Charlotta Hedman
There were plenty of lively and exciting discussions at yesterday’s Music 4.5 event ”The social live industry – where is the money?”. Here’s a quick recap of the day for those of you who couldn’t make it.
The changing live music landscape – Jon McIldowie, promotions director, Mama Group, organiser of The Great Escape
- Live used to be a service industry to record industry, today it’s about 50 percent of an artist’s earning potential.
- Venues and traditional media used to be the only way to sell a ticket, now 80 percent of tickets are sold through the artist or the venue. Promoters have an impact on about 20 percent of the sales, using social media first and then radio and other traditional media. The best way to drive sales is through the artist.
- Twitter drives more ticket sales than TV advertising. If someone like Fearne Cotton tweets about a gig she can reach 300 000 or 400 000 people.
- Radio 1 dictates their playlist after how many views a band has had on Youtube.
- Promoters aren’t getting a large share of the pie anymore and will get about 5 to 10 percent of the gross profit.
- The artists really are the key. Braver acts, like Mumford and Sons, are now doing it all themselves. They hire venues, push tickets through social media, collect email addresses and do it without promoters.
- Bob Dylan might have started promoting his shows 20 years ago, but social media makes it easier. There are fewer layers between the artist and the fan and the artist is becoming powerful.
- Artists fees have gone up every year for festivals. Artists can command huge prices, as much as £20 000 pounds to do a festival. They will make more out of the process than anyone else if they’re doing well.
- Artists don’t really need record labels anymore. Promoters are booking talent straight off Youtube and sometimes pay the same money as for signed act.
- An ad in NME doesn’t make a difference anymore. The exceptions to the rules are acts like JLS or a heritage act, for them it’s still worthwhile to book a half page in tabloids or in the Times.
- The dance scene is going to be huge next year, it’s emulating bands and doing gigs in the same way. Every major promoter is aggressively targeting that market. The economy is going down the drain, a good way of coping is going out clubbing.
Debate: How can new digital business models help artists earn money from playing live
Panellists: Laura Kidd, SheMakesWar, DIY artist, Rynda Laurel, digital marketing, Smashing Pumpkins, Jon Mansfield, MusicConnex and CEO, JM Music Limited, Gaynor O’Flynn, BeingHuman
LK: I wouldn’t have a fan base it wasn’t for twitter and facebook. Getting the fans involved on the same level as me is important. I’m also doing targeted mailing lists, ”London alerts”, for people in London who can go to my gigs. I’m also using Pledgemusic, I was against it at first and didn’t like that I had to pay for it.
RL: I’m marketing Gish, the first Smashing Pumpkins record, again and it’s a completely different market place. Today is one of the best times to be an artist, but it means a lot of work and artists don’t always want to do a lot of work. There are a few really motivated artists and a lot that aren’t and they bitch about it a lot. It is hard to promote yourself. It’s also completely different to work with a machine like the Smashing Pumpkins than working with an emerging artist.
JM: The digital revolution has democratised everything, people use social networks. Lots of people are competing for share of voice, but they can now do it a lot more cheaply and effectively and quickly. Good promoters and artists can get people to turn up to a gig within a week. Even with the power of radio that didn’t used to work. There are services like Crowdsurge, MusicGlue, Amiando and Eventbrite, that allow people to set up gigs and cut Ticketmaster out. It is harder and harder for artists to get serious global traction. It is more about niches now and how to monetise those niches. You can do that more effectively if you’re doing it yourself, with less people taking a cut. A lot of people aren’t brave enough to do that though.
GF: We have to get back to live as artists, Youtube is the biggest radio station out there and artists have let royalties slip. People don’t want to read 15 000 random tweets. Digital should follow live. We need a new generation of internet entrepreneurs who want to share their wealth. If you find an idea that will create us money, then you’ll see your start up fly because we will spread the word like nothing else.
Brands + Live Music = Money? Only if done right… – Paul Sampson, EskimoLive
Don’t waste your money if you’re a brand. Make sure you get a return.
There are three keys to a successful brand partnership:
- Create an experience – just sticking your logo on an event doesn’t work.
- Engagement – Engage your target audience in the lead up to the event, during and after.
- Access – You must offer access to your audience
Brands should take ownership – create your own event, own the experience.
Global ad spend on music licensing in 2010 was $2.3 billion, sync for TV $1.5 billion and for film $1.3 billion
Advice to artists:
- Find a sync agency
- Do some non specific song-writing – the Olympics are coming, it’s a big opportunity to sync music and people will be looking for music about glory, success and winning.
- Mix your songs properly
- Provide alternative versions, ie instrumental versions and separate vocals.
Brands are interested in investing in up and coming talent.
Is social and digital promotion for festivals and live gigs too expensive? And does it lead to conversion? – Joshua Greene, Digital Marketing Consultant – Social Media Strategy for the Lovebox and Wilderness festivals
Social and digital is a means to an end to drive ticket sales.
Remember:
- Acquisition – every attribute of your fanbase is exciting, you need to understand and connect with your fanbase. Knowing them is also important to any partners who want to align themselves with you.
- Retention – If you treat your fans well they will come back, you can’t build that over night, have a loyalty programme, become a trusted source.
- Conversation – Enabling your fans to talk will give you huge reach, listen to your audience, provide support.
Twitter is a discovery space, Facebook has a lot more opportunity to create your own environment.
Develop consistent content, messaging and engagement.
It’s all about narrative, letting people buy into your journey, give people an opportunity to be connected with your brand and share your journey.
Using exclusive content is a key drive in social media.
We recruited 150 people to become brand ambassadors online and set them tangible tasks. The results were amazing. The advocates had to provide print screens of their activity.
Facebook advertising can be effective if done in the right way. Wilderness festival got 12000 fans in three and a half months. We spent 600 pounds on Facebook ads and got a few thousand fans through that.
Getting more people through the door, the digital way – Saint – 10Tribes
If you can raise the bar of live music as a whole it’s good for the whole industry and can help us compete with the cinema, the pub or with people just staying at home.
The goal is to build bigger audiences.
We’re an impartial third party and want to build better ways of sharing knowledge.
Artists can create their own profiles on 10Tribes. We were thinking, what would Myspace have been like if it had only been for music?
The dirty ticketing market… do you ask for legislation or do you work around/with it?
Discussion moderated by Eamonn Forde, with Joe Cohen, Seatwave and Tom Hopewell, MusicGlue.
TH: A ticket is something that was sold by an artist, venue or promoter. Keep it clean, it should not be sold by a second source.
JC: The problem with ticketing is that it is fundamentally a BtoB business, but it is the fan who will pay for the ticket. It should be about what fans and consumers want. There should be more transparency around the transaction and what it means for the market price. It’s probably the least transparent business there is.
JC: There is still a lot of opacity going on, a big chunk of the booking fee is rebated back to the promoter or artist, so no one wants to reduce the booking fee to zero, people don’t want to make the price lower for their consumers, because everyone is hooked on the booking fees.
JC: Most promoters are working on a thin margin, one of the sad facts of the industry is that you have to fill the house and sell beer. What are the other income streams? Everyone’s margins are squeezed so much, 90 percent of the gross goes to successful artists, so there is nothing left on the table for anyone else and they have to fight over whatever is left.
EF: Fundamentally it is a broken business model. Ticket prices have been growing steadily, but are now hitting the wall.
TH: There are more independents in the live industry to spread it out and come up with new models. We have had the record industry as a model for such a long time, so there was time to prepare for a crisis.
JC: The profit is coming from rising ticket prices, not from rising attendance. But there is a backlash against growing prices. People who buy tickets and hope to sell them on for a profit are losing out this year. Tickets are released late with a dumped price, which is also hurting the industry.
JC: One of the reasons festivals attendance has gone down is why would you go to three festivals to see the Killers over and over again.
TH: There will always be an excuse, if an artist wants to do a five pound show someone will tell them not to do it because it devalues their brand.
