As live music’s corporate giants continue to concentrate on market share dominance and revenue growth, the plight of independent operators battling to compete has never been fiercer. But as IQ discovers, the passion for delivering meaningful events, for artists and audiences alike, is continuing to drive these entrepreneurial outfits forward, albeit amid some challenging circumstances…

Covid may have been the final straw for many independent companies involved in live entertainment, as two years without income left some bankrupt and others disillusioned. But the enforced lockdowns also provided numerous professionals with the chance to set up their own companies, with the agency sector in particular experiencing the birth of numerous new outlets, including Mother Artists, One Fiinix Live, Runway and Midnight Mango, in the UK.

Compiling our inaugural indie-focussed edition of IQ, we heard from countless professionals who are either working at independent companies or running their own enterprises and the myriad challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. But their conviction to remain indie and to excel in their particular sectors or markets is inspiring.

And while Earth Agency’s Williamson believes it is slightly easier to operate as an independent now than when the company first started, it’s clear that in today’s live music business, the obstacles to remaining independent are high. Noting the camaraderie among the indie sector, Rev. Moose at New York-based Marauder comments, “We consider ourselves fortunate to have made strong relationships within the freelance community that allow us to support one another.” He notes that honesty is one of the guiding principles at Marauder, rather than the over-selling that some companies seem to expound. “We’re a small company that manages quite large programmes. Part of this is due to how we communicate with our clients, making sure they understand our practical limitations and needs as much as we understand theirs.”

“I have a healthy company, and I cannot see the benefit of being part of something else”

In Belgium, Steven Thomassen, founder of Toutpartout, is celebrating 30 years of being independent. “I love the luxury of only telling myself what I have to do and having the freedom to do that,” he says. “I don’t have many luxury demands: I don’t need a swimming pool or a big car because I like using public transport. And right now, I have a healthy company, and I cannot see the benefit of being part of something else.”

That’s a philosophy that strikes a chord with Conal Dodds at Crosstown Concerts in the UK. “I didn’t come into music just to make money. It’s a vocation, it’s something I love doing, and I still think I’m in it for the right reasons,” he tells IQ. “I’m not driven by money in the same way that a lot of people are – all I need is enough. Crosstown has 19 full-time employees, and I’d rather be in a position where I can pay them all a really good salary, and they can all have a nice existence, rather than just milking it all for myself.”

Outlining his decision to remain independent, Anthony Jouet of Prague-based promoters, Fource Entertainment, says, “There are no shareholders to tell me that we need to do 50% more shows next year or hit some crazy targets just to try to raise more money. We’d rather do the right shows and deliver them with the same quality of services we are known for than overwhelm myself and the team by booking so many shows that we’re not able to allocate proper time to them.”

That’s an approach that Greenhouse Talent founder Pascal Van De Velde sees as fundamental to his business. “I’ve had bosses before – really good ones who I could look up to,” he says. “But with the big corporations, your superiors are not always people that you look up to. In many cases, you report to the accounts department. Whereas, for me, it’s the music and the concerts and the artist relationships that are key. I don’t want anybody breathing down my neck about much money we’re going to make in six months’ time.”

“Global deals are a major game changer

Losing acts
For those on the promoting side of the fence, while there are always opportunities to begin working with exciting new talent, the increasing popularity of global tour deals is causing some to reconsider whether artist development is still worth investing the time.

Global deals “make our work massively more difficult, as we cannot ever be sure that we are still going to remain as promoters on the next cycle,” says Jouet. Indeed, he can cite examples. Among the acts Fource has worked with, up to arena level, are Imagine Dragons, Billie Eilish, and Twenty One Pilots. “But we lost the last tours to Live Nation because what they can offer the acts was obviously unbeatable,” says Jouet. “It’s a pattern that’s happening more and more. Global deals are a major game changer.”

Dodds has similar experiences. “Those bigger companies can say to new acts, ‘Well, if you don’t let us be your promoter, you won’t get our festivals.’ So, it’s definitely a struggle, but I would still rather be in a position where I know that I’m going to lose an act at a certain point in their career because they’re going to take a European deal or a worldwide deal. I can deal with that just as long as I’m not answerable to someone that’s based in LA or Berlin or wherever.

“I’m philosophical: you have to roll with the punches. But I do think it will get increasingly difficult over the next five to ten years for independent companies like Crosstown to exist, because there aren’t many that will be able to promote at a national level.”

“As an independent, you need to know your limit. And if you cross the line, you will get hurt”

Van De Velde takes another view: that not being part of a corporate structure allows him to operate free from a need to increase turnover or maintain a monopoly. “Our goal at Greenhouse, meanwhile, is directly connected to the profession, to the artists. It is to make a concert successful and an artist’s career successful – and that’s not a secondary goal. Of course, the competition from the corporations is enormous, so we have to make sure we are much better than they are – but there’s always room for boutiques and the personal touch.”

He continues, “If you’re a mid-size artist or manager and your guy in Benelux who you’ve worked with for 25 years has always done a good job – he’s very attentive and detailed about your career and knows your sensibilities – I think you’ll definitely consider working with a person like that, because you’re still in touch with the boss of the company.”

That sentiment is reflected on both sides of the Atlantic, with Jose Muniz at Mercury Concerts telling IQ, “Unlike big corporations that can afford to overpay an act for whatever reason – market share, world dominance, executive promotions and bonuses – as an independent, you need to know your limit. And if you cross the line, you will get hurt.”

However, nodding to his 12 years within the OCESA/T4F setup, Muniz adds that experience within a major company has helped shape his business since. “Personally, I learned to apply some of the corporate mentality to my independent operation: the discipline, the way I focus on results, and last but not least, to realise that my bank account, although solid, has limitations.”

“First and foremost, we’re all very entrepreneurial in spirit, and we are all very committed to our artists”

Agents of change
In March 2023, Primary Talent International announced a management buyout following CAA’s acquisition of ICM, Primary’s former parent company.

“First and foremost, we’re all very entrepreneurial in spirit, and we are all very committed to our artists,” says partner Sally Dunstone of Primary’s reinstated indie status. “We enjoy having the freedom to work with whichever artists we want on our roster, and we are very committed to making sure that they’re serviced as well as any other agency.”

And noting that the independent spirit can be a state of mind that can exist within individuals across the industry, she continues, “As an agent, you work with the people who you get on with the best, and there are many promoters at AEG, Eventim, Live Nation, and others, who were independent and then moved into that space, but they still have that indie, entrepreneurial approach.”

Indeed, believing that many live music professionals still pursue their careers from a position of passion, Dunstone adds, “It’s a vocation, it’s not a job, and you have to love it to be able to excel.

“As an agent, you wake up every day and you never know what challenge is going to hit you – it could be a thousand different things. But the important thing is how you react, and here at Primary, we’re a very strong, closeknit team, and we’re very collaborative in terms of solving issues that will benefit our artist clients and promoter partners.”

“I don’t have to ring anybody up to make a financial decision”

Highlighting the multiple hats that many indie operators wear in order to make ends meet, Thomassen explains that in addition to promoting shows across the Netherlands and Belgium, Toutpartout is also an established agency for international and domestic talent, while other sidelines include a record label and a record store.

And while some peers worry about global deals, he’s less concerned about losing talent. “I have a very long relationship with a lot of my acts. For instance, Beach House and Kurt Weill were sleeping on my couch when they first came over – they stayed in my house, and we grew up together. I think those acts don’t forget that because they also have this indie spirit,” says Thomassen.

“I still need to do my job properly, of course, delivering shows or festivals that a band or manager expects, because I’m sure they will move somewhere else if I don’t. And that sometimes still happens. But I love the bands I work with, and I love their music – it’s what I try to send out to the world and also to the promoters or the festivals. I’m not saying that in all the major companies that you’re a number, but it’s a different approach. For me, all of my acts are my priorities, so I give all my attention to them.”

Crosstown’s Dodds thinks the indie approach is, by definition, the most sustainable for the industry. “Nimble is a great way of putting it,” he says. “I don’t have to ring anybody up to make a financial decision. We’re easy to get hold of – the agents deal with me or the relevant promoter, they don’t have to wait for a decision because we’ve got to get someone to sign off our deals, for instance. And they’re not having to wait for six weeks to get paid because we’re a big corporate machine that is top heavy in terms of admin. We’re prompt payers.”

But he concludes that when it comes to independent promoters, at least, Crosstown and its compatriots around the world could become an endangered species.

“I’m never complacent. Even with acts I’ve worked with for a long time, you never know what’s around the corner”

“I’m never complacent. Even with acts I’ve worked with for a long time, you never know what’s around the corner, and I don’t have the pockets to dangle £100m cheques in front of them. And I don’t want to – I’m not in high finance, I’m in showbiz. Developing new acts has always been the thrill for me.

“I might find the hottest new thing and do a few gigs with them, and then suddenly they burst through to arena level, and suddenly Live Nation or AEG have signed them to a global deal. That’s the way the world works. But one of the things that my old Crosstown partner, Paul Hutton, always said was that he saw a future where there would be two or three companies that completely dominated the marketplace and owned everything. And when that happens, then the agents will have ceded too much power, too.”

In Spain, Xavi Manresa launched Cap-Cap Produccions in 1988, and admits he is becoming more reluctant about working on new acts only to lose them to global deals. “It’s hard to be independent, knowing that I’m probably not going to recuperate all the time and energy and money that I put into developing a band in the market. That’s why I don’t do that many new bands these days.” he says.

However, he discloses his own simple plan to reinvigorating those early independent sensibilities – the expansion of a new office in an emerging market – in Cap-Cap’s case, Tbilisi, Georgia. “It’s something really interesting for me because everything has to be built from the ground up,” he reports, “It’s like Spain in the 80s, but with more infrastructure because there’s already some people working there.”

And while he confesses he may launch a festival in Georgia, it’s the intimate shows that titillate the music fan within, keeping his indie spirit alive. “I’m not interested in arenas or stadiums. Who wants to see Green Day on a screen when you can do a club of 2,000 capacity?! That’s the kind of show I did for them in 2019,” Manresa adds.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

UK promoter Crosstown Concerts has expanded its team by welcoming Connor Cupples as a new national promoter.

Cupples has 18 years of live music industry experience, starting out as a local promoter and going on to serve stints as manager of Cardiff’s Gwdihw venue, and as operations manager and promoter at Wales’ Orchard Live.

He has worked with artists such as Thunder, You Me At Six, IDLES, Viagra Boys, TV Girl, Feeder and Rufus Wainwright, in addition to helping deliver Paul McCartney’s Glastonbury warm-up show, plus major outdoor gigs with the likes of Diana Ross, Bryan Adams, Tears for Fears, Paul Weller and Gerry Cinnamon.

“Connor has been on my radar for a few years now and we are delighted to have him joining our team,” says Crosstown Concerts director Conal Dodds. “He’s very well regarded across the industry and we look forward to him developing new opportunities for us across the UK.”

“I’ve worked with some amazing acts in my time at Orchard Live and can’t wait to get stuck in at Crosstown to achieve even more”

Crosstown’s forthcoming shows include Ash, Pixies, Vaccines, The Menzingers, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Barenaked Ladies, Max Cooper, Slowdive and Royksopp. The company is also broadening its output by staging 18 sold-out dates with comic Brian Butterfield, a sold-out UK tour with broadcaster James O’Brien and launching a Polar Express Christmas experience on the Swanage heritage railway.

”I’m thrilled to be joining the amazing team at Crosstown Concerts, they have a brilliant and passionate team and I’m very much looking forward to learn from them,” adds Cupples. “I’ve worked with some amazing acts in my time at Orchard Live and can’t wait to get stuck in at Crosstown to achieve even more.”

Formed by Dodds and Paul Hutton in 2016, Crosstown added four young industry professionals to its team earlier this year in Danny Morris, Richard Walsh, Simon Bailey and Hayley Thompson.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Independent promoter Crosstown Concerts has added four young industry professionals to its team to extend its network of artists and live shows as the firm enters a new era.

Formed by Conal Dodds and fellow director Paul Hutton in 2016, the company has promoted more than 2,000 live shows across the UK with a focus on nurturing a loyal stable of artists and “protecting fans from the excesses of the secondary ticketing market”.

With Hutton now planning to step back to an advisory role, the firm says it is looking forward to a new era bolstered by an injection of fresh talent in promoters Hayley Thompson, Richard Walsh, Simon “Blaze” Bailey and Danny Morris.

“I was keen to introduce new voices into Crosstown that face the future”

“Promoting live music has never been more vibrant, as we rise from the turmoil of the pandemic to shape a new landscape,” says Dodds. “I was keen to introduce new voices into Crosstown that face the future. This new breed of promoters each bring their own passion, individual ideas and ambitions that will bring progression to our business, the artists and fans.

“Paul Hutton is stepping back from front line promoting from the end of March to take up an advisory consultancy role, so our new team is the way forward for Crosstown. We celebrated our seventh anniversary in business earlier this month and we look forward to the next seven.”

Thompson ran her own website, Music Festival News, before joining Crosstown as a freelance digital marketer in 2017 and was upped to head of marketing in 2020 before she began booking and promoting her own shows for Crosstown. Her debut showcase event Do It Without You begins on April 18th at The Lexington in London, featuring upcoming talent including Bekah Bossard, Rosie Shaw and Harriet Rock.

Walsh, who joined Crosstown as a national promoter in January, helmed early releases with Porridge Radio, The Orielles and The Golden Dregs via his own Art is Hard label, before making the switch to promoting in Bristol. For six years, his company, 1% of One, staged shows with the likes of Weyes Blood, Alex G, Bill Callahan, Mitski, Yard Act and Black Country, New Road. During this time, Walsh also founded Factor 50, managing the careers of Katy J Pearson, Happyness and Young Knives, alongside working as an assistant on the Adam Buxton podcast.

Bailey, aka Blaze, brings over a decade of promoting experience, starting his career in the booking team at Wolverhampton Civic Halls in the late 2000s. He has also worked in venue, artist and tour management.

Bailey founded Future Perfect in 2015, bringing artists such as Loyle Carner, IDLES, Tom Grennan, Slowdive, Easy Life, Dermont Kennedy, Courtney Barnett to Oxford. He has worked with Crosstown since 2018 and promotes the likes of Katy J Pearson, Pale Blue Eyes, Kurt Vile, DIIV, Bellowhead, Thea Gilmore, Easy Star All-Stars and The Comet Is Coming. In 2020, he launched Ritual Union Festival in Bristol in collaboration with Walsh and will promote more than 150 shows in 2023.

Morris, meanwhile, started out booking the likes of Idles, Catfish & The Bottlemen and Bill Ryder Jones into grassroots indie venues. Moving over to the Preston Guild Hall as the in-house promoter, booking artists such as White Lies, Bowling for Soup, Pigeon Detectives, Soul II Soul and British Sea Power.

After a brief stint working for VMS Live, he moved over to TEG MJR, where he promoted 300-plus gigs a year, and worked with the likes of De La Soul, Dinosaur JR, Eagles of Death Metal, Kiefer Sutherland, Alfa Mist, Starsailor and Red Rum Club. He moved to Crosstown in 2022, where he promotes UK tours for the likes of The Sherlocks, Badly Drawn Boy, John Cooper Clarke and Max Cooper.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

IQ 96, the latest issue of the international live music industry’s favourite monthly magazine, is available to read online now.

February’s IQ Magazine details the unique 2021 edition of the International Live Music Conference (ILMC) and offers an exclusive preview of new session Pulse with agent Mike Malak.

Elsewhere, IQ editor Gordon Masson finds out New Zealand’s industry is coping in its post-pandemic bubble, and talks to some of Europe’s biggest venues to find out how they plan to get back up and running, as the European Arenas Association turns 30.

This issue also hears from Crosstown Concerts director Conal Dodds, who details his firm’s creation of a new live-streaming operation, and Nue Agency chief Jesse Kirshbaum, who extols gaming’s ability to introduce artists to new audiences and accelerate career development.

And if you’re curious to know what Rob Challice (Paradigm), Claudio Trotta (Barley Arts), Alan Day (Kilimanjaro Live) and other industry pros are looking forward to most when life gets back to normal, you’ll find the answers in Your Shout.

All that is in addition to all the regular content you’ve come to expect from your monthly IQ Magazine, including news analysis and new agency signings, the majority of which will appear online in some form in the next four weeks.

Whet your appetite with the preview below, but if you can’t wait for your fix of essential live music industry features, opinion and analysis, click here to subscribe now and receive IQ 96 in full.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

British promoter Crosstown Concerts has launched an artist management division, joining forces with Cliff Jones and Mark Bowers (the latter formerly a colleague of Crosstown founders Paul Hutton and Conal Dodds at Metropolis Music) to create Crosstown Management.

The new division – which the company says gives Crosstown a talent development arm that will be “important to its growth plans in the coming years” – is initially looking after artists including Keir, Mauwe, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and, in partnership with Ian Mizen and James Dawson of Jax Management, Paris Youth Foundation.

“The Crosstown team has a heritage in artist management as well as promoting, so it’s great to have that part of the business launched and some great up-and-coming artists under our umbrella already breaking through in the European market,” comments Dodds.

“It’s great to have some great up-and-coming artists under our umbrella already breaking through in the European market”

“We are looking at a huge number of touring dates and festivals this summer under the Crosstown umbrella and we’re inviting artists looking for representation to get in touch, as we are looking at expanding the roster during 2018.”

Adds Bowers: “We are delighted to join Crosstown and launch this new management company. We share a great passion for developing artists and for giving fans a great experience.”

Crosstown Concerts was launched by Hutton and Dodds, both former directors of Metropolis Music, and hotel owner Fraser Duffin in September 2016. Upcoming tours for 2018 include Belle and Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Jack White, the Wombats, the Vaccines and George Ezra, along with festivals Bristol Sounds and the Downs Festival Bristol.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Figures from across the live music industry have shared their memories of Mark E. Smith, the late frontman of UK post-punk pioneers The Fall, who died yesterday after a period of illness.

“Name a promoter you know and we’ve all got a Fall story,” says Crosstown-concerts Conal Dodds, who relates his own. “My gig was 1992 I think, Bristol Victoria Room: Mark E. Smith barging out of the dressing room, beer can in hand, mid-afternoon, moaning, ‘Why is there always a racket going on every day when I’ve finished soundchecking? I want some peace and quiet… I’m not fucking having it!’”

‘That,’ replied Dodds, ‘will be the support band, Mark.’

Tim Hornsby of York venue Fibbers says that “you get warned about doing a show with Mark E. Smith: Late on stage, short sets, pissed, cantankerous…”

Conversely, Hornsby says on the “many times” he promoted Smith (pictured), while “he was very definitely pissed”, Smith “was also a model of good temper and co-operation, performing long sets and even encores. Unbelievably, in recent years, he once stood at the front door shaking hands as people came in.”

“He was a mad, brilliant, intense, horrible genius, and the world was a better place with him in it”

He continues: “Yes, a man with immeasurable man-of-the-people lyricism, oft-impenetrable logic but always with his singular independence, total and undisguised disdain for self-proclaimed authority and the only man to appear on Jools Holland’s show with the stipulation, ‘as long as he doesn’t tinkle along with us on the joanna’ [piano].

“In an era of committee-composed music weak as maiden’s water, little or no imaginative vocabulary or delivery, and samples, samples, samples, Mark E. Smith’s urgent and angsty guitar indie almost entirely stood alone.

“I’m going to miss him getting tangled in mic leads, fiddling with the amps and generally rambling around looking confused, but always in total control of yet another packed house.”

“When I finally met him, sometime in the late ’90s, he was in one of his phases where he was sacking the band on a nightly basis,” recalls Mark Davyd, CEO of Music Venue Trust and co-owner of the Tunbridge Wells Forum. “After an hour and a half waiting, he finally took the stage and proceeded to rant over some improvised rockabilly performed by a drummer he’d met yesterday and a keyboard player who he’d handed a bass to. The show lasted 40 minutes. No one asked for their money back. It was The Fall.

“Name a promoter you know and we’ve all got a Fall story”

“We ended the evening together in a romantic fashion, him chasing me round the dressing room trying to hit me with £3,000 in cash. At least a dozen other promoters could tell you a similar story.

“He was a mad, brilliant, intense, horrible genius, and the world was a better place with him in it. Thanks, Mark.”

Enter Shikari manager Ian Johnsen says he was “13 years old when I accepted Mark E. Smith into my life. Like most fans, I have stories. Some of them from my own first-hand experience – others legends passed down from those that came before me.

“I saw The Fall countless times. No matter what, I never left disappointed. (Though last time I saw them I left halfway through as it upset me too much, but that’s different to disappointment, yeah?)

“I hope Mark E. Smith is remembered for what he actually was, not the caricature that is so easy for people to fall back on. A fantastic life.

“‘Ours is not to look back. Ours is to continue the crack…’ And this, always…”

“I hope Mark E. Smith is remembered for what he actually was, not the caricature that is so easy for people to fall back on”

Finally, paying tribute to her ex-husband, Brix Smith-Smart, The Fall’s guitarist from 1983 to 1989, says: “Mark defied convention and definition – he was a true artist. When I arrived in Manchester – a young American – he introduced me to pickled onions, pubs and punk. He was my music mentor, my cultural anchor and my first love.

“I feel deeply saddened by his passing but I feel a greater joy for having shared his journey. He never once compromised; how many others can leave this life with such a singularity of vision?

“‘Check the guy’s track record, he is not appreciated’ – now at last he is…”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

If 2016 will be remembered in the live music business for any one thing, it will be as the 12 months in which the pitchforks well and truly came out against secondary ticketing.

It was the year of the Waterson report and the Bots and Boss Acts, of FanFair and #ResaleNO, and the year in which Italy surprised the world by announcing plans to outlaw ticket touting altogether.

Although most of the industry – with, of course, the exception of the secondary sites themselves – agree on the desirability of minimising touting, it remains divided on the best way to do so. Italian-style legislation is one possibility; as is blocking individual sites, as has happened in Belgium.

Another is the dynamic pricing of tickets, in which prices fluctuate based on market demand – already common for sporting events, as well as in the booking of airline tickets and hotel rooms. Despite market leader Ticketmaster throwing its hat in the dynamically priced ring for select tickets in 2007 – followed by then-CEO Irving Azoff calling for more dynamic pricing in music – the practice has yet to find widespread acceptance in the live music industry, despite its obvious potential for making the for-profit secondary market far riskier for touts, if not redundant altogether.

The reason for that, says Barry Kahn, the CEO of Qcue, a leading developer of dynamic pricing software, is primarily logistical: “From our side, it’s a challenge working with [concert] promoters because ticketing relationships run through venues: for example, Madison Square Garden with Ticketmaster,” he explains. “If you’re an artist coming through MSG you don’t touch the ticketing system.”

Kahn says the majority of his current clients are sports teams, with “not a lot of dynamic pricing on the concert side”. While he is clear he “[doesn’t] want to say it doesn’t justify the fees” – “I’ve never seen a client that didn’t have a large positive on ROI [return on investment],” he says – he admits “it is a more expensive proposition” to dynamically price tickets, and for that reason is more popular for long runs at a single venue.

“I’ve never seen a client that didn’t have a large positive on ROI”

Manager Adam Tudhope – co-founder of Everybody’s (Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling, Keane) and a prominent anti-touting campaigner – says he “doesn’t doubt that it [dynamic pricing] might be one of the tools that people use alongside other ones [to minimise touting] – and I say good luck to them”.

Tudhope says it’s important that artists and promoters are upfront with their audience – that if they do decide to dynamically price, they let fans know the reason ticket prices are fluctuating – and that the ‘demand’ determining prices isn’t fixed by the secondary market.

“The ethical stance when selling tickets to fans is to be as transparent as possible,” he says. “If an artist and their business advisors think the audience can afford to pay more – and they want to make more money out of the show – then as long as they’re straightforward with their audience about what their offering is, I don’t see a problem with dynamic pricing.

“Doing it via secondary is underhand and rips off the fan, because they don’t know what the whole market has to offer.”

Ticketmaster UK, which dynamically prices most of its high-profile shows under the Ticketmaster Platinum banner, tells IQ its Platinum tickets aren’t pegged to how well shows are telling on its secondary platforms (Seatwave, Get Me In!). “Platinum prices are based on the demand,” explains managing director Andrew Parsons. “We place a portion out for sale starting at what we estimate market price to be; this is based on previous experience and our data tools. We also gauge market price on how quickly the initial allocation sells – we change price as we release more seats.”

Parsons says dynamic pricing is suitable for multi-venue tours, as opposed to just residency-style shows, explaining that the company can easily “manage it across multiple promoters and venues”.

“There are often many decision-makers involved … It can sometimes be challenging to get everyone on the same page”

While Parsons says he’d “love to think” there will be a time when Ticketmaster’s general-admission (GA) tickets are also dynamically priced, he explains it’s much easier to implement with premium seats. “With Platinum there’s a clear differentiating element: you’re selling the best seat,” he says. “That’s understood by both consumers and artists. It’s harder to do when it’s GA.”

Greg Loewen, CEO of Qcue rival Digonex, says he believes take-up of dynamic pricing in live music is being affected by a false belief among many promoters that dynamic pricing is an unreliable or unproven technology.

“Pricing is really hard, especially for a tour,” Loewen tells IQ. “Every night is in a different market and a different venue. Optimising pricing under those conditions is extraordinarily time-consuming and challenging, and not many dynamic pricing tools are designed to handle that level of complexity, so promoters may assume there is no reliable way to dynamically price a tour.” He insists that isn’t the case: “We hope to talk to those folks!”

One of Digonex’s live-entertainment partners is a well-known American comedian, who has seen significantly increased ticket revenues as a result of adopting dynamic pricing. “When we started out, his manager was concerned about the price going up too much,” explains Loewen. “But because of his popularity, we’re now seeing significant growth in ticket price – and we haven’t had a single complaint from any consumers.”

Despite the success stories in sports and live comedy, both Loewen and Kahn admit dynamically pricing live music is more difficult.

“There are often many decision-makers involved: promoters, agents, venue management, artists,” says Loewen. “It can sometimes be challenging to get everyone on the same page regarding a significant change like adopting dynamic pricing. It takes time.”

“As promoters we spend far too much time having to discuss ticketing and allocations – time that could be better spent on marketing and selling shows”

Former Metropolis Music director Conal Dodds – now running Crosstown Concerts with Paul Hutton and Fraser Duffin – says he can’t see it becoming commonplace in touring. “I think [it] works on theatre runs, and could work on festivals and residencies, for instance, but it would be incredibly complicated to strike a deal on the basis of one-off shows or tours where more than one promoter is involved,” he explains.

While Crosstown is committed to minimising touting for its shows – and has an exclusive ticketing partnership with Songkick to that end – Dodds says, as a promoter, he just isn’t interested in getting into the nitty-gritty of ticketing, gradually or otherwise: “As promoters we spend far too much time having to discuss ticketing and allocations – time that could be better spent on marketing and selling shows, which is where we all earn our monies.”

Kahn believes in order for dynamic pricing to see wide adoption in live music, “you need a restructuring in contracts”, with promoters “properly incentivised to take more risks” via a more generous share of the show’s revenue. At the moment, he says, there’s “too much risk and not much upside for the promoter”, leading to the temptation to “purposefully” pass tickets to secondary sellers.

There’s also the thorny issue of the potential for dynamic tickets to drop in price if the demand isn’t there. “Bands,” says Kahn, are simply “unwilling to drop prices… How often does that happen?”

Parsons says the eradication of ticket touting is “very much up there” in the considerations of those artists who do opt for at least partial dynamic pricing. “We’ve had discussions with artists who think it’s a problem,” he explains. “There’s a growing appreciation that you do need to take some steps [to minimise resale], and one of them is dynamic pricing.”

He adds there’s still “almost a stigma” about taking more money from fans, even in a “world where there’s no [income from] recorded”: “If you [artists and promoters] don’t take this money, other people will – you’re the ones with the creativity and who are taking the risk.”

“If you don’t take this money, other people will”

Loewen, too, is firmly in the Michael Rapino/Professor Waterson camp when it comes to the pricing of primary tickets, opining that “the level of activity in the secondary market suggests that many tickets are not priced efficiently”.

“Many view dynamic pricing as code for ‘price gouging’,” he says, “and are concerned about alienating their loyal fans with primary ticket prices that are perceived as too high.

“This is an understandable concern, although we all see that in instances of excess demand many fans will still pay the higher price – the only difference being that more of the profit is captured by the secondary market as opposed to the artists.”

He adds that dynamic pricing “isn’t only about increasing prices: sometimes it’s about lowering them too.  It’s about finding the ‘right’ price that more accurately reflects true market demand and is fair to consumers.”

Tudhope, however – who has spoken of his wish to see ticket touting criminalised in the UK – isn’t wholly convinced. “Dynamic pricing, ethically done, might be appropriate for some of my artists’ audiences, and not for others,” he concludes. “This is the main point, and an important argument to make against the secondary sites who say ‘put on more shows!’ and ‘make your ticket prices higher!’.

“If the artist and I decide that there should only be one show, and that it be priced reasonably, that should frankly be our choice – not down to a market that is completely skewed by the often-illegal practices of touts.”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.