To mark the publication of our academic article on the live music ecology, the LMX team is publishing our original discussion notes. These illustrate the origins of the ideas that inform the article but include points that weren’t further developed (and perhaps should have been). We thought it worth making public—particularly in relation to this topic—an aspect of the academic process that is usually hidden.
Professor Simon Frith (University of Edinburgh) interviews Paul Latham, Chief Operating Officer of Live Nation UK and Chairman of Creative and Cultural Skills. Together they discuss Paul’s career in live music, the current state of the industry and the future of live music in the UK and globally, the relationship between the live and recording industries, and issues around secondary ticketing.
This week’s blog post was written by music industries blogger, Bob Lefsetz, and originally published in the regular Lefsetz Letter, republished here with permission. In it, he shows how Kid Rock bargained with his merch company, and his promoter and ticket agent, in order to get a fairer deal for the fans.
In the third of our series on the theories that underpin our research into live music, Matt Brennan and Emma Webster attempt to define the promoter and how they operate, in an extract from ‘Why Concert Promoters Matter’, originally published in Scottish Music Review in 2011. The authors analyse existing accounts of live music promoters and offer their own analysis of what a promoter is and does, concluding that promoters may use one or more of three basic models of promotion within rock and pop: ‘independent’, ‘artist-affiliated’, and ‘venue’.
Competition Commission report into the merger between Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc and Live Nation – includes analysis of the live music industry in the UK and the competitive effects of the merger in the market for the primary retailing of tickets for live music events and in the markets for live music promotion and live music venues.