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Monday 16 April 2012
Tuesday 6 March 2012
RotD exclusive: Jeff Smith, head of music at BBC Radio 2 & Radio 6 Music, celebrates 10 years of 6Music
It was back in the late '90s when I first visited a little office in the BBC’s Henry Wood House and heard and saw what a small team of music producers and researchers were doing.
The team were listening to and digitising session tracks from the BBC archive. I was visiting them as the then head of music for BBC Radio 1. Part of my remit was to help develop a music policy for one of three new digital (DAB) only networks. One network would be a black music station, one would be a speech and drama network built on the BBC’s archive of classic comedy and drama and one would be developed based on the popular music sessions archive.
It was clear from my visit that our original vision of an album oriented rock station, plugging the gap between Radio 1 and Radio 2, might not be where it was going.
The research into the archive hadn’t delivered the traditional adult oriented rock radio set of artists but instead a treasure trove of alternative rock and pop from the likes of Siouxsie and The Banshees, XTC and Nirvana. These were artists recorded for various BBC Radio 1 session programming over the years.
As producer of Radio 1’s Evening Session from 1990 I’d been responsible for commissioning a few of these sessions and I could hear how a smarter pop radio station built on these musical foundations could evolve. In fact in 1991 when Mark Radcliffe deputised as presenter on that show we talked about building on the Evening Session and his show Out on Blue Six to establish what we loftily then described as “an intelligent pop music radio station”.
I returned to the BBC in 2007 as head of music for Radio 2 and 6 Music and found the station building a reputation but not exactly clear on what it was. We focussed the station’s music policy on music with an “alternative spirit”. This means that on 6 you’ll hear those more established artists who still lean towards the alternative in what they record - including their classics and deep cuts - alongside those newer artists who are building careers on those foundations.
For instance alongside XTC you’ll hear Field Music, alongside Siouxsie an artist like Anna Calvi and Nirvana’s influence is building new alternative rock bands like Howler, all supported in daytime music programming and across the network by 6. We’re also building more on the genres we cover so you can hear an Orb classic juxtaposed with SBTRKT or a deeper Bill Withers cut alongside that of Michael Kiwanuka .
I think that policy is typified in the live music moments that are my highlights of 6 Music's first 10 years. Those highlights were when we helped arrange for heritage names to work with their musical progenies or admirers i.e. Heaven 17 and LaRoux, Gary Numan and Little Boots, Paul Weller and Adele. These are the most difficult things to get together but they can also be the most exciting.
6 Music is very lucky to have a very creative and passionate editor in the shape of Paul Rodgers. Our week of celebration in Maida Vale and the South Bank is the latest manifestation of his vision of the station and continues Paul’s latest initiatives that include 2012’s monthly “6 Music celebrates…” features.
Paul intends to continue these through the year and I think these ideas and other new concepts that we have to take 6 Music beyond our London and Manchester bases will help increase the awareness of the station and digital radio in general into 2013.
We know 6 Music listeners also consume digital music services (subscription music, blogs etc) with the station often giving them their cue to discover music in other ways. We intend to keep them doing that by further embracing ours and their digital future as we re-imagine radio for the future and continue to be the UK’s biggest digital-only music station.
Finally I should add that in our first ten years 6 has also made its own and substantial contribution to the BBC sessions legacy with a unique commitment to broadcast over 300 new sessions by musicians every year. These sessions then take their place in the same vault that gave birth to the station and help it continue its work celebrating the alternative spirit in music.
Monday 5 March 2012
Record of the Day message
This blog is temporary while our main site is being fixed, which should be this week.
DOMINO RECORDING CO, INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANT
Domino is seeking an International Assistant to join their team. The job is to provide support for the int’l marketing campaigns. This includes the management of digital tools like video and music files, helping with the production/stock needs of partners around the world, the organization of marketing support tools like merch, print ads, banners and the collection of sales data for marketing reports. The successful candidate should ideally have experience working inside a record label or a similar creative music environment, preferably in the areas mentioned above, and a strong understanding about the Domino label and artists. The position is based in our London office. CV’s to internationalassist@dominorecordco.com
Based: London
Based: London
Cutting Edge assists R2M in sale of its publishing catalogues to BMG.
Leading music publisher Cutting Edge has expanded beyond its established music for media business to assist the owners of music publishing catalogues with the operation, administration and exploitation of their assets.
Cutting Edge managed the operation of the R2M catalogue on behalf of R2M over an 18-month period, and more recently assisted R2M in the successful sale of its music publishing and related assets to BMG in February 2012. During this period asset NPS was stabilized and increased.
Cutting Edge can provide deep industry expertise to the owners of music publishing copyrights in addition to providing access to the company’s exploitation avenues and opportunities in media. By maximizing both administration accuracy and catalogue exploitation Cutting Edge can help improve revenue and catalogue value.
The R2M catalogue contains a range of international hits from the past four decades including songs recorded by Jim Croce (“Time In A Bottle”), Faith Hill (“This Kiss”), Tupac (“California Love”), Neil Sedaka (“Laughter In The Rain”), The Fifth Dimension (“Up, Up and Away”), The Carpenters (“Solitaire”), Zapp, REO Speedwagon, Enrique Iglesias, Britney Spears, Celine Dion, Shalamar and S-Club 7. R2M also owned Country and Gospel music
catalogues as well as rights to Germany’s classic band Die Toten Hosen.
Cutting Edge is one of the world’s leading publishers and providers of music services for media music having recently worked on films including “The King’s Speech”, “Drive”, “The Woman In Black” and “The Grey”, with international brands including Barclaycard, L’Oreal and Nestlé and on commercials for Vauxhall, Blackberry and American Airlines.
The Cutting Edge Group has offices in London, Los Angeles, New York and Louisiana.
Cutting Edge managed the operation of the R2M catalogue on behalf of R2M over an 18-month period, and more recently assisted R2M in the successful sale of its music publishing and related assets to BMG in February 2012. During this period asset NPS was stabilized and increased.
Cutting Edge can provide deep industry expertise to the owners of music publishing copyrights in addition to providing access to the company’s exploitation avenues and opportunities in media. By maximizing both administration accuracy and catalogue exploitation Cutting Edge can help improve revenue and catalogue value.
The R2M catalogue contains a range of international hits from the past four decades including songs recorded by Jim Croce (“Time In A Bottle”), Faith Hill (“This Kiss”), Tupac (“California Love”), Neil Sedaka (“Laughter In The Rain”), The Fifth Dimension (“Up, Up and Away”), The Carpenters (“Solitaire”), Zapp, REO Speedwagon, Enrique Iglesias, Britney Spears, Celine Dion, Shalamar and S-Club 7. R2M also owned Country and Gospel music
catalogues as well as rights to Germany’s classic band Die Toten Hosen.
Cutting Edge is one of the world’s leading publishers and providers of music services for media music having recently worked on films including “The King’s Speech”, “Drive”, “The Woman In Black” and “The Grey”, with international brands including Barclaycard, L’Oreal and Nestlé and on commercials for Vauxhall, Blackberry and American Airlines.
The Cutting Edge Group has offices in London, Los Angeles, New York and Louisiana.
Sunday 4 March 2012
Steve Machin's comment on Channel 4's Great Ticketing Scandal
Steve Machin of Stormcrowd argues that whilst Channel 4’s Great Ticket Scandal raised some interesting points, it also missed out large chunks of the bigger picture…
Bringing an arsenal of investigative techniques to bear, Dispatches sought to expose what it had clearly predetermined was the dark side of the hitherto opaque and mysterious world of the concert industry - ticket sales and resales. The sense of entitlement and expectation that fans can show, rightly or wrongly, regarding an act and their tickets is startling and Dispatches exploited this highly-charged topic to create what it portrayed as a sensational scandal. But while the programme did uncover what appeared to be genuine legal concerns around some aspects of the descriptions of the resale market, I would argue that the sensationalist approach that it took overall failed to give an accurate representation of the complex economics of the 21st century ticketing market.
Rockonomics - In order to understand this, we first need a quick (and simplified) overview of rockonomics. Economists talk of supply and demand, yield management and mitigation of risk - do these principles apply to the sale of tickets? Absolutely. The promoter acts as an initial speculator, buying the performances (and related services such as venue hire) hoping that they can make a profit on the total cost of the gig or tour, by selling sufficient tickets at the right prices. The promoter assumes risk from the performers.
The perceived demand impacts upon supply variables - ticket pricing, the number of tickets made available, and the size of the venues. The better the tour can predict demand, and price tickets accurately against fans expectation of value, the more effective the yield will be in returning a profit on the risked capital.
What risk? A question asked by the programme was “how hard is it to predict how successful a comeback tour by Take That might be?” It was raised precisely to undermine the notion that there is any risk in promoting concerts. While some tours are inherently more risky than others, one only has to look at the annual returns filed by Live Nation to see razor thin margins where even a small amount of increased risk could significantly impact upon the business.
Risky Business
So how do the promoters reduce their risk? By selling tickets at prices that are low enough to ensure that sufficient attendees provide a return on investment, and that price, for some of the tickets is below market value, while for others is above market value.
It is a common complaint that “music or concerts cannot be reduced to a commodity and traded” - I am no apologist for the areas of the resale market that were exposed as legally challenging from a consumer protection viewpoint, nor do I make any claims as to whether it is right or wrong to trade tickets - that is not the subject of this piece – but what is clear is that tickets ARE traded like commodities. That is in part because there continues to be a consistent disparity between the market price of a ticket and the published face value at which it is first sold. Not all tickets are created equal, and over time the value of each ticket will vary - see a recent article by PRS for Music for a good review of the economics of ticket discounting - the “front rows” get traded while there are still seats available "at the back"
The internet has simply made it much easier to buy and sell most products, everything from iPods to insurance and all points in between. Tickets are no different and with arbitrage opportunity available the internet allows buyers and sellers to easily connect and transact at market price - leading to the creation of an additional layer of speculation - fans who buy more than they need, and professional brokers investing in buying tickets purely to resell - the cold harvesting of tickets.
The whole truth
The Dispatches investigation wanted to ensure that this programme was car-crash television of the highest order. In doing so they did not tell the whole story about many of the points that they covered.
1 - Fans learned that a significant proportion of tickets sold on ViaGoGo and Seatwave are not sourced from individual fans looking to sell tickets that can no longer be used - the notion of being exclusively fan-to-fan is a misnomer as many tickets come from brokers and box-offices. It is worth noting, as Dispatches failed to mention, that Seatwave states clearly on its website when tickets have been made available directly by the box office.
2 - We also heard that on some tours, ViaGoGo and Seatwave are provided tickets directly by the promoter to sell at the best price possible. The presumption was that tickets are always sold at astronomical prices above face-value. In reality, tickets are often sold on exchanges, or other discount channel sites at significantly below face value. The cold truth is that exchanges can provide access to a cohort of demonstrably price insensitive customers who are willing to pay a premium to acquire tickets closer to the event date.
3 - More surprising was the evidence that staff at ViaGoGo has purchased tickets from primary vendors such as Ticketmaster to resell using the company’s own “internal seller” accounts. There is a significant difference between market clearing price (which is generally considered a good thing economically) and an exchange making the market under false pretenses.
The public rage on twitter during the broadcast was aimed squarely at the exchanges and promoters, and assumed (as Dispatches suggested) that artists or their management are not aware that tickets are allocated to exchanges. Speaking to Pollstar reporter John Gammon following the broadcast, Live Nation’s Paul Latham stated that Live Nation has never allocated tickets without the knowledge and consent of the artists’ management. The Concert Promoters Association issued a statement to the effect that placing tickets into the secondary market reduces prices by increasing supply, and ensures that additional value is captured within the industry.
Dispatches also failed to mention that there are already mechanisms available that make ticket reselling more difficult should a tour choose to. These include paperless tickets that require the purchasing credit card to be present or photo-ticket schemes such as that used by Glastonbury festival. Removing speculators however exposes the tour to true demand, a point made eloquently earlier this week by Bob Lefsetz in his industry blog (www.lefsetz.com/) and this is not always good news for the artists or promoters.
The fans pay the bills
The wider impact of price sensitivity on the concert business must be considered for everyone competing for the same share of the fan wallet. Do fans who decide to not spend money on a ticket spend it on other concerts or other music entertainment products, or do they spend it on computer games or fashion or some other category? Do fans who spend high sums of money on concert tickets spend less at the venue on F&B or on merchandise? Will dynamic pricing be a reality and provide genuine real-time market pricing for concerts and would that be embraced by the industry and fans alike as a fair solution?
Ultimately in such a complex market there are a lot more questions than answers - while emotions clearly run high when discussing entertainment tickets, does it mean the government should legislate and introduce price regulation into efficient markets? After all, the face value is an arbitrary price that could have been set much higher or much lower. And anyhow, now that these markets exist, can the genie be put back in the bottle? Would it be helpful, and to whom? Dispatches successfully demonstrated that some fans care a lot about ticket pricing but that even more care about transparency.
Built in part on largely one-sided questioning designed to elicit highly emotional responses from disgruntled fans who chose to purchase tickets (and similarly grief stricken tales from disappointed fans who chose not to) the programme failed to make a balanced representation of issues affecting the ticket business. All the primary stakeholders in the concert industry that I speak to are concerned with how to get more fans, to habitually attend more shows, more often. That is the wider challenge that frames this debate.
--
Steve Machin (@stevemachin) runs Stormcrowd (@stormcrowd) - an entertainment consultancy specializing in ticketing and social commerce - www.stormcrowd.com/
Further reading:
Bob Lefsetz (@lefsetz) on ticket scalping
Pollstar review of Dispatches
PRS article on ticket discounting
PRS article on Secondary Market Analysis
Kobalt Artist and Label Services seeks a marketing manager
Kobalt Artist and Label Services is looking for an experienced Marketing Manager to work with its AWAL team based in London. The ideal candidate will have experience in social media marketing and a good general knowledge of the social web with the following specific skills:
· PPC advertising experience with a working knowledge of both Google Adwords and the Facebook Advertising Platform
· Competent knowledge of Photoshop/Fireworks or similar
· Well versed in the use of Topspin, Campaign Monitor, Mail Chimp, Soundcloud, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, RootMusic, and other similar sites and tools.
· HTML, PHP, Javascript and Flash knowledge are also a plus
Responsibilities will include managing social advertising campaigns across a number of platforms for multiple clients, assessing social media reach and implementing fan engagement campaigns, creating bespoke advertising assets for clients, setting up and administering direct-to-fan campaigns, co-ordinating with external marketing partners and agencies, and generating end of campaign reports.
If this sounds like a set of responsibilities you can handle, and you are looking to join the expanding Kobalt and AWAL teams, send your CV over to marketing@awal.com