The debate over the impact of VIP culture on the next generation of clubbers has been reignited as top executives warn it is in danger of becoming “an elite form of entertainment”.

Moderated by International Music Summit (IMS) co-founder Ben Turner, ILMC 37’s Electronic Music: Where to Now? panel delved into the dance space ahead of the imminent launch of Ibiza’s latest superclub [UNVRS].

Billed as the world’s first “hyper club” thanks to its cutting-edge technology, the 15,000-cap venue is due to open this summer on the site of the former Privilege Ibiza.

“I think it’s going to be amazing,” said CAA agent Maria May, who has worked in the electronic space for almost 30 years. “The team behind it [Yann Pissenem’s The Night League] are incredible. The production in there is going to be epic. I think every artist that is going to be in there is going to make the most of it. Anyone who’s going to Ibiza next summer is going to go to [UNVRS] to see what he’s done to it.”

Today (13 March), meanwhile, it was announced that Calvin Harris will become the first artist in history to hold a double residency at the same White Isle venue in a single season. He will take over Tuesdays (1 July-26 August) and Fridays (30 May-12 September) at Ushuaïa Ibiza this summer with 25 curated shows. General sale tickets cost €100-120.

Speaking at London’s Royal Lancaster, Turner noted electronic music, which was valued globally at $7.3 billion pre-pandemic, suffered an “inevitable dip” during the Covid years, but had since experienced a “phenomenal bounce back” to a “nearly $12bn industry”.

“The whole success of the night is going to be based on if you’re selling out all your tables”

On a less positive note, May admitted to concerns over the general state of affairs, suggesting that young clubbers were shortening their stays in Ibiza due to the escalating costs, and questioned whether the spirit of the island had been “buried”.

“Ibiza was a bit quieter last August, which was unusual,” she observed. “They might have made it up in September, but the reality is it was quieter… because of cost of living.

“I brought someone very important to Ibiza last year, who will remain nameless, but is in the rock & roll world and known to everybody, and they felt that it’s like Vegas now.”

May said the Ibiza profit model was increasingly leaning towards VIP table sales.

“The whole success of the night is going to be based on if you’re selling out all your tables,” she said. “All the investment that’s going into Ibiza has got to be paid for by the VIP tables. [But] there aren’t enough VIPs on the island to fill every single VIP table, so at some point this is going to start to creak.”

May was also critical of some of the circuit’s programming choices for stifling opportunities for newer talent.

“We’re also gatekeeping younger talent from emerging because we continually book the DJs that sell the VIP tables,” she argued. “The whole model now is pretty much based on a VIP offering and what we’re seeing is pretty much the same DJs from the same genres playing every single year. You look around across Europe and you see emerging talent that are selling serious numbers, but they’re not getting a look in.”

“We’re saying that it’s harder and harder to break talent, but we’re actually sticking to that top level… We’re maintaining the hierarchy”

She continued: “An artist that could… be playing in Ibiza this summer is not allowed to, because the promoters don’t know who they are. And yet, in other places in Europe, they’re selling out thousands and thousands of tickets. It takes a lot more than just a hit record and being hot in Europe to have a residency in Ibiza… but there is an element of actually starting to call out the gatekeeping.

“We’re complaining about there’s not enough headliners. We’re saying that it’s harder and harder to break talent, but we’re actually sticking to that top level. Especially in dance music, across the board, we’re maintaining the hierarchy.”

Turner brought up that VIP culture had permeated the London dance scene, pointing to one DJ event where VIP access tickets were priced at £400.

“I can’t stand it, I honestly can’t stand it,” said Pete Jordan of promoter LWE/AMAAD. “It’s a joke, and if we want to onboard young people, we should be really going back to the roots of what it was about… VIP culture is effectively cutting out most people. It’s going to become an elite form of entertainment, and youngsters will just do their own thing – and they’ll do something different.”

He added: “The biggest thing we should be doing is really opening the doors for young promoters to be able to do events and be given a little bit of freedom, and not be pushed too hard financially because, ultimately, it’s a risky business. If you’re 18-19 and haven’t got thousands of pounds to back you, then as soon as you do your one bad show, you’re out of it for good.

“Promoters, DJs, musicians, will keep coming through forever because it’s kind of hardwired into you. But at the same time, we are definitely cutting out some talent at the low end just because there’s too many barriers to getting into the scene.”

“A lot of promoters are going for similar acts across the board”

UTA agent Hannah Shogbola, who represents acts like Jaguar, Helena Star and Girls Don’t Sync and previously worked within the booking team at London’s Fabric, had mixed feelings on the subject.

“I’m kind of split on the VIP thing,” she said. “I think it’s also genre-dependent. For example, within genres such as amapiano and Afro house, VIP does really work. I’m not going to deny that sometimes I prefer to be in a club and be in the VIP section. But in other places, I don’t. I want to be down in the nitty gritty.

“I’m definitely against the insanely overpriced tickets to stand on the side of the stage next to the DJ… But I do think there are events that it is suitable for.”

Shogbola moved on to discuss the heated competition for festival slots within the sector.

“A lot of promoters are going for similar acts across the board,” she said. “Certain parts of my roster that might sit in between fees of £1,000 to £5,000, you’re probably up against 30 to 60 other people competing for that slot. It’s been quite tricky this summer actually, if I’m honest, just allowing myself to give artists that transparency, because obviously, for them, that’s hugely disheartening sometimes. I think in their heads, it’s always like, ‘There’s so many festivals and there’s all these available slots,’ and the reality is there just isn’t anymore.”

“The shows really need to sell out to be successful – 80-90% sold just doesn’t cut it”

Columbo Music’s Marcus Drew, who is also in-house booker for Phonox nightclub in South London and the 15,000-cap Maiden Voyage Festival, described the London festival market as “incredibly saturated”.

“We’re all going for the same kind of space musically, especially within electronic music,” he said. “Two Brixton acts don’t equate to 10,000 tickets. Ultimately, there needs to be an intentional theme in the curation, and there needs to be more community-driven sales beyond just headliners on the bill.

“It’s an interesting point about what slots are available to artists… because of the risks involved with festivals at the moment, the shows really need to sell out to be successful – 80-90% sold just doesn’t cut it. And with that in mind, we’re booking every single slot with artists that have proven ticket value in the market. So even our 12 o’clock slot, our 1pm slot, our 2pm slot, will be someone who’s sold 500 tickets and has proven that in advance. I think that makes it very difficult for everyone else.”

May did see reasons for positivity for the business as a whole, however.

“Yes, we have problems. Yes, there’s a credit crunch. Yes, the cost of living is more,” she added. “But there are still a lot of entities that we work with on a regular basis that are doing really great.”

A report on the state of the electronic music sector will appear in the next edition of IQ.

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ILMC’s annual state-of-the-nation opening session delved into the stadium boom, ticket pricing and the industry’s evolution following a huge year for live music.

Chaired by CAA’s Maria May, The Open Forum: Setting the Course brought together DF Concerts’ Geoff Ellis, Samantha Kirby Yoh of UTA, FKP Scorpio’s Folkert Koopmans and Ashish Hemrajani of India’s BookMyShow.

In her introduction, May noted it had been a “great year for some” but a “hard year for others”, and questioned whether the business needed to refresh its ideas.

“We’re seeing the massive disparity between the top end of the business and the lower end of the business needing much more support,” she said. “We’re seeing lots of ideas coming out with the levy on venues, and I feel like there’s a real need for innovation.”

However, UTA partner and co-head of global music Kirby Yoh reported positive results from the last 12 months.

“Ticket sales are doing good,” said Kirby Yoh. “I think that the headline shows are doing great. The number one thing for me is understanding the artist’s audience and then, in partnership with the local venues… understanding what is happening in each of the local markets and how we tap into the local media partners.”

“The business is as strong as it’s ever been and the appetite is there at all levels”

Kirby Yoh observed a shift in the tastes of the younger demographic.

“The audience is moving away from wanting the festival experience, and they want to actually go more to have the full two-hour-plus experience, seeing their favourite artists for £100, versus going to the festival for £500,” she said.

Glasgow-based DF chief Ellis said the business is “as strong as it’s ever been”, with the appetite for live music evident “at all levels”, and stressed the need for government support for grassroots venues.

“We have more shows this year than we did last year,” he said. “It’s not easier, because the costs are higher so the margins are tighter, but we’ve seen an appetite for ticket sales as strong as it’s ever been and lots of sold out shows, even in January with just local bands. So that appetite is there for grassroots artists, but also for the big artists as well.

“We’re seeing great sales for outdoor shows like Kendrick & SZA, which was a very high ticket price. The average ticket price isn’t huge. It’s significant, but it’s not huge. It can be £150 to buy a ticket on the floor but there’ll be tickets in the seats for £45/£55, so you’re getting that spread across the levels.”

“We’ve got to get better – and we are getting better – at pricing the house”

In response, May asked whether the industry is becoming “smarter” at pricing tickets.

“Artists want their tickets to be affordable for the mass market and that’s understandable,” said Ellis. “So we’ve got to get better – and we are getting better – at pricing the house. You’ve got an entry level ticket and a premium price ticket, so you might be paying £150 for the best seats but those people would go onto the secondary market otherwise – if you price the whole house at £75, you’re underpricing them and the artist should be getting that money.

“This secondary market shouldn’t exist, but it exists because we don’t always price it properly. You don’t price everybody out because you want the working class people to still go to live music – that’s where most of the audiences come from – but charge a premium for the small section of the house and that helps fund the cheaper tickets.”

FKP CEO Koopmans suggested that although ticket prices on headline shows were “reaching a ceiling”, there were still “enough people to pay those high ticket prices”, but raised concerns over the festival market.

“I think on festivals, there is a big problem,” he warned. “People don’t want to spend €250-300 for a festival ticket anymore. I think it’s also got to do with the change in the community, that during the pandemic… we kind of lost the generation.”

Koopmans said the situation facing grassroots venues in Germany was similar to that in the UK.

“It’s the same story,” he said. “There is hardly any subsidy from the government. You can’t make a penny playing a grassroots venue, and the venues itself are suffering. There are countries like Holland where the grassroots venues get [subsidies]. Therefore, you have a lot of shows and bands get a decent fee to play there. So from my point of view, that’s the way to go.”

“The Indian market’s going to go 10x in the next five years”

Moving onto emerging markets, Hemrajani, who is founder and CEO of Big Tree Entertainment Private Limited, which operates India’s leading online entertainment platform BookMyShow, referenced its recent successes including Coldplay’s record-breaking Ahmedabad concerts and Ed Sheeran’s six-city Indian tour.

“Ed Sheeran was unique, because as a top tier artist, we went really deep into the country,” explained Hemrajani. “It was heartening to see that we could do an end stage format produced by us. It wasn’t easy, but it was historic. The average ticket price was about $100.”

Hemrajani predicted the Indian market would balloon “10x in the next five years”, despite acknowledging shortcomings with its current infrastructure. And said its first fully-fledged arena was in the works for Mumbai.

“Arenas is very loose word in India because we have… mostly festival grounds,” he said. “‘We don’t have arenas in India. And we have a six-month window where we can do outdoor events, because our weather permits us to do events between October to April, or at best May.

“The need of the hour is actually to have indoor venues with real air conditioning and 18-20,000 capacities. We’re building an arena in Mumbai, which will be the first hard arena.

“Infrastructure continues to be a challenge, and we’re trying to solve that as you build more routing around Middle East and Southeast Asia, because the timing works. It’s the same time of the year, from October to March, April, when you can tour in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. I think anchoring around those markets is a good segue to actually building volume into that market.”

“Electronic music isn’t dead, but nightclubs have to adapt their model”

May brought up statistics showing decreasing alcohol consumption among young adults in the EU and US, plus a reduction in binge drinking in the UK, and queried whether venues in the UK needed to change their business models as a result.

“Clearly everybody needs to innovate and adapt. We’re always needing to do that as business,” offered Ellis. “You’ve just got to adapt constantly, because the market doesn’t stand still.

“The rise of country music is phenomenal, particularly in the UK. It’s always been big in Glasgow, but it’s exploded now. If any promoters out there are going, ‘I’m not going to do country music,’ they’re going to miss out big time, so we always have to evolve and adapt.

“Electronic music isn’t dead, but nightclubs have to adapt their model because, as we said, people aren’t coming in and drinking. Not everybody wants to be out until 3am anymore.”

Kirby Yoh pointed out that LCD Soundsystem had added a successful afterparty element to their New York residency.

“It is the continual that actually gets a whole new crowd that comes in later,” she said. “Secondly, they have also taken one of the bars at the back and made it an organic wine bar, bringing in local vendors. I know that’s harder, but it’s another way that has encouraged people to come back.”

On the subject of diversification, Koopmans said he was most excited by FKP’s expansion in the exhibitions world under its FKP Scorpio Entertainment (FKPE) umbrella.

“We invested quite a lot in that,” he said. We are building a [new exhibition] venue in Oberhausen. There’s a lot to be done in that area.”

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Accidentally falling into the agency world, Maria May has helped to define the parameters of dance music over the past 30 years.

In part two of our in-depth look at May’s 30 years as an agent, IQ looks at the highlights, lowlights, and future of the CAA agent. Find part one here.

Team Disco
While there were early suggestions that May’s department at CAA be named “EDM,” she insisted on the “Team Disco” moniker that she and assistant Gina Gorman had adopted at ITB. “In London, there are 11 of us, while in America, we’re up to around the same number including agents and assistants – it’s no longer a niche business; it’s huge! But there’s still lots of room for this business to grow. The scenes are constantly evolving with new talent and new genres coming through.”

Looking back to the original Team Disco at ITB, May was one of the pioneers in cementing Ibiza’s place at the centre of the electronic music business. “I was part of the first residencies in Ibiza, thanks to Danny Whittle who wanted to do a residency at Pacha with Paul [Oakenfold]. He told me that if it worked, he also wanted to do it with Death Mix – David Morales, Frankie, Satoshi Tomiie, and all of those guys, and obviously I repped all of those people. The Paul Oakenfold residency was massively successful, and the rest is history.

“Being part of that and setting the building blocks is something I’m pretty proud of, even though we were just doing stuff instinctively. We didn’t really know whether it was gonna work half the time, but it did, so well done us,” she laughs.

Again, she names Judy Weinstein as one of the architects behind the strategy that propelled dance music to a global phenomenon. “It’s a partnership, and the managers who understand that are the best people to work with,” states May. “But I also represent a lot of artists that don’t have managers, so I work with them directly.”

Drawing comparisons to the worlds of rock and pop, she notes, “A DJ schedule is 365 days a year if you want it to be. It’s not built on a model where an album comes out and you’re touring and then you have a year off. I do a lot of live acts as well – Black Eyed Peas has been a fantastic relationship for me, because their management, Polo Molina and Seth Friedman, always trusted me with access to their diaries. I never imagined that I could be their agent, but Rob Light signed them to CAA, and then phoned me to ask if I wanted to be the Black Eyed Peas agent. I just love things that end up being beautiful happy accidents.”

“Suddenly I was working with this guy that I knew from my local area who turned into a massive act”

Losing Talent
Of course, for every happy accident there’s a flip side, and May admits that losing clients can be tough. “I was sad to lose Soulwax and 2manydjs – that was probably the biggest loss of my career, and of course they went to David Levy. That was a wake-up call because I realised that while David is my friend, he’s also my rival. We got through it, but I didn’t handle it very well in the beginning. It happened as soon as I started at CAA, and I’ll always remember going to see Emma Banks, and she was really clear, telling me that CAA didn’t employ me for my acts; they employed me because they believed in me.”

Indeed, May highlights the support her bosses and colleagues provided during some of her darkest moments. “About six years ago, my dad got very ill, and the company allowed me to do whatever I needed to do, so I made the job work around being a single parent with two kids and a dying dad,” she recalls. “And then six months after Dad died, my mom was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and needed round-the-clock nursing. It was a horrible time, but Emma and Mike and everyone at CAA were amazing.”

Career Highlights
Thankfully, the good times vastly outnumber the bad, and May has had some spectacular highlights in her career to date.

“David Guetta at Masada in Israel – I was the first person to do it with a major artist,” she says of her most memorable shows. “I also did Paul Oakenfold on the Great Wall of China before anyone had ever done it. Róisín Murphy at sunset on West Holts at Glastonbury is always fucking amazing – Róisín is one of my favourite partnerships. I’ve loved every second of being her agent, and I genuinely can’t wait for her next record.”

May also cites X-Press 2 as a standout client. “My relationship with their manager, Chris Butler (currently the manager of Jalen Ngonda also repped by CAA), is fantastic. He gave me my first band, Red Snapper, and when I’d been their agent for about a year, we sold out the Astoria, and I just remember being so proud. So, when X-Press 2 blew up, it was just brilliant, as I’d known [DJ] Rocky from growing up, and suddenly I was working with this guy that I knew from my local area who turned into a massive act.”

“Being able to make stuff like that happen that has a legacy is just the cherry on the cake”

She also talks fondly of American talent David Morales and the late Frankie Knuckles. “They taught me all about the New York club scene, and I’d go there every other month. It’s the privilege of a lifetime to know those guys – the originators of house music – and bring them to Europe. Frankie was an enduring friendship that I really am very grateful for. He was an amazing man, and I loved him, so it was really hard when he died.”

May’s association with the godfather of house music continues to this day, through her work as a board member of the Frankie Knuckles Foundation, and she recalls ways in which their relationship helped elevate one act to iconic status.

“I repped Hercules and Love Affair for a long time, and he brought this collection of music to me that included a track called Blind, and his biggest wish was for Frankie to work on remixes. So, I asked Frankie if he would do it, and he was a bit non-committal, so I kept nagging him, and in the end, he said he’d do it for me. And Frankie’s Blind remix is one of the club-defining tracks, even now. So being able to make stuff like that happen that has a legacy, is just the cherry on the cake.”

The Darling Buds of May
While May’s life ultimately revolves around her children, her devotion to her clients’ careers, and the growth of electronic music, means her workaholic approach is more of a vocation than a job. “I’m hugely proud of my two kids,” she states. “They are my greatest achievement.”

Within Team Disco, May works closely with colleague Jen Hammel in CAA’s London office. “We’re a bit of a dynamic duo,” she comments. “[Jen’s] proved to be a formidable agent. She’s just killing it, and I love working with her.”

The Future
With 30 years under her belt, May’s love for her craft shows no sign of waning, and she remains committed to helping guide the careers of a new generation of talent amidst an ever-accelerating pace of evolution in the dance sector.

“Due to TikTok and streaming, we’re starting to see genres changing really quickly,” she observes. “Being able to create longevity is definitely becoming more challenging, and it’s up to us agents to help our clients achieve prolonged careers, if that’s their goal.

“I prefer taking my time, underplaying, believing in the artist long-term, and building a fanbase that will stick by them”

“But at the moment, there seems to be a desire for people to just rinse the shit out of things. It’s almost like pop, and a lot of people are spending an awful lot of money on social media in order to maintain their careers, because there’s a lot of stuff that comes along that’s super hot, super firing, and doing massive numbers. But by the second summer, the kids have moved on.

“I also find that the leverage-on-leverage-on-leverage model, which was really strong in the dance music scene for many years, may be on the way out. For example, people who hit 25m streams would leverage that number, then they’d leverage on the leverage. I’ve never really bought into that. I prefer taking my time, underplaying, believing in the artist long-term, and building a fanbase that will stick by them. There’s definitely a style here within Team Disco (and at CAA in general), where we try our best to sign career artists, because we want to be part of that journey.”

Predicting both short-term and long-term growth for dance music, she tells IQ, “It’s interesting, China is definitely coming back strong again for electronic, and Southeast Asia seems to be really pumping again, post-Covid. Holland is doing extremely well in terms of certain sounds, certain scenes – and there are really strong ticket sales.”

“Our job (as agents) now is to slow time down and take more care”

Breaking new markets is also on May’s radar – an ambition that she believes is easier given the genre her clients occupy. “If you are a DJ, and it’s just you and a tour manager when you start out, you can go anywhere. And you have no costs, really, because the promoter pays for your flights. You can go anywhere you want, and we send people into new territories all the time. And the artists that come to you saying, ‘I just want to tour these markets and build my career,’ they’re the keepers. They’re the ones that put the graft in.”

Naming new clients such as Marlon Hoffstadt, Malugi, Jammer with Más Tiempo (a label/events brand owned by Jammer and Skepta), and Arcadia (Glastonbury structure and field), May concludes that the electronic sector is facing a bright future as dance music has established itself as a mainstay across most major festivals with more and more headliners coming from Team Disco’s roster.

“Our job (as agents) now is to slow time down and take more care, be totally confident in our artists, and help build long-term artist careers based on real ticket sales and exceptional experiences for the artist and the audiences,” she concludes.

“We need to achieve that in the most authentic and fan-led way possible – guardian angel-like – while having the experience, the knowledge, and the confidence in how to do that. I am lucky to be at CAA and to be surrounded by other people doing exactly that every single day.”

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Accidentally falling into the agency world, Maria May has helped to define the parameters of dance music over the past 30 years, allowing such talent as David Guetta, Paul Oakenfold, Black Eyed Peas, The Chainsmokers, Róisín Murphy, Paul Kalkbrenner, Robin Schulz, Meduza, Hugel, Sara Landry, and Lee Burridge to achieve global fame and long-term careers.

While her academic abilities perhaps had her parents and teachers predicting a job in the city, Maria May’s evening routine introduced her to a world in which she would ultimately become one of the global powerbrokers.

Born in Bedfordshire, Maria Hutt, as she then was, grew up in west London where her parents ran a pet shop – sparking a lifelong love of animals. “My dad, John Hutt, was also a security guy and did loads of different jobs before ending up as head of security at Wembley Arena and Wembley Stadium,” says May. “So I went to concerts from a very young age – my first gig was ABBA, when I was six or something, at Wembley Arena. It changed my life. That’s probably why I’m into disco.”

That serendipitous behind-the-scenes lifestyle became part and parcel of May’s daily ritual. “When I was 11, I got into a really good school – City of London School for Girls. At the end of each day, I’d catch the train to Wembley, watch a show, and then get a lift home with Dad. I’d often be doing my homework during sound check. And so I saw everything – Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Pink Floyd, Luther Vandross, Tina Turner, Spandau Ballet, Tears for Fears, Dr Hook, you name it. And often I saw them on multiple nights.”

While she was still unsure about what to pursue as a career, a seed had been planted. “I was at the venue often till 10 or 11 o’clock, so I got used to being a night owl at an age where most people had never even been to a gig. Ultimately, after each show, I’d go backstage, and I really got into the atmosphere of all the hustle and bustle. Otherwise, I worked for my parents at the shop and did a load of part-time jobs to earn money. And then the rave scene hit and everything changed.”

“We pretty much were the architects of where the electronic scene sits right now”

While May seemed destined for higher education, acid house presented a different route entirely. “I just announced I didnt want to go to uni,” she recalls. “Mum and Dad’s reaction was that if I wasn’t going to university, I had to get myself a job. As a result, I found myself working at a recruitment firm, and within about three months, I was running the payroll across two agencies, because I just found the work really easy. And then I saw a job advert for an assistant at a private recording studio in West Hampstead, which was owned by Robert Howes, and at the time was rented to Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson.

“It was a great job – once a week, they’d give me the tapes, I’d drive down to Abbey Road to get them mastered, and I’d hang out with the studio manager there. My parents were quite impressed, because I was on a decent salary, so they sort of relaxed. And meanwhile, I was in this crazy world of latenight studio sessions, with different people like Squeeze, Aled Jones, and Gary Barlow popping in all the time. It was fun, but I didn’t really understand that I was in the music industry… I was just turning up every day to make sandwiches and coffee, do invoices, and run errands.”

Mixing with musicians and DJs soon led May to rave culture. “I started going out with this guy, Chris Binns, who was running the World Party illegal raves. We did quite a few massive events, and I got caught up in that whole scene. I basically wasn’t going to bed four days a week because I was dancing in fields. I was very tired, but I was having the time of my life while trying to hold down my day job.”

However, that was all set to change, thanks to Phil Nelson, manager of the Levellers. “He rented an office opposite the studio, and he’d come over to collect his post, and we’d always have a chat. Then, one day, he asked if I’d like to be his assistant. Being 18 years old and not even knowing who the Levellers were, I just went, ‘Yeah, that sounds great.’”

Not everyone in the Hutt family was as enthusiastic. “I remember an item on the TV news about the Levellers as the whole counterculture thing was blowing up. They were sort of portrayed as the devil, and my parents were not impressed.”

But it was May’s work with the band that sparked her passion for activism and first got her noticed on a national scale.

“I was young and opinionated, but they put me in my place a lot and taught me loads about myself”

“The government had announced the Criminal Justice Bill and the Levellers decided they were going to fight it, so they got me to run their campaign. The challenge was to get the message out about all the rights the government was trying to take away from people. We didn’t have a budget, so we did all sorts of mad things: we blagged free adverts in the music press, we did billboards on Vauxhall Bridge, we organised marches, and it was so successful that I got profiled in The Times and The Big Issue which, for a teenager, was a bit mad.”

The campaign would also introduce her to David Guetta manager Caroline Prothero, who at the time was working at Ministry of Sound, and who, after meeting May, insisted that everyone entering the club needed to sign the petition against the Criminal Justice Bill.

In a stint that at one point saw May singing backing vocals for the band, she describes her time with the Levellers as an experience that shaped the rest of her adult life. “They were brilliant to work with,” she says. “I was young and opinionated, but they put me in my place a lot and taught me loads about myself. I learned about politics, and that’s something that has remained a big thing for me – being actively involved in trying to make people aware what the ramifications of new legislation might be on their lives. The Levellers were true human beings, who did the right thing, always, no matter what the consequences, and that really inspired me.”

The subsequent beneficiaries of May’s creative campaigning and strategic skills have included a number of music-related trade bodies and organisations. She is a founding board member of the Association For Electronic Music (AFEM) and also a former board member of the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA). Meanwhile, she sits on the boards of the Frankie Knuckles Foundation and Lady of the House and is also on the executive board of Beatport.

The Accidental Agent
While other friends had gone to university and even enjoyed the luxury of gap years, May had been working since she was 17 and, at 21, decided she needed some time out.

“I had a new DJ boyfriend who ran clubs like Indulge in Brixton. We’d go to Ministry of Sound to see [David] Morales and Knuckles and [Tony] Humphries, and otherwise, I decided I was just going to sit around for six months and have a nice time. But then the Levellers’ agent, Charlie Myatt, introduced me to David Levy who he worked with at ITB. David was in the dance music side of things, and when he asked me about my musical influences and I named Chaka Khan and Jazzy Jeff, he said he wanted to give me a job on the spot.”

“There were many situations where I had to deal with people who were not very nice because I was a woman”

As a result, in early 1995, May embarked on a new journey, alongside Levy. “I barely knew what an agent did, and on day one, David handed me a list of promoter contacts and got me to call them to ask if they wanted to book Paul Oakenfold. And shortly afterward, I met Paul himself. It was just before he started to really blow up. But basically, me, David, and Paul made it up as we went along, and we pretty much wrote the book, and I only now realise the importance of all the stuff we did in the 90s – Paul taking things dance music mainstream through supporting the likes of U2 and Madonna on tour, for instance.”

May also cites dance music matriarch Judy Weinstein as a big supporter. “If I’m in New York, I make sure I visit Judy. She has been a huge influence on me, and in those early days, she helped David and I build the business internationally.”

Lauding Levy as her mentor, May states, “We were an absolute dream team. He was fierce, and I learned so much from him. In fact, I introduced him to one of my best friends, Irina, and they got married. We remain close, and the lovely thing is that our kids are friends. I spend every summer with David and his family in Ibiza. I love him. He’s one of my dearest friends, and the 17 years that I worked with him were just the best, because in that time, we worked with everyone – we pretty much were the architects of where the electronic scene sits right now in terms of superstar DJs, headline billing, and residencies.”

She continues, “Before us, there were no dance agents. It was David, me, and a handful of others. And there were certainly no other women. As agents, we were treated like second-class citizens, because the larger live music business didn’t understand our world. But we were quietly making shit loads of money for our clients, so it was a fantastic time during which I learned how to be an agent.

“David never let me make a mistake; he’d always catch them before they went out, so he absolutely protected me. In saying that, there were many situations where I had to deal with people who were not very nice because I was a woman. But David defended me to the hilt. He was absolutely invested in my success.”

“I’ve grown with the client, and we’ve just been able to do the most amazing things all over the world”

That working relationship ended when Levy departed for William Morris in 2010. “I totally understood his decision,” says May. “He’d gone as far as he could go. And it allowed me, perception-wise, to come out of his shadow. He never treated me that way, but I know other people in the business saw it that way.”

Levy’s departure also helped solidify May’s own roster. “Of course, David took most of his artists with him, but a lot of acts who I had worked with day-to-day decided to stay with me – 2manydjs, Soulwax, Paul Oakenfold, David Guetta, and Róisín Murphy, for instance.”

While May remained at ITB for a couple more years, in 2012, she decided it was time for a change. “The likes of David Guetta, 2manydjs, and Soulwax were really big, and I ended up getting a few more assistants. At the same time, the industry was waking up to the power of electronic music and the money that can be made. As a result, a lot of the American agencies were trying to lure talent away, so maybe it was insecurity on my part, but I really felt I needed to be at a major agency so that I could better represent a client like David Guetta, for instance.

“I’ve been at CAA for nearly 13 years, and I made the decision to come here because Emma and Mike treated me so well. Back in 2012, CAA didn’t have an existing dance or electronic department, so one of the big attractions was coming in to set it up and do it globally.”

Recognising idiosyncrasies, she adds, “I don’t think I’m that easy to work with. I’m all over the place with my train of thought. But at CAA, there’s a genuine sense of looking after each other.”

Among the beneficiaries of May’s stewardship is Guetta, who has been at the top of the tree for decades. “It was just obvious he was gonna be a huge pop star even though he’s still a DJ,” says May. “Maintaining the DJ side of it has always been critical to his career path, and it’s something that we’ve pretty much pulled off in the sense that he makes commercial pop hits but does lots of underground stuff as well, so he’s now doing major festivals and stadiums as a headliner, like a pop artist with huge production. That’s been a brilliant relationship in the sense that I’ve grown with the client, and we’ve just been able to do the most amazing things all over the world.”

“Setting the building blocks is something I’m pretty proud of, even though we were just doing stuff instinctively”

Team Disco
While there were early suggestions that May’s department at CAA be named “EDM,” she insisted on the “Team Disco” moniker that she and assistant Gina Gorman had adopted at ITB. “In London, there are 11 of us, while in America, we’re up to around the same number including agents and assistants – it’s no longer a niche business; it’s huge! But there’s still lots of room for this business to grow. The scenes are constantly evolving with new talent and new genres coming through.”

Looking back to the original Team Disco at ITB, May was one of the pioneers in cementing Ibiza’s place at the centre of the electronic music business. “I was part of the first residencies in Ibiza, thanks to Danny Whittle who wanted to do a residency at Pacha with Paul [Oakenfold]. He told me that if it worked, he also wanted to do it with Death Mix – David Morales, Frankie, Satoshi Tomiie, and all of those guys, and obviously I repped all of those people. The Paul Oakenfold residency was massively successful, and the rest is history.

“Being part of that and setting the building blocks is something I’m pretty proud of, even though we were just doing stuff instinctively. We didn’t really know whether it was gonna work half the time, but it did, so well done us,” she laughs.

Again, she names Judy Weinstein as one of the architects behind the strategy that propelled dance music to a global phenomenon. “It’s a partnership, and the managers who understand that are the best people to work with,” states May. “But I also represent a lot of artists that don’t have managers, so I work with them directly.”

Drawing comparisons to the worlds of rock and pop, she notes, “A DJ schedule is 365 days a year if you want it to be. It’s not built on a model where an album comes out and you’re touring and then you have a year off. I do a lot of live acts as well – Black Eyed Peas has been a fantastic relationship for me, because their management, Polo Molina and Seth Friedman, always trusted me with access to their diaries. I never imagined that I could be their agent, but Rob Light signed them to CAA, and then phoned me to ask if I wanted to be the Black Eyed Peas agent. I just love things that end up being beautiful happy accidents.”

“Suddenly I was working with this guy that I knew from my local area who turned into a massive act”

Losing Talent
Of course, for every happy accident there’s a flip side, and May admits that losing clients can be tough. “I was sad to lose Soulwax and 2manydjs – that was probably the biggest loss of my career, and of course they went to David Levy. That was a wake-up call because I realised that while David is my friend, he’s also my rival. We got through it, but I didn’t handle it very well in the beginning. It happened as soon as I started at CAA, and I’ll always remember going to see Emma Banks, and she was really clear, telling me that CAA didn’t employ me for my acts; they employed me because they believed in me.”

Indeed, May highlights the support her bosses and colleagues provided during some of her darkest moments. “About six years ago, my dad got very ill, and the company allowed me to do whatever I needed to do, so I made the job work around being a single parent with two kids and a dying dad,” she recalls. “And then six months after Dad died, my mom was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and needed round-the-clock nursing. It was a horrible time, but Emma and Mike and everyone at CAA were amazing.”

Career Highlights
Thankfully, the good times vastly outnumber the bad, and May has had some spectacular highlights in her career to date.

“David Guetta at Masada in Israel – I was the first person to do it with a major artist,” she says of her most memorable shows. “I also did Paul Oakenfold on the Great Wall of China before anyone had ever done it. Róisín Murphy at sunset on West Holts at Glastonbury is always fucking amazing – Róisín is one of my favourite partnerships. I’ve loved every second of being her agent, and I genuinely can’t wait for her next record.”

May also cites X-Press 2 as a standout client. “My relationship with their manager, Chris Butler (currently the manager of Jalen Ngonda also repped by CAA), is fantastic. He gave me my first band, Red Snapper, and when I’d been their agent for about a year, we sold out the Astoria, and I just remember being so proud. So, when X-Press 2 blew up, it was just brilliant, as I’d known [DJ] Rocky from growing up, and suddenly I was working with this guy that I knew from my local area who turned into a massive act.”

“Being able to make stuff like that happen that has a legacy is just the cherry on the cake”

She also talks fondly of American talent David Morales and the late Frankie Knuckles. “They taught me all about the New York club scene, and I’d go there every other month. It’s the privilege of a lifetime to know those guys – the originators of house music – and bring them to Europe. Frankie was an enduring friendship that I really am very grateful for. He was an amazing man, and I loved him, so it was really hard when he died.”

May’s association with the godfather of house music continues to this day, through her work as a board member of the Frankie Knuckles Foundation, and she recalls ways in which their relationship helped elevate one act to iconic status.

“I repped Hercules and Love Affair for a long time, and he brought this collection of music to me that included a track called Blind, and his biggest wish was for Frankie to work on remixes. So, I asked Frankie if he would do it, and he was a bit non-committal, so I kept nagging him, and in the end, he said he’d do it for me. And Frankie’s Blind remix is one of the club-defining tracks, even now. So being able to make stuff like that happen that has a legacy, is just the cherry on the cake.”

The Darling Buds of May
While May’s life ultimately revolves around her children, her devotion to her clients’ careers, and the growth of electronic music, means her workaholic approach is more of a vocation than a job. “I’m hugely proud of my two kids,” she states. “They are my greatest achievement.”

Within Team Disco, May works closely with colleague Jen Hammel in CAA’s London office. “We’re a bit of a dynamic duo,” she comments. “[Jen’s] proved to be a formidable agent. She’s just killing it, and I love working with her.”

The Future
With 30 years under her belt, May’s love for her craft shows no sign of waning, and she remains committed to helping guide the careers of a new generation of talent amidst an ever-accelerating pace of evolution in the dance sector.

“Due to TikTok and streaming, we’re starting to see genres changing really quickly,” she observes. “Being able to create longevity is definitely becoming more challenging, and it’s up to us agents to help our clients achieve prolonged careers, if that’s their goal.

“Our job (as agents) now is to slow time down and take more care, be totally confident in our artists”

“But at the moment, there seems to be a desire for people to just rinse the shit out of things. It’s almost like pop, and a lot of people are spending an awful lot of money on social media in order to maintain their careers, because there’s a lot of stuff that comes along that’s super hot, super firing, and doing massive numbers. But by the second summer, the kids have moved on.

“I also find that the leverage-on-leverage-on-leverage model, which was really strong in the dance music scene for many years, may be on the way out. For example, people who hit 25m streams would leverage that number, then they’d leverage on the leverage. I’ve never really bought into that. I prefer taking my time, underplaying, believing in the artist long-term, and building a fanbase that will stick by them. There’s definitely a style here within Team Disco (and at CAA in general), where we try our best to sign career artists, because we want to be part of that journey.”

Predicting both short-term and long-term growth for dance music, she tells IQ, “It’s interesting, China is definitely coming back strong again for electronic, and Southeast Asia seems to be really pumping again, post-Covid. Holland is doing extremely well in terms of certain sounds, certain scenes – and there are really strong ticket sales.”

Breaking new markets is also on May’s radar – an ambition that she believes is easier given the genre her clients occupy. “If you are a DJ, and it’s just you and a tour manager when you start out, you can go anywhere. And you have no costs, really, because the promoter pays for your flights. You can go anywhere you want, and we send people into new territories all the time. And the artists that come to you saying, ‘I just want to tour these markets and build my career,’ they’re the keepers. They’re the ones that put the graft in.”

Naming new clients such as Marlon Hoffstadt, Malugi, Jammer with Más Tiempo (a label/events brand owned by Jammer and Skepta), and Arcadia (Glastonbury structure and field), May concludes that the electronic sector is facing a bright future as dance music has established itself as a mainstay across most major festivals with more and more headliners coming from Team Disco’s roster.

“Our job (as agents) now is to slow time down and take more care, be totally confident in our artists, and help build long-term artist careers based on real ticket sales and exceptional experiences for the artist and the audiences,” she concludes.

“We need to achieve that in the most authentic and fan-led way possible – guardian angel-like – while having the experience, the knowledge, and the confidence in how to do that. I am lucky to be at CAA and to be surrounded by other people doing exactly that every single day.”

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IQ 132, the latest issue of the international live music industry’s leading magazine, is available to read online now.

The December/January issue marks 30 years in the agency business for electronic music pioneer Maria May and 20 years in the concert business for German mainstay Wizard Live.

Elsewhere, Coldplay production manager Chris Kansy takes home The Gaffer Award (again!), Derek Robertson talks to the crew behind Sum 41’s farewell outing and Adam Woods health-checks the historically robust live music industry in Austria.

Primavera Sound and Roskilde discuss gender-balanced festival lineups, CAA’s Chris Ibbs celebrates the rise of women to the top of global touring and WME’s Meera Patel defines the role of agency tour marketers.

This issue will also deliver a round-up of the last 12 months and a glimpse at what 2025 might have in store.

A selection of magazine content will appear online in the next four weeks but to ensure your fix of essential live music industry features, opinion and analysis, click here to subscribe to IQ – or check out what you’re missing out on with the limited preview below:

The International Live Music Conference’s (ILMC) annual state-of-the-nation opening session lived up to its billing, as senior industry leaders tackled hot topics including the venue boom, ticket prices and breaking talent.

Chaired by CAA’s Maria May, today’s Open Forum: The All-Stars featured panellists Chris Bray of ASM Global, Niamh Byrne of Eleven Management, DEAG boss Peter Schwenkow and Live Nation Spain chair Pino Sagliocco at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel.

May began by citing Pollstar figures that showed the worldwide top 100 tours generated $9.17 billion in 2023 – up 46% on the previous year. Gross from the top 100 stadiums and arenas also increased 35% and 29% respectively.

“At the top end of the business, it’s clearly in rude health,” said May. “But there’s a flip side here, with grassroots festivals and venues reporting closures and challenges.”

Schwenkow, who is celebrating 50 years in the business, said: “I think this is my fourth real recession. And I love recessions because people don’t buy new houses, apartments, cars, washing machines; they’re spending their money on live entertainment. We had a terrific ’22, we had a very very good ’23 and ’24 looks great as well.”

“As long as we have a market outside the market – where certain organisations can ask for twice the ticket price – then tickets are not expensive enough”

The Germany-based DEAG founder and CEO said he agreed with Live Nation chief Michael Rapino’s assertion that ticket prices “are still not high enough”, referencing the secondary ticketing market.

“As long as we have a market outside the market – where certain organisations can ask for twice the price that is on the ticket – then tickets are not expensive enough,” he argued.

Bray discussed the recent renovation work at ASM’s AO Arena in Manchester and the impending opening of Oak View Group’s Co-op Live venue in the city.

“I think competition is driving standards high,” he said. “There’s a fight to get the best talent in the venues, and that’s not just here in the UK, it’s across the world as well. We’ve got 400 venues across the world so we’ve always got to be at the top of our game.”

The ASM Global Europe president also touched upon the venue management firm’s proposed acquisition by premium experiences company Legends.

“There’s also a lot of venues that will be opening up within the next 12 to 18 months, which will only open up lots of markets for us”

“It’s not a done deal yet, we’re still waiting on a few things to come through,” he said. “That probably will be the back end of the year, but that brings with great opportunities for this space and more investment – and more investment is only good for the fans that are coming through and the artists that are playing in the spaces.

“It’s an exciting time for the venue market,” he continued. “We’ve got lots of activity going on, particularly the Legends acquisition which is an exciting opportunity for us over the next few months. There’s also a lot of venues that will be opening up within the next 12 to 18 months, which will only open up lots of markets for us.”

Sagliocco, meanwhile, recalled attending U2’s residency at the groundbreaking Las Vegas Sphere.

“It’s one of the most incredible venues I’ve ever seen in my lifetime,” he said. “We always have to look to bring something more because I think the public demand is also there. They don’t want to be seeing the same thing over and over again. They’re looking for a new experience and I think that the Sphere is a tremendous [vehicle] to do that.

“Now, to make it work, they really have to work hard to find the right concept to make sure people want to go to see it.”

“One thing that we are all good at is being innovators,” added May. “The more innovation there is, the more success that we’re seeing across the world.”

Byrne, however, agreed with May’s suggestion that although the top end of touring was thriving, there were issues for mid and lower range acts, amid reports of some artists at the 1,000-3,000-cap level opting not to go on the road due to it not being financially viable.

“From a mid-level point of view, it’s really, really tough and I feel like we have a big conundrum”

“From an artist point of view, we are so appreciative of innovation and the opportunity to play in different venues and different types of spaces, and long may that continue,” said Byrne. “But from a mid-level point of view, it’s really, really tough and I feel like we have a big conundrum.

“There is no live business without artists and audiences, and we shouldn’t be hammering fans to make that make sense. There needs to be something done in order to be able to invest and drive culture because, ultimately, that’s what it’s all about.”

On the subject of discuss artist development, Sagliocco bemoaned the lack of support for up-and-coming talent.

“I think the problem is that we don’t do enough to build a bridge to help younger talents who are asked to try and make a living every day,” he said. “That’s why I’m so proud to help develop burgeoning Spanish musicians while convincing local politicians that we need a sponsorship break. We have the funds to support these artists through the banks, and I feel that is really important.”

The panel then segued into discussing the rapid rise of the Middle Eastern market – particularly Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states’ heavy investment in hosting and providing live entertainment. While concerns were raised about some artists’ views on performing in the MENA region, Bray considered the opportunity a “major development”.

“ASM is about to have one of the biggest entertainment centres in the world in Hong Kong,” he said, advising the audience and his fellow panelists to not disregard Europe.

“We opened a new office in Milan last year, and we’re going to open new venues in Lisbon and Finland as well,” he continued. “It isn’t just the Gulf states where a noticeable growth in the market has occurred.”

“With the number of new markets opening up in recent years, it seems like the live music and entertainment industry is heading towards a truly global era”

May, who mentioned the new arena being built in Lagos, Nigeria as well as the success of last year’s inaugural edition of Lollapalooza in India, said she was “barraged with constant approaches for new markets”.

“With the number of new markets opening up in recent years, it seems like the live music and entertainment industry is heading towards a truly global era,” she said

The panel also voiced their thoughts on the willingness of audiences to pay more for premium tickets.

“I think people will pay to have a little bit of luxury,” said Bray. “They don’t want to have to queue, they want to be able to get in seamlessly. It’s a real trend in the venue space, where customers have realised that they get more out of paying extra for those perks. In return, we’ll invest in making luxury spaces nicer and making that premium experience more accessible.”

Schwenkow agreed with Bray, adding: “Before, it used to be the case that the cheaper tickets would sell more than the premium ones, but it’s now the other way around.”

“Sometimes, going through hardships and recessions can be a really good thing”

Wrapping up, May asked her guests about the challenges they anticipated in 2024 and beyond.

“Sometimes, going through hardships and recessions can be a really good thing,” said Byrne. “It’ll force us to become more innovative with our ideas, and I’m looking forward to exploring new ways of doing things, as well as opening up lots of international markets.”

Sagliocco, meanwhile, hailed the explosion of the Latin music market.

“Compared to others, the Spanish market is growing bigger than any other market and this is being reflected around the world with acts like Bad Bunny and Karol G being global stars,” Sagliocco said. “Because Spain is the bridge to the Latin American market and vice versa, I think Spain is in a very good position.”

“I’d love to do more European touring,” concluded Schwenkow. “Can we invent more products? Can we keep the prices stable? Can we be creative? Do we always respect value for money? At the end of the day, we are all in the ‘promise’ business, and our general challenges in this industry haven’t changed much in the 50 years since I began at DEAG.”

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A raft of moderators and partners for the 36^th edition of the International Live Music Conference (ILMC) have been unveiled.

The three-day conference will welcome over 1,400 of the world’s top live music professionals from over 50 countries when it returns to the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London between 27 Feb and 1 March.

On the opening day, CAA’s Maria May hosts The Open Forum, while cultural disruptor Cliff Fluet from Eleven leads a discussion on the practical applications of AI for live music in Artificial Intelligence: Moving at light speed.

And on 29 February, The O2’s Robbie Balfour asks the pressing questions in Marketing: Planet-ing new ideas.

The Friday of ILMC (1 March) will once again be dedicated to the next generation of live music industry leaders, with the fourth edition of Futures Forum.

On the opening day, CAA’s Maria May hosts The Open Forum alongside a soon-to-be-announced panel of VIPs

Connie Shao from AEG Presents hosts the opening session, Meet the New Bosses: Class of 2024; Marc Saunders from The O2 dives into the details of working relationships in Agents vs Bookers, and AGF’s Claire O’Neill leads a deep dive into tried-and-tested practices and innovative solutions in A Greener Future: The case studies.

Also on Friday, Touring Entertainment LIVE (TEL) will see Tom Zaller from Imagine Exhibitions kick off proceedings in The State of The Nation whilst TEO’s Manon Delaury hosts Quick-Fire Sessions presenting the best up-and-coming productions available to book.

And finally, Semmel Concerts’ Christoph Scholz takes the helm in Standing Out in a Crowded Market, to examine how promoters and producers are finding unique paths to success; and Jonathan Shank from Terrapin Station Entertainment chairs We’ve got 99 problems & here’s how we solve them, to ask how the sector can work more collectively.

TEL is supported by TEO, Fever, and Semmel Exhibitions. The ILMC Production Meeting (on 29 February) has also announced a wave of partners including Freight Minds, eps, and Solotech.

Full information about ILMC 2024, The Arthur Awards, Futures Forum or TEL, visit 36.ilmc.com.

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The fascinating differences between the generations on the professional side of the business were explored during ILMC’s Futures Forum.

The OK, Boomer: Closing the Generation Gap, Part II session was chaired by Debbie McWilliams, from the Scottish Event Campus, and leaned on the experiences of CAA agents Maria May and Bilge Morden, and promoters Raye Cosbert (Metropolis Music) and Peter Thomsen (Kilimanjaro Live).

While May and Cosbert harked back to a time when their generation helped make the rules and by definition had to be entrepreneurial, Morden noted that millennials and Gen Z staff desire more feedback from their elders, hoping to be guided through their careers, rather than being allowed to follow the wrong path and waste any time.

“The review we get once a year doesn’t really work for millennials – it’s very important to keep them motivated and engaged, otherwise they are likely to move on,” warned Morden. “Millennials will leave a job for less pay, if it has more purpose.”

But underlining just how much busier today’s live music environment can be, Morden disclosed, “We have the Helter Skelter [agency] roster framed on the office wall, and that entire roster is probably smaller than the roster that many agents personally have today.”

“Women in live did not really exist back in the day – and that was the same with colour, people with disabilities… The change has all been positive”

May acknowledged that the commitment to invest in people’s success has brought about significant changes in the business. “We need to create an environment where we can retain staff,” she said. “We spend so long investing in them that you want to keep them and develop them into future bosses.”

However, sounding a note of caution for younger people who want to climb the ladder quickly, May admitted, “It took me about ten years to become a really good agent – and I wasn’t firing on all cylinders until I was six or seven years in. But those years allowed me to make mistakes and learn from that, so it was good that it took a moment.”

Thomsen, who started at Kilimanjaro as an intern, told Futures Forum delegates, “The internship was super-helpful, but very much [because] I figured out how to make it work for me: I sat next to ticketing and learned about that; I asked marketing if they needed help… so, I got to know how the company worked, and when they were hiring promoter reps, I told them that’s what I wanted to do, and they fortunately gave me the break.”

Thomsen also applauded Kilimanjaro for the way it emboldens staff to be creative. “It’s about making sure everyone feels that they contribute, and their ideas can be heard. There’s a lot of intelligence and creativity at all levels of employee,” said Thomsen.

Cosbert pointed out that it has been the younger generation that has driven change when it comes to concerns like gender balance, equality and diversity. “Women in live did not really exist back in the day – and that was the same with colour, people with disabilities,” said Cosbert. “It’s the younger generation that have made my generation embrace that a lot
more. The change has all been positive – being more inclusive. People did not consider it years ago.”

“WhatsApp does not work for me. I urge my team to pick up the phone because you can solve multiple things quickly, rather than send multiple emails”

Such concepts, said Cosbert, are also changing the way companies conduct themselves strategically. “Rather than think what’s the best for your company, the change is that you need to think what is best for your people,” he stated.

May agreed, “We need young people to come into the business and work with us: it’s the job of senior management to adapt and make that happen… People are choosing to work at different places based on how the [employers] treat their workers.” Indeed, May urged young delegates at Futures Forum to “Ask questions in interviews – what is your gender split? What is your diversity policy?”

While CAA colleague Morden admitted to liking the office environment, he observed that many younger people do not feel the need to be in an office to get the job done. May opined, “If we’re together three days a week, we can see where things are going wrong and can help each other.”

On communications, she added, “WhatsApp does not work for me. I urge my team to pick up the phone because you can solve multiple things quickly, rather than send multiple emails.”

On the related subject of the work/life balance, each guest spoke about music being a vocation, meaning those working in live music often view that balance in a different way. Thomsen summed this up by saying, “Our work and personal life intertwine and it depends how people handle that from person to person. If I only think about and care about music, that does not make me the most productive person.”

“My advice to younger folk is if in doubt, ask. There’s always someone who will have an experienced view that you can use”

Addressing mental health and the work/life balance, May, concurred it can be a tricky tightrope. “When I was in my 20s, in the 1990s, it was a bit of a blur, so I’ve realised I need to take breaks – a week here, three days there. But even then, I’m still on my phone quite a lot. I’m trying to reach that place where I do have balance – but I love what I do, so I think I do have balance.”

While Cosbert and May urged others to use their ears, rather than rely too heavily on data, the latter conceded that technology had undoubtedly made their lives easier. “Leading a department that churns out thousands of contracts, tech has obviously made that easier,” she said. However, she countered, “Sometimes it turns me off when people are spouting data rather than talking about a track and how it makes them feel.”

That struck a chord with Cosbert. “The younger generations have access to immediate information that I did not have coming up through the industry,” he said. “But there’s so much information coming in now, it’s about putting filters in place… [In turn] I have to pass on my knowledge correctly to help them grow. My advice to younger folk is if in doubt, ask. There’s always someone who will have an experienced view that you can use.”

While the session’s panellists highlighted a slate of differences between the ways that each generation operates, Cosbert concluded, “Our priorities and pathways and goals are pretty much aligned. The live business is a people business. We get paid for doing something we love, but we often tend to forget how it can affect you when you are engrossed in it, and how it can burn you out.”

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ILMC 35 kicked off with the traditional Open Forum session with this year’s host, Maria May from CAA, addressing a swathe of issues, while looking back on a monumental year for live music around the world.

May noted various statistics about the growth of the business in 2022, including the fact that ticket prices for Pollstar’s top 100 tours had increased by more than 10%, before posing a question to her guests about whether those biggest-selling productions should be doing anything to support the grassroots side of the business.

Obi Asika from United Talent Agency noted that the year ahead was looking like it would be the strongest he has ever had, reporting that his dance music and afrobeat acts were doing great business. And answering a question about the stadium business harming grassroots, he stated, “I’m more worried about the stadium effect on festivals. But I don’t see it as an issue; it’s just different.”

“We have to be brave and inclusive if we want to have new headliners”

When it comes to helping grassroots acts, he added, “We have to be brave and inclusive if we want to have new headliners.”

Q Prime Management’s Tara Richardson contested: “There’s a whole generation of ticket buyers who have skipped [going to] sweaty clubs because they have been stuck indoors during the pandemic.”

But she agreed that perhaps stadiums could support grassroots venues through sponsorship or some other system. “The record labels and publishers develop talent, but the live side seems to be the only part that does not throw money back toward grassroots,” she observed.

Addressing the issue of spiralling costs, Herman Schueremans of Live Nation Belgium admitted that most people in the business had not expected such big rises. “The bottom line is that it’s a thing of give and take – listen to each other and be nicer to each other,” Schueremans pleaded. Looking back at 2022, he reported, “By respecting people and paying part [of the money] in advance and the balance the day after show, it worked really well.

“You cannot avoid rising costs – you have to live with it and deal with it. It might mean we have to work harder but earn less. Making a profit is important, but it’s not the most important.”

“The live side seems to be the only part that does not throw money back toward grassroots”

On a related note, talking about all the various challenges that the live sector is facing, Asika pointed to the example of some of his African artists who have had all kinds of obstacles to overcome to establish careers outside of their own countries. “However complex it is, we can figure it out,” he said. “There are enough ideas and enough good people to figure it out – it’s part of the fun.”

Tackling the controversial topic of dynamic pricing, John Meglen from Concerts West noted, “Most shows do not sell out, but at the very high end it’s a very simple supply and demand issue [and] dynamic pricing is a business decision. If you sell a ticket for $100 but then watch it be resold for $500, the artist should be receiving that money, not the tout.”

Meglen suggested that blaming the ticketing system for any issues was a cop-out. “It’s up to us to set those business rules – we cannot be blaming the ticketing systems, he said. “We have an issue of pricing, and we have a resale issue. We need to make sure that the money [remains] in our business. If we’re getting market value for our tickets, the artists are going to earn more and it’s not someone outside business making the money.”

Q Prime’s Richardson drew comparisons with the price of theatre tickets when it comes to tour pricing, but also had a pragmatic idea on how the teams involved in tour planning could better handle the subject. “Maybe there needs to be a middle ground where we involve tour accountants before we route – and we have a plan A, plan B, and plan C for the tour and the production, depending on the ticket price.”

“We have an issue of pricing, and we have a resale issue”

The session also looked at how the live music industry can attract a more diverse workforce, with the speakers agreeing that more needs to be done – from the top of the business downwards – to make true and meaningful progress.

Engaging in a debate regarding the environmental impact of the live music sector, Schueremans revealed, “At Rock Werchter 2022 we recycled or recouped 95% of our plastic. It was a hell of a challenge, but we did it and we should not just be doing it as festivals, we need to do it at all shows.”

However, Richardson concluded that rather than beat up the festivals and tours, “We’d be better off having a huge industry lobby to do something about the six big companies who are contributing most to carbon emissions.”

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Co-chaired by Live Nation’s Phil Bowdery and CAA’s Maria May, the Open Forum session featured remote guest speakers Alona Dmukhovsla and Sasha Yerchenko from Ukraine, who updated delegates about the current situation in their homeland.

Yerchenko from SEA talked about the “terrible and awful war” they are experiencing. “It feels like we live in two different worlds now,” she said. Explaining that she and her 15-year-old daughter stayed in Kyiv, she said every citizen was now volunteering for various causes to support the war effort. “My daily routine is not just about concerts, it is about delivering humanitarian aid to older people and people in need,” she told delegates.

“If Ukraine fails, the whole of Europe will fail”

Dmukhovsla, of Music Export Ukraine, said every single Ukrainian believes they are responsible for the country’s mutual victory. On the music side, she said she is coordinating efforts to have Ukrainian bands play at festivals around Europe. And she highlighted the partnership with ARTmania in Romania and Pohoda Festival in Slovakia to find work for some of the live music industry professionals who are desperate to find employment. “If Ukraine fails, the whole of Europe will fail,” she warned.

Codruta Vulcu from ARTmania urged ILMC attendees to participate in the ARTery.community not-for-profit programme that centralises jobs at events for Ukrainian professionals “so that they can be treated with dignity rather than end up in European capital cities doing menial jobs for unskilled workers.”

Looking back over the past two years, Rauha Kyyrö (Fullsteam Agency) talked of the frustration in getting government assistance in Finland and the fact that freelancers and musicians in particular suffered when they could not work because of pandemic restrictions. However, she noted her company had survived and had organised some highly successful livestream events that captured the imagination of Finnish fans.

Kornett said that convincing baby boomers to return to live events would be a trickier task

Marty Diamond (Wasserman) noted that some streaming platforms that emerged through the pandemic were interesting because they were interactive, and some clients had embraced the technology. But he said persuading other clients to use livestreaming was not something he would do.

However, May noted that the opportunities for additional income and for allowing access to disabled people or fans who cannot make gigs means that livestreaming is here to stay. And she also lauded the opportunities that the metaverse might offer to concerts and live events for people who prefer to remain on their sofa.

Detlef Kornett (DEAG) said that convincing baby boomers to return to live events would be a trickier task, so bands that attract fans of a certain age group could struggle in the months ahead.

Talking about the return to touring, Diamond revealed that on the recent Louis Tomlinson tour the audience was noticeably younger and there was a degree of education needed to remind people how to attend shows, while on the latest Snow Patrol tour there was a degree of slippage in terms of fans who didn’t show up for whatever reason. And he noted that he is seeing ticket price rises in America, while many events are still priced at pre-Covid rates.

No-show rates had reduced from 40% last year in the UK, but spiked again during Omicron

Alex Hill (AEG Europe) said no-show rates had reduced from 40% last year in the UK, but spiked again during Omicron, however confidence among fans seems to be slowly returning. Diamond said this mirrored what is happening in America, where he also said merch rates have rocketed with fans eager to get their hands on t-shirts and the likes.

Having asked their guests about the Covid experiences and the challenges and opportunities that brought with it, the co-chairs moved the conversation on to the very real problems of the supply chain where both staff and equipment are in short supply.

May noted that some of the festivals that she is working with have dropped performance areas because they cannot physically find the stages for their events.

Meanwhile, Amy Thomson (Hipgnosis Songs Fund) explained that she had actually closed down her artist management operation just prior to Covid and while in isolation went down a rabbit hole where she looked at exactly where the money goes from performance rights around the world. And she criticised PRS in particular for increasing rates for struggling artists who turned to livestreaming to earn some money. As a result, she revealed details of a campaign to make performance rights more transparent and push for itemised statements that show exactly what the breakdown of payments are to rights holders.

Voicing their support for the people of Ukraine, the panellists concluded by talking about the year ahead and the hard work that will be needed to negotiate the hyper inflationary conditions that face everyone. Kornett predicted that at next year’s ILMC we will be talking about all the problems we had to deal with in fall and winter 2022 and the fact that ticket prices will only be going in one direction.

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