Roundtables & Mentoring Sessions

Now established as a tradition, the final day of the conference included roundtable and mentoring sessions to get everyone fired up for the afternoon’s final panels.

Situated right next to the Tales from the Backstage and Beyond round-table, Substance Abuse and the Concert Business moderators Amy Blackman-Romero of Tsunami Enter-tainment, MusiCares’ Harold Owens and Johanna Rees of the Hollywood Bowl / Walt Disney Concert Hall joked about the disparity in attendance between the two.

It seems everyone wants to hear the drunken stories from the road, but far fewer people want to discuss artists getting sober.

Paradigm’s Duffy McSwiggin noted he’s seen the effects of addiction on bands’ performances and ticket sales.

If an act performs poorly on drugs/alcohol, ticket sales for the next few shows may drop.

There was a consensus at the table that many of the people who’ve lasted the longest in the concert industry do so only because they got sober – but the subject is still relatively taboo.

The Tales from the Backstage roundtable, facilitated by Goldenvoice’s Elliott Lefko, wasn’t all about groupies and other escapades on the road.

Photographer Herb Wise gave a presentation and the backstories on his in-the-moment portraits of con-certgoers and one-time rising artists including Bob Dylan, Todd Rundgren, Black Oak Arkansas, Blood Sweat & Tears, Frank Zappa and John Cage.

He also had plenty to say about his photos of festivalgoers dancing en masse in the mud, raving to a band or sitting quietly in their camps.

Jeremiah “Ice” Younossi, head of A List Talent Agency which includes clients 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes, held an intimate discussion that included a U.S. military show producer, a venue GM, an artist manager and a Nevada casino rep.

Urban music is doing great, although club promoters could do a better job reporting box office numbers and could use some schooling on how to publish, package and service their shows.

Many artists, including Fiddy, are looking at virgin fan bases overseas. Mean-while, timing can be improved, such as Lil’ Wayne’s gap between his record drop and his tour.

The Climate Change: Touring Impacts & Opportunities panel dis-cussed Julie’s Bicycle, a nonprofit company established to educate the U.K. music industry on climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Festival Republic’s Melvin Benn, Big Life Management’s Jazz Summers and Oxford University’s Diana Liverman facilitated this wide-ranging discussion.

Research was conducted on emissions of the U.K. music market in 2007 and it was found that the live performance sector contributed two-thirds of omissions – everything from artist and crew travel to shipping equipment to catering.

Radiohead is one band that is tracking its impact on the environment by attempt-ing to audit its tours. To combat global warming on a recent tour, the band didn’t play remote shows, choosing instead to only play big concerts in urban environments so people could take public transportation and not have to travel as far.

A conversation about Grassroots and Lifestyle Marketing, led by Insight Management’s Maria Brunner, revealed an unlikely source of word-of-mouth promotion: Moms – especially those with blogs.

Mom-bloggers are extremely important as mouthpieces of communities. One way to engage them is to offer mom-bloggers tickets to family events. Develop those relationships, and they will be more likely to blog about future family shows in their towns. Also discussed was using Web sites like Ninge.com

and Yelp.com to promote events as social networking can really benefit artists and doesn’t cost a thing but time.

CAA Nashville’s Rod Essig once again held his popular Country Music Touring discussion, answering questions about ticket pricing, strategies for touring artists like Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, how to avoid over-saturating markets and putting together showcases for new country artists.

Each CIC includes discussions on the latest tech, and this was no different, with roundtables discussing mobile marketing and new online toys for marketing whizzes.

Hal Hassall from Echo, a Ticket-master Entertainment subsidiary, stressed the importance of consolidating audiences. He called the current system of Web marketing a “furball,” with the artists’ Web sites sending fans every which way. He envisioned a model where all other related sites point to the artists’ homepages.

Hassell encouraged panel visitors to check out Google Analytics, which also came up during the Internet Marketing For Live Events panel, hosted by Topspin Media’s Ian Rogers and Jeff Schroeder.

At the Mobile Marketing of Concerts table, Isaac Naor of Ping Mobile stressed the importance of embracing mobile technology in concerts and explained the benefits of his company’s program, which provides instant mobile marketing to legions of fans. He also said there’s no excuse for the business to still use paper tickets.

- Photos by Jason Squires and John Shearer