Live Music inteLLigence An ILMC Publication. May 2011, Issue 35
iLMc 23: tHe RePORt Full review of conference weekend tOMORROW’s WORLd Industry-shaping new technology gOddess Of Live Kylie sets news standards in touring LOndOn’s ciRcLe Of Live The Roundhouse profiled at five LeAding tHe fieLds Switzerland’s divided live music market Getting it Right: Alex Hodges • Listen uP!: BRYAn gRAnt • The Summer of ’69: David Stopps • AnOtHeR BRicA in tHe WALL: RALPH siMOn
Switzerland
4 Frauenfeld Winterthur
11 16
2 2
Wohlen
Basel
Kestenholz
13 17 20
12
6
19
Zofingen Sursee
9
Arbon
8 14
9 6
12
St. Gallen
Zúrich
1
Lucerne
Neuchâtel
3
Avenches
3
1 4
Fribourg
BERN 10
15
Thun
Vella
7 5
13 7
Lausanne
Nyon
11
Montreux
5
Gampel
Locarno 8
Zermatt
18
Lugano 10
Leading the fields In the second of our revamped market reports, Adam Woods pieces together the divided live music scene in Switzerland… As much as any nation in the world, the Swiss know how tedious it is to be defined almost entirely by random clichés: chocolate, pocket knives and banks. Cuckoo clocks, for the record, are German, although the Swiss added the fetching chalet roof. Live music offers a cliché of its own, in the form of the legendary Swiss appetite for festivals. It would be refreshing to be able to debunk that stereotype, but like most of the others, there is something in it, even if festival promoters are as puzzled as anyone about just where it comes from. “Everyone knows we are the country with the most fields and the most festivals,” says Stefan Matthey, CEO of rock promoter Free & Virgin, which stages the Swiss Sonisphere as well as plenty of artist shows. “The strange thing is that there are more and more every year
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but none of them are disappearing. Obviously, there is a market out there, but if you look at a map of all the festivals, it is a crazy sight.” If this curious phenomenon looks like it might be a bubble waiting to burst, the official figures show mainly growth, though of an increasingly gradual kind. Show and festival revenues generated by members of the Swiss Music Promoters Association (which represents roughly 80% of the entire market) have exceeded CHF200million (€155m) every year since 2006, and last year they rose by 5.5% to hit a high of CHF265m (€204m). The number of gig-goers (including free entry shows, guests and VIPs) fell fractionally from 4.56m to 4.49m between 2009 and 2010, but the number of tickets sold rose (from
Map of Swiss promoters and festivals by location (to reveal the map key, fold point A to point B on the opposite page )
Switzerland
2.79m to 2.83m). Bear in mind, all the while, that Switzerland has just shy of 8 million inhabitants. The average ticket price rose too, but only by 20 centimes; there is a widespread acknowledgement among promoters that the market can’t stand further heavy price increases, and that there may be a ceiling to all this growth. At any rate, price inflation has already had its way in the past five years, the average ticket climbing from CHF63.80 (€49.32) in 2005 to last year’s CHF84.40 (€65.25). [All data: SMPA. Average prices are calculated on the basis of single show tickets and festival day passes.] A remarkably complex country for outsiders to grasp, Switzerland’s three regions – the French-speaking west, Romandie; the Italian-speaking south, Svizzera italiana; and the German-speaking everywhere else, known as Deutschschweiz translate into three very distinct markets, with remarkably little overlap and a more or less distinct live industry in each. Zürich is the largest city, the financial centre and the home of the Hallenstadion, which means it is often the only stop for large international artists. Geneva, while far smaller – with a population of roughly 500,000 in its conurbation, to Zürich’s 2 million – is highly prosperous in its own right as the world capital of oil and gas trading. Consequently, ticket prices in both cities are around CHF85 to CHF90 (€66-€70) for a high-end show. “Geneva is a bit lower than Zürich in terms of prices,” says Vincent Sager, director of promoter Opus One, which operates from Nyon on the western shore of Lake Geneva. “As a guide, tickets in Geneva are on a level with Paris but more expensive than other French cities.” Both cities represent very meaningful markets for English-speaking acts while offering extraordinarily little potential for artists who don’t otherwise speak the local language – German in Zürich, French in Geneva. “[The German and French parts of Switzerland] are absolutely different markets,” Sager says. “The main international acts are top acts everywhere. Then you have some local sensibilities: Bryan Adams is stronger in the German territories than the French, for example; Muse is the other way around.” French acts in the German part, however, or vice versa, can forget it. “We have so many strong French acts – extremely well-known, able to fill the Arena de Genève – but it’s impossible to promote a show in Zürich.” Good News is the country’s largest promoter, and neither Live Nation nor AEG has found a foothold to date, though Live Music Production worked with the former to bring Cirque du Soleil’s Saltimbanco to Basel’s St. Jakobshalle arena in December.
B
Festivals are many, and often organisations in their own right, with broad-ranging festivals such as Paléo and St. Gallen; hip hop gathering Frauenfeld; the worldfamous (and 2011 ILMC Arthur Award-winning) Montreux Jazz; and thriving boutique festivals such as AVO Session Basel and Blueballs at Lake Lucerne among the biggest names.
“The strange thing is that there are more and more [festivals] every year but none of them are disappearing.”
– Stefan Matthey, Free & Virgin Jazz events account for a disproportionate share of Switzerland’s international profile, but Zofingen-based international booking agent Peter Basler of Basitours, whose artists include John McLaughlin and Hugh Masekela and, formerly, the late Joe Zawinul, says the genre isn’t necessarily a runaway sensation in Switzerland. “We are still a minority,” he laughs. “It is a very small cake, and of course pop and commercial music are much more popular. But in Switzerland, hopefully, the good music will always shine through.”
Promoters While a network of established promoters stretch across each region, sub-agents come under fire… Good news remAins the largest promoter in Switzerland, having pioneered the market from the early-1970s. With the exception of independent festivals, it has a hand in many of the country’s biggest music and family entertainment shows, either as sole or co-promoter. An exclusive relationship between Good News and the Hallenstadion means that promoters wishing to put their acts in the 13,000-capacity venue need to partner with the market leader. However, rumours repeatedly abound that the deal might soon come to an end, particularly since the transfer of power 18 months ago from long-time chief executive André Béchir to new incumbent Thomas Kastl, though it would be wrong to suggest a clamour of discontent. “Good News has got a strong position because they do a good job and they have been doing it for a long time,” says Sebastien Vuignier of Lausanne’s Takk Productions.The deal with the Hallenstadion
A
Switzerland
Map Key PROMOTERS 1 Avenches
Art Contacts Production*
2 Basel
Act Entertainment*
3 Bern
Appalooza Productions*
Deepdive Music
4 Fribourg
SOFA Agency
Gersau
Mix Max Music
5 Lausanne
Takk Productions
Black Lamb Productions
Just Because
Ishtar Music
Gentlemen Music
6 Lucerne
Swiss Musictour*
7 Nyon
Live Music Production
8
Opus One*
St. Gallen
Domingo Event*
Incognito Productions
9 Sursee
Taifun Music*
10 Thun
Pleasure Productions
11 Winterthur
AllBlues Konzert
Cult Concerts Agency
12 Zofingen Basitours 13 Zúrich
Free & Virgin Group*
Good News productions*
Show and Music*
Gadget
Rent-A-Show
FESTIVALS 1 Arbon
SummerDays Festival*
2 Avenches
Festival Rock Oz’Arenès*
3 Basel
AVO Session Basel*
Sonisphere
4 Bern
Gurtenfestival
5 Frauenfeld
Openair Frauenfeld*
6 Kestenholz
St. Peter at Sunset
7 Lausanne
Metropop Festival
For Noise Festival
8 Locarno
Moon & Stars
9 Lucerne
Blue Bells Music*
10 Lugano
Estival jazz Festival*
11 Montreux
Montreux Jazz Festival*
12 Neuchâtel
Festi’neuch Neuchâtel
13 Nyon
Caribana
Schaffhausen
Das festival
14 St. Gallen
Open Air St. Gallen*
15 Vella
Open Air Lumnezia*
16 Winterthur
Winterthurer Musikfestwochen*
17 Wohlen
Touch the Air
18 Zermatt
Zermatt Unplugged
19 Zofingen
Heitere Open Air*
20 Zürich
Live at Sunset
*Members of the Swiss Music Promoters Association (SMPA)
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“We will try to get more upcoming talents and more different styles of music in the future.”
– Thomas Kastl, Good News Productions
Paléo Festival *
can be taken as a boon or a handicap by other promoters,Vuignier suggests. On the one hand, it limits access to the country’s largest venue. On the other, it has almost certainly had the effect of keeping the global operators out of the Swiss market all this time, allowing local players to plough their own furrow undisrupted. “I work with young agents and a new generation of bands,” Vuignier says. “I also have Queens of the Stone Age, Sonic Youth, Portishead, but I don’t feel in competition with Good News. We did Amy Macdonald together at the Hallenstadion last November and it was good to have such a big, established promoter on board, if only for technical production matters.” For his part, Kastl professes himself pleased with the market. “We are happy with the status of sales right now,” he says. “Hopefully, it’s going to continue.” The promoter has Shakira, Bon Jovi, Rihanna, Elton John, Sade, Neil Diamond, Sting and Roger Water’s The Wall coming to Switzerland this year, as well as European stars André Rieu, Hansi Hinterseer, Jovanotti and Zucchero and entertainment shows Mamma Mia! and Apassionata. And Kastl predicts still greater diversity on the horizon, though he stops short of saying more. “Yes, we are trying to become wider in our point of view,” he says. “We will try to get more upcoming talents and more different styles of music in the future.” Béchir remains a part of the organisation – Kastl describes him as a “senior advisor” – and it is unlikely the market-leader he built will crumble now he has stepped back. But in spite of the size and pedigree of Good News, there are a number of other significant promoters in Switzerland. The Swiss Music Promoters Association numbers 27 members, only a dozen of which are specifically festival operators.
I Q Ma g a zin e Ma y 2 0 1 1
Based in Nyon, Live Music Production is one of the larger promoters in the French-speaking part of the country. It sold 60,000 tickets for Johnny Hallyday at Geneva’s stadium and arena and broke a Swiss record for the speed at which it sold out two nights (72,000 tickets) at the Stade de Genève with Mylène Farmer. Live Music Production is also one of relatively few promoters to confidently claim it has broken out of its region. “The market is changing and artists are ready to talk to more people,” says MD Michael
Switzerland
Such activity clearly has the effect of driving up prices, not least because the artist fee has to accommodate a standard 15% sub-agent percentage. “These sub-agents don’t have to deal with promotion, they don’t have to think about how to sell more tickets if a show isn’t selling well; they just book a band and take 15% that would be better spent on promotion,” says a disgruntled Matthey. Partly in response, he says Free & Virgin plans to develop a club network to build new artists, “like in the 80s”. Winterthur-based booker/promoter Derrick Thomson of Cult Concerts and his business partner, Marc Lambelet of Lausanne’s Black Lamb Productions, are working on a similar basis, forming deals with particular venues. “There is a change taking place in the structure of the business,” Lambelet says. “We used to take a band, book it in some clubs and then forget about it for two years. Now we are building agreements with venues, acts can talk to us like a national promoter and they can work up from 100-capacity to 12,000.” Drieberg. “Even the big international promoters are looking for more and more dates, and they need more promoters to partner with, so we are working in Basel and Zürich as well now, and it has become a more open market.” Drieberg also has international concerns through his ownership of Mozart L’Opera Rock, already a million-selling show in Europe after runs in France, Germany and Switzerland, and soon to transfer to Broadway and London’s West End. Other active Swiss promoters include rock promoter Free & Virgin; Basel-based, CTS Eventim-owned Act Entertainment, which promotes diverse music and entertainment shows and produces the 30,000-capacity Greenfield Festival; Bern’s Appalooza Productions, which operates Gurten and promotes international and German-language shows; and the jazz and blues specialist AllBlues Konzert. AllBlues promoted over 100 concerts last year, as well as the Zürich Jazznojazz Festival in the autumn, and it has strong ties with the international musical community in its field. “With regard to our core areas – jazz, world music, funk and soul – I almost exclusively work with international agents,” says MD Johannes Vogel, though he identifies a trend that irritates promoters in more mainstream areas, if not necessarily his own – namely the issue of sub-agents. “When it comes to pop-rock acts, the situation is definitely more complex and demanding,” he says. “There are many promoters and on top of that, there are a number of sub-agents in Switzerland who sell shows but do not promote any themselves. Consequently, an international agent will often receive various offers for a concert or an act.”
Venues Despite a mid-range gap, Switzerland offers a wealth of high quality venues… The problem wiTh the concept of working up through the clubs to the arenas is the void that exists in Switzerland between those two circuits. “There are very many clubs – you can do a lot of club shows,” says Lambelet, who is in the process of formalising his long-standing partnership with Thomson’s Cult Concerts. “It’s between 2,000 and 10,000-capacity that you get this gap.” The new star of Zürich’s nightlife, right at the top end of the club range, is Komplex 457, which opened its doors in February, occupying the same building as previous venues Fame Club and Jail. The interior of the site has been rebuilt to include a large main stage with a capacity of around 2,000 and an adjacent 350-capacity room. Other diverse, smaller venues in Switzerland’s largest city include key indie destination Abart Club, the X-tra Club, the Neues Theater Spirgarten, run by Act Entertainment, the well-heeled Volkshaus and the Maag Music Halle. In Lausanne, there’s the Metropole Hall, Les Docks and
“It is not opportune to share this public money with private entities, but the Swiss agents have difficulty understanding.”
– Laurence Vinclair, Les Docks
Above: Nick Cave at Les Docks, October 2010
Switzerland
Swiss Music Promoters Association annual figures 2005-2010 2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
% change 09/10
Total events
877
1,013
1,041
1,002
1,043
1,084
4
Total visitors (millions)*
3.71
4.04
4.14
4.53
4.56
4.49
-1.7
Tickets sold (millions)
2.71
2.94
2.64
2.63
2.79
2.83
1.4
Average ticket price CHF (€m)
63.80 (€48.78)
70.74 (€54.09)
75.10 (€57.43)
82.40 (€63.01)
84.20 (€64.39)
84.40 (€64.54)
0.2
Gross income CHF millions (€m)**
173.2 (€132.5)
207.7 (€158.8)
208.1 (€159.1)
230.5 (€176.3)
250.3 (€191.4)
264.1 (€201.9)
5.5
No. of artists engaged
1,839
2,272
2,372
2,246
2,308
2,259
-2
No. of employees
112
135
153
176
185
192
4
* including free offers, VIPs and guests ** including tickets, sponsoring, catering etc
D! Club (2,000, 1,000 and 800-capacity respectively) and in Geneva, L’alhambra, Zoo/usine and Victoria Hall. At Les Docks, Laurence Vinclair says that sub agents are proving an issue with the venues as well. “The subagents are putting all the venues under pressure to make co-productions,” she says. “The fact is that most of the venues in Switzerland (especially in the French speaking part) are non profit organizations subsidized by the city or other authorities. It is not opportune to share this public money with private entities, but the Swiss agents have difficulty understanding.” At the top end, Zürich’s Hallenstadion can’t be beaten for size indoors, and its Hallenstadion Club
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I Q Ma g a zin e Ma y 2 0 1 1
configuration takes its 13,000-capacity down to 6,000, going some way to plugging the gap for a mid-sized venue. The 50,000-capacity Letzigrund Stadion is Zürich’s major outdoor offering and rather larger than the 36,000-capacity Stade de Genève. Rihanna, Shakira and Guns N’ Roses have all played the Arena de Genève in the past year, but the capacity of the venue – up to 9,500 – and its inability to stage shows in the round, makes it unlikely to snag the truly phenomenal international touring artist. The remarkably impermeable regional divisions, meanwhile, mean fans can’t be counted upon to travel for anything but the biggest acts.
Switzerland
“It’s not possible to promote Lady Gaga or AC/DC in Geneva,” Sager says. “When U2 play Switzerland, they play in Zürich, and that is when you will get people travelling. Usually, that doesn’t happen much. When Kylie played in Zürich recently [at the Hallenstadion], fans from the French part did travel, but it wasn’t thousands and thousands.”
Tax, tickets and infrastructure Consolidated ticketing operations and a strong production infrastructure benefit the market… swiTzerlAnd AdminisTers withholding tax on a stateby-state basis, and in practice, every state has a slightly different rate, making city-to-city tours a potentially head-scratching business. “For a touring act doing five different shows in Switzerland, if they are unlucky enough they will pay five different rates of tax,” Sager says. The problem isn’t so much the percentage rate, but the items on which the tax is calculated. “What changes is the way tax authorities agree on things like production costs,” Sager adds. On the evidence of recent years, the Swiss market is not a place of dramatic shake-ups, the closest thing to a major corporate shift being CTS Eventim’s €60m move for market leader TicketCorner in February 2010. The most established ticket seller in the Swiss market, TicketCorner claims a 60% share of the market and operates a network of distribution points in train stations and post offices across the country. Ticketportal is the number two player, followed by Starticket. “We work across the country with a subsidiary in Geneva and with Ticino Online in the Italian part of Switzerland,” says Pascal Zürcher, Ticketportal’s head of marketing. Switzerland’s strong festival market does, however, ensure solid investment in its production infrastructure. As with most sections of the live industry, a sharp line is drawn between Romandie and Deutschschweiz. On the French side, 30-year-old “For a touring act doing five different shows in Switzerland, if they are unlucky enough they will pay five different rates of tax.”
– Vincent Sager, Opus One
Hyperson is the market-leader, based in Lausanne. On the German side, players include Livesound and Stagelight, based in Worb, east of Bern, and Stagelight in Herisau, close to St. Gallen in the north. “The production infrastructure in Switzerland is excellent,” says Vogel at AllBlues. “We exclusively work with Swiss companies, for the most part using Stagelight for sound and lights.” Some festivals, meanwhile, have been known to bring in equipment from across the border in Germany, largely on grounds of price.
Media Developed and diverse it may be, but promoters call for more attention from their media… The mulTipliciTy of languages spoken in Switzerland – German (74%), French (21%), Italian (4%) and Romansh (1%) – is responsible for the dizzying patchwork of media across the country. “Each territory has its own television, its own radio, its own structure of print media,” says Marc Lambelet. On the broadcast front, many of the platforms are controlled by the Swiss public broadcasting organisation, SRG-SSR. This oversees whole clusters of TV and radio services in all four languages, including radio network SR DRS, which takes the majority of listening in the larger German-speaking part of the country. “TV in Switzerland is basically national, and what you mostly tend to see is Montreux Jazz, but other than that, there is no real concept for music,” says Francois Moreillon, president of SwissAMP, organiser of the forthcoming MX3 Awards, which will be the first event to honour Swiss talent. The largest independent Swiss media enterprise, Ringier, happens to own a majority share in Good News, and publishes newspapers and magazines in German, French and Italian, including Blick, the Germanlanguage daily tabloid. Few promoters report extensive support from the country’s mainstream media, all the same, with the exception, according to Stefan Matthey, of 20 Minutes (published in German as 20 Minuten), the free daily. “That is more or less the only press support we get,” he says.
Above: Black Eyed Peas at Zurich Hallenstadion
Switzerland
“We don’t have any TV support in the live market, unless we are doing Metallica or Katy Perry, and the radio stations are still a bit lazy – they play the hits, but they are not too keen to help you build up new artists.” Advertising, likewise, is a pricey commodity. “Promotion and publicity is extremely expensive here,” Sager says. “It really must be the most expensive in the world, and it is hard to explain that to international agents and managers.”
Festivals When it comes to summer events, per capita, Switzerland still leads the field… if fesTivAl TickeTs suddenly failed to sell in Switzerland, it would send tremors through a highly developed sector that includes events such as Paléo and Montreux (in the French-speaking west); and St. Gallen, Frauenfeld, Greenfield, Gurten, AVO Session Basel and Sonisphere (in the German-speaking north, east and central regions). Nobody necessarily thinks it will happen, but each year, there is the same tension.
Paléo, the country’s largest festival, with 150 acts over six stages on six days, takes place in Nyon each July, and more or less effortlessly sells 35,000 tickets per day. “People in this area all take a week’s holiday for Paléo, whether to come and enjoy the concerts or to come and work,” says the festival’s booker Dany Hassenstein. Amy Winehouse, Chemical Brothers, The Strokes and Jack Johnson are some of this year’s big acts at Paléo, which according to Hassenstein has been voted Switzerland’s best sponsorship property. Switzerland profits greatly from a low exchange rate with the dollar, the pound and the euro, giving promoters comfort where international negotiations are concerned, though as everywhere, there are concerns about international fees, as well as a belief that ticket prices can’t rise further in case punters do the unthinkable and stay at home. Free & Virgin is preparing for its second year of Sonisphere and has scaled the event back from its 50,000 beginnings to between 35,000 and 40,000, with Iron
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Maiden at the top of the bill. “One of the reasons we are not doing it at the same level is that there are more Sonispheres around our market, with a new one in France and a new one in Italy,” Matthey says. “Also, Iron Maiden are playing a few shows in Germany. We are in Basel and Stuttgart is next door, so there is about an hour’s drive to the nearest Maiden show.” “With the smaller acts, you have so many good possibilities that there is certainly pressure on their fees.”
– Andy Locher, Pleasure Productions Matthey believes Sonisphere will do fine, largely because it has a specialist niche in hard rock, much as the highly successful Frauenfeld mines a rich seam of hip hop. Staged in northern Switzerland over three days in July with a capacity of 50,000, Frauenfeld achieved its dream line-up last year with headliners Jay-Z and Eminem. This year, it has signed Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Taio Cruz, Cypress Hill and Ice Cube and tickets are reported to be selling as strongly as they did in previous sell-out years. “I was told that it would be more difficult to book headliners at our festivals this year, but so far we have been lucky,” says Andy Locher of Pleasure Productions, who books Openair Frauenfeld, Heitere Open Air Zofingen and Open Air Val Lumnezia. Headliners’ fees have held up, though further down the bill, there are deals to be done. “With the smaller acts, you have so many good possibilities that there is certainly pressure on their fees,” Locher says. Some festivals, such as the famous AVO Session Basel, find their own ways of making things work. A three-week concert series at the Messe Basel, AVO has maintained its boutique scale for 25 years and has no plans to increase the nightly capacity of its dozen-or-so shows from 1,500. “For some artists, we have to pay more than we earn,” says founder Matthias Müller, whose stars in last year’s silver-jubilee year included Jamiroquai, Mary J. Blige, Robert Plant, Sheryl Crow, Anastacia and Ray Davies. One of AVO’s secret weapons is a group of wealthy residents of Basel, who will sometimes subsidise an artist for the good of the festival and the city. “Five or six years ago, we used to come to ILMC and fight to get meetings, but now people know us, they know we are good and they know artists like to play at our festival,” Müller says. In the Italian-speaking south, Good News’s Moon and Stars shows in Locarno’s Piazza Grande are a highlight of July. Local legend André Béchir continues to oversee and book the series, with Amy Winehouse, Zucchero, Jack Johnson, Bryan Adams and Roxette among this year’s headliners.
I Q Ma g a zin e Ma y 2 0 1 1
Above: Paleo Festival 2010