© Lauren Baxter 2021.
Gone are the days of sleeping rough outside your favourite record store in order to be the first in line for those sweet tickets. So how do we combat scalpers in an age of Viagogo and bots, and stop punters forking out a grand a ticket. Sure we’ve been having this conversation for a while now and it seems a bit like it’s falling on deaf ears, but Michael Chugg, a pioneer of the Australian music industry and one of the country’s most prominent music promoters, is positive that change is coming.
“The laws are coming in slowly but surely,” Chugg reflects. “There’s some sort of government working force and they’re having meetings in all the states and hopefully we’ll get some laws that are strong enough to stop it.”
It’s clear though that despite this, Chugg, like many others, isn’t Viagogo’s number one fan. He thinks they are still “the biggest problem” in the industry, mainly because they are “showing tickets sometimes they don’t even have”.
“Other times – tickets which they’ve bought off someone else and nine times out of ten they won’t get in on them.”
“I know the English government have told Google to take Viagogo off their google search which hasn’t happened yet but that’s the sort of stuff that needs to happen. The biggest problem is, is that a lot of people, when they want to go to a show, they go straight online, google up the band or the venue and up comes box offices and unfortunately Viagogo have the official box office banner which is a total lie and a lot of people just go in there and buy the tickets at ridiculous prices – sometimes three, four hundred percent more than what the tickets are worth.”
But still, despite all the discussion and constant uproar, we are still seeing new players enter the secondary ticket game, with Ticketmaster even bringing in their own resale facility. Chugg is not happy about this. “Sometimes we suspect tickets are going up before they’re even being sold on the right site you know. I’ve even done it myself where I’ve googled up Ticketmaster and I haven’t gone to the right box office I’ve gone to the resale box office.”
“And then you go onto Ticketmaster and they’ve got tickets for the other cities which are Ticketek tickets – well how did they get them?”
After giving “maybe 100 interviews on radio and TV and press for the last 12 months trying to get the message across,” it is clear that this is an issue that affects Chugg deeply.
“I mean, it really breaks my heart when I’m standing at the box office and somebody has driven from Bourke to Sydney to see a show and then can’t get in because they’ve got a Viagogo ticket.”
After years of campaigning though, Chugg finally has some faith in the powers in Canberra. “At least the government after years of inactivity are finally facing up to that they’ve got to deal with it,” he says. “The ACCI [Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry] have been great, I mean they’re really starting to work it out, so all we can do as the music industry is keep pushing the government, keep pushing the corruption body, keep communicating with the box offices. But it’s very hard when people only buy one or two shows a year, to educate them.”
So how does Chugg want this change to manifest?
“Well you know the QLD government put through a law and they busted a young guy in Brisbane, printing and selling illegal Ed Sheeran tickets and he went to jail. So more of that. Up until now a lot of the states were just worried about sporting events.
“We get the blame or the act gets the blame, it’s never Viagogo, it’s always us. So yeah, I’m hoping they bring in some very tough laws and I’m sure it’s gonna happen. But you know as I said, we’ve been fighting this for a few years now.
“In Italy somebody from Viagogo and Live Nation went to jail last year for this very thing and the quicker we can get into that the better but I know the corruption body agent are considering taking criminal action against Viagogo but I haven’t heard any more.”
Chugg also feels with all of this, the government is now finally giving the music industry, compared to sport, the recognition it deserves.
“Look, we’re getting much more recognition out of all the governments now than we’ve had in the past, it’s not just across ticketing. It’s also across Australian music not getting played enough on Australian radio. It’s also about, you know, not supporting Australian music around the world. There’s a whole scope.
“And of course the music industry in Australia is getting stronger and stronger so the governments are getting more pressure, and they’re just looking at all our problems for the first time really.
“So we continue to go to Canberra, we continue to push wherever we can. Slowly but surely. There’s a lot of people in the industry that are working tirelessly to try to resolve all this.”
Forget what The Buggles taught you, radio is still alive and well and Australian content quotas are by no means a new thing. But with the release of a study by Chrissie Vincent that claimed, on the whole, commercial radio was not in fact meeting the minimum requirements for local content, on top of a call to arms in Tina Arena’s keynote address at BIGSOUND last year, there’s been a lot of talk about the issue.
At the same time, there are not many artists who can claim they broke through at number two on the triple j Hottest 100 only then for album numero uno to debut at top spot on the charts. So what is the real world impact of these quotas and radio play in general on Australian artists? What does it mean for say, Amy Shark? Rachael Comerford, Senior Artist Manager at Unified Music Group has got a pretty good idea.
“I’m sure that Kylie Minogue’s still getting played with Spinning Around on like a Top 40 station and that’s filling a quota,” Comerford laughs. “The station can say what kind of format they are though and I don’t think that’s fair because therefore they can change their format, brand, title in order to change what amount of new music they’re playing.”
Still, Comerford beamed positivity – she’s had a lot of success and put a lot of work in with Vance Joy and Amy Shark after all. “There’s a lot of Australian artists that are finally having continued success in the format,” she ponders. “Even just with Dean Lewis, 5SOS, Conrad Sewell, Amy, The Rubens, Peking Duck, Vance Joy. There you go that’s seven Australian artists that in the last six months, have actually continued to have multiple songs in the format – that’s working.”
“I know that Dan Rosen and ARIA are working with commercial radio behind the scenes on a research project and I think that what you are seeing there is, it’s evident.”
But what about closer to home. Has there been a direct correlation between commercial radio play and Shark’s success?
“I can’t say that I can see it’s been a direct reflection because it is too early,” Comerford speculates. I Said Hi has been a huge hit but our tour was announced around the same time so it’s hard for me to go, ‘Yeah that impacted.’ When Amy tours again in the next six months and we go with our next tour, we’ll be able to, at that point I think, turn around and say, ‘Yes commercial radio helped’ or, ‘No it didn’t.’ But at the same time, she’s done the work.”
So what does Comerford say to the critics who combat these discussions with claims that it is “not their fault”. The music just isn’t researching well with their audience and they’ve got to give the fans what they want. Shut up and play the hits or so they say.
“I think they need to stick by Australian artists.
“If there is clearly something happening with that artist in other areas, maybe take a stab at it because you might find that in the second round, third round, fourth round of research they do.
“I also understand that they have their audience and the research that comes back from that and maybe they don’t want to take a chance. I think they should start taking chances, I think that would be good for the industry.”
Gaze into the crystal ball then, does Comerford think there is change coming with all this discussion?
“I think that people are aware,” she starts optimistically.
“I think that if commercial radio can continue to have that discussion and continue look at that research then hopefully in 12 months time we’re going to see more artists have a chance taken on them.
“Let’s get more. Let’s do more. Let’s break more. Let’s support more. Because we can…
“But you know, one other thing though, is it’s so easy to just pick on people. It’s so easy to pick on festival bookers, it’s so easy to pick on radio. There are so many gaps, like what about TV. Where are our TV opportunities?”
Does anybody here actually know how blockchain works? We’re still confused to be honest so Rico Soto, Director of the Australasian Blockchain Music Association and Founder of Fire Entertainment, gave us the rundown of how the technology is going to revolutionise the music industry.
But first, please explain… “I guess it’s like explaining the internet in the 80s right?” Soto laughs. Like what is the internet? You know, where do we start…”
“It’s a decentralised, peer to peer system of exchange of information. So what this means is every time I pass on something, whatever that is, a piece of information, from one hand to another hand there’s a trail. And that trail helps up track where its been, who’s been holding it and possibly how it’s being used.”
Okay, but how is that going to guillotine the music industry’s Marie Antoinette and inspire a revolution?
“Imagine that the business now depends on a system that doesn’t require you to trust any other party because trust is no longer necessary,” Soto starts. “The way that you build a business is you receive something and you are 100% certain that it is correct.
“Right now, we are working with streaming, and streaming is just one of the many applications, but when you receive your royalty…you need to trust that whatever information you’re receiving from that other party is correct. That, with blockchain, goes away.
“So when your asset, say a song, is played in multiple streaming platforms, if you find a way of integrating blockchain into this system, the information that you receive is completely real, is completely accurate down to the individual stream. And I’m just using streaming as an example, we could go into management, we could go into commissions, we could go into bookings, we could go into ticketing.
“When you have a platform that is built on blockchain, those things are immediate. There’s no need anymore to wait, to confirm that the data is correct – the data is correct.
To say the contractual arrangements of the entire recording industry are complicated would be a bit of an understatement. So how do you go about turn that into code? Turns out that start-up companies are already tackling that problem in a multitude of ways, but there is still a lot of doubt.
“The problem right now and this is kind of where I sit as part of the Australasian Blockchain Music Association as part of the movement, is that there’s still a lot of doubt about the technology as it’s always been.
“The music industry is not necessarily known for being avant-garde necessarily. It’s usually the outcasts and the people outside of that inner circle, and the best way to exemplify that is Spotify. You know it came from Sweden, from a random guy and then all of the sudden, everyone wants to play in the streaming game.”
Even so, if you have multiple start-ups working on multiple blockchains, surely you would still need someone to bring them all together. Let’s just say someone owns the ‘.music’ blockchain for example – does it then work like a shopping centre where artists have to pay rent to use the technology? Who is going to pay for the computing resources?
“Well that’s the thing. There is a movement to develop this technology because of the benefits that it would present humanity,” Soto muses.
“I think the “rent” comes in multiple ways. Let’s say if you’re building a lego castle, imagine that each one of those lego pieces is stored in different people’s computers and all of these different people just contribute a lego piece in order to build that castle. So using your analogy you pay that rent either by contributing to building that castle…or you pay rent by using those services. Those services would generate some sort of revenue that then can be used to pay the technology or the expansion of that technology. But that’s just simple business.
And what about factoring music fans into the equation?
“Letting fans access your music is going to be faster, it’s going to be fairer. You know the money when you buy something is going directly to the artist. That the artist is getting paid fairly. That they can manage those funds themselves rather than depending on other people managing those funds.
“It’s just going to be more efficient. And the fans are going to be able to access the artist’s assets, and the artist’s creativity, and the artist’s music, and the artist’s content in multiple different ways and make sure that however they interact with the artist, the artist is actually getting more benefit and growing and that money is going directly to them.
“I think the record labels will start seeing the benefit of this and start incorporating this technology into their business models. But it’s also going to give a lot of opportunities to the artists to generate more revenue.”
It’s clear now that the technology exists. That’s not even a talking point anymore. When it comes to implementation into the mainstream, Soto speculates that it’s not a matter of if, but when.
“The technology needs a little bit of improvement because right now it takes a lot of energy to validate the blockchain. That is only a matter of scalability. I think that in the next five years we’re going to solve that problem.
“I guess the simple answer is that some companies will need to open their doors to start assimilating this technology or the other option is that another new company will jump into the market with this point of difference.
“You either innovate or you die.”
Original article: The Music BIGSOUND Issue