International Live Music Conference - March 9 to 11, 2001

The obvious value of this annual conference is that it provides a platform for debate on a wide range of music business issues, but it's also a forum at which delegates can meet colleagues and associates from all over the globe, talk business if they wish, enjoy each other's company in a relaxed atmosphere and even chill out together in one of the surrounding bars. But this year, faced with the fact that something radical had to be done to prevent accidents like the one that claimed nine lives at last year's Roskilde Festival, was being at ILMC The 13th like watching the international live music industry drinking in the last-chance saloon?

The blurb on the ILMC Web site mentions that many people consider it to be the most successful forum of its type on the planet, which is by no means an outrageous claim. What sets it apart from other major conferences is its irreverent style, as it manages that delicate balancing act of taking business very seriously without taking itself too seriously.

Even during Saturday afternoon's Safety In Numbers panel, probably the most critical debate the ILMC has ever staged, there was still the amusing diversion of Italian promoter Claudio Trotta's brilliantly graphic and hysterically funny description of the screwed up kid who spends so long staring bug-eyed at his computer that life itself has become virtual reality.
There's no point in repeating it here because no words could do justice to Trotta's eloquent verbal snapshot of disaffected youth. You simply had to be there.

Having to be there, or rather having to be everywhere at once, is really the only problem the conference presents. Accommodating all the panels that deserve their places on the schedule inevitably means that some clash, making it impossible to watch Belgian promoter Herman Schueremans become steadily more bemused by the lassitude allowed to some government-funded festivals, and also benefit from The Simpkins Partnership's Richard Taylor's rather dry take on 70-page live show contracts framed under Californian law.

• The Grown Ups' Room discussion dealt with the question of whether signing a contract makes a manager or a promoter a hostage to fortune while, in a neighboring room, the insurance panel considered what happens when contracts are broken and claims ensue, which suggests that for this year at least, it might have been sensible to bolt the two meetings together.

  It's inevitable that these two separate sessions weren't particularly well attended, falling as they did on a Sunday morning, which is a bit of a shame as these unsung heroes of the industry have the burden of taking care of that side of business that most of those with entrepreneurial spirit find rather mundane.
  Lawyers, accountants, insurance brokers and tax advisors work in that grim area where rock 'n'roll meets the real world. However, as German promoter Peter Rieger said last year, the bare bones of a contract can be scribbled on a beer mat and that's agreement enough if both parties honor the commitment.

  It's really only when things go wrong that anything other than the front page comes into play, and agents and promoters hit that reality checkpoint that involves calling one of the suited men from such esteemed and expensive companies as Sue, Grabbit & Run. Although litigation rarely brings a reward that even comes near to compensating for the cost and aggravation involved.

  As many delegates had been in the bar until around 4 a.m., it was pleasing that some managed to get themselves out of bed on the Sunday morning, get ready, grab a coffee and rush out ready to hit the ground stumbling. Being at the ILMC is like being a kid in a candy store or at a fairground; it's not possible to eat all the sweets or go on all the rides. In fact, any attempt at detailed coverage of every conference panel would result in this booklet having as many volumes as Encyclopedia Britannica, and also require four very able-bodied men to deliver it to your door.

  Trying to catch the best bits is like kissing frogs in the hope that one will turn into a princess. It's an approach that can lead to very sore lips and also to being surrounded by hordes of disgruntled frogs, but every now and again, a true gem will be uncovered.

• In The Jazz Session, the third one the conference has hosted, Dennis Armstead of the U.K.'s Yellow Go-Rilla promoting company, opened by saying it was time the ILMC took this subject more seriously, only to discover that the panel and delegates had somehow managed to inadvertently lock themselves in the room. Julie Allison, a press officer for Universal label, was also upbeat and positive about the subject. In fact, they were so bullish about where jazz could go that, if they worked together, surely there would be no limit to what they could achieve in the big wide world, if only they could have got themselves out of the room.

• The Dance Panel began with a discussion based on the premise that club music is just something people use as an excuse to stand in dark rooms and take drugs, and however much the forum unraveled, the word "drugs" continually reared its head.
  We learned how half-a-million Ecstasy tablets are taken in the U.K. every weekend.
  It was tempting to work out what that is as an average per person (around one thousandth each), but statistics like this don't mean very much. If one person hogged the lot while the rest of the population didn't even get a look in, the consumption per capita average would still be exactly the same.

  It's taken dance music 12 years to get a panel slot at ILMC but James Barton's assertion that it's revolutionized music to the extent that two kids can get a No. 1 with a track recorded in one of their bedrooms, demonstrates the dynamic effect it's had and also why the music and the panel are both here to stay.

• For people who still believe a PC is a police constable and a laptop is an exotic dancer, the webcasting panel was equally difficult to follow. This meeting was another making its ILMC debut and the longer the discussion went on, the more difficult it became to see who can make rights revenue out of this without taking it from someone else. As the media develops, there's going to be further discussion in this area and in a few ILMC's time, perhaps we'll all be wiser on the subject.

Friday, 9 March
Main Room, Lower Ground Floor
Royal Garden Hotel
Chairman: Carl Leighton-Pope (LPO, UK)

 

Whether it's a proverbial thorny question or the ultimate proverbial hoary old chestnut doesn't seem to matter at the International Live Music Conference; ticket pricing raised it's head over the parapet once again, stared around as the most well aimed comments missed the target by a mile and then ducked down happy in the knowledge that it had survived another year and would return to mock the delegates at some time in the future.

So what's new? Nothing really. The corporate view says promoters can ramp up the ticket prices for the mega act and get away with it, while that's countered by those who say that line of thinking will just suck interest (and money) away from the fledgling acts at the bottom end of the market. Well, there's nothing really new in any of that, which sort of leads to the question of which argument is nearest to being right - the answer remains that it's probably both.

Actually trying to fathom this unanswerable question is a lot less rewarding (and a lot less fun) than listening to how the speakers manage to skirt around it. The fact remains that the biggest acts can screw for higher fees and (therefore) higher ticket prices and, given that there's only a finite number of coins in the pot, logic tells us that what's left for the smaller acts is hardly enough to cover the bottom of it.

Discussing what can be done about it is as futile as trying to frame an enforceable legislation to outlaw greed.

• Dave Corbett from Scotland's Dance Factory spoke of the leisure pound and compared a kid's perceived value of a concert ticket with the perceived value of a pair of Nike trainers. This provided a wonderfully ironic touch as Dave has a couple of children who are at the age where they must outgrow trainers and pop groups at about the same rate.

• David Zard of Italy's Musiza Srl warned that we face a day when live concerts will be broadcast online and 50 kids will sit in one living room and collectively pay less than the price of one ticket.

• Carl Leighton-Pope retaliated by describing the actual buzz of being at a live event and explained how he felt when he took one of his regular visits to see his beloved Chelsea play football. For want of another nebulous argument, it was tempting to be diverted into trying to draw some correlation between the size of Zard's living room and the inconsistency of Chelsea's away form.

• Harvey Goldsmith of Artiste Management Productions earned most talking time by consistently taking a down-to-earth common sense approach. He told the meeting, "Music is about fans and without them, nothing happens."
  That in itself is probably not among Goldsmith's most enlightening kernels of wisdom, but he was talking about what he would undoubtedly describe as "real" fans; that's fans as in fanatics who are prepared to scrimp and save to support new talent rather than fans who have got more credit cards than they have mobile phones and will happily pay the earth to see the top end of the market. What's going on at the bottom end of the market is of no interest to them unless or until it reaches the top.

Fans differ over what they feel earns them the greater status; some feel they gain more kudos by boasting that they got tickets for the XYZ band before they were sold out in five minutes, while others would prefer to say that they saw the XYZ band when they were playing in front of three men and a dog ... and, of course, the XYZ band was much better in those days.

Tiering the audience so that the seats in the front are sold at a premium isn't the answer, according to Goldsmith, who told the forum, "Gold Circle sit there with their hands down and by the time you get behind them, the atmosphere is dead."

Whether Gold Circle don't clap because they don't know how to show appreciation or because it's difficult to clap when you've got a mobile in each hand wasn't made clear.

As the discussion meandered along (and around), it took Carl Leighton-Pope to sweep away the tedium creeping over the room by announcing, "I think I'm getting bored with this." He couldn't have realized the great compliment he was being paid as surely most of the delegates must have sat there thinking, "I really wish I'd have said that."

Perhaps it was diverting to start in this way. This year's ILMC would be dominated by the subject of safety more than any other subject has ever dominated the ILMC before. Leighton-Pope touched on it when he said, "It gets scarier and scarier every year I come here." ILMC chairman Martin Hopewell had said, "What we cannot accept is that we don't do as much as we can about it," but dwelling on the subject right from the opening would have meant that it would have not so much dominated the conference as blighted it.

Following years of rumor, it appears that Fritz Rau is going to retire. Deservedly held in some degree of awe by all that either know him or even know of him, he came onstage and was granted the respect that he thoroughly deserves. It was his 71st birthday and watching him clearly enjoying it was one of the warmer memories to be taken away from this year's conference.
Tributes were spoken, greetings were read and a huge smile beamed out through Mr. Rau's white beard.

Leighton-Pope accurately described him as "the grandest elder statesman," probably happy in the knowledge that his admirable handling of the session was being wholly upstaged by the fact that Rau was sitting a few feet away from him.

The man has that sort of presence. To upstage Leighton-Pope in that way really takes some doing as he always conducts this "Talking Shop" business with such rapid-fire humor and cool aplomb that it's not hard to imagine him hosting a prime time TV chat show. Perhaps he should get himself an agent. Welcome to another ILMC.

[ Talking Shop ] ILMC Report

Saturday 10 March
The Albert Suite
Royal Garden Hotel
Moderators:

• Tim Dowdall Multimedia / Hungary
• Nadia Solovieva SAV Entertainment / Russia

Believing in the 85 percent/15 percent deal is a bit like believing in Father Christmas; once someone discovers that it's a myth, they'll carry on pretending it's real for the benefit of those that still believe it actually exists. It enables an agent to tell his act that he's getting the right cut of the net profit pie, while the promoter fiddles his costs to obscure what the actual net profit is. As the late great American impresario Bill Graham is alleged to have said, "We don't steal, we just cheat."

The problem this causes the emerging, emerged and (in some cases) emergency markets is that the developing countries are now being asked to recognize it as a standard clause in the contract.

At least Tim Dowdall of Hungary's Multimedia had the courage to come out with all this. The Western agents live by this x-y = z equation in which x is the gross, y is the costs and z is the net ... and all three factors are a work of pure fiction. The irony is that the sooner an emerging market is forced to get involved in this percentage split, the sooner they'll feel they have an official licence to cheat.

The agent's attitude is understandable. There was a time when an act may have been paid £ 200.00 to perform in front of a 4,000-capacity arena crowd who'd pay £ 2.00 each for a ticket. At the time, the hippie speak for that would have been "ripped off," and it was a practice that led to the fact that most deals between artist and promoter are based on mistrust.

The narrowing of a promoter's margins notionally narrows the area in which he can take something extra out of the deal, and it may be that some deals are driven hard to the point where he feels he's allowed to take a risk but not make a profit. Unless, of course, he takes the same line as Bill Graham.

Anyway, enough of this talking of promoters in the male gender, because the main focus of the "Emerging Markets" forum revolved around Aga Lezniak of RMF FM radio in Poland and Nadia Solovieva of Russia's SAV Entertainment.

Since the ILMC, RMF FM radio has made it known that their free outdoor shows will be limited to local acts, which lessened the importance of the time spent discussing how much damage those huge outdoor shows by Texas, Joe Cocker, The Scorpions, and The Pet Shop Boys took out of last year's market.

The ways to counter this ranged from Solovieva suggesting governments should be lobbied to ensure shows are only promoted by people with proven expertise, while Multimedia's Laszlo Hegedus felt the radio stations' involvement should never extend beyond sponsorship. The market has always heavily depended on sponsors, and the day may come when the corporations' marketing departments wonder if they really need promoters at all.

In Dubai, only licensed promoters are allowed to promote shows and any free show is categorized as a private function with a strictly limited capacity. That may be the way for the old Eastern Bloc to sort out the problem until, that is, the sponsors set up or buy their own promoting wings. Rogue promoters making ridiculous offers for acts with little chance of ever being able to deliver that amount and throat-cutting competition are perennial emerging market topics.

It was fun to hear Dowdall and Serge Grimaux of the Czech Republic's Ticketpro talking about this, as it's not so long ago that the bidding wars between the two of them and the resultant hiking of ticket prices, cost both their companies a lot of money and effectively set the Czech market back by about a couple of years. The U.K. and U.S. agents must have had a field day.

They work well together nowadays and their only disagreement in this panel concerned which of them had lost the most. After a while, Grimaux reluctantly conceded that may have been Dowdall.

Obviously, the rate at which a market develops is intrinsically linked to the strength and stability of its economy.

• The fact that it's geographically well positioned and its currency is sufficiently stable to make it the most likely contender for European Economic Community membership, means that Marijan Crnaric of Vinyl Ltd could report that Slovenia may well be moving from the emerging market category to fully emerged status.

• Peeter Rebane of Baltic Development Group was keenest to accept the idea of the 85/15 split, having already agreed to such a deal for Depeche Mode. He believes it will lead to cheaper guarantees and, given his ever-growing links with Finland, it may be that Estonia will be one of the first old Iron Curtain countries to embrace a Western European way of doing business.

• Solovieva, however, depends heavily on sponsorship and is also operating in a territory that's only three years on from coming close to economic collapse, and so it's understandable that she would be one of those most opposed to the 85/15 split. Next year, it's a safe bet that she'll be asking Rebane how he got on.

In the longer term, it is worrying that both sponsors and radio stations putting on shows may mean the end of some promoting companies. Then, further down the line, if the radio stations and sponsors decide to place their marketing spend in other areas, someone will have to go to the top of the shaft and tell the defunct promoters to come out of the coal mine.

[ Emerging Markets ] ILMC Report

Saturday 10 March
The Victoria Suite
Royal Garden Hotel
Moderator: Brian Croft Vari-Lite Europe Ltd / U.K.

Numerous shifts in emphasis during the '90s substantially changed the patterns of live touring in Europe and one result is the reduction of the role of U.K.-based production service providers.

The growth of summer festivals has corresponded with a decline in the numbers of tours cris-crossing the continent, and those acts still on the road are increasingly likely to use either local providers or rigs and stage production supplied by companies based in mainland Europe.

The Engine Room panel addressed the high cost of touring and set out to identify the key factors propelling these changes and discuss their wider impacts whilst trying to avoid, not always successfully, the old chestnut arguments between agents, promoters and suppliers.

With all the contributors being U.K. based, the panel was inevitably Anglo-centric, but nonetheless managed to be illuminating and entertaining. The current tricky situation that many production service companies find themselves in was graphically illustrated by the announcement from SSE's Chris Beale that, after 25 years of going it alone, his company had bitten the bullet and merged with the French p.a. company Melpomen.

Throughout the discussion there was consistent agreement that, although the cost of equipment had continually fallen over the years, any savings gained were lost by the demands for higher technical specifications and bigger, brighter stage sets. The development of digital touring consoles and other newfangled gadgetry caused much concern amongst the panel with Chris Beale pointing out that sound engineers always want the latest toys, even if they cost £ 100k each, and that there were bound to be disasters on the road as stretched, underpaid and under trained crews toured with new equipment they weren't fully up to speed with.

Screenco's Dave Crump had no hesitation in agreeing that production and artist management personnel were demanding bigger and better stage shows that were essentially beyond the reach of their limited incomes.

This results in production companies being squeezed and forced to cut crew wages in order to meet budgets. "It's now a world driven by accountants but they are the only people whose fees go up and not down," he added, somewhat despairingly.

The lack of accountability, particularly from production managers, was a repeated cause of concern for all the Engine Room panelists. Throughout the discussion, examples of poor preparation and lack of thought for the consequences were regularly mentioned. Unfortunately, although it was well attended, there were no production managers or artist managers on hand to respond to criticisms - ironically underpinning Brian Croft's closing summary, which said that the key difficulty was a fundamental lack of communication between bands, their "representatives on earth" and the service suppliers.

[ Engine Room ] ILMC Report

Saturday 10 March
Main Room
Royal Garden Hotel
Moderators:

• Roger Barrett Star Hire / U.K.
• Roberto de Luca Milano Concert / Italy

Harry S. Truman was president of the United States between 1945 and 1953. He had a sign on the front of his desk which read, "The Buck Stops Here."
No, this isn't a history lesson. It's more of an examination of where, in the international live music industry, does the buck really stop? Hopefully, it stopped on Saturday March 10th in the conference suite of London's Royal Garden Hotel at around 5:20 p.m., when the ILMC decided it would set up a special working group to investigate how and when it could improve crowd safety at its outdoor festivals.

There was really only one point during the two-hour-plus debate when the entire room wasn't of one accord, and that probably had more to do with semantics than a radical difference of opinion.
Italian promoter Claudio Trotta described how many bands are becoming aggressive, violent and "trying to be more ugly," and that the kids in the audience are trying to emulate them. He said there are social phenomena developing among a generation reared on weird computer games, for which he felt he could not be held responsible.

Of course, he is completely right. However, as much as he may not be responsible for worrying changes in a generation's behavioral trends, he does remain responsible for that generation's safety when they turn up at his shows. Stuart Galbraith of SFX told him, "If you can't make the environment safe, then you can't do the show."

During the course of the past year, much has been written and said on the subject of crowd safety, stimulated by the tragic loss of nine lives at last year's Roskilde Festival. There have been times when the press have probed the happenings of that night and been critical of the event's organizers, and there's also been times when the press themselves have been criticized for doing so. However, when such an accident happens, it has to be thoroughly and impartially investigated.

When a car goes into a ditch, someone has to determine if it happened because of road conditions, a wonky wheel-nut, a suspect steering-column or a dodgy driver who'd fallen asleep at the wheel. If that investigation is not carried out as meticulously as possible, then there'll be a ditch full of cars and nobody will know how they got there.

But this wasn't an afternoon for pointing fingers, it was an afternoon for scratching heads and trying to find a way in which those working in the international live contemporary music industry could accept a collective responsibility to smarten up their acts.

Galbraith's 1988 Castle Donnington show cost two lives. In 1989, the promoters didn't do what had previously been an annual event because they were not confident that they would be in control of the crowd. That's the equivalent of not getting in the car and, if there's reason to believe that it may go out of control, it's a decision that should be warmly applauded for its common sense.

Too many shows have been done by too many people who had too little control over what they were doing and if the industry cannot come up with the self-determination to put a stop to it, then governments will come up with legislation that will.

If the situation is allowed to continue, then where (and when) the next deaths occur is what Martin Hopewell had referred to in his opening Flight Attendant's Briefing as a "grim lottery," and there's probably not a more cogent and concise way of describing it.

Crowd control can be difficult because of the rebellious nature of the beast. The more a crowd becomes excited, the less it will think. The Mean Fiddler Organisation's Melvin Benn said, "If rock 'n' roll ever becomes less than anarchy, it will become Neil Diamond," but John Mulder of Mojo Concerts used the measures taken at last year's 60,000-capacity Lowlands Festival in Holland as an example of how such things as upping the numbers of security staff, banning crowd-surfing and increasing the audience's awareness of its own responsibilities will work.

Although it was Galbraith who neatly teed up the discussion about forming a safety task force by arguing that governments are happier to talk to industry associations rather than individuals, the impetus that led to the group being set up can be traced back to last July.

Mick Upton and Bert van Horck of International Crowd Management and Security Group dropped the pebble that started the ripple by calling for a European code of good crowd safety practice only days after the deaths at Roskilde.

Their discussions with European Festivals Association (Yourope) led to that organization putting their weight behind the movement, and it will be represented on the panel by Roskilde's Leif Skov.

When Galbraith, one of the men you'd more readily allow to proverbially babysit your kids at an outdoor event, had the honesty to confess to being frightened of the responsibility of running his upcoming summer shows, it was obvious that the ripple started by Upton and van Horck was beginning to swell into a flood tide. It's fitting that Upton, van Horck and Galbraith should all be on the panel, the latter as a representative of the Concert Promoters Association.

Although he must surely support the principles of this crowd safety focus group, Leon Ramakers of Mojo Concerts, promoters of the Lowlands Festival, sounded a note of caution. Fearing the panel's efforts to seek European Economic Community funding to carry out an investigation into current European festival safety practices would merely cause a delay, he said, "I think we are fooling ourselves again. For the 13th time at the ILMC, we all speak very eloquently about all sorts of things and nothing is going to happen."

"We have to just make an association of people that are prepared to want to put a stamp on their festival that shows that it adheres to certain codes, and we have to pay for that privilege. We have to give, for example, one-tenth of 1 percent of every gross to a fund that enables us to do this. I'm sorry to be so negative, but we must come to the table and open our pockets because, if we don't do that, then nothing will happen."

That may well prove to be one of the most significant and prophetic utterances ever made at an ILMC but, for the sake of the industry, Ramakers himself would be first to hope that it isn't the case. He would certainly be one of the first to reach into his pocket but then that's to be expected because he's been investing in safety for years. Unfortunately, there are others who may not be so forthcoming.

The ILMC crowd safety group may not be the industry's cure-all panacea but, at the moment, it's as good as it gets. Through the initial efforts of Upton and van Horck, something has at least and at last been done. However, initiatives as worthy as the one they've started can come too little without the platform that the ILMC provides.

Martin Hopewell ensures that this platform exists. After the debate, he said, "As the conference organizer, an agent, a father, and (still) a bit of a fan, the 'Safety in Numbers' session gave me quite a lot to think about."

"From the ILMC's viewpoint though, it's pretty clear that this was one of our most significant discussions ever. Not only was it one of those rare occasions when the forum has directed its attention away from rather conceptual internal business issues to something practical that could be agreed and acted upon, but in this case it also involved a subject that could be regarded - quite literally - as 'a matter of life and death.'"

"At last year's conference, crowd safety was the subject of a small and quiet technical 'breakout meeting' of people from festival and production backgrounds, but I was happy to see from the packed Main Room this year that everyone had realized that this issue is one that affects all of us."

"It was our longest single session ever, but all the delegates stayed in the room and gave it their full attention. The ILMC is probably one of the few places in the world where you get so many 'decision-makers' from different countries and occupations, and where discussing something of this importance might actually make a difference."

[ Safety In Numbers ] ILMC Report

Saturday 10 March
The Westminster Room
Royal Garden Hotel
Moderator: Peter Tudor Wembley Arena / U.K.

The National Arenas' Association (NAA) celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and although this forum consisted mainly of facts and figures, it managed to present a very focused snapshot of the venue business and also highlighted certain trends in the live music industry.

Based on research first instigated by SFX's John Drury while he was still working at Wembley Arena, the statistics have proved to be a useful working tool for the venues as far as budgeting is concerned and also a barometer that enables them to predict changing musical tastes.

• Although the figures, which cover concerts at 15 U.K. arenas, are published, each venue reported anonymously so as not to provide competitors with too much detailed information. Not surprisingly, in terms of event nights, the fourth quarter accounts for most of the arena business at 56 percent, the spring quarter provides 26 percent, January, February and March supply 14 percent, while the summer festival season sees the figure drop to a mere 4 percent.

• In the year 2000, there were 419 event days, which is a 21 percent drop on 1999's figures, although the trend since '94 shows a steady overall increase in arena shows.

• The "Millennium Factor" of '99, particularly in the last quarter, may well have produced and extraordinarily high number of arena-sized musical events.

• There were also more multiple nights of teen bands in '99, which the arenas refer to as "The Triple A Factor," after the company that promotes most of them. Given that '99 was an extraordinary year, the 3,053,000 tickets sold in 2000 showed an encouraging 7 percent increase on the '98 figure.

• When attendances are analyzed by genre,
  • rock acts like Bryan Adams, Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, and Texas accounted for 29 percent of shows
  • pop shows like The Corrs, Simply Red, Whitney Houston, Cliff Richard, Macy Gray, and Shania Twain totaled 14 percent
  • middle-of-the-road shows like Daniel O'Donnel, Neil Diamond, Michael Ball, and Shirley Bassey take 24 percent
  • teen attractions like Boyzone, Steps, 911, and "Smash Hits" tours clock up 32 percent

• When it came to attendance, rock then edged ahead by recording 9,258 tickets per 10,000 of available capacity against teen's 8,873. But it was a teen band that took the prize for most tickets sold, with Steps clocking up an incredible 492,446.

During his presentation, the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre's events sales manager, Phil Mead, suggested that, in the future, the scope of the report could be broadened to cover such things as comparisons between the results achieved by U.K. acts and international acts.

No doubt the report can be expanded and improved in future years but Anne-Marie Harwood, the SECC's market research manager, should be applauded for the exhaustive research put into the current issue as it's an excellent foundation upon which to build. It's called Music Concert Research and is available from NAA administrator Eileen Naughton at a cost of £ 150.00.

[ Meet The Venues ] ILMC Report

Sunday 11 March
The Victoria Suite
Royal Garden Hotel
Moderator: Stuart Worthington The Music Managers' Forum U.K.

There was broad agreement that 21st century managers, whatever the status of their acts, need to have a wide and detailed understanding of all aspects of the legal, financial and marketing sides of the business, as well as being aware of the ways and wiles of record companies, publishers and promoters. Delicate nursemaiding skills are another useful asset.

From an accountant's perspective, Anthony Addis, of Addis & Co, feels that whilst a broad base of knowledge was imperative, the business today demanded managers who could assemble an appropriate team to work on an artist's behalf. Focusing initially on live work, the panel examined the effects on management of the growth in companies who frequently handle both agency and promotion roles in many different territories.

Although everyone recognized the danger of companies such as SFX being focused on established acts and less concerned with the development of new talent, it was widely felt that it's every manager's job to find the best promoter for his artist in each territory. There's many worrying aspects and inherent dangers in consolidation, but it's part of an evolving market and all managers must learn to live with this fact.

There was real optimism that new players can move into the promotion scene to take up the slack left by the big players. Petri Lunden eloquently pinpointed the reasons for the success of Swedish acts internationally over the past decade. He said the '70s global success of ABBA left an inherited legacy of positivism throughout the Swedish industry, and that has been picked up and used to very good effect ever since.
It's resulted in a crucial confidence which, combined with a level of cooperation and sharing of information, has given the country's managers greater knowledge and helped create a real "can-do" feeling.

The forum briefly looked at the changes and demands made by new technologies, particularly webcasting rights, and discussed whether such developments can create greater earnings for artists. It was generally agreed that artists must retain the rights to their performances, however it is broadcast or recorded. "Never let your record company have the rights to anything but records," was Petri Lunden's mantra.

Digital transmission can stimulate demand for live performances rather than replace the need to tour but managers need to be up to speed with new technology skills if they are to form relationships that really benefit their artist. There was shared optimism about how the rise of the Web is creating a new arena for marketing artists, particularly as it's an area that could exclude record company involvement and the handicap of the inherent costs that come with it.

[ The Managers Office ] ILMC Report

Sunday 11 March
The Albert Suite
Royal Garden Hotel
Moderator: Herman Schueremans Rock Werchter / Belgium

Herman Schueremans greeted the room by saying "Good morning everybody. It's Sunday morning and this must be the way the priest feels when he is waiting in his church to see if people will turn up."
Schueremans chairs a panel in the manner of a man who appears to be wondering if he would actually prefer to be slowly roasted alive on a rotating spit. His thorough knowledge of his subject makes him an obvious choice, but he's so far removed from being an extrovert that he's not a natural choice. It's a trait of character that means he needs some help from the floor to generate lively debate and, being the morning after the Saturday night before, it wasn't very forthcoming.

"I'm going to bring up some items and see what reaction comes," he said, sounding like he felt as if he was trying to push a large stone up a steep hill with his nose. He needed someone to give him a break and he got lucky.
Musing on whether festivals should be above the law, he compared them to early Christian gatherings, saying, "Festivals started one day somewhere. Why can't we have these gatherings? Why can't people come together? If Christianity managed that Miss Maria appeared in Lourdes and built a cathedral and whatever, why can't we set up a festival ... in the middle of nowhere?" "And she didn't have an agent," chortled Mike Hinc of Hinc Inc.
"Exactly," Schueremans replied, "And she also does very well in merchandise." Beneath the sound of the laughter, it was almost as if you could hear the ice breaking.

The easiest trap this "The Festival Forum" could fall into was turning itself into a post-mortem of the previous day's "Safety in Numbers" panel, but Schueremans neatly headed that off by quickly stressing the importance of the issue and then adding, "But let us not repeat ourselves too many times."

He can be forgiven a couple of mischievous and rather surreptitious attempts at setting the agenda. He tried once when he introduced a topic by saying, "The subsidized festivals versus the commercial festivals - especially when commercial festivals, or festivals that are run by private people or private organizations, have to apply or follow a hell of a lot of government rules. Subsidized ones just get a trunk of money from the government and for the rest, they're not controlled at all."
It's something of a pet subject for him - not so much because he feels it's unfair to him as a private promoter, but more because he feels it's irresponsible to allow the subsidised festivals such leniency.

Nobody took up the gauntlet, but that didn't stop him trying again a little later when, talking about free outdoor shows, he said "The times of festivals being a free anarchistic enterprise are over and on one side, that's a pity but on the other side, it's an excellent thing for the safety of the audience. Some festival organisers weren't always realizing what they were doing."
He doesn't resent the fact that he can't run his 70,000-capacity Rock Werchter on a grant from Brussels. He's just appalled by the lack of professionalism shown by some of those whose only license requirement seems to be one that says they can squander money in order to be given more.
A private promoter's failure leads to him losing his money, whereas the subsidised festival promoter's failure leads to him being given even more.
Once he'd made his comments on "Miss Maria's" business acumen and left us pondering the marketability of crosses and holy water, the session really livened up.

If foot and mouth affected the festival business, should promoters delay paying deposits? The promoter would have clearly committed to presenting the festival but, equally, the act would have clearly committed to playing it. Where does a paid deposit go when the circumstances are clearly beyond the control of either party? Martin Elbourne, a programmer for the Glastonbury bill, lucidly explained why it's now non-insurable.

He also came close to suggesting that the cancellation of this year's Glastonbury Festival happened because they'd foreseen the outbreak of this epidemic, but either his tongue was tucked firmly in his cheek or he was fibbing.

Given that the festival season is about 13 weeks long and the vast majority take place at weekends, should more promoters consider running their events during the week?
Working people may well be on holiday and, more importantly, kids are out of school and students are home from college. Hungary's Sziget Festival, Switzerland's Paleo Nyon, Norway's Quart and Greece's Rockwave have all found it a pragmatic way of doing business.

Helter Skelter agency's Jeff Craft quite sensibly pointed out that bands touring the festival season depend on big fees at weekends, and may well accept nearer to half during the week. They still have to pay, feed and look after the crew during the week. Crews can't be hired on Thursday and fired on Monday and they're obviously not prepared to be paid for three or four days work each week throughout the summer. So if you are paying them, then you may as well use them. On the face of it, it may well be a way for smaller festivals and emerging markets to hook bigger acts.
Last year, Oasis played a set at Sziget and part of a set at Paleo Nyon, so there's no reason to think that the theory wouldn't work on more predictable acts.

Craft had clearly turned up carrying a couple of nuggets of wisdom. On the vexed question of whether radio stations promoting free shows is killing the festival market, he suggested the promoters put a clause in the deal that says the fee depends on that not happening in their territories.
OK, that sort of gets the agent off the hook, but surely that's only fair. Record companies have been known to confirm these radio shows without even telling the act's agent. In fact, record companies have been known to confirm these shows without even telling the act's manager.

The record company plugger's logic is based on the premise that if the band does the show, then their record will be played on the radio. If the band doesn't do the show, their record won't be played on the radio.
So who picks up the pieces when the band does the show and the radio station still doesn't give it the airplay it expected? Worst case Scenario? You better believe it happens.

[ Festival Forum ] ILMC Report

Sunday 11 March
The Chelsea Room
Royal Garden Hotel
Moderator: Martin Goebbels Robertson Taylor / U.K.

It sounds like one of those meetings in which the fly on the wall would fall asleep and fall off, but the very nature of insurance means that it doesn't come into play until something goes wrong; and stories of things going wrong can prove interesting in themselves.

The list of things that can't be covered obviously includes poor ticket sales and an artist suffering from an illness of which he has a history, and it was hardly surprising that foot and mouth has made it's way onto that list.

There's a case for saying that this is one of the ILMC's breakout meetings that could easily be merged with, for example, "The Grown Ups Room," as both were badly attended this year. There's a strong possibility that the brokers and the lawyers could come up with subject matter that would interest a wider range of delegates. Much of the insurance industry's business is based on what's actually written in the artist's contract.

As with the tax panel, it is wholly unfair to say these panels aren't interesting; it's just that they're not interesting to that many people. Accountants, insurance brokers and lawyers have specialist and crucial roles to play in the industry, but they're the sort of roles that everyone else is prepared to leave to them while they run off to play with their mates in the music business.

One of the problems facing brokers is caused by both the artists and the promoters securing the guarantee. What appears to be a sensible belt-and-braces approach on the face of it can lead to problems when the loss adjusters start to examine the situation. As often as not, the loss adjuster will recommend that the insurance companies pay only half of the claim in that situation, which can cause a delay in settlement if the act then has to recoup from the promoter.

The most interesting case under discussion concerned a Wet,Wet,Wet show in Scotland which was canceled as the date was set aside as a national day of mourning for Lady Diana.
The band's insurance claim was based on a clause that covered a day of mourning for a member of the royal family, but the company that was covering them pointed out that Diana was no longer in that category. The company did pay up in the end, but it's a case that shows that the devil really is in the detail.

[ Insurance ] ILMC Report

Sunday 11 March
Main Room
Royal Garden Hotel
Moderator: Emma Banks Helter Skelter / U.K.

This session is the one that best justifies the ILMC's reputation for saying the same things about the same subjects every year, but it's compelling to the point of being unmissable because it's when different factions from the industry enjoy blaming someone else for problems which are clearly of their own making.
It also has a reputation for good-humored banter and (rubber) sabre-rattling, but the presence and charm that Emma Banks exuded from the stage created an atmosphere in which most people behaved themselves.

Of course, there's no way Harvey Goldsmith will do that entirely because he just can't resist playing devil's advocate. During a discussion on trying to reduce the costs of touring, he tried to blame the agents for not doing enough about it by claiming, "They have to have some responsibility in life."

In response to Martin Hopewell's assertion that, "The way agents are remunerated is insulting and offensive," Goldsmith had to hog the mic again to argue, "The promoter is the greatest unpaid servant in the world."

He probably doesn't mean half of what he says in these "Booking Ring" sessions, but this will never stop him from saying anything if thinks it's likely to set two factions against each other, while he quietly slips off to enjoy his lunch.
Hopewell tried to put him in his place by telling him that if promoters really were the greatest unpaid servants, then Goldsmith had made a bad career choice. That wouldn't have bothered Goldsmith, as he was probably too busy feeling pleased with himself for saying something that could draw Hopewell into such a response.
By the time that the discussion on touring costs took any sort of real direction, Goldsmith had enjoyed his fun and was probably already tucking into his starter.

Leon Ramakers pointed out that he'd seen seven trucks outside Amsterdam's Paradiso, and only a couple of bits of equipment being taken out because the venue's equipment is equally as good. He said, "It's an enormous and utter waste."
And so it is. But the venues played prior to and after the Paradiso show may not be as well equipped, and there'll always be a band or crew member that will insist on a piece of kit that's the equivalent of that Spinal Tap amp that had the volume control that went up to 11.

Ramakers said he'd never understood why there's animosity between agents and promoters because they're both in the same boat, but agents are unlikely to help promoters in a bid to get production costs down. Those costs are usually covered by the guarantee and the agent wants to commission on them and, apart from that, disavowing any responsibility means the agent won't be the channel for a disagreement between promoter and artist.

Ramakers is right about promoters and agents being in the same boat, but only until the agent sees a faster and sleeker boat coming over the horizon. The agent's defense which says "I have a duty to do my best for the act," can usually be translated as "I have to get as much money as is feasiblely possible."

Again, it was Ramakers who pointed out that the balance of power had shifted so much towards the artist that it was now too late to even think about trying to shift it back. Recounting a tale of when he saw a promoter walk into a dressing room and tell Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald it was time to go onstage, he mused over what would happen if he attempted to do the same with Elton John.

The meeting mooched on to cross-collateralization of tour dates if SFX and other global giants expand to the point where they can cover all the territories on an itinerary and how it will surely become commonplace. Dave Corbett, a promoter with Scotland's DF Concerts, sensibly mentioned that the rights and wrongs of cross-collateralisation should depend on who wants the extra show. If an act insists upon adding Aberdeen (or wherever else in Scotland) to the shows Corbett may have booked in Edinburgh and Glasgow, he suggests the percentage split should be gauged across the gross and the cost of the three shows combined. If however, it was Corbett who wanted the third show, then he accepted that the dates should be assessed individually. He said, "I'd have to hold my hands up. If the extra show didn't do well, then the act and the agent are entitled to ask why they should pay for my mistake."

There was talk of how the matter should be resolved and brief discussion on whether promoters would offer higher guarantees if the risk of one poor show ruining their run was removed, but it had all begun to develop into something that sounded as if it had the potential to be repeated verbatim next year. Banks said, "So it's all proved very little. It just proves we'll all carry on as we have been."

Exactly whether "The Booking Ring" proves anything or not, we still wouldn't miss it for the world. ?

[ Booking Ring ] ILMC Report