Having done some research on the merger between the two biggest live music companies, I have seen some serious issues; not only for the wider music market, but also the artists. Both companies consider their merger as creating a helping hand towards the music industry but its obvious that they are trying to monopolise the market and thereby reduceing the development of competition within the live scene.

Ticket fees have been continuously rising and the artists are usually the last link in the chain to benefit from the inflated prices.Supposedly, high ticket prices will do no good to the relationship between the band and their fans, and may erode trust and create a “backlash”.

Highly priced tickets are likely to drive sales away, as more people will search for alternative ways of enjoying music. (as it already happened with the overpriced CD – many years people were paying a high price for it and now people feeling they have been ripped off and download music for free instead).

And yet another reason is that the majority of promoters pay a set fee for their artists based on set ticket prices and not the variable demand-based pricing.

have a look at this article: http://www.themusicvoid.com/2009/10/will-live-nation-ticketmaster-merger-go-ahead/

Just when you thought a label not paying their artist was bad enough, TMV recently came across something just as bad, if not worse, afflicting small time promoters in the UK. As it turns out this disease involves small-time promoters ripping off small artists trying hard to break through the clutter.

The general scenario is this: in London, when it comes to live shows, as an artist you have to pull x amount of people and then you as an artist receive one pound per paying person through the door to see your band only, not any of the other bands. The general rule is that an artist needs to bring a minimum of 25 people before they receive £1 per person and then if you bring 40 or more you receive £2 for every person after the first 40 that you as an artist brought to a show. So if you attract 24 people, which is becoming increasingly difficult, the band receive nothing

Now it gets interesting because most of these venues have capacity limits for health and safety reasons. Yet a lot of these unscrupulous promoters play on the fact that if every band was to bring a large amount of people they would not legally fit into the venue and hence the promoter gets to walk away with everything because most of the bands could not actually get the minimum payers through the door because of the law. So the artist gets nothing and the promoter gets anywhere between £5 – £8 per person.

But is something missing here? The title ‘promoter’ generally refers to someone who promotes music. Instead, these scum insist that the bands to do the promotion, and do not one single thing themselves except demand the artist sell a minimum amount of tickets from their own fan base. Yes, the promoter has some costs associated with booking a sound engineer (generally around £80 – £100 per night), a door person (around £30 – £50) and that is it. Other than perhaps updating their website, they do not print or distribute flyers, posters nadda, zero, and zilch!….

This is a great read for all artists out there! Being one myself and having worked for a promoter, it is sad but true how some of them try to rip you off!

Read the full article Parasite Small Time Non- Promoters Ripping Off Artists

In the past couple of weeks we’ve been able to see there is genuine potential for streaming gigs. First, the widely-publicized U2 concert stream on YouTube generated 10 million streams during the concert on 25th October, as well as 2.3 million more views since last Monday when it was archived. Also, Foo Fighters gave a web-only concert with Livestream and Facebook and that gained 440,000 viewers.

These are obviously impressive and promising numbers for future projects, and it’s worth noting that Ustream, Billboard and Hulu have all previously done similar events, giving more hope for this potentially profitable venture. New projects and experiments are being tackled in the live industry at an increasing rate, but a strong constant seems to be from summer festivals.

This summer’s American festivals Austin City Limits and Bonnaroo had highlights and streaming from AT&T, self-professed ‘lifestyle website’ RumBum.com covered Lollapalooza and New York’s All Points West, and San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival had its own YouTube channel that was archived (although only a select few songs were uploaded rather than complete sets). These can only help artists and festival promoters thrive, who are gaining more and more value to the industry each year. Even though the major ones are already covered in the UK by the mainstream press, it would be great to see some more niche festivals jumping on this bandwagon next summer to gain more exposure for themselves, as well as lesser known bands out there (and their indie labels of course).

Another area for live revenues is the growing availability of highly-produced live albums right after the performance. Last week, EMI issued a press release introducing “Abbey Road Live” recordings for EMI artists, which launched last week in North America and Europe. Not only will it produce live products for current EMI artists, but there are also plans to sell older shows via an online archive destination.

There aren’t many specific details but the press release stated that “the recordings will be made available in range of formats including CD, DVD and digital devices or via secure digital delivery to home computers or mobile handsets”. Although they already tested its products on concerts in the UK by Blur, Deadmau5 and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, releasing various products, both digital and physical, makes it seem like EMI have a lot to work out.

As great as the idea sounds, having label-funded “live companies” isn’t the best way for labels to be spending their money. Research and technology can be costly and attempting too many ventures for live can be a great risk to any label these days. Also, if a label does manage to ‘get it right’ and produce high quality CDs and DVDs and iPhone-capable concert footage, there has to be the concern for who gets priority of these deals. Targeting the right bands’ fanbases who are already digitally adept and willing to spend time online watching those bands or paying for the gigs after the show is key. Labels are already overwhelmed with tackling digital as a whole; all of that extra research on each artist’s live fanbase would stretch their marketing teams a tad too thin. These decisions shouldn’t be left up to labels, or to whichever manager has the most pull, but to bands who understand their fanbase best and who are willing to conduct deals elsewhere to best suit their individual needs.

Other outside companies have been very proactive… Read the rest of the article at Labels Getting Into Live, Are They Already Too Late?

Written by: Cassandra Callais

The venues are wired for video and audio capture and presumably offer real-time editing suites. While many artists have offered digital packaged copies of live recorded performances at venues and via their websites for some time, the scale of this partnership presents potentially significant revenue opportunities.

What isn’t clear at the moment, other than iTunes offering a special page in iTunes to create shelf space for these live recordings, is how and when the performances will be available for sale. Certainly the timeliness of catching consumers as they leave the venue is an optimal emotive moment for impulse purchase.

However, perhaps the new merchandise might be bundled in the price of the tickets and the recording is made available soon after the performance, but not necessarily as one walks out of the door. In this scenario, it will be interesting to see how long the bundled recorded performances will be charged at an additional cost to consumers. When artists like Prince give their music away for free with the purchase of tickets(while subsidized by a fellow struggling sector of newspapers), it may be difficult to continue to charge additional fees for performance recordings in advance.

Certainly there will be temptations at Live Nation to create additional packaged offers including bundling extra content when 80% of performances fail to sell out.

There is still a general unwillingness for consumers…. Read the rest of the story at Is Live Nation Prevented from Bundling Live Performances into Ticket Sales Now?

Written by: Angel Gambino