Friday, 11th March 2005

As usual, the ILMC provided some of the music industry's major associations with complimentary rooms for their private meetings.

[Room 5, Lower Ground Floor, Royal Garden]
Website: www.ijfo.org

[Room 3, Lower Ground Floor, Royal Garden]

[Room 4, Lower Ground Floor, Royal Garden]
Website: www.yourope.org

[Room 1, Lower Ground Floor, Royal Garden]
Chairman:

• Carl Leighton-Pope [LPO, UK]

Following the traditional 'Flight Attendant's Briefing', the welcoming address from founder Martin Hopewell, came the now equally traditional 'Talking Shop' - part panel, part annual review and part sit down comedy show, you can always guarantee a full room for Carl Leighton Pope's highly individual session.

Sub-titled, 'An Audience with the Pope', this review of the year and initial conversation with delegates is always well attended - it covers serious issues as well as being entertaining, humorous and wide ranging, and therefore seems to satisfy the session attending needs of many delegates.

The increasingly comprehensive Value Added Ticket Packages was one of the topics to be raised by the 'People's Chairman', with the conclusion that pretty soon you will be able to purchase a front row ticket which will entitle the purchaser to climb on stage and take over from the bass player during the number of their choice! Carl says,

"People seem to look forward to it, they all hang around for the full time, and there's always 20 or so people in the room that I can get to, and have fun with, such as Ossy Hoppe, Claudio Trotta, Michael Chugg etc. For instance, I wanted to get someone to explain 'Instant Live' recordings, so I asked CCE's Stuart Galbraith, who passed the question on to his colleague Graham Pullen who said, '...well, we record the shows and give you the tapes at the end...', John Giddings (Solo-CCE) looked astounded!!"

Later on in the sssion Carl invited three heavy weight guests from the international departments of major record companies: Wolf Muller (Universal), John Reid (Warners) and Mark Collen (EMI) to join him to talk about the present situation re the relationship of their artists and the live industry. Much as these very experienced and eloquent people had many things of interest to say, it seemed that in this particular setting the delegates prefer the solo interaction with the floor. As Carl says, "If we do it again next year I won't have guests - nobody really responded to this section, but as usual I enjoyed it very much."

• Photorial

[Room 4, Lower Ground Floor, Royal Garden]
Chairman:

• Jim King (Loudsound Events, UK)

Chaiman's Comments:

What was clear from this year's panel is that dance music is performing well around the world. In the last 12 months dance acts tour sales have been very strong and the festival market appears even stronger. Internationally Skol Beats, Dance Valley, Exit and Tiesto in Concert have had continued success and domestically; Homelands, Creamfields and Global are again experiencing growth.
What was clear is that live music has led the way to recovery and the audience had several good news stories from the last 12 months about new events and festivals that were performing well.

The media debate became heated with half the panel and the audience advocating that the media was not necessary and that, especially in emerging markets, they were doing ok without it. The other side strongly argued its importance to effective promotion, marketing and sponsorship opportunities. With performance fees still high the importance of secondary income such as sponsorship would seem to back the importance of media support.

The panel ended by focussing on technology and the debate was vocal. Debate as to whether new advances in equipment were a good thing for the genre split the panel and the audience in two. Some, mostly promoters, felt that the development of MP3, CDJs and Ableton meant that they were paying huge fees for less of a performance but as we concluded technology used in the right way will add to the performance and increase the quality and impact of live performances.

• Photorial