IFF 2024: Surveying the state of the metal scene
The ups and downs of the metal sector – and the lessons the genre can offer the mainstream scene – were pored over in a candid discussion at the International Festival Forum (IFF) in London.
Jan Quiel of Wacken Open Air chaired the Metal: Keeping in time, shredding old rules panel, which brought together Jouni Markkanen, promoter of Finland’s Tuska Festival, K2 Agency’s Sharon Richardson and Merle Doering, owner and MD of Catch 22 agency.
A key question centred on the lessons other events could learn from metal’s enduring ability to nurture a dedicated fanbase.
“Metal festivals are not focused on such a tiny pool of super-hot bands,” said Markkanen. “I don’t focus only on the headliners, but on the balance. You need to have a very strong start to the day; the party needs to start when the gate opens and it needs to last until the gate closes.
“At Tuska, we never made the mistake of just putting on one massive band because then it is like a park concert with a few support bands. Of course, somebody is closing the night, but it’s the collection of art for the weekend. You are trying to serve the wider audience; we are not just looking at modern metal bands, there is a twist of all genres here and there. Communication with the audience is super-important.”
“The pool of available bands was diminishing and we were like, ‘Okay, we need to find a new batch – a new style – to get the audience average age down.'”
Quiel added the metal “community” had bred fan loyalty through the years, although Doering pointed out that happened organically.
“I don’t think that can be learned,” she advised. “In pop music, you can have a one-hit wonder, but nobody cares about them the next year because they’re on to the next trend. I grew up very close to Wacken, and we went to Wacken on the first weekend of August. It didn’t matter who played; that was just what we did. And that’s a thing with metal culture – people identify very strongly with the festivals.”
The panellists also shared how they had succeeded in attracting a younger demographic in recent years, with Markkanen explaining he had changed his booking strategy “quite drastically” over the last few years, leading to fresh headliners such as Ghost, Electric Callboy and Lorna Shore.
“The audience was getting older and older,” he said. “The pool of available bands was diminishing and we were like, ‘Okay, we need to find a new batch of bands – a new style – to get the audience average age down.’ We didn’t do it in one stroke, but added more modern stuff here and there.”
Markkanen noted that this year’s booking of electronic rock band Pendulum was greeted with a frosty response on social media, yet their set attracted the festival’s third biggest crowd ever.
“Festival booking has become a fight for smaller to medium-sized bands, because so many bands want to tour and there are so few slots”
“Trying to find new ways of shocking the audience is nothing bad,” he added. “Of course, the old audience says that, ‘Markkanen has ruined the festival, Tuska has nothing to see anymore.’ But we grew from 15,000-cap to 23,000 and we’re selling out.”
On a similar theme, Richardson noted that K2 achieved a “phenomenal” result after securing a slot for Canadian metal band Spiritbox on the Reading & Leeds bill.
“Your job as an agent is to build that artist profile, but to get longevity out of an artist, so the slots for festivals are really important,” she said. “Reading & Leeds nowadays is more of a pop-indie festival, so for Spiritbox to play on the main stage was really difficult for them. But they won the crowd around, and it was a really good result in the fact that we put Alexandra Palace on sale around [their performances] – that’s 10,500-capacity – and it sold out in two and a half weeks, which was a phenomenal result from taking a risk.”
Wrapping up the session, Doering stressed that the metal scene was not without its struggles.
“A lot of changes need to happen because we are facing a lot of challenges,” she cautioned. “I don’t think the scene is necessarily handling the challenges very well overall, but generally it is adapting. Festival booking has become a fight for smaller to medium-sized bands, because so many bands want to tour and there are so few slots.
“At least for me, there’s a bigger threshold to taking on bands from North America because the cost of bringing them over are so much higher… Building a smaller act, especially from abroad – and you probably all know what flight costs are like nowadays – is so much more challenging. The financial situation of the band is something that comes up very early on, which was probably not the case to the same degree 10 years ago.”
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Superstruct buys into Finnish metal festival Tuska
Superstruct Entertainment has signed an ‘investment and partnership agreement’ with Finnish Metal Events Oy, organiser of Tuska Open Air Metal Festival.
Launched in 1988, Tuska (Finnish for “pain”) takes place annually in Helsinki across three days and is one of the largest metal festivals in the Nordic countries.
In 2019, the festival set a new attendance record, welcoming 43,000 visitors over the course of the event.
The deal will see Providence Equity-backed Superstruct become a key shareholder of the Tuska festival. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“This is the next step for Tuska,” says festival director Eeka Mäkynen. “Focusing on boutique festivals, Superstruct will provide us with more muscles for development and more rivets in our belt.
“Superstruct will provide us with more muscles for development and more rivets in our belt”
“All shareholders and key personnel will continue to be involved, and the organisation will continue to run the festival independently. The mosh pit will keep spinning, only faster – in other words, the festival will remain its own unique rough self, as it has been until now.”
Jouni Markkanen, who has been the head promoter of the Tuska Festival since 1999, adds: “We had been thinking about expanding our ownership base for a long time. Now the pieces all fell into place and the time was right.
“We believe that the festival business will intensify after the corona crisis. International connections have always been close to our hearts when booking bands. The arrival of Superstruct opens up more opportunities to create even better programmes and festivals for Tuska’s loyal customers, our tribe.”
Superstruct’s portfolio includes more than 30 European festivals including Sziget, Elrow, Parookaville, Wacken Open Air, Boardmasters, Sonar, Zwarte Cross and Finnish event, Flow Festival.
The live entertainment powerhouse recently signed a partnership agreement with Dutch promoter ID&T which produces Mysteryland, Defqon.1, Awakenings, and Milkshake.
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