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2024 WRAPPED!

FEATURES

18 2024 Wrapped!

A round-up of the last 12 months and a glimpse at what 2025 might have in store

Wizard Live’s Spellbinding Future

As Wizard celebrates 20 years, MD Oliver Hoppe plots a path for the next decade

What’s Going On... with genderbalanced festival lineups?

Making stages more equitable with Primavera Sound & Roskilde Festival

Electronic music pioneer Maria May celebrates 30 years in the agency business

The Gaffer 2024

Chris Kansy takes home The Gaffer Award... again! 56 Sum 41: So Long, Goodbye

Derek Robertson talks to the crew behind the Canadian outfit’s farewell outing

Baroque & Roll

Adam Woods health-checks the historically robust live music

COMMENTS & COLUMNS

Tour Marketing

Meera Patel defines the role of tour marketers

Chris Ibbs celebrates the rise of women to the top of global touring

Members’ Noticeboard ILMC members’ photographs

Your Shout

What is your most memorable moment from 2024?

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Cover photo: Le Sserafim at the MTV Europe Music Awards at Co-op Live in November © Shirlaine Forrest / Getty Images for Paramount

LONDON

25-28FEBRUARY2025

THE TIME IS NOW

At press time, we are into the first week of December, and the party season has well and truly started, as the victims staggering home along the streets of London on a nightly basis will attest.

Meanwhile, at IQ Towers we’ve barely had time to breathe, let alone crack open bottles of fizz, as we pull together this year-end edition of the magazine while simultaneously trying to set up what we promise will be the biggest ILMC programme in the 37-year history of the conference.

As you may have already seen on 37.ilmc.com, the agenda for our February gathering has now been set, and the hottest topics of the day will be up for debate. We’re confident that solutions to some of the concerns that are testing ILMC members will be discussed during our three-day summit, setting everyone up nicely for what will be the biggest year to date for the live music industry.

An early event in 2025 will see Donald Trump downsizing his normal accommodation and moving his branded luggage back into the White House. And while we all have our opinions on The Donald, his return as commander in chief appears to have delighted those in high finance, with the news buoying stock markets and, in turn, boosting the values of various live entertainment corporations (see page 8).

Only time will tell if that bonhomie continues until we all get together at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in February, but in the meantime, there’s plenty more in the following pages of this issue of IQ to celebrate – not the least of which is the first of our Arthur Award winners for 2025: Chris Kansy, who becomes the first production chief to be named The Gaffer for a second time (see page 44).

Talking of high achievers, I recently had the pleasure of chatting with CAA’s Maria May as she marks 30 years as an agent to some of the planet’s biggest electronic music acts. Her path to the top is a fascinating tale, so be sure to turn to page 32 to discover all about your Open Forum host’s house music history.

Also marking a 30-year landmark are Sum 41, but in altogether different circumstances, as Derek Robertson peeks behind the scenes of the band’s farewell tour on page 56.

Clocking in at 20 years, and counting, Wizard Live had a recent party in Frankfurt to celebrate their landmark anniversary. And as managing director Oliver Hoppe plots the next decade for the company, he shares some of his candid thoughts on the current challenges and opportunities in the business, which make for some interesting reading (page 28).

For his November globetrotting exploits, Adam Woods checks in with our colleagues and peers in Austria (page 66) to learn about the state of the business in what has traditionally been one of the world’s most robust live music markets.

And as Chris Ibbs lauds some of the women who have dominated international touring in the past year on page 13, I’d also like to flag up our article on gender-balanced lineups on page 30. It’s an area that virtually every festival has to do better on, and the fact that diversifying lineups sells more tickets means anyone who does not, is doing the business and themselves a disservice. And for those who are unsure how to achieve better gender balance, then there’s a workshop at ILMC where you can learn the tips and tricks of how to find and book female acts.

And that’s that. Sayonara, 2024.

The next 12 months are going to be massive, so I’lll wish you a Happy New Year now, as it looks like we won’t have time for such pleasantries in 2025…

IQ Magazine Unit 31, Tileyard Road

London, N7 9AH

info@iq-mag.net

www.iq-mag.net

+44 (0)20 3743 0300

Publisher

ILMC & Suspicious

Marketing

Editor

Gordon Masson

News Editor

James Hanley

Deputy News Editor

Lisa Henderson

Sales Director

Gareth Ospina

Account Manager

Tom Brint

Design

RND Studio

Sub-Editor Michael Muldoon

Head of Digital

Ben Delger

Subscriptions

Toby Denton

Digital Content Exec. Hanna Ellington

Contributors

Chris Ibbs, Meera Patel, Derek Robertson, Adam Woods

Editorial Contact

Gordon Masson

gordon@iq-mag.net

Advertising Contact

Gareth Ospina gareth@iq-mag.net

ISSN 2633-0636

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As 2024 draws to a close, has been speaking with a number of industry leaders around the world to gauge their thoughts on the industry’s evolution over the past 12 months, as well as sharing their insights into what 2025 may have in store for touring artists and the hundreds of thousands of professionals who help them connect with their fans through live performance. Gordon Masson reports.

When the clock ticked over from 2023 into 2024, the live music industry was bracing itself for a big year. The biggest grossing tour in history, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, had finished its triumphant journey from the United States south to Mexico and then to Brazil and was about to hit Japan, Australia, and Singapore before continuing its record-breaking spree around Europe and the UK.

Elsewhere, stadia that were not being used for the likes of the Copa América football tournament, the UEFA European Football Championship, or the Olympic and Paralympic Games, were otherwise kept busy by acts like Bruce Springsteen, Ed Sheeran, Karol G, Paul McCartney, Depeche Mode, P!nk, Foo Fighters, AC/DC, Travis Scott, Coldplay, Green Day, and Rammstein.

And with many executives telling IQ that 2025 will likely be the biggest year on record, tour announcements over the past few weeks have been coming in thick and fast as artists and their promoter partners look to secure early ticket sales on the back of festive gifting and the sheer excitement that the marketing teams behind the artists can generate so far in advance of the shows themselves.

“Demand for 2025 has been impressive: we’ve found that ticket sales for events in fall 2024 were a bit slow, but sales for fall 2025 – a full year away – have been really strong,” comments Olivier Toth, who in addition to running the Rockhal arena in Luxembourg is also chairman of the European Arena Association.

And the same fever for 2025 is being felt internationally. At press time, among the stadium acts confirmed for Mexican powerhouse promoter OCESA next year, are Shakira, 21 Pilots, Justin Timberlake, Sting, and Linkin Park, “and there's a lot more who will be confirmed in the next few weeks,” says company director Memo Parra. “It's going to be a huge year!”

Indeed, Parra has reason to celebrate, as sales in his country have reached unprecedented levels. “The biggest highlight for us in Mexico this year was that acts are selling 100%, 200%, 300%, 400% more than they [did] three years ago,” says Parra. “That's very impressive, because some of

those acts don't even have a new record.” Citing examples, he says, “2019 was the last time Shakira toured Mexico, and she did two stadiums. Next year, she's doing seven!”

Unable to pinpoint just what is behind the phenomena, Parra reports, “The Mexican economy is not doing great right now, and there's a lot of economic uncertainty for the next year – the peso was at 17 to the dollar two months ago, and now it’s nearly 21 to the dollar. But people are really enjoying going to live shows, so they're spending their money on concerts instead of spending it on something else.”

While at the stadia and arena end of the spectrum, 2025 is looking very bright indeed, concerns are mounting over mid-tier and club-level tours, where it is becoming increasingly difficult for anyone to make money.

Detlef Kornett, CEO of DEAG, tells IQ, “The difficulty of smaller and mid-sized bands to do European tours will have an impact. The market share of UK-based music has decreased within Europe within the last couple of years, [and] I think we will see even more of an impact in 2025, because unfortunately, nothing has changed –costs haven’t gone down.”

That situation is aggravating the already perilous situation among the club and small venues network in the UK, with Beverley Whitrick, COO of Music Venue Trust sounding the alarm. “Grassroots touring has collapsed in the UK,” she says. “Over four decades, we have seen a decline from an average length of a tour in 1994 being 21.9 shows in 28 locations to 10.9 shows in 12 locations in 2024.

“The fact that artists cannot afford longer tours means that they are connecting with a smaller audience, visiting fewer towns and cities, and struggling to build the sort of fanbase that creates a sustainable career. Some artists are simply giving up as they cannot make a living from their music. And anyone who lives outside a major city has

the most limited access to live music the UK has ever offered. Venues have fewer gigs to offer, compounding their financial challenges. The touring model needs support, or it will crumble further.”

Elsewhere, however, OCESA’s Parra is experiencing no such difficulty, as public demand for live music in Mexico is high across all levels of touring, including club and mid-tier shows. “Additionally, all of our 6,000–8,000-capacity shows are doing fantastically well,” he says. “Another highlight is that Latin and Mexican acts have also stepped up: acts that have been in the market for 20, 25, 30 years are now selling stadiums for the first time, while others have done progressional steps up from clubs to theatres, from theatres to arenas, and arenas to stadiums. Everyone grew. And that’s also helping our industry because the Mexican and Latin acts are becoming huge.”

But there is one troubling area of business, even in Mexico. “My only concern would be festivals, where we saw a little bit of a reduction this year,” says Parra. “This year, all festivals were on a lower level ticket sales-wise, compared to 2023. But I’m hoping we can get the numbers back up next year.”

Festivals in Europe also felt the pressure, with more than 70 being cancelled in the UK, while in the Netherlands, around 50 did not have 2024 editions. And in Australia, a slew of events ran into trouble, with slow ticket sales and rising costs making some festivals untenable.

However, a number of intrepid souls also chose 2024 to launch some new festival formats, including Summer Sonic in Thailand, Rolling Loud Europe in Austria, In The Meadows (Ireland), Tomorrowland Presents Core Medellín (Columbia), Montreux Jazz Festival Miami (USA), and Untold in the United Arab Emirates, to name but a few.

Unfortunaetely, violent storms and unseasonal heavy rain also took their toll on many events around the world, with the likes of Pohoda in Slovakia, Graspop in Belgium, Slam Dunk in the UK, Australia’s Pitch Music & Arts Festival, and the USA’s Sol Blume, Lovers & Friends, Sueños, and Gazebo festivals all hit by varying degrees of severe-weather-related problems.

But FKP Scorpio CEO Stephan Thanscheidt’s portfolio of events fared better than most, thanks to the company’s decision not to impose significant ticket price hikes.

“The whole team and I have many highlights to share,” he says. “Among them are a memorable and successful festival season with the strongest sales start in the history of Hurricane and South-

“I thought we would be in trouble. But whoever said entertainment booms in leaner times was right”

John Giddings | Isle of Wight Festival

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SUPER TROOPER

MARIA MAY’S 30 YEARS AS AN AGENT

Accidentally falling into the agency world, Maria May has helped to define the parameters of dance music over the past 30 years, allowing such talent as David Guetta, Paul Oakenfold, Black Eyed Peas, The Chainsmokers, Róisín Murphy, Paul Kalkbrenner, Robin Schulz, Meduza, Hugel, Sara Landry, and Lee Burridge to achieve global fame and long-term careers. Gordon Masson talks to May about her fascinating background, the roots of her passion for activism, and the continued growth she foresees for dance music.

While her academic abilities perhaps had her parents and teachers predicting a job in the city, Maria May’s evening routine introduced her to a world in which she would ultimately become one of the global powerbrokers.

Born in Bedfordshire, Maria Hutt, as she then was, grew up in west London where her parents ran a pet shop – sparking a lifelong love of animals. “My dad, John Hutt, was also a security guy and did loads of different jobs before ending up as head of security at Wembley Arena and Wembley Stadium,” says May. “So I went to concerts from a very young age – my first gig was ABBA, when I was six or something, at Wembley Arena. It changed my life. That's probably why I’m into disco.”

That serendipitous behind-the-scenes lifestyle became part and parcel of May’s daily ritual. “When I was 11, I got into a really good school –City of London School for Girls. At the end of each day, I’d catch the train to Wembley, watch a show, and then get a lift home with Dad. I’d often be doing my homework during sound check. And so I saw everything – Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Pink Floyd, Luther Vandross, Tina Turner, Spandau Ballet, Tears for Fears, Dr Hook, you name it. And often I saw them on multiple nights.”

While she was still unsure about what to pursue as a career, a seed had been planted. “I was at the venue often till 10 or 11 o’clock, so I got used to being a night owl at an age where most people had never even been to a gig. Ultimately, after each show, I’d go backstage, and I really got into the atmosphere of all the hustle and bustle. Otherwise, I worked for my parents at the shop and did a load of part-time jobs to earn money. And then the rave scene hit and everything changed.”

While May seemed destined for higher education, acid house presented a different route entirely.

“I just announced I didnt want to go to uni,” she recalls. “Mum and Dad’s reaction was that if I wasn’t going to university, I had to get myself a job. As a result, I found myself working at a recruitment firm, and within about three months, I

was running the payroll across two agencies, because I just found the work really easy. And then I saw a job advert for an assistant at a private recording studio in West Hampstead, which was owned by Robert Howes, and at the time was rented to Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson.

“It was a great job – once a week, they’d give me the tapes, I’d drive down to Abbey Road to get them mastered, and I’d hang out with the studio manager there. My parents were quite impressed, because I was on a decent salary, so they sort of relaxed. And meanwhile, I was in this crazy world of late-night studio sessions, with different people like Squeeze, Aled Jones, and Gary Barlow popping in all the time. It was fun, but I didn't really understand that I was in the music industry… I was just turning up every day to make sandwiches and coffee, do invoices, and run errands.”

Mixing with musicians and DJs soon led May to rave culture. “I started going out with this guy, Chris Binns, who was running the World Party illegal raves. We did quite a few massive events, and I got caught up in that whole scene. I basically wasn't going to bed four days a week because I was dancing in fields. I was very tired, but I was having the time of my life while trying to hold down my day job.”

However, that was all set to change, thanks to Phil Nelson, manager of the Levellers. “He rented an office opposite the studio, and he’d come over to collect his post, and we'd always have a chat. Then, one day, he asked if I’d like to be his assistant. Being 18 years old and not even knowing who the Levellers were, I just went, ‘Yeah, that sounds great.’”

Not everyone in the Hutt family was as enthusiastic. “I remember an item on the TV news about the Levellers as the whole counterculture thing was blowing up. They were sort of portrayed as the devil, and my parents were not impressed.”

But it was May’s work with the band that sparked her passion for activism and first got her

noticed on a national scale.

“The government had announced the Criminal Justice Bill and the Levellers decided they were going to fight it, so they got me to run their campaign. The challenge was to get the message out about all the rights the government was trying to take away from people. We didn’t have a budget, so we did all sorts of mad things: we blagged free adverts in the music press, we did billboards on Vauxhall Bridge, we organised marches, and it was so successful that I got profiled in The Times and The Big Issue which, for a teenager, was a bit mad.”

The campaign would also introduce her to David Guetta manager Caroline Prothero, who at the time was working at Ministry of Sound, and who, after meeting May, insisted that everyone entering the club needed to sign the petition against the Criminal Justice Bill.

In a stint that at one point saw May singing backing vocals for the band, she describes her time with the Levellers as an experience that shaped the rest of her adult life. “They were brilliant to work with,” she says. “I was young and opinionated, but they put me in my place a lot and taught me loads about myself. I learned about politics, and that’s something that has remained a big thing for me – being actively involved in trying to make people aware what the ramifications of new legislation might be on their lives. The Levellers were true human beings, who did the right thing, always, no matter what the consequences, and that really inspired me.”

The subsequent beneficiaries of May’s creative campaigning and strategic skills have included a number of music-related trade bodies and organisations. She is a founding board member of the Association For Electronic Music (AFEM) and also a former board member of the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA). Meanwhile, she sits on the boards of the Frankie Knuckles Foundation and Lady of the House and is also on the executive board of Beatport.

The Accidental Agent

While other friends had gone to university and even enjoyed the luxury of gap years, May had been working since she was 17 and, at 21, decided she needed some time out.

“I had a new DJ boyfriend who ran clubs like Indulge in Brixton. We’d go to Ministry of Sound to see [David] Morales and Knuckles and [Tony] Humphries, and otherwise, I decided I was just going to sit around for six months and have a nice time. But then the Levellers’ agent, Charlie Myatt, introduced me to David Levy who he worked with

“We pretty much were the architects of where the electronic scene sits right now”

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CHRIS KANSY

Currently steering Coldplay’s record-breaking Music of the Spheres Tour around the globe, production manager Chris Kansy is helping to establish new best practices for acts trying to minimise their carbon footprint. His efforts, over a career that now dates back more than 40 years, see Kansy become the first person to collect the Arthur Award for top production guru (aka The Gaffer), twice. Adam Woods caught up with him during the band’s recent Australia leg…

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So longgoodbye

As Sum 41 lower the curtain on their 30year touring career, the band is in the midst of a year-long farewell jaunt that will wrap up in their native Canada early next year. As they say goodbye to legions of fans around the world, Derek Robertson speaks to some of those behind the scenes who are helping the band to bow out in style.

Tenth grade, 1996. A fledgling high school band called Kaspir in Ontario, Canada decides to change their name, as their new music – mainly inspired by NOFX and hardcore punk – no longer suits their original moniker. For various reasons, “Sum 41” is chosen; within two years, they release a mixtape called Rock Out with Your Cock Out and songs with catchy titles like Grab The Devil By The Horns And Fuck Him Up The Ass. These might not seem like sensible first steps on the path to longevity in the music business, and yet here Sum 41 still are (for a little while longer) – 28 years young, better than ever, still wowing fans young and old alike, on what’s so far been a celebratory, wildly successful world tour.

But this latest jaunt, Tour of the Setting Sum, is also bittersweet, marking as it does the band’s final chapter. It’s also in support of their last-ever album, the recently released Heaven :x: Hell. Announced alongside news of their impending breakup, the tour has taken on dual significance: a celebration of a stellar career that saw the band transition from skate-punk darlings to global rock mainstays and a farewell to fans and the music industry. Spanning continents and featuring a carefully curated setlist that blends fan favourites with deeper cuts, the tour has also demonstrated the band’s wide appeal and ability to evolve musically while maintaining a distinct identity – all while staying true to the swagger and attitude that set them apart from their peers in the early 2000s punk-rock revival.

“A bit of a shock” is how Wasserman Music’s Geoff Meall, their long-standing agent (he booked one of their first international shows in April 2001, at The Garage in London) describes receiving the news that they were calling it quits, and even vocalist and guitarist Deryck Whibley, the only remaining founding member, has said in interviews that the decision was only taken once the most recent album was written and recorded. “On the last European tour, in October 2022, I was actually chatting with Deryck in a dressing room about how long he’d keep this running for,” adds Meall. “We were laughing about [whether he could] keep it going as long as Jagger.”

Who knows whether Whibley will still be rocking out in some form or other aged 81, but in the meantime, he and the band are doing a damn fine job of giving Sum 41 the send-off they deserve. “Being the final run afforded us the ability to go bigger and harder than we’d ever done before,” says Meall. “If this is indeed the last chance to ever see them…”

Outwardly at least, there weren’t many signs that Sum 41 was about to call time on their near 30-year career – after all, they were at the height of their powers, playing bigger and bigger shows on every tour. Read some of the many interviews Whibley has done over the last year or so, and you’ll discover the desire to end it was more a dawning

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BAROQUE & ROLL

As a historic powerhouse for music, Austria still punches above its weight in terms of the calibre of artists and bands who include the country in their international tour routings. Adam Woods learns that despite impressions of political turmoil and a recession looming, the country’s music fans remain stoic with their live entertainment budgets.

The optics of Austria in 2024, viewed from the outside, aren’t especially good.

The far right, embodied by the Freedom Party (FPÖ) made an emphatic point in the country’s September elections, taking 28.9% of the vote. The economy is technically in recession, with GDP expected to decline by 0.6% this year and exports to the all-important and somewhat ailing

German market significantly down.

Then again, whose optics are good these days? And where the Austrian live business is concerned, appearances can be a little deceptive, says Richard Hörmann, co-managing director of the country’s leading promoter, CTS Eventim’s Barracuda Music.

“I think, in general, the atmosphere is much worse than the real situation, especially in entertain-

ment,” he says. “We aren’t seeing slower sales – we have [had] very strong figures for the last few years.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Austria isn’t in a cold spell; more that, in this prosperous, 9m-strong nation, shows and festivals remain fairly affordable luxuries. Even a price rise of around 10% to 15% on the average ticket has done little to stifle demand.

“In Austria, it’s more a situation

[in which] people can’t afford to buy apartments anymore or maybe can’t afford to buy cars, but they invest in their entertainment,” says Hörmann. “They go on holidays, and they watch shows.”

After all, Austria still has the fifth-highest GDP per capita in the EU at €46,200. And to look on the bright side, the FPÖ, while resurgent, has been unable to find a coalition partner, leaving the way clear

for a three-party coalition of the centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP), the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), and NEOS (liberals).

There are still underlying concerns, of course, just as there are everywhere in a candidly unpredictable world: from Vienna’s controversial noise restriction law and frustrating venue omissions to the shifting of the world’s political and macroeconomic centre of gravity.

“We have seen a lot of competition this year that we did not have in the past”

Richard Hörmann | Barracuda Music

okay, it’s really solid.”

That view holds fast across the board, in a market that hungrily hoovered up most of the German and international tours on the circuit this summer, with appearances from Coldplay Metallica, AC/DC, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Nicki Minaj, Travis Scott, Ed Sheeran, André Rieu, and the rest.

“The market in Austria does feel like it’s gradually stabilising after the post-Covid surge,” says Filip Potocki, CEO at FKP-backed promoter Arcadia Live. “However, there’s still plenty of momentum, especially around large-scale events and innovative formats.”

Unfortunately, the most headline-grabbing piece of news from Austria’s live calendar this year was one about which there is little worth saying. In August, Taylor Swift and Barracuda were forced to cancel the Vienna leg of her record-breaking Eras Tour, which was due to be seen by 170,000 fans over the course of three nights at the Ernst Happel Stadium, after an apparent terror plot was foiled.

It was initially said the shows could go ahead with additional security, but the concerts were soon cancelled as Vienna police chief Gerhard Purstl said an “abstract danger” remained. Three arrests were made and investigations continue, and in an otherwise bountiful year, the promoter has made little comment about the affair.

pacity Electric Love festival in Salzburg was forced to shut down for half a day due to a severe weather warning.

Nonetheless, the business rolls on. As far as concert hotspots are concerned, Austria doesn’t just mean Vienna, but for sheer numbers, the City of Dreams is very much the centrepiece. Between 70% and 80% of all tickets sold are for shows in and around Vienna, though there are decent secondary markets, too, from the second city of Graz to Linz, Salzburg, and Innsbruck.

“The focus is, of course, on the greater Vienna metropolitan area, where 4m people live – nearly half the Austrian population,” says Live Nation GSA chief executive Marek Lieberberg. “Hence, this is where most major events take place, similar to Zurich in Switzerland or Amsterdam in the Netherlands.”

Given the presence of powerful German-based promoters – including Live Nation GSA; CTS Eventim, whose umbrella extends across both Barracuda Music and Arcadia Live; and Semmel Concerts, whose Show Factory offshoot is personally overseen by Dieter Semmelmann – it is easy to cast Austria as an unofficial extension of that larger market. However, Lieberberg declines the characterisation.

“Everything is a bit difficult right now in Europe,” acknowledges Silvio Huber, co-MD of Live Nation-owned Goodlive Artists. “If Germany struggles, we struggle. We don’t know where Europe will be in the future, between the US, Russia, and China, and this and that. But we don’t see the effects of any of that yet. Let’s see how that will turn out in the next one or two years, the next decade. But basically, it’s still

“There’s nothing to add,” says Hörmann. “It is what it is, and within the company, it’s still an ongoing process. Obviously, it’s not going to be replaced.”

Austria also got its share of Europe’s alarming weather events this summer. A headline show by US band Agriculture scheduled for Arena Wien was among a number of shows called off due to flooding on the River Danube in mid-September. And in July, Barracuda’s 70,000-ca-

“Austria has a very distinct individual national character, and the dark times when it was regarded as a German province are definitely over,” he says. “Everybody has to recognise this fact and the unique appeal of Vienna as the political, cultural, and historical centre. The EU allows individuals and companies to operate in all countries of the union, and this opportunity is respectfully used.”