Seconday Ticketing - Touts gone wild

Written by: David Harrison

May 27, 2008 · Filed Under Blather, Industry · Comment 

The days of that yellow-toothed bloke shouting ‘BUY AND SELL TICKETS!’ outside gigs haven’t gone yet, but there is a lot more profitable way to do it these days. The last two years have seen the growth of a tout market that has become so big, it is considerably larger then some of the companies that actually put on the shows it is touting for. This ‘tout market’ has even got a proper ‘legit’ name these days - Secondary Ticketing.

Secondary Ticketing was apparently worth up to £200m in 2007, with the primary ticket market at £790m over the same period. Could that be possible? In two years, could the more respectable side of the tout market have swelled to be worth a quarter of the old, legit ticket-selling industry?

In a meeting last week, I found myself in a room where Viagogo, Seatwave, Getmein, etc, were all represented. Interestingly, they are all Americans. I can’t help but think along the lines of ‘Americans coming over here, with their convienent user-friendly technology and free market ethics’ in order to exploit our own greed.

It would seem most UK promoters have slept through the development of this industry - it is more then their jobs’ worth to deal with them. Now it would seem this strategy may have been to their peril. As it becomes established, and worth so much, it becomes a lot harder to legislate against, plus now some of the bigger artists are thinking – ‘maybe we can make a load more money here’…

So should the government ban secondary ticket selling? In that aforementioned room, where the great and the good in the industry allegedly came to try to come to some kind of consensus, it couldn’t seem further away. This conference was a mess of claims and counter-claims, but sifting through everyone’s opinion there are essentially 3 outcomes.

  1. Allow concert tickets to be sold again but for only 10% more the original price
  2. Allow concert tickets to be sold again but with a tithe going back to the artists
  3. Allow concert tickets to be sold again – i.e do nothing at all.

The last time the government sat down at talked about this, they all went ‘errm , do you think? Is that the time… I have to rush…’ and went for option 3. Now in 2008, they are umming and ahhing over a law that requires buyers of paintings to pay a tribute to the original artist…and in the end will probably once again go for something like option 3 - and do nothing solid again until the industry really is in a mess.

Meanwhile, those Americans with their technology and free trade ethics, are making more money than I care to imagine from the UK’s exploding live industry and festival scene. They have even made an industry association to keep practices nice http://www.asta-uk.org/

Some other Americans, Live Nation and AEG Live, have noticed they can mark up a £20 gig ticket, by bundling it with some cheap champagne and a five-fingered shuffle for corporate clients. While some booking agents are seeing the potential for higher show revenues are asking promoters give the secondary sales auction sites a direct allocation of tickets after all if touts can tout then artists can tout a lot better.

The UK Government itself is unlikely to actually do anything until there is some particular disaster, say - a Sun campaign to show that terrorist money is being laundered through ticket touts, or other such sensationalist nonsense. But since that is about as likely to happen as Wolverine winning the next general election, nothing looks set to happen in the near future.

So what is happening with Concert Ticketing, will it be the new frontier for an artist pay package? Not much in the way of leglisation, that’s for sure. So while the artist/agent and ticket tout get inventive I think the customers might wonder why their tickets costs are going through the roof.

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Interview: The Parlotones - rock’n'roll South African-style

Written by: Hugh Platt

May 2, 2008 · Filed Under Features, Interviews · 1 Comment 

Khan Morbee – it’s the kinda name that makes me think of men in animal furs and war paint, swinging fake weapons about and hollering ‘BATTLE METAL!” at each other. Calm down though – Khan Morbee is actually the frontman of South African indie-rock-types, The Parlotones. There’s not a Lordi-esque jockstrap in sight, just rousingly accomplished indie rock’n’roll.

“Myself and [Neil Pauw, drummer] were introduced by a mutual friend who knew we liked similar bands, we got together and ‘jammed’ a few times soon realising we needed additional musicians.” It’s an age old story, only instead of coming together in a grotty bedsit in Camden, the embryonic form of The Parlotones developed in South Africa. “[Neil] had played in a band previously with [Paul Hodgson, guitarist], and our bassist [Glenn Hodgeson] (who at that stage was really a pianist), happened to be the brother of the guitarist and he took over the reigns of the only instrument left to complete the package.”

“We are fans of The Beatles, Queen, Radiohead and more recently Coldplay (although we never knew of them when we named ourselves) and noticed a connection with Parlophone records, so we slightly morphed the name in an attempt to tempt fate.”

Of course, when a band is fairly established in one territory and trying to break into others, it can cause bizarre release schedules, even in this day and age when it is possible to download a band’s album before they’re even aware they’ve finished it. Which is why the band is only getting round to promoting their ‘Radiocontrolledrobot’ album here, while the follow-up is already out in South Africa.

“[Radiocontrolledrobot’] was our first proper recording in which we did 18 songs in 2 weeks. We have obviously been promoting that album since [2005] and now we are sort of multiple-personalities, having to promote different albums in the different territories. I’d like to think that as musicians we’ve obviously improved, so playing them here seems almost effortless. The songs have been given a breath of fresh air playing them to brand new audiences and winning them over one by one. It’s an exciting challenge…”

“The idea is to release [‘A World Next Door To Yours’] abroad next year and then do a simultaneous release with the third album, so that we’re not having to do this disjointed promotional thing. We’re recording an unplugged session back home in May, we’re very excited about it. It will also give us a chance to delay releasing another album in SA so that we can correlate the third release.”

“I think with ‘A World Next Door…’ we’ve settled on a Parlotones sound that is distinctly ours. Both albums, and albums going forward will always reflect our energetic side as well as our gentler side. I think this is largely due to the fact that influences range from Simon and Garfunkel to System of a Down – we’ll never go to those extremes but will try sit somewhere comfortably in between”

And The Parlotones aren’t afraid to make their influences as clear as an invisible window pane, with recent single ‘Louder Than Bombs’ being “unashamedly a direct reference to [The Smiths] greatest hits album” of the same name. “We are all big fans and we used to throw indie parties back home where we would have friends playing all the indie classics, we would play and the parties were called Louder then Bombs, we even had flyers made with Louder than Bombs big on the front.

“We wrote a song called ‘Louder than Bombs’ as a sort of ode to that moment in our lives. Lyrically, it expresses our desire to ‘make it’ with the refrain ‘Finally it’s happening…’ Weirdly, it was written when things were starting to ‘happen’ (well, what we thought was happening) for us back home and it’s getting a bit of mileage over here – needless to say we’re holding thumbs” That means ‘crossing their fingers’, for those not au fait with SA slang.

The video for ‘Louder than bombs’:

[”src”:”http://www.youtube.com/v/L9JGTFlEKRg&hl=en”,”wmode”:”transparent”]

The band is back in South Africa at the moment, gearing up to record a show on May 8 for their first DVD release. It’s a startling comparison to their relatively small profile in the UK “We have experienced this anonymous existence when we were starting out back home so we don’t feel that out of place…it really makes the sweet moments that much sweeter and we appreciate every step of the journey.”

The band’s popularity back home led them to be one of the bands playing the much derided Live Earth at its South African-leg. Looking back, does Morbee think the whole worldwide event now smacks somewhat of environmental tokenism?

“I really don’t know – the world loves to panic about ‘something’, whether its war, crime, terrorism, bird flu etc. I don’t really know how much of its fact or how much of its fiction, or how much of it is designed by authority to induce a sense of their purpose and existence as the big brother who steps in to fix it.

“Our level of panic is all relative, people in London say crime is a problem, which I find laughable coming from Johannesburg…but then again, I’m sure someone coming from Lagos would find crime in Johannesburg laughable. I don’t really know the real answers but will try to assist whenever there is a perception that something needs to be fixed, i.e. our big stance back home in assisting with HIV/Aids charities and our involvement in Live Earth.

“My only concern is that a loud noise is made initially and it soon peters off into returning to old ‘more comfortable’ habits whilst the hob knobs deliberate on end how to fix the problem so as to not impact the profit machine to intensely – who’s actually running the show? The intentions were good and we were honoured to be a part of that process. I just hope the noise continues and results in real action, not just a couple of windmills peppered across the continent for decoration”

So why is it that while hundreds of identikit indie-twerps in tight jeans (aka the XFM daytime playlist…) somehow prosper, while bands from South Africa are virtually unknown over here? Geographical distances are increasingly irrelevant now thanks to this invention called ‘the internet’.

“In the past, we didn’t have the technology to compete on quality, sanctions were in place for many years, and unfortunately politics stifled arts and culture into a sideline hobby, not to be taken too seriously - and heaven forbid, be considered a career.

“Our currency is also weak making the necessity of touring difficult. There’s also a inferiority complex that seems entrenched whereby we tend to think everything from overseas is bigger and better evident even today where ‘BIG’ international bands who sell way less than local artists [domestically in South Africa] are placed higher on a bill. The verdict is still out on whether it can be done and we’re going to give it our best shot”

“ If all else fails we’ve enjoyed the journey thus far and that’s worth its weight in gold.”

The video for ‘Dragonflies & Astronauts’:

[”wmode”:”transparent”,”src”:”http://www.youtube.com/v/kYO5MnrRlu8&hl=en”]

‘Radiocontrolledrobot’ is ether set for imminent release, or has already come out, depending where you happen to live in the world. It’s easier if you just go check the website, yeah?

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The Cure: gimmicking the number 13

Written by: Hugh Platt

May 2, 2008 · Filed Under Blather · 1 Comment 

RobertSmith250The Cure have a great back catalogue. At their shows earlier in the year they literally excited Music Towers so much we forgot to write a review. Now they’ve decided it’s about time they add to their already-stupidly-impressive songsheet with a new album, due out on September 13. Did you see that? September