t understand the needs of the lighting guys and so on. Backline is the same – people think they’re a big part of the show, but in reality they’re only a speck on the whole production. “The way I approach things is that I try to make sure that I am there from the trucks arriving, catering opening and the rigging call, right through until the end of load-out. That’s your remit as production manager. It’s tough at the top because you cannot please everybody. But once you understand that everything affects everything else, you start to learn your craft. Even tour accountants don’t always understand the ramifications of certain decisions, especially when it comes to adding tour personnel and the knock on effects of that.”
Taking Care of Crew AN IMPORTANT WOB ROBERTS philosophy is that he won’t ask crew to do anything that he couldn’t do himself, relying on the experience he has amassed over the decades working behind the scenes. “I can hold my own pretty much in every department,” he states. “In saying that, the way in which audio works has run away from me a little bit. It’s absolutely amazing what PA boffins can do now and the detail they go into to make sure that the quality is as good for the cheap seats as it is for everyone else. But sometimes you just have to tell them to turn up the volume. After all it’s just audio left and right at the end of the day,” he laughs. “I’ve found myself perplexing audio crews by saying that some people prefer mono…” As well as pulling on his time as backline tech, Wob has also notched up some valuable experience in areas including lighting and video – albeit through unusual circumstances. “I used to live in Battersea where Midnight Design were based. When they moved, I helped put their warehouse together and so effectively became part of the lighting crew,” he says. “Another time, I did a gig with Aswad in Uganda where I helped out on the video crew.” He adds, “I’ve not actually rigged, but I’ve been in the roof and pulled on points.” And while technology is constantly changing the way roadies go about their work, Wob believes that experience is one of the best
IQ Magazine January 2015
The Gaffer
weapons in any crew’s armoury. “Sometimes it’s good to go back retrospectively to how we used to do things. Everyone used to be ‘the crew’ rather than all the chief titles that are around today. I still try to spend time with people letting them know that I appreciate what they do and that I understand the challenges they face.” Andy Franks observes, “Wob is a hugely intelligent guy. A lot of people, when they start to scale the career ladder, their ego grows as well. But that’s not the case with Wob; crews like him because he’ll fight their corner with management. Also, Wob is not the sort of person who passes the buck to the crew chiefs. He is just a wonderful chap and I’m really happy that, through The Gaffer, he’s getting the recognition he deserves.”
Directional Challenges TAKING CARE OF HIS crews on 1D’s Where We Are outing, has proven to be one of Wob’s biggest challenges to date, but having confirmed his involvement in the band’s On The Road Again tour in 2015, the experience obviously hasn’t put him off. Production North ran the first three tours for One Direction. “However, for the stadium tour, management wanted someone who had that experience of the bigger venues,” says the company’s Steve Levitt. “At the time, Olly Murs [who is also represented by Modest Management] was touring with Robbie Williams and as a result, Wob built up quite an acquaintance with Olly’s team, so he became the obvious choice when Modest wanted a stadium production manager. Wob inherited about 60% of his crew from 1D’s previous tours, but while many PMs might have run a mile, he agreed to keep them on and supplement them with some of the people he’s worked with on previous stadium shows.” Levitt continues, “The schedule for the 1D tour was horrendous and to be honest I would not have been surprised if Wob had turned the tour down. But it’s great working with him, as we trust each other and he knows that he doesn’t have to justify every single decision to management, as I manage the purse strings and know which requests are reasonable and which are not.” “All of Robbie’s tours have always been scheduled with the right amount of time that allows you to do what you want,”
From Glastonbury to Wembley, via the Royal Albert Hall, Slane Castle, San Siro and Knebworth...we had it! Congratulations WR! RW x Robbie Williams explains Wob. “That time has been a lot less available on 1D. The tour was booked before I even became involved and when I first saw the line-up of dates, my reaction was ‘bloody hell, you really want to do this?!’ But it’s not the first time I’ve come across this situation. With Genesis, the tour was all booked and some shows were even sold-out before they even showed me the design drawings. That’s when I had to break the news to them that they were going to need multiple productions on the road.” The knowledge gained on that Genesis tour has definitely helped the One Direction camp. “1D has gone the other way: we’ve scaled the production to fit the schedule,” Wob continues. “So there were three Stageco stages – 11 steel trucks per system – and one universal production that fits into 30 trucks. Typically, we’ll have one day of production load-in and then show day the following day. Obviously, on multiple dates in the same venue, the pressure eases off and that’s where I could figure in days off for the crew.” With such a hectic diary, Wob also devised a strict regime to make sure his crew did not reach breaking point. “The build schedule would stop at 8pm and start again at 10am. It’s very tight, but that’s how I made the schedule work. I never like playing the health and safety card, but you always have to bear it in mind with things like scheduling. The reason why Robbie Williams always has a happy crew is that Robbie always has days off and he understands that the crew needs and deserves the same treatment. With 1D there were not many days off at all, but I’ve tried to make sure that everyone at least has time to eat, sleep and relax. A grumpy crew is a dangerous crew because they only start thinking about when they can get out of there, and that’s when accidents can happen.” He adds, “If I walked away from it I wouldn’t feel good about myself, so I’m actually looking forward to the next part of the tour – this time we can consider the scheduling a bit more before the routing is decided, so that’s a big bonus for a start.” “In my capacity as head of touring for Modest! Management I have worked very closely with Wob over the last 18 months, and travelled the world with him amongst our recce trips and the One Direction Where We Are tour,” comments Sam Kruger. “Since we started working on putting the tour together and
If you want to get ahead, get a hat!
72
IQ Magazine January 2015
The Gaffer The Roberts family – Josh, Sylvia, Luc and Wob – enjoy 1D’s gig at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester
taking it on the road, I have come to admire his knowledge in the production field, his ability to remain calm under pressure and deliver a show against all the odds. He also always looks out for his team, and runs a tight, but very fair ship.” Kruger adds, “It’s truly been a pleasure working alongside him – I’ve even come to accept the occasional conversation with him in his tight cycling shorts. I look forward to another world tour with One Direction in 2015, knowing we have Wob in charge of production.” Production North’s Levitt takes his hat off to Wob for the way he handled the most recent 1D stadium tour. “Most production managers like to bring in their own people, but Wob inherited about 60% of his crew, which can’t have been easy.” Wob explains, “I was able to bring in my own stage management team of Fitz and Mark Berryman from Robbie’s crew. Robbie wasn’t planning to do anything originally and had said he was coming off the road to write a new album, which is why I agreed to the 1D tour. Swing was only going to be a few promo gigs, but that obviously changed and became a full tour. But I’ve nicked the stage management team from Robbie and the carpenters from Robbie.” And commenting on Levitt’s observation, he says, “One of the hardest aspects of this tour has been merging the existing arena crew, most of which had never worked on a stadium tour before, with the experienced stadium crew that I put together. To be honest, things only really started to gel toward the end of the tour, but it’s looking promising ahead of the next leg.”
The Gaffer Wob and son Josh at the Amsterdam Arena. Photo by Leon Ramakers
Sunny Climes NOW LOCATED SOUTH of the equator, Wob admits that spending time away from his young family, Sylvia and sons Josh (ten) and nine-year-old Luc, is the biggest issue he has to contend with in life. But the long ‘commute’ to his day job has not been a problem – and it’s something he recommends. “It was an unplanned move to Brazil,” he admits. “In 2004, Sylvia saw the state of one of the hospitals in London and was adamant that Josh would be born back in her home country. So we wanted to go for a year to have the baby, but we love it so much that we’ve stayed. “At the outset I thought it might compromise being able to get work. But it was in my mindset that I was moving out to Brasil for 12 months, in the knowledge that I was working with Robbie Williams pretty much full-time. That went on until about 2006 though, by which time we had settled in and were calling Florianópolis home.”He adds, “I basically decided that no matter where I had to be, I’d always get myself to the job – and that’s the way I work with my crews as well. For instance, my production coordinator on the One Direction tour, Toby Fleming, lives in New Zealand. But as long as he can get to the job, it isn’t a problem.” Missing his loved ones takes an obvious toll, but Wob knows that being on the road is a drug. “I was with Snow Patrol and I bumped into Jake Berry when he was winding up a tour with U2 and he told me it was his last tour. But then he started working with Madonna. So it’s difficult to give it up. I completely understand that – my productions have entertained millions of people and there are not many people who can say that.” But there are home comforts he misses about living in the UK. “I miss going down the pub with my mate, Franksy. But Florianópolis is where my family want to be and where I want to be with my family. That might change when it comes to the kids’ education, but we’ll see.” At press time, The Gaffer was in the midst of visiting venues as part of planning for next year’s 1D tour of Australasia, Japan, Southeast Asia, South Africa, the Middle East and Europe. “After that, it’s back to the USA, so we’re talking about being on the road most of next year.” And thankfully, he’s had a bit
of input into the band’s itinerary this time around. “I’ve had more of an influence on the scheduling, so that it’s not as brutal as the last one. A big plus is that management have listened.” Levitt laughs, “They’ve given him one day off in nine months, so that’s an improvement on this year’s tour.“ Wob concludes, “Modest Management are great to work with – they are receptive to feedback and recognise that they are going through a learning curve too. Stadiums are very different to arenas, but it’s not until you experience those differences that you understand that.”
Wob with best mate Andy Franks
76
IQ Magazine January 2015
The Gaffer
Worldly words on Wob When it comes to production managers, Wob is up there with the best of them and is one of the few capable of handling a stadium tour. What Wob undertook this year is really commendable: I don’t know too many production managers who would have done that. Andrew Craig, Live Nation It is always a privilege and pleasure to work with Wob and I’m thankful that our working relationship now goes back a long way. The first time we met, he was backline tech for Tom Jones, but it’s not surprising he’s reached the heady height of the production manager world, as he is massively respected. Phil Bowdery, Live Nation It has been an absolute pleasure to work side by side and live with Wob over the last year. There is nothing like waking up on the bus to the sight of Wob’s morning hair-do masterpiece. He is hard working, loyal, incredibly supportive and compassionate about his crew. His never-ending patience for tolerating all of my neverending questions makes him awesome in my eyes and I am proud to be a part of his team and to call him my friend. Ina Jacobs, Tour Accountant, One Direction This is great recognition for Wob. We have seen Wob over the years on many jobs and watched him grow in stature to become the leg-end that he is today. It has been a pleasure working with him – he brings the same degree of attention to detail jobs and to all his projects, but does it all with a good degree of charm and humour. He regularly has difficult tasks and roles to achieve, but pulls them all off without the tears and the heartache. Top chap and top gaffer – well deserved indeed. Jon Greaves, Lite Alternative We have worked with Wob for a number of years now and have tremendous respect for him and his work ethic. He does expect first-class service from his vendors, but returns that by looking after everyone with loyalty and by being hands-on. He’s a top guy and thoroughly deserves to be The Gaffer! Tim King, Beat The Street We’ve had great times on the road with Wob over the past 15 years, both professionally and personally. We’d love to share a few stories with everyone, but... what happens on the road, stays on the road! We do want to say massive congratulations to Wob on his award. He really is The Gaffer! Lee Spencer, XL Video The first time I worked with Wob was in December 1998, on the first Robbie Williams show in Denmark. It was in Pumpehuset, which is a 650-capacity club, and he brought a small trailer of production. However, the production grew as fast as Robbie’s career and a few years and a couple of bigger venues later, I had a nervous phone call from Wob asking if the next venue was big enough, as he was now up to seven trucks of production. Last time I worked with Wob was this summer and he was here with approx. 60 vehicles. Signe Birkedal, Live Nation Denmark
78
Wob Roberts is a master at his craft. He has taken the reins of a worldwide stadium tour and operated it as effectively and as efficiently as a four-truck arena tour. We’ve put Wob in the biggest stadiums in the world, then mixed in an arena or two, even an amphitheatre, and the end results are the same: safe, professionally run shows, on time and on budget. Can’t ask for anything more. Brad Wavra, Live Nation Touring (USA) I remember having a very old and heavy Powerbook 145 (early Apple Mac), and Wob would often assist loading files and software via the now obsolete floppy drive. He always had and made time for you. It was nice to work with him again in such a vast change in roles, and I look forward to the next one. Scottie Sanderson, Production Resource Group UK Laura and I have had the pleasure of knowing Wob for 20 years or so. Most every Friday night when he wasn’t away working as a backline tech, we would meet for the obligatory curry and several beers. One evening of note was after our return from Goa, bearing Feni (the local alcohol made from cashews), which had a strange and hilarious effect on Mr Roberts to say the least! Wob has been instrumental in the growth of Fourth Generation. As PM for Robbie, Wob involved us from the early days, from shows at The Forum through all of Robbie’s touring productions to date. As both a friend and a client he has been fiercely loyal, supportive, and nothing but a pleasure to work with. Despite whatever pressures are on his shoulders, he always greets you with complete warmth and a smile. Wob (along with Sylvia and their boys) is first and foremost one of our oldest friends. We are delighted to see him be awarded this latest accolade and look forward to having the opportunity to raise a glass of red with him soon! Tweed and Laura Hurlocker, Fourth Generation Ltd Wob is great with attention to detail, so everyone knows where they stand and what’s expected of them. That ensures all professionals work to a high standard and the result is a fantastic example of just what our industry is capable of achieving. Wob will also listen when there are aspects to take into consideration that don’t make his life easier, quicker or cheaper! If things need to be done to ensure the customer will have a better and more enjoyable experience, he will implement them, if possible. If certain venues need changes so the production works for them, again Wob understands where others response may be to shrug shoulders and say ‘this is the show and this is how it happens.’ Wob is a 24/7 professional so when I asked him for advice when touring Brasil on vacation, not only did Wob come back with the answers, which varied for each region, he illustrated his answers with pictures lifted from the internet! Thorough at all times! Rob Ballantine, SJM Concerts Over the years, we have built a strong working relationship with Wob, organising travel for the tours he is involved with, and it is always an absolute pleasure. The IQ Gaffer award is certainly well deserved – congratulations Wob! Susanne Robinson, TAG Global Touring
IQ Magazine January 2015
I guess Wob was the first actual touring roadie I ever worked with. He was looking after some massive digital multitrack 2-inch tape decks, doing backing tracks and sending timecode to me to lock up nine laserdisc players. Probably the first ‘projection mapping’ tour – we just called it “pixel tossing” then (I think Wob still has a spreadsheet column called that). Since then, we’ve stayed in close contact – as colleagues, boss, gaffer, friends and he was even my landlord for a time! He remembered our ‘what you could do with projection’ conversations for the first Robbie Williams arena tour and we did some serious pixel tossing on that after being told “it can’t be done” and “projection will never work in arenas”. So we did it at Slane Castle... “It can’t be done” has turned into the way it’s done – and Wob made that happen by his faith in the people he trusts. Here’s to another 20 years, mate. Richard Turner, Lucky Frog Ltd Every tour has its logistical challenges, particularly stadium tours, and Wob is very pragmatic and level headed when working through them. He’s just such a nice person to work with, and that on its own makes for a great experience. I remember paying a visit to the production office at the iHeartRadio show in Vegas, but we had to cut our chat short so he could get on a Skype call with Sylvia and the boys ‘for dinner’. I loved that little snippet of him as a dad, being ‘present’ for his family from so far away. As a mom of three little kids whose husband tours as well, that memory of him has always stayed with me. Chanon DiCarlo, Upstaging Inc When I receive a rider that lists Wob as production manager, it always makes me smile. He is consistently well prepared, gracious and good humoured on every project we have worked on together. I adore him. Ruthie Marshall, Live Nation North America We have worked with this great man for over 20 years. Always totally honest, reliable and hardworking in one of the toughest jobs on the road. Wob is a true leader. We love him very much and are so pleased he is receiving The Gaffer award for 2014... arise Sir Wob!! David, Tim and all your friends, IE Music We have worked with Wob for many years and he always stays calm in the worst storms of uproar and mayhem…. fans going crazy, barriers about to burst, tornados hitting the stage, venues flooding and power breaking down. But never has he lost his temper and never has his planning been wrong. Simply – we love him! Scumeck Sabottka, MCT Konzertagentur Wob is an incredibly professional production manager whose depth of knowledge, when working on large scale projects, always makes the project run smoothly and helps tremendously when any challenges occur. We always look forward to working him and we think he is an incredibly worthy winner of this year’s Gaffer award. Tony Bowern, Brilliant Stages RCA’s loss was production management’s gain – Wob is very deserving of an award! Liz Berry, Hologramica
Members’ Noticeboard To celeb rate IQ ’s tenth b irthday, and the launch of IL MC 27 , the S tillery venue in L ondon hosted a special C hristmas party, where, thank s to sponsors S pirit P roductions, Eventim, MEI L ive and Mojo Barriers, a very merry time was had b y all.
Laura Goldsmid and Angela Glazin from Spirit Productions meet Father Chris(Prosser)mas.
For being a good boy, Shelt on International’s Robert Fowler gets a yuletide gift from Santa.
Power ballad gurus Brian Mahoney and Dave Fawbert, of DJ duo Ultimate Power, provided an air guitar fuelled soundtrack for our rockin’ party goers to make some festive shapes on the dancefloor.
The Santa Clause: lawyer, Ben Challis, finds out where the name Saint Knickerless comes from, as ITB’s Steve Zapp and IQ’s Allan McGowan eagerly await their turn.
Swiss brain boxes Olivia Bachelard and Guillaume Chardo nnens, from Rock Oz’Arènes, won the evening’s pop quiz.
The dream team: IQ’s Gordon Masson catches up with Amber McKenzie (ITB), Tom Taaffe (The Agency Group), Rosa Martinez (AXS), ILMC’s Greg Parmley and Olivia Sime (ITB).
ton-Pope, flank father Father and son, Kane and Andrew Leigh Steve and Tom Andrews.
and son
Santa tells Music Venues Trust founder, Mark David, exactly who is on his Naughty List.
If you, or any of your ILMC colleagues, have any notices or updates to include on the noticeboard, please contact the club secretary, Gordon Masson, via gordon@iq-mag.net
80
IQ Magazine January 2015
Your Shout
“What mad invention would you like to see come to fruition?” TOP SHOUT The general consensus in the office: a GPS-enabled app for all stadium tours that will direct fans straight to their seats without the help of an usher, so basically like a GPS to your seat. The app will also have all relevant concessions listed so you select what you are looking for and it will take you there. Attie van Wyk, Big Concerts International
My dream invention is a very selective virus that attacks any person, company or site that tries to resell tickets for anything more than face value. Neil Croker, Palais Theatre ( Melbourne)
In London, I used to happily toddle about on my pushbike; cycling in Istanbul (where I live) would be suicidal, so I need a car-zapper. Just something that turns cars into dust when they run you over (just the car not the people inside); plus a handheld version for zapping cars blocking the pavement. Next year will do fine. Nick Hobbs, Charmenko
Having just spent three days on the road in a van with a band, it has to be transporter technology. Preferably with air fresheners as standard.
A long-distance taser gun linked with a phone signal (one-way only, of course) Conversations with agents would never be the same again.:-)
Ruth Barlow, Beggars Group
Thomas Ovesen, Done Events
The creation of a 15,000-capacity arena with only a single row, thereby allowing everyone a front-row seat!
I’d like to see a Monty Python replicating machine. We want them back for another ten nights in 2015!
Brian K abatznick, AEG Live
Emma Bownes, The O2 arena
One day – hopefully, in my lifetime – we will see the advent of the ‘artist beamer’. Instead of having to bus, fly, truck the artists and equipment from city to city – the artists will get on a special platform. At the end of each show, I will give the order ‘Scotty – beam them to… so and so’. And they appear, completely rested, relaxed and in great spirits on the stage in the next city – ready to rock the house!
A portable money printer with promoters’ priority right to order – that would be sufficient for the next couple of years, I guess.
Georg Leitner, Georg Leitner Productions
I invented it years ago but despite much campaigning am still waiting for agents to listen: a show contract without the maddening term “Force Majeure” mentioned, and clear clauses as to who pays what when a show is cancelled. Martin Goebbels, Robertson Taylor
Borek J irik, Transmusic Booking
I would like to see wireless electricity. In this way, all stages, lights, LEDs, PA systems would run without all the heavy cabling. I dream of a really clear stage, without tonnes of cables running up and down the trusses; without kilometers of cable protection. This is my dream. Silviu Scrob, Hermannstadt Events
As long as no one invents ‘the beamer’ from Star Trek, then people will still need buses - and I am happy! J oerg Philipp, Beat The Street
It’s the Beam Machine: I invented it a while back so I am ahead of the game. It’s a button that gets pressed at a show which instantly beams you on stage. I have used it a few times. Amongst others, I have been in Take That, sung duets with Elton John, and even managed a starring role in an opera. My proudest moment was beaming myself on stage at Swan Lake and I was the Black Swan. Everyone should watch the finale of Strictly [Come Dancing], yes, that will be me holding the large crystal ball at the end. It was all very magical. Ed Grossman, MGR Touring
A solar-powered, automated, random, Your Shout witty response generator. Andy Lenthall, PSA
If you would like to send feedback, comments or suggestions for future Your Shout topics, please email: info@iq-mag.net
82
IQ Magazine January 2015