Music Business Liabilities

My business consists of every aspect of the show production world. Today I'll be discussing a few liabilities from within my field. I've highlighted a few significant cases:

1. Radiohead's touring company is being investigated the Canadian Ministry of Labor; after a stage collapse at one of their tour venues. In the incident, the band's drum technician Scott Johnson was crushed and died. At this point it is difficult to say who will have to be held uncountable for the tragedy. But I'm sure there is a large settlement in store for Mr. Johnson's Family.
   http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/questions-linger-after-radiohead-stage-collapse-20120623
2. Justin Bieber is being sued for $9m, by an Oregon woman, who claims that she suffered from loss of hearing after attending one of his shows. This sounds silly, since she is mother of a Justin fan, so her daughter probably hates her for even going through with this lawsuit. Just from what I learned in my entertainment law course, I'm pretty sure he wont have to pay up since the tickets she bought act as waivers.
   http://www.tmz.com/2012/07/12/justin-bieber-lawsuit-hearing-noise-concert-oregon/
   
   
3. Both Cristina Aguilera and her label Sony, are being sued for not clearing a sample with its rightful owners. It's for a sample in her song, “Ain't No Other Man.” Apparently Sony cleared it with a company that didn't completely own the work. So TurfAmerica is pursuing a suit against them.
   http://music-mix.ew.com/2011/03/07/christina-aguilera-sued-aint-no-other-man-sample-clearance/

Ankh Marketing

In the ever changing art of Artist Management, there are many different types of managers who come from a long line of varying different art forms and ways of life, all with a common goal, to make their artists happy while still being profitable. While there are many great artist management companies out there I had to find one to research, Ankh Marketing. While their name says they are a marketing firm, their work shows that they have many artists they help manage by properly marketing, the artists, to the right people.

Ankh marketing helps such companies, by producing advertisement campaigns, as Play Station, 2K Sports, The Gumball Rally, Vitamin Water, and The City of Oakland, among many others, by helping them properly market they, in a sense help to manage these companies to their many high levels of success.

While on the other hand they help several artists by promoting events such as, the 2007 Rock the Bells Hip Hop Festival. This festival included the reunion of Rage Against the Machine, Snoop Dogg, The Roots, Public Enemy, Erykah Badu, Wu-Tang Clan, Mos Def and Talib Kweli. By allowing these artists to come through and play at such a large event they are helping their careers, however famous and large the artists may be. This may not be “management” in the eyes of a lot of people, but to me it seems like bringing these people together, especially a reunion of a great band, Rage Against the Machine, would take a large amount of great artist management to make it all work.

This company tells me that there is a way to be a great artist “manager” while still attributing yourself to many other things that can still be lucrative. Ankh marketing shows us all that management can be done in many different ways, not excluding marketing through the proper channels to help “manage” artists to the next level of their careers. I would suggest visiting their website to learn more information about this company to anyone interested.

diddy's managment

Sean Combs formerly known as Puff Daddy, who brought the world artist such as Notorious B.I.G., The Lox, Mary J. Blige, 112, Total, Lil Kim, and a host of other talented artist that contributed to his success P Diddy has overtaken Jay-Z as the richest hip-hop artist, according to Forbes, with a net worth of $550 million.

The Bad Boy Records founder has many business ventures, including Ciroc vodka, which saw a 122 per cent sales spike last year, as well as his Sean John and Enyce clothing lines, his marketing firm Blue and a handful of business start-ups, which have helped him accumulate a huge personal fortune.
Last year's richest hip-hop artist Jay-Z was left in second place with a net worth of $460 million thanks to his recent Watch The Throne tour, which will come to the UK at O2 Arena in London on May 20, as well his multi-million dollar deal with Live Nation, his 40/40 Club chain and cosmetics company Carol’s Daughter. 

The other artists featured in the list are Dr Dre ($270 million), Birdman ($125 million) and 50 Cent ($110 million).

Dr Dre is rumored to be planning a tour with the hologram version of Tupac, which was unveiled for the first time at the Coachella Festival at the weekend. 
Speaking to MTV, Sean P-diddy Combs claimed not to be fussed by the list, commenting: "I think people think that I have that money actually sitting at home in the basement. To everyone calling me for a loan today, I do not have that money today." The list was compiled using the same methodology which Forbes uses to calculate The World’s Billionaire’s list, looking at the past earnings, valuing current holdings and gauging the opinions of financial experts and industry insiders. Reference http://www.nme.com/news/p-diddy/55408

Live Production Consoles

Live sound production has forever and always been a dream and hobby of mine. With newer technologies, it is an ever exciting field to be in. From all the new soundboards that come out there is bigger and better things that happen. Light boards are also very new and exciting. The idea that we can take digital sound and place it into a board then supply the same board with the power to control lights and tv screens and everything that has to deal with producing a live show is really great.

One of my favorite digital consoles that are out there right now is the D-Show by AVID. With this board you can run everything from the sound coming out, while running the audio through a multitrack recorder, all while producing the sound through a dvd player recording everything that is going on. This is very exciting because a number of years ago it would have taken a whole truck full of equipment to do what this console can do by itself. I would love to get one of these consoles for my live venue because it can do everything and anything I set it up to do.

Another one of the consoles that I really like that is out right now is the Hippotizer by Green Hippo. This is a fully functional Multimedia, show display. It can run everything from audio through it to video and lights through it. A quote on the website says, The Hippotizer was the only media sever capable of creating the complete multimedia, fully interactive, audio visual performance that Andy C required”, Andy C is a drum and bass DJ that just participated in Electric Daisy Festival. One of the largest Electronic Music Festivals around. I had the opportunity to use the Hippotizer here at Full Sail. It was a great experience.

As technology advances so will the boards and consoles utilized and I can’t wait until I get to own and use bigger and better things.

Dreamer Management

For my first Artist Management blog, I decided to review a website that deals with artist management in the town of Atlanta, Georgia, a place where I would love to someday work. The website is www.dreamermanagent.com. Right away on the home page of the website, you can easily see that Dreamer Management had attended the 2012 BET Awards. The members from their team that attended the event were, William Scott, Jarvis Bowman, and Bradford “Jazzy” Smith.

Since the webpage probably won’t show the entire event, or have that posted on their front page for long here is a link to read the entire story.

 Dreamer Management Attends 2012 BETAwards

            This shows me that this company is very professional, and knows something about the game of artist relations. Next I decided to click on their Talent option. From this we can choose from several different levels of artist management that they handle. It is a very impressive list of clients they are able to successfully manage. This list includes, Artist Management, Model Management, and Entertainment Management. To be this diversified, shows that the company means business and really know what they are talking about. After perusing through all 3 of the links, it affirmed that they in fact do know what they are doing.

            The last thing about this website that I really liked was the fact that under the Talent drop down menu, they had forms to fill out to apply for theirmanagement. Their list just has a few, but much needed things in order to see if a client is ready for their level of service. They also have a place for a referral code, which I could only assume would be for people who have been told directly, whether it be at a party, event, or just walking down the street, to come and apply because the talent scouts were interested.

            All-in-all this website looks great and I would gladly use it, or send some higher level talent, I couldn’t handle to this company.

NDM blog

In order to be successful in this industry, negotiations are very important. Thebest way to learn about how to successfully negotiate would be to actually talk to someone who does negotiations for a living. So what better way to learn than from actual negotiating consultants. K and R negotiations are the foremost teachers to the business world, that can teach all of what is needed to know to do well throughout negotiations.

            First of all, I learned that the best way to make sure to get my bottom line is to have a BATNA established and ready before the negotiations begin. By doing so people will often know when and where they should stop their bottom line.

           

            Secondly, avoid using dirty tricks and tactics. If the person I am negotiating with starts to try to use dirty tricks, I have thought them all through. If I decide to try to use dirty tricks, I should just be able to learn to stop before the opposing negotiator finds out, otherwise the deal could go sour.

           

            Thirdly the website goes on to say that, leverage is huge in any negotiating scenario. Use leverage from other, smaller negotiations to help leverage the things that I really want and need. By making something small, like for example a hairstyle choice in an artist contract, seem large ­then I can use it to leverage something I actually care about, like actual money made per compact disc sales. If I can make it seem like it is a big deal to me, then I will use the leverage to properly negotiate what I want out of the contract.

There are many things that K and R negotiations can teach, and one day I would love to take several of their classes to better my negotiating skills. And I feel much more intelligent after looking through their website.

Largest concerts ever

The idea behind being a live venue owner is trying to make as much money as you can, while still maintaining your integrity. Now one way to make a ton of money is to sell out the venue every night. If the venue is sold out every night and lets say it holds two thousand people, well the average show that I have been to has been anywhere from ten to fifteen dollars. This means that that venue alone on ticket sales would bring in anywhere from twenty thousand dollars to thirty thousand dollars. That is a good chunk of change for any venue owner to get every night they have a show. So this got me thinking, “how much money did the largest show in history make if the tickets were at an average of ten dollars a ticket?”

            Well we could not just start with the largest show in history so we will go with the top four. The forth largest show in history is: the Monsters of Rock show which had Metallica, Pantera, The Black Crowes and headlining was AC/DC. The total number of people at the show was 1.6 million which means at ten dollars a ticket, which I am sure they were much more, that company made sixteen million dollars for just one large show.

            The third and second largest show in history were performed by Jean Michel Jarre, who is a large name in France. The show was put on by MTV France, so I would assume there was a huge following. The third and second largest show in history was a live MTV event. The third largest had 2.5 million people in attendance and the second largest had 3.5 million in attendance; which means that the concerts took in two hundred and fifty million dollars, and three hundred and fifty million dollars respectively.

            The largest show in the history of mankind was by the artist Rod Stewart, which had 4.2 million people in attendance, which if you ask me is ridiculous, but at an average of ten dollars a ticket those venue owners pulled in a whopping four hundred and twenty million dollars. That is amazing.

            There is a ton of money out in this industry and I can’t wait to start making some for myself.

Finance and Artists Riders

One of the major things that involves finance that a live venue owner has to know about in order to run a great business is that there will sometimes be exuberant costs to get certain artists to come out and perform. There are many websites that have artists riders and some of the crazy things the superstars would like in their dressing room and backstage in order for them to perform. The first place I checked out to find some of these wacky riders are Thesmokinggun.com. to be able to get T.I, a famous rapper, to come out to your show you must have 11 flights booked, 2 first class, and 9 coach, for him and his crew to be flown out, the venue/ promoter must also have  their hotels booked which are 8 rooms. 2 of which are suites and 2 are double rooms. This adds up just rounding off the 2 cross country trips for first class are probably 1000 dollars a piece and the 9 others are probably around 500 dollars a piece. Then depending on the suites for the hotel rooms they could run anywhere from 1000-1500 dollars a night and about 300 per individual double room. So just adding those numbers up we would need just about 10,000 dollars just to be able to accommodate and fly out T.I.’s touring group.

This does not mention anything about what the artist needs for the day of show, or even what he needs backstage before, during, and after he plays. To have T.I. come out to play the artist asks for a total of around 20,000 dollars to even show up to play.

            Keeping this in mind, I would try to make it easier by having my stuff ready and having a personal artist manager for any touring group that comes through. And I will realize that they may be expensive to have for the show, but are worth it in the end.

Tupac Hologram

Throughout my life I have seen many huge celebrities come and go and some of my favorite artists have also come and gone. One of my favorite artists of all-time is Tupac Shakur. With some of his great hits as California Love, Changes, and many many others, he has personally reached out to my life and helped me form the person that I am today, hardworking, talented, and the tenacity to make it in an industry such as this. So when I had heard the rumor that he was playing at Coachella, I was taken aback and realized that this isn’t real. I finally figured out that it was in fact a hologram. The hologram looked very, very real. Many of the patrons were shocked to see Tupac and Snoop Dog performing together after so many years. It also sparked up the interest in Tupacs back catalog, which helped make his record companies a lot of money

It got me thinking as a person who is really excited about live entertainment, how come I had never heard about the ability to have holograms perform for the purpose of making money. So I started to dig into in and found out that it is not reasonable if I could set up a show every day with many artists and keep the seats in my live venue filled up, I would be able to make a ton of money. At a cost of only $100,000 to $400,000 rumored it seems a bit out of my price range for the venue, but maybe one day I would be able to run several artists everyday, in order to maximize profit margin.

As this technology takes off I realized that I need something like this in order to promote my live venue and take it a step above the rest of the other live venues out there. I would love to eventually be able to find and afford a hologram machine.

Live Event Finances

Live event management is what my passion is and I realize that there are many factors that go into the finances of getting a live show going. Personally I have worked on several live events and love it. I have also found out that there are many artists and or performers that will not perform if there are financial issues. The first thing that many people over look for a live event show is paying the artist. There are a few schools of thought on this subject. The first being, that the band should take a pull from the door and the bar after the expenses of the show are paid for. The second being that the band should only get money for the tickets that they sell. I would rather, with large acts, get paid through the bar and door pull because generally at live events people like to have a few beers and get a little loose so the party can be more fun. This means that for me and the artist there will be more profit to be made.

            Another very large financial issue for live events is the fact that the venue has to be paid for, that and all of the equipment. In my case, I will be owning the venue and the equipment so the only thing I would have to worry about, after initial payment, would be up keep, which is generally cheaper, depending on the problem.

            The final issue would be the people needing and wanting that great luxury that is associated with many large scale venues. I would need to provide sky boxes and nice suites so deep-pocketed patrons could come and enjoy the show in their own style

            After seeing how many financial decisions and responsibilities are put into making a live venue run smoothly, I am very glad that I can learn about finances from this class.

The RIAA

The RIAA or the Recording Industry Association of America is a very important organization in the terms of the music industry. The RIAA is made up of different record labels and distributors, who “create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legally sold recorded music in the United States.” They help protect the artists first amendment rights as well as protect the intellectual property rights. This is important so the artist may have a say in which way his or her music is used or not used. They also stay current with laws and regulations that are current in the industry.

One of the things the RIAA is known for is their gold and platinum certifications. A gold record is achieved when an album reaches 500,000 sales, this is also true for singles. A platinum album is achieved when the album sells 1,000,000 copies. An album can also go multi-platinum meaning that the album has sold at least two million copies albums have been certified as ten times platinum which in my opinion is a bit ridiculous.

As technology changes so must the rules and regulations for how an album gets rewarded with a gold or platinum status. In 2004, the RIAA started to include “digital” sales for its certification. A digital sale is one that is transferred over the internet.  They added the silver certification to this category, so if an album sells 100,000 copies on the internet it receives a silver certification. Gold and Platinum albums remain at the same sales level, and the multi-platinum status is the same as well. Now if an album does so well that it sells over 10,000,000 copies over the internet it is deemed the diamond level certification.

The RIAA is here to protect musicians and as a person who wants to put a new style of live recording out, it is very important to me.

TED Talk with Bobby McFerrin

While I was stumbling around the internet a few weeks ago I came across this video from TED.com. It shows Bobby McFerrin, the writer of the popular song “Don’t Worry Be Happy”. In the video Bobby shows us that without prior music knowledge peoples’ brains could be hacked to understand music. He starts by standing in one space and tells the crowd to sing a certain note. Afterwards he proceeds to move to the left and right, showing members of the audience that when he steps to the audience’s left the note the audience is sings should be lower. Oppositely when he steps to the right the note the audience sings should go higher. Stepping back and forth the audience starts to create a song, under the direction of Bobby McFerrin. He soon begins to extend the range of the song and the audience is shocked that they are going that high and low. Bobby McFerrin only told the members of the audience to sing the note only 1 step left and 1 step right of the original spot. When the audience followed along with him as he began to move farther up and down the stage (scale) he was basically hacking the peoples’ brains. Afterwards you can hear one of the other guests on the stage asking if he was ever interested in a job in neuroscience, showing how well thought out this talk and experiment was. Bobby McFerrin sure made me not worry and be happy after I saw this great presentation.

I thought this was very interesting that all people are created with something inside of them that after they are exposed to music, was released. The ability to count and follow basic musical notation, without being taught to do so shows us how amazing human beings are and how powerful the music influences all of our lives.

LIve gig with GnR

One of the best things about this school and how its networking works is the fact that people like me, who went through the Show Production Bachelors Degree, can make connections throughout the course to get side jobs in the industry. I was recently talking to a friend and found out that I had the opportunity to work the Guns ’n’ Roses show at the House of Blues. This took place on a Saturday, a day that means basically nothing special to a person in the show production industry. I started by getting there at like 3 in the afternoon to start with the loading and unloading of the bands gear and show props. I have been a fan since I was little so it was kind of an honor to be able to work on the same stage as Axl Rose. Throughout running cables and putting things in their place I was hoping that I would get a chance to shake Axl’s hand . We waited and waited for Axl to come out and do his voice check. Quickly a few hours passed and the show was about to begin when suddenly I was just looking at Axl Rose come up and try to adjust a few things, done to his vocal mix. He looked at me we briefly made eye contact and that was enough to realize that sometimes these mega huge rock stars are still people who at the basis of it all just want to put on a good show so that they get paid. Needless to say that standing back stage to help out during the show was one of the best experiences this school could have given me, but then I realized as much as the school helps me it is the connections I have made throughout the degree program that allowed me to experience this.

Event LiveExpo 2013.

As a live show fanatic I decided to look into a trade show that I would like to attend in the future. This trade show is called Event LiveExpo 2013. Just from reading some of the tabs I decided that this is where the greats of the industry are located and meet every year in order to see what is new on the scene and how technology is evolving the industry that I like so much. After reading some of the testimonials from the website I was even more convinced that I need to go to this show. One testimonial read, “The people that we need to see are here, so if we’re not here, we’re going to miss out on a huge opportunity. This, as our second year exhibiting, really has exceeded our expectations and we look forward to being here many more years.” . And there are many more testimonials that are among the same lines. Some of the speakers of this event are, MSR , Mobile Stage rentals, one of the biggest names in large stage rentals for large tours throughout the United States. Another company that I would be glad to see would have to be TLC Creative Design and Production, a company who has innovated the lighting aspect of live shows for over 30 years. The event also has live industry top speakers, who are talking throughout the event. One guest speaker I would like to see is Chuck Randall, who has 30 years in the industry touring with bands such as Alice in Chains, 311 and the Pet Shop Boys. To hear him speak about his experiences and how he worked to get to where he is now would be reason enough for me to want to go to the show. These and a few other reasons are why I would like to go to the Event Live Expo this year.

Live Nation

I recently visited the website Live Nation. This website shows much more than just a company that is trying to sell tickets. Under the venue tab on the front page, one of the main links, there are all 50 states and all of the venues that they work with. This could help someone like me, who is trying to get into the Live show industry, find an arena or job at one of these locations. I would use it to also discover new places where I could go and enjoy shows. Speaking of jobs this site has a page directed towards their Careers section. I have already searched for several different jobs in different cities that would suit me  for the future. I checked out Atlanta, Georgia and Las Vegas, Nevada, just to name a few. There were quite a few jobs that would suit me in and around those areas. Another aspect I liked about Live Nation's website is the fact that they do partner with so many large big name companies. This means that if I were to get a job through Live Nation I would eventually be able to use their contacts to further my career.


I also learned about their program which helps new artists get promoted and hired to perform live shows through their website. It is called Live Nation All Access In House Artist. It showcases an artist every month and helps them get noticed. This is great because it can help someone like me get to know new artists and look towards the possibility of working personally for some of the artists.

Live Nation is a great page to discover new artists and a great place to look for many jobs around the country. As well as a partner with huge ticket selling sites and venues. I have bought tickets from them and look forward to using them to help me find a job in the future.

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