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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I have a band, a myspace page, now what

Written by: David

May 2, 2008 · Filed Under Features, Industry · 4 Comments 

So you have written some bitchin’ songs, made a MySpace page, and maybe even bought a domain name. You’ve had a few local gigs – but what now? Well, it’s going to cost you a bit of money, and a lot of time.

Web Presence

1. Organise your mailing – even if it is just one from your Outlook Express. Allow people to get on it. You can use a lot of third-party solutions such as Yahoo Groups / Wufoo / Icontact Zookoda - whatever service you feel is suitable for your costs or project.

2. Don’t over-plug your projects - people get very bored if just signed up to you out of politeness. Ask them to add you to their Safe List, as otherwise you’ll end up in the SPAM box.

3. Make your own webpage that isn’t MySpace – you don’t know how?

4. Use blogger.com and post news regularly. Link to friends’ websites, and ask nicely if they will link to you in return. If you feel the need, let a few free tracks to get out.

5. If Blogger does not ‘do’ enough for you – use Drupal and an automatic install of it on Machine Networks for £3.50 a month. Sony use Drupal for their artist websites, and The Onion use it for their very popular news site. Wordpress and Joomla are other alternative free content management systems to consider.

6. Install Google Analytics on your page – this will let you find out why, when, and how people use your website. It sounds fancy is actually easy-peasy, and will help you in the long run.

7. Find some relevant music blogs, and/or aspiring writing people to review your work. To your face, usually everyone will tell you they like your work. If they have to put their opinion into words with their name in the byline, they may not be so inclined to be gracious.

8. Everybody still loves it? The record is still the best thing the world hasn’t heard? Excellent.

9. Are you sure? If you push your band before you are ready, you can garner black marks next to your name for years, as people remember “oh, that band from ages ago? They suck!”. Oh, still cool you are? Let’s go then.

Don’t hate the Media; become the Media

9. Channel 4 Slash music / Bebo / Trig / Moblog / Sellaband / Slice The Pie / YouTube / Yahoo 360 / Upcoming / Last.Fm / www.scoutr.co.uk / musicnation.com / Facebook….

There are a million social and music networks out there. None will make you famous, but they all can contribute to awareness about, and drive traffic to, your precious project.

Make sure they all link to each other (that’s how Search Engines work). Ideally, if you can use RSS feeds from your Blogger/Drupal page to do that it will save you updating them manually.

10. Post any cool articles about yourselves onto Digg / Shoutwire / Technorati / Del.icio.us or similar.

11. Register with the http://music.podshow.com/ Get any airplay? Blogs say nice things? Quote them on your website. Tell all the Podcasts where they can buy your stuff.


12. Get a mate to write a review on Playlouder.com / DazedDigital / Bizot.ch or similar contributed editorial websites.

13. Register your tracks on www.Last.Fm. Play them a few times. Make sure your friends that use Last FM have copies and play them a few times. If you have a budget you can force a 1000 plays on people for a £100.

14. If you have got this far, then you seem to be taking this whole thing seriously. Well done

15. Sign up for My MCPS/PRS / myPPL / www.catcouk.com / and go get yourself some ISRC numbers (congratulations, you just made yourself a record label). Make sure that these ISRC numbers are in all your outlets, as that is how the charts are made.

16. Want more info about making a label? Check here: http://www.bemuso.com

17. Set up and Indiestore page – put a couple of tracks up for sale, and throw one in for free. Make sure your Myspace / Indiestore / Homepage all have relevant links to each other.

The Dark Arts of Distribution

18. Okay, this is all very well, but we want to see our releases on iTunes and on Amazon. These companies do aggregated distribution for independent artists, and it will cost you a bit more. If you were Radiohead, you could cut a deal…but you aren’t as famous as them, so you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way:
http://www.emubands.com/
http://advantage.amazon.co.uk/
http://www.cdbaby.com/

19. Okay, you want your releases in local record shops. Ask them about stocking them on a sale and return basis. Keep an Excel spreadsheet of your distribution.

20. Don’t understand Excel? Find a manager that does, and love him for it. Offer to pay him and hope he says ‘no’.

21. HMV: you want our releases in HMV round the country… erm I must confess I don’t know how to do that.

Some of the distributors that feed into them are: Vital:Pias / Pinnacle / Cargo.
Call them up, ask them questions, and prepare to be ignored.

I know from previous experience, when I have said we are expecting to sell 2000 copies of a release, they still don’t get back to me. It is tough for them. It’s only if you can guarantee you are going to flog 20k records, ask them for an advance.

22. By now your marvellous Record is stocked with main online retailers. Logged with MCPS / PRS / your performances are on PPL. Everything is in place.

Press Play

23. Read this Radio Play guide: http://www.tomrobinson.com/writing/radioplay.htm and do what Tom Robinson says.

24. Make some printed CDRs in see-through sleeves, with very simple details of the tunes with the release date on it. These are good for promotions. If you want to sell to the public you will have to get some nice ones made (don’t use the Impact font or I will kill you).

25. Send it to radio stations, hand-picked and hand-written like that Tom Robinson said.

26. If you can’t come up with a suitably controversial publicity stunt, how about calling up the radio and requesting your own track, that you know they have as you sent it in? Just don’t tell them that you’re in the band.

27. Press: there’s a lot to be said about understated presentation. Club together with some like minded bands and pretend you have a press company. Copy the format of this Duffy Press Release (Congratulations you have a Press Company - charge for it!). Politely nudge and convince writers that they like they are onto a winner if they cover this band, and offer to do some interviews.

Find the review writers of magazines, email them and ask for a contact address to send them a promo. Then send on your CDs. Be subtle and charming.


28. Web Traffic: use digg / shoutwire / blogs / if you have a show make sure you are linked too. Get the blogs that cover you to link to you. Ask the indie music sites if they take advertising? Might only cost you £30 here and there.

They say that money is the live show

29. Can’t get gigs? Book your own shows you will make/lose more money if they work that way. Makes sure you can make them more of an experience and get known for good parties, rather then be on that 8:00pm 20-minute slot where you’ll be playing to the barstaff and that guy sweeping up.

Use wegottickets.com to sell tickets they are independent ticket agent.

There are always ailing pubs that want a few people in.
DON’T label things as showcases – it is very pretentious.
DO build a scene without trying not to exploit your friends.
DON’T stick stickers in the toilet there is an ancient curse that it means your band is shit.

30. Approach some promoters of new band nights, and arrange to have a few gigs here and there. Send the listings to Gigs@PAentertainment.com and/or clubs@paentertainment.com . The promoter should be doing this, but they might not. This is the universal organisation that flogs gig listings to the newspaper websites.

31. If you have made a CD or T-shirts. TAKE THEM TO THE GIG AND SELL THEM. Chances are you will make more money from them then the show.

32. But you want to get some good support slots?

For that you need an agent, but they aren’t going to be convinced until they think there is a load of money and success behind it. Generally all agents will only take on a project if a label or significant press is behind it.

Find a band that you would suit a support, and find out who is their agent is, and approach someone in their company, asking if they have any slots to fill - local or otherwise. You will only get £50 though, even if it is at Wembley – but you will sell merch.

X-Ray | Coda | Helter Skelter | Itb | Primary | The Agency | CAA | William Morris will probably cover most bands between them.

33. Try and get on festival bills…it doesn’t have to be Glastonbury or Reading, these days there are a million and one smaller festivals around and they need bands to fill their stages. Approach promoters in advance (not just when it starts to get sunny and you fancy playing outside) – they often book 9 months in advance.

Publishing

34. Registering with the PRS and PPL is the grounding for this. All your monies from Radio Play, TV, Films, etc, around the world will be fed through these guys. If you are not registered, you won’t got anything. It’s that simple.

35. Take PRS forms with when you perform, and send them off yourself. If you know any DJs, get them to include some of your tracks in their PRS playlists.

36. Sync: Now is the time to exploit the family and friends. Exploit your contacts. Anyone work in advertising / TV / Films? Send them copies of CDs, with a concise biog of your press and radio play. Don’t harass them, but do find out if they listened to it.

Now this is possibly the most important one. If you can get your tune on a big advert, you could expect anywhere from £20-60 grand. That is bigger then most record deals you are likely to get.

Nobody likes us everybody hates us just because we eat worms

37. Are you now saying something like “I can’t believe that we did all that and haven’t had any sort of break yet!”

Or maybe “No label is interested / No publishing company got in touch / No magazine ever covered us / No Agent ever replied / we never sold any downloads” or similar?

38. Maybe you are just not good enough. If you did all that, then you should have a press company and a small record label by now and have learnt how to make search-friendly websites from scratch. Maybe your skills weren’t meant for the Axe?

39. Maybe your sound isn’t in fashion (it happens)? It took Pulp ten years to get a record deal. Work out how much you are prepared to put into this project, in both time and money, before calling it day.

This list isn’t complete

40. “You left out a lot information about Merchandise / Publishing / Tour supports / Branding / Compilations / Video Promotions / Web Animation….” Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes I get the idea - this list is a work-in-progress, and I have tried to write about things I have done.

What’s that you say? “Your punctuation is rubbish” Yes, the comma key on my keyboard broke off when I tore it off, after someone asked me to explain the same bloody thing for the 20th time, without simply doing a Google search on it. I got one of my tame journo’s to scrub it up in his lunch-hour today.

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