6 - Live music

Summary

Live music market functions

Apart from the artists, the main players in the live music business are (1) music promoters and festival organizers; (2) concert venue operators; (3) music agents and bookers; (4) support service providers; and (5) ticketing companies. Thus, the live music business is based on a division of labour with many different occupational roles.

Music promoters and festival organizers

Promoters

Music promoters organize concerts, tours and festivals at their own risk and expense by selling tickets. The promoter conceptualizes a musical event or a concert tour and, to this end, contracts the artists. A tour manager and crew attend to and support the artists while travelling and performing. Before staging the music event, the promoter is in charge of event publicity and public relations and seeks to support the sales of tickets in order to cover the costs already incurred. The promoter will inform the public about the event with an advertising campaign comprising posters, flyers, mailings, radio and television ads, social media networking, as well as arranging interviews of the artists with journalists and even with press conferences. However, if the presales of tickets indicate an insufficient demand for the event, the promoter will cancel it and has to bear the costs already incurred.

We can roughly distinguish between (1) small local promoters who organize concerts in small venues such as bars and music clubs; (2) regional promoters organizing concerts in medium-sized venues; and (3) national promoters who collect several concert dates to put together national and international tours. Concert promotion involves a high level of risk. The promoters have to spend money upfront and cannot guarantee that a sufficient number of tickets will be sold to cover the costs. The larger the capacity of venue and the higher the number of shows, the higher the risk for the promoter. Therefore, national promoters spread the risk by coupling concert dates of an artist for a tour to cross-collateralize possible losses from one concert by possible gains from others (for the history of the new live music business model see Chapter 1).