Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to this week's edition of the Bob
Speaker 1: Left Sets podcast. My guest today is Rick Mueller, who's
Speaker 1: president of A E. G Presents North America. Good to
Speaker 1: have you here. Thanks for having me, Bob. Like I
Speaker 1: do with everybody, We're gonna get into ticketing, We're to
Speaker 1: get into touring, we're gonna get to other things musical.
Speaker 1: But I like to get where a person comes from
Speaker 1: because that reflects who they ultimately are. You're from North
Speaker 1: Cow right correct to grew out in the East Banna
Speaker 1: town called Lafia, just on the other side of the
Speaker 1: Berkeley Hills, Lafayette. It's like what, I don't even I
Speaker 1: didn't even know the name Lafiat. Pretty much grew up
Speaker 1: in the suburban dream, deep suburbs of the San Francisco
Speaker 1: Bay area. My dad was an executive at Chevron. I
Speaker 1: grew up going to high school like thousand people, pretty
Speaker 1: much the American dream. I think your father was an
Speaker 1: executive at Chevron doing what do you have any idea?
Speaker 1: He worked in chemical additives division, and so he did.
Speaker 1: I mean, so when I go to the Chevron stage
Speaker 1: and it says you want to buy show run because
Speaker 1: of tech Ron. He's that guy. He is. Indeed, he
Speaker 1: would oftentimes at the dinner table tell me what you
Speaker 1: know additives did to gasoline. I couldn't recount any of
Speaker 1: that today, but you know, but he was passionate about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was a hard working guy. He was smart guy.
Speaker 1: As a trained chemist from m I T and worked
Speaker 1: his way in the executive side and finished his career
Speaker 1: living in Singapore managing and building a refinery and doing
Speaker 1: deals in the Pacific. Room thought your parents remained married.
Speaker 1: They just had their fiftieth winter in anniversary. Okay, so
Speaker 1: they moved to Singapore after you were out of the house.
Speaker 1: They did after my freshman year. I went to school
Speaker 1: at Santa Barbara. They left I think that spring and
Speaker 1: my first year of college, and they spent the next
Speaker 1: seven or eight years there. Okay, so you're the only kid.
Speaker 1: How many kids in the family, two kids, older brother
Speaker 1: he went to Santa Barbara as well, and then went
Speaker 1: to business school at U T in Austin and then
Speaker 1: never left Austin. What does he do? He and his
Speaker 1: wife had their own mortgage brokersh company. Okay, so you're
Speaker 1: living in northern California and are you into music. Grew
Speaker 1: up on music, So music because you're parents, role, your
Speaker 1: older brother, your personal passion, personal passion. Early just I
Speaker 1: was a Kinnectic kid. Music resonated with me so early on.
Speaker 1: My mom got me enrolled in drum lessons because I
Speaker 1: don't know if I just you know, she saw me
Speaker 1: like an animal from the Muppet movies. I was a
Speaker 1: bit for sure growing up in this day and age,
Speaker 1: I would have been diagnosed as they like the A D.
Speaker 1: D kid and probably put on adderall or something to
Speaker 1: like calm me down. But she got me involved in
Speaker 1: a lot of sports. She signed me up for drum lessons,
Speaker 1: and these were all kind of outlets to get the
Speaker 1: energy out. But I really resonated in music early on.
Speaker 1: And then as I got into high school, they had
Speaker 1: a high school radio station, so I signed up for
Speaker 1: that and we used to broad a little bit slower.
Speaker 1: So how old were you when you started to play drums? Eight?
Speaker 1: Ten years old? Okay? Did you ever play with bands?
Speaker 1: Try to played through the jazz bands in high school.
Speaker 1: A few failed attempted rock bands that they never got far.
Speaker 1: There wasn't really much of like a rock band music
Speaker 1: scene in the suburbs. Of this would have been eighty
Speaker 1: eight to ninety two ish. And do you have a
Speaker 1: drum set today? I do not? I uh in college,
Speaker 1: I took it with me to Santa Barbara. I played
Speaker 1: a little bit, and this is right as I was
Speaker 1: getting into concert promoting at school at Santa Barbara, and
Speaker 1: I decided that I was just better at promoting events
Speaker 1: than I was a drummer. I think many concert promoters
Speaker 1: and people in the music business are failed musicians, so
Speaker 1: they got onto the business side of the absolute We
Speaker 1: all try yeah, and then woke up one day and
Speaker 1: realized we didn't have What a total failure. Where are
Speaker 1: those drums today? Sold long gone. I'm not a big
Speaker 1: keeper of stuff, so like if I'm done the opposite,
Speaker 1: I'm around my girlfriend crazy. But in any event, you're
Speaker 1: in high school, you're in the band correct playing the
Speaker 1: drums played jazz band, and the drums had to do
Speaker 1: the orchestra band as requirement to get into jazz band.
Speaker 1: Hated that, and we just put on headphones and play
Speaker 1: along with rock tracks at home. At the time. What
Speaker 1: music were you listening to at home? I think the
Speaker 1: first really big band to me was the old Van
Speaker 1: Halen the David Lee Roth Ara van Halen is like
Speaker 1: the first thing that really what do you think about
Speaker 1: Van Halen is they were a big band. These played
Speaker 1: the star Wood, which no longer exists, and I went
Speaker 1: to the Santa Monica Cific. This is a couple of
Speaker 1: months before the first album came out, and they were
Speaker 1: the opening band for Nils Loft Grin who came and
Speaker 1: he would do his little flip on the mini tramp whatever.
Speaker 1: And you laughed because people listen to the podcast may
Speaker 1: not be old enough to remember this band, Black Oak, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: but the leader Jim Dandy, who had the same stick
Speaker 1: as David Lee Roth, the long blondier the open Street
Speaker 1: and I was laughing. And then of course the record
Speaker 1: came out with Running with the Devil, and you go, wow,
Speaker 1: this is great. Well, it just came down with the
Speaker 1: guitar plane right right exactly, but it was it was
Speaker 1: beyond that. Even the people who poo poo that sound
Speaker 1: said that Eddie was a great guitar player. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you were into uh van Halo, van Halen and and
Speaker 1: that era of hard rock heavy metal at the time,
Speaker 1: and then you know, I think around my junior year
Speaker 1: of high school junior going to senior high school, Kurt
Speaker 1: Cobain put out, uh, never mind, and that turned me
Speaker 1: on my head. I went deep into the alternative scene.
Speaker 1: As soon as I got to college, I got turned
Speaker 1: onto hip hop. Um, and that was where I just
Speaker 1: kind of got to see a lot more music happening
Speaker 1: when it was, you know, once I got to school
Speaker 1: at Santa Barbara. Okay, So when you're in high school,
Speaker 1: you have no dream of being in the music business,
Speaker 1: or do you. I don't know that headed dreams for anything.
Speaker 1: At that point, I was just finding my way. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed doing music. I enjoyed doing the radio station. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: so what I mean? But this was much more sophisticated
Speaker 1: than my era. There was a high school radio station
Speaker 1: casey e Q Rock of the Dons. And how far
Speaker 1: away could you hear it? At least to the parking lot.
Speaker 1: You remember how many watts it had? I don't. I
Speaker 1: I remember, like, I'm not sure you could have gotten
Speaker 1: it at the other side of town. It was really
Speaker 1: not it was it was more of a of a
Speaker 1: hobby than it really was. We were actually entertaining anybody
Speaker 1: out there. But um, I pursued it with a lot
Speaker 1: of passion. We definitely worked on my playlist every day.
Speaker 1: So how often what were the hours of the station?
Speaker 1: It would run from, you know, like late periods of
Speaker 1: the afternoon into I think the last show ended up
Speaker 1: at like ten o'clock at night really, so it was
Speaker 1: like a regular way to Yeah, you're a kid, you
Speaker 1: had like a two hour shift, maybe three hour shifts
Speaker 1: something like that. But you must have been pretty passionate
Speaker 1: to be involved. Loved it, loved it. I think it
Speaker 1: was the president of the Radio Club or whatever they
Speaker 1: called it at that time. So you go to Santa
Speaker 1: Barbara with a you know, once one goes to college,
Speaker 1: it's a reset and you can join or not join.
Speaker 1: What did you then do to further your music career? First?
Speaker 1: Did you? Did you join the radio station? I did not.
Speaker 1: I looked at it. It was a little too um
Speaker 1: at that point. It was a little too alternatives that
Speaker 1: the right word. It was just a little too left
Speaker 1: for me with the political views and it with the
Speaker 1: snobbery of the music and that kind of stuff. It was.
Speaker 1: I just didn't get the right vibe from it when
Speaker 1: I first checked it out, and I didn't really kick
Speaker 1: the tires that hard because you also had to start
Speaker 1: out with shows that were like at two in the morning,
Speaker 1: because it was put in your dues and I probably
Speaker 1: wasn't that interested in it. Um. Actually further the music
Speaker 1: interest kind of on accident. So my freshman year of college,
Speaker 1: I went through fraternity rush in the spring and I
Speaker 1: hated it and it just wasn't my scene. I didn't
Speaker 1: like it. And at that point I was looking around
Speaker 1: what to do, and my friend who lived on my
Speaker 1: floor at the door and said, hey, come check out
Speaker 1: the programming committee. Um, there's some jobs open there. My
Speaker 1: buddies on it. They do all kinds of stuff, And
Speaker 1: I said, why not. I went down and checked it
Speaker 1: out and filled out an application. It was hired on
Speaker 1: as the movie coordinator, so I booked movies that would
Speaker 1: happen on campus every year. But as soon as I
Speaker 1: got in the door for that, I fully locked in
Speaker 1: on the guy who was booking concerts. I said, what's
Speaker 1: that's all about? I was super interested in it still
Speaker 1: right in. It's how I learned to use Excel to
Speaker 1: do budgeting. Um, I learned how to you know what
Speaker 1: the poll star thing was all about and start so
Speaker 1: you go at the end of your freshman year, did
Speaker 1: you book movies? I did, and that would be just
Speaker 1: what would be the economics of that? That was more
Speaker 1: for what I think for most colleges, it was more
Speaker 1: of just a lost leader of entertainment on campus. We
Speaker 1: charged a couple of bucks to get into the IV
Speaker 1: theater um and we do you know, new releases. A
Speaker 1: lot of the movie companies would say, hey, we want
Speaker 1: a premiere this movie, and they do free premiers to
Speaker 1: kind of get the word of mouth going with college kids.
Speaker 1: And then we'd also run you know, second run films
Speaker 1: in there that kind of had some you know how
Speaker 1: much marketing and promotion was there for those films. It
Speaker 1: was a lot of hand to hand. It was kind
Speaker 1: of good early early concert promoting training. I did a lot.
Speaker 1: I did a lot of walking around campus with flyers
Speaker 1: and putting up posters. Still probably have a couple of
Speaker 1: staple guns in the garage. Okay, so how long before
Speaker 1: you start to become active in the contract end of it? Uh?
Speaker 1: The following year when they opened up the concert promoter job,
Speaker 1: I applied for that and got that, So I ended
Speaker 1: up promoting shows. You became the concert promoter. So there
Speaker 1: was you know, there was a concert promoter job within
Speaker 1: the program where there was a movie program or a
Speaker 1: concert promoter, a production guy, a marketing guy, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of what would be a business affairs type person
Speaker 1: who would handle the contracts and the organization internal organization.
Speaker 1: So I applied for the concert promoter, which is really
Speaker 1: becoming the buyer. But I really immersed myself in the
Speaker 1: whole thing. One would think that would be a desirable job,
Speaker 1: that other people would want that job. There was a
Speaker 1: bunch of people who were into it. The guy who
Speaker 1: had the job became before me. I became friends with
Speaker 1: really quick and just kind of I was all over
Speaker 1: him my first year when I was doing the movies
Speaker 1: about concerts. And I don't know if I was a natural,
Speaker 1: but I was certainly like chasing that thing pretty vigorously.
Speaker 1: So I think there were a few other people that
Speaker 1: applied for it, but at that point I had had
Speaker 1: the experience in the tenure on the program board and
Speaker 1: lit and behold, they got the job. Okay, So, so
Speaker 1: you really didn't work on concerts before you got that job. Lets,
Speaker 1: so you got the job, what's the first thing you
Speaker 1: have to do books and bands. So so you know
Speaker 1: many I went to a small college and there were
Speaker 1: certain times a year when they booked named talent. It
Speaker 1: was like three times a year. How many slots were there.
Speaker 1: At UCSB, we had more of a pot of money,
Speaker 1: and whatever the pot was, we could book bands until
Speaker 1: we were out of money, and at the end of
Speaker 1: the year whatever, some amount of money was all back
Speaker 1: for the big spring show. So if we book shows
Speaker 1: and we figured out how to make money or lose
Speaker 1: less on them, it was we had to keep going.
Speaker 1: So um I started booking bands. If we made money
Speaker 1: on shows, we put it back. So the first year
Speaker 1: you did In the second year, how many shows did
Speaker 1: you actually book? Probably did about four or five shows
Speaker 1: in my first year. Okay, so knowing people in the business,
Speaker 1: you're dealing with a middle agent to book those shows, No, sir,
Speaker 1: just for those people don't know a lot of colleges,
Speaker 1: they don't deal directly with W M. E or CIA.
Speaker 1: There are people who who are middle men who booked
Speaker 1: those shows. But you didn't do that. No. I I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was as much of a scene
Speaker 1: was in college, but I never they had they had
Speaker 1: some middleman type agencies called Nakpa that would like he
Speaker 1: could go. Well, that was a convention where you could
Speaker 1: go and you could see all the talent and meet
Speaker 1: all the people. Correct, it was Nacka, not na Um.
Speaker 1: But uh I called I got up polls Star, and
Speaker 1: I called up Frank Riley at are your peninicial Artists
Speaker 1: and said, we'd like to book Fish at UC Santa
Speaker 1: Barbara And they were doing a college tour. Do you
Speaker 1: remember just would have been nineteen four, okay, relatively early
Speaker 1: in Fisher's tenure. Correct, So the the programming committee already
Speaker 1: had a subscription to poll Star. That's how you were
Speaker 1: aware of that. Correct. So you call up Frank and
Speaker 1: Frank says, what UH send in the offer? We're doing
Speaker 1: a college tour. Get me these dates. So put together
Speaker 1: everything facts in the offer because it was pretty email.
Speaker 1: Uh probably called Frank once a week for the next
Speaker 1: three four or five weeks, just probably mostly annoying him
Speaker 1: because there was no answer. They just hadn't finished routing
Speaker 1: and pulled part of your personality, how much does your
Speaker 1: relentlessness figure into ultimate success? Well, in this particular case,
Speaker 1: it probably almost figured into my failure because I think
Speaker 1: Frank was getting tired of hearing from me at the time.
Speaker 1: But um, eventually we confirmed the date and it's sold
Speaker 1: out and which was how many people people? Four thousand
Speaker 1: people played the events center there. Do you remember how
Speaker 1: much you charged? No if I had a guest somewhere
Speaker 1: around twenty bucks and you booked Fish because you were
Speaker 1: a fan or you knew they would sell uh, because
Speaker 1: they were So I was not a huge jam guy,
Speaker 1: but I mean it was well aware of Fish and
Speaker 1: somebody maybe somebody turned me onto the opportunity that they
Speaker 1: were gonna be touring. So I just started chasing it down.
Speaker 1: And so you have that's your first gig, so you
Speaker 1: must be feeling like a million bucks. Well yeah, until
Speaker 1: the show played and then we got overrun by Fish fans.
Speaker 1: I was not very popular on campus after they played,
Speaker 1: because you know, Fish is actually very prepared band, even
Speaker 1: even in the early days. They had great road people
Speaker 1: and they did pretty thorough security advances because of the scene.
Speaker 1: You know, it was very grateful dead esque and people
Speaker 1: who have followed them on the road, and we had
Speaker 1: a bunch of you know, new age hip. He's taken
Speaker 1: over you see Santa Barbara Campus and I don't think
Speaker 1: the police department was particularly I don't know, it's probably
Speaker 1: an extra thousand people around realized that didn't get into
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah. Yeah, but the show was a financial success.
Speaker 1: Where do you go from there? It was a winner.
Speaker 1: So we did that and then I did shows with
Speaker 1: We did Ben Harper, we did G Love I did
Speaker 1: you know? At that point, I think I had started
Speaker 1: in turning the Golden Voice in the summer, So that's
Speaker 1: another Southern California promote. At one point I met Mitch Oakman, um,
Speaker 1: and we started booking No Doubt, who was already a
Speaker 1: pretty successful Southern California band in that scene. They were
Speaker 1: playing and selling out thousand clubs throughout Southern California before
Speaker 1: Tragic Kingdom came out. Um, So we had them on
Speaker 1: sale and then Tragic Kingdom came out and just a
Speaker 1: Girl was blowing up and so that sold out there. Um.
Speaker 1: And they're actually the first band I did from clubs
Speaker 1: to selling out twenty two thousand seats at Shoreline. Okay,
Speaker 1: did you do anything that didn't work? Uh? Did we
Speaker 1: do anything that didn't work? We had a pretty good
Speaker 1: track record, did we Oh, we booked a Sponge show.
Speaker 1: I got bullied into booking Sponge one point in time,
Speaker 1: by whom the agent think just kind of like, hey,
Speaker 1: we'll sell you some other stuff, but you got to
Speaker 1: do this one. It's a big college tour. It's really
Speaker 1: important to us, and and that one didn't work so well,
Speaker 1: and we had a widespread panic show that didn't work
Speaker 1: so good as well. Okay, now you're starting from zero
Speaker 1: and it's a bullying business, so you must have learned
Speaker 1: a few lessons along the way there in college. Yeah. Honestly,
Speaker 1: when you're in college here it's a you could be
Speaker 1: a bit more irravulant because I wasn't at that point
Speaker 1: thinking of it as a career. So it was sometimes
Speaker 1: easier to say no to certain agents as opposed to
Speaker 1: you know, in the relationships where we have with a
Speaker 1: William Moore associated now, where you want to be full
Speaker 1: service and try and help them out with a lot
Speaker 1: more even though you know or don't feel it's gonna work.
Speaker 1: So what were the lessons you learned promoting in college?
Speaker 1: I think really how to be utilitarian about it, so
Speaker 1: you know, we'd go out and hand out flyers, try
Speaker 1: and sell tickets. I learned about ticket printing. You know,
Speaker 1: at that time it was still a hard ticket business
Speaker 1: on campus. It was an electronic system. So I had
Speaker 1: to learn a little bit about the ticketing business. I
Speaker 1: had to learn a little bit about production. I had
Speaker 1: to learn a little bit abou settlement and get myself
Speaker 1: proficient enough to come off as we were quasi professionally
Speaker 1: presenting these concerts. And at what point do you wake
Speaker 1: up and say, WHOA, this might be a career. It's
Speaker 1: very clear moment for me. So spring of nineteen nineties six,
Speaker 1: we're in your college career, my senior year, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to be graduating. Uh. That June I went to
Speaker 1: the career center on campus and I remember flipping through
Speaker 1: this binder and they have the companies that are coming
Speaker 1: to interview on campus and what kind of jobs they have.
Speaker 1: And I was flipping through, flipping through, flipping through, and
Speaker 1: then I said, you know, if I leave right now,
Speaker 1: I can go and work on that budget for the
Speaker 1: three leven Farside cypercill tour that Caro Lewis had called
Speaker 1: me about. And uh, I closed the book and went
Speaker 1: and did that and never did anything. At that point.
Speaker 1: I was all in on concerts. Okay, so you graduate,
Speaker 1: what is your next job? I started it at Bill
Speaker 1: Graham Presents three days after I graduated. How did you
Speaker 1: get the gig so um backing up before that my
Speaker 1: after my junior year, I or spring of my junior year,
Speaker 1: and uh and some that summer I had talked my
Speaker 1: way into an internship with Paul to let Rick van
Speaker 1: Stanton a Golden Voice. So I cut class three days
Speaker 1: a week in the spring and drove to l a
Speaker 1: and would work out of the Golden Voice office. And
Speaker 1: then as soon as classes friends couches that I do
Speaker 1: in l a UM and so I'd work for them
Speaker 1: in the spring and and and then the summer. And
Speaker 1: which was like the best next step for learning because
Speaker 1: had I intern at a company like Bill Cranbers, because
Speaker 1: Bill gran Presents, I would have been in the back
Speaker 1: and their poster archives finally posters all summer, wouldn't wouldn't
Speaker 1: have had the access sitting literally right in between Rick
Speaker 1: and Paul. I got to prepare offers for them. I
Speaker 1: got to see how they do settlements. I got to
Speaker 1: see watch them do a lollapaloos a year um, you know,
Speaker 1: out of the field, and really get hands on and
Speaker 1: get real jobs. I got to work the box office
Speaker 1: Duke box office settlements. It was way more access than
Speaker 1: a college kid was getting to professional concert promoting at
Speaker 1: that point in time. So, um, you had Paul to Lett,
Speaker 1: who ultimately went on as well. Both he and Rick
Speaker 1: co founded Coachella and was as a visionary in our business.
Speaker 1: But you had Rick and Paul and Moss Jacobs, who
Speaker 1: I worked with again now all these years later. Um,
Speaker 1: I got access to these guys and how they were
Speaker 1: promoting their styles, and it was just an incredible learning experience.
Speaker 1: So then I went back to Santa Barbara. We actually
Speaker 1: ran the concert program in the Black the whole year,
Speaker 1: uh that following year, and I think we probably did
Speaker 1: close to twelve to fifteen shows that year for for concerts,
Speaker 1: I mean, sorry for our college promoters, quite a bit
Speaker 1: of shows. Um. So, as I was decided to try
Speaker 1: to get into this business, I went to see Paul
Speaker 1: t as they were opening up the Glass House out
Speaker 1: in Pomona and gave them the big pitch that I
Speaker 1: wanted to be in the business. And at that point
Speaker 1: in time, they just weren't in a fine financial position
Speaker 1: to hire me on full time, and I said, great,
Speaker 1: if you can give me a reference as I go
Speaker 1: hunter round for whoever else is out there, I'd appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So my production managers girlfriends father was friends with Greg
Speaker 1: pearl Off, who was running bill Gram Presents. So it's
Speaker 1: all about the connections, all about the well anyway, I've
Speaker 1: i've i've, you know, fact in a resume cold the
Speaker 1: Bill Gram Presents. Uh. One day and UH to Greg
Speaker 1: and UH said, hey, I'd be interested in working here.
Speaker 1: And I know, uh, your friends, uh daughter who knows
Speaker 1: my production manager, and I really love concerts, and I'd
Speaker 1: like to work at bill Gram Presents and send in
Speaker 1: with my resume. And I remember on a Friday afternoon,
Speaker 1: I got a call from Greg when I was probably
Speaker 1: you know, two beers, two beers or into the afternoon
Speaker 1: and eating a bowl aposta in my apartment and uh
Speaker 1: and you know, as you often did at the UC
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara, and uh he flew me up for an interview,
Speaker 1: and I went up there to interview. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: obviously in the spring of nine. I had a good interview.
Speaker 1: I brought, you know, I brought my my show file
Speaker 1: from the Big Fish jo a done and having worked
Speaker 1: the summer Golden Voice, I felt like I had a real,
Speaker 1: you know, professional looking show file, which it was probably
Speaker 1: it was probably in a pretty good shape. And I
Speaker 1: remember sitting in an office with Greg pearl Off, Sherry Wasserman,
Speaker 1: and Lee Smith, and Sherry looked through the Fish show
Speaker 1: file where they're asking me with questions, and she told
Speaker 1: me years later that one of the reasons they hired
Speaker 1: me is because I had kind a better deal than
Speaker 1: they did on Fish. They had done the U. C.
Speaker 1: Davis show themselves, and I got Santa Barbara. So she said,
Speaker 1: you know, you actually looked like you know what you're
Speaker 1: doing for a college kid. So worked out pretty good. Okay,
Speaker 1: But you know you said, Golden Voice couldn't afford you.
Speaker 1: It couldn't for me. They just weren't. They weren't. They
Speaker 1: just weren't in a position to hire. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: I was negotiating. Was just like, we don't understand, but
Speaker 1: B G P had an opening or they made an
Speaker 1: opening for you. Uh, maybe a little bit of both.
Speaker 1: In a sense. I think there had been some talk
Speaker 1: about hiring somebody young that they could bring in as
Speaker 1: an assistant and groom into a booker for the department,
Speaker 1: and I presented the right opportunity in case at the
Speaker 1: right time, and it was the gig. I started out
Speaker 1: as Lee Smith's assistant in the booking department, and I
Speaker 1: was pretty active about um learning everything I could. When
Speaker 1: I got to Bill gram Presents, uh, you know, listening
Speaker 1: on all his phone calls, whether he knew it or not,
Speaker 1: and uh learned how he talked to agents, learned about
Speaker 1: booking bands, kind of learned what different agent styles were about,
Speaker 1: and again kind of further further to my knowledge base
Speaker 1: of you know, how they how they process contracts, how
Speaker 1: they built show budgets, how they you know, executed shows,
Speaker 1: and the Bill Graham way of doing things. Now you
Speaker 1: start in the spring of at the end of nine
Speaker 1: s comes the famous roll up by Sillerman into Clear
Speaker 1: Channel where he buys multiple promoters within they bought Bill Graham. Correct.
Speaker 1: It was It was about a year, about a year
Speaker 1: into my tenure there that Bob Stillman came along and he,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we were bilgram Presents was probably
Speaker 1: in the middle of the middle of that row of acquisitions.
Speaker 1: Somewhere in there. I don't but you know it wasn't
Speaker 1: at the very beginning, but it certainly wasn't the last
Speaker 1: of them either. Okay, so you worked there for a
Speaker 1: year and you slowly gained more responsibilities, I would assume. Yeah,
Speaker 1: about a year and a half in they started letting
Speaker 1: me book my own shows. Um I think I was
Speaker 1: a full time talent buyer there. Okay, could you book
Speaker 1: at any of their venues or you do? It's got
Speaker 1: specific venues to book. Uh. You know, when you first
Speaker 1: start out, they give you a kind of maybe the
Speaker 1: less desirable agents to work with. Um. I booked a
Speaker 1: lot of third party venues. Michael Bailey was pretty much
Speaker 1: the exclusive booker at the Fillmore on Warfield at that
Speaker 1: point where they're which is where their main two clubs.
Speaker 1: Um So I didn't really do anything there, but I
Speaker 1: think one of the first shows I booked for Bill
Speaker 1: Represents was BB King at the Paramount Theater. Um. But
Speaker 1: it was it was actually kind of a good, uh
Speaker 1: good way to cut my teeth because I learned how
Speaker 1: to book R and B and blues, I learned how
Speaker 1: to book Lyle love It and a lot of the
Speaker 1: M O R stuff, you know. Coming out of college,
Speaker 1: it was a kid who loved Nirvana and indie music
Speaker 1: and hip hop like learning these other genres of music
Speaker 1: that I wasn't really that turned onto. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: a good way to become a more well rounded promoter
Speaker 1: and understand the business. Okay, so you're working at Bill Graham,
Speaker 1: it ultimately gets brought by Sillerman. How do you end
Speaker 1: up working what results as Live Nation today? For me,
Speaker 1: it was just pretty much a steady arc through all
Speaker 1: of that that I call I always generally refer to
Speaker 1: it as the consolidation roller coaster. So Bob Stillerman and
Speaker 1: the original SFX came in and bought all the promoters.
Speaker 1: He flipped that to Clear Channel Radio. Clear Channel Radio
Speaker 1: stuck with it for a number of years and then
Speaker 1: will eventually spun that company off into Live Nation. The
Speaker 1: big reason Clear Channel Radio spun off Live Nation is
Speaker 1: that when they acquired it, it was all on the
Speaker 1: concept that there's going to be synergy between sponsorships of
Speaker 1: what we can sell in the concerts, and we'll be
Speaker 1: able to take our clout with artists and help generate
Speaker 1: more concerts, will generate more sponsorship, and we'll grow the
Speaker 1: business that way. At the time, the business wasn't predictable
Speaker 1: enough that you know, concert promoter years could be very
Speaker 1: spiky in terms of revenue and profitability, and for a
Speaker 1: public company at that point in time, it was really
Speaker 1: difficult for them to get their head around it because
Speaker 1: Clear Channel was kind of a straight line of growth
Speaker 1: and at that time what was either Clear Channel Entertainment
Speaker 1: or that part of the division would be very up
Speaker 1: and down year over year in that economy. So I
Speaker 1: think there became a frustration that they weren't it was
Speaker 1: hurting the overall Clear Channel performance. UM. Their frustration grew
Speaker 1: within that because nobody UM seemed to be able to
Speaker 1: kind of get their arms around and get a consistent
Speaker 1: result out of the concert company. So they spun that
Speaker 1: off and that was around the same time that uh,
Speaker 1: Michael Roppino came in and took hold of what them
Speaker 1: became Live Nation UM when they finally gave it the
Speaker 1: new name, and Michael has done a great job with
Speaker 1: its sense. So you were at Bill Graham, how do
Speaker 1: you move up the food church just buying shows. I've
Speaker 1: been fortunate of a lot of good circumstance and opportunities,
Speaker 1: so I've put in a lot of hard work but
Speaker 1: so I came into the department and Lee Smith and
Speaker 1: Sherry Ossman were booking most of the shows throughout San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and that was from everywhere from theater stuff up to
Speaker 1: Shoreland Amphitheater and the stadium shows. Um I'd say right
Speaker 1: around the time I got promoted, UM, Lee Smith had
Speaker 1: kind of a change of heart in terms of what
Speaker 1: he was focusing on, and he left the day to
Speaker 1: day booking department to go work on new business development.
Speaker 1: So it then became mean Cherry Wasserman booking most of
Speaker 1: the shows in there, and at that point Sherry was
Speaker 1: probably focused a bit more on passion projects and interesting
Speaker 1: projects that she was on day to day stuff. So
Speaker 1: I was essentially the you know, nine to five guy
Speaker 1: in the office picking up the phone. And I just
Speaker 1: was so in love with getting out offers and promoting
Speaker 1: shows that it was really this wide open opportunity for
Speaker 1: me to promote as much as I could in my career.
Speaker 1: So not a lot of people get there. I mean,
Speaker 1: you hear far more stories about people having to compete
Speaker 1: for their lane. I had a different opportunities that, you know,
Speaker 1: this unique opportunity where I didn't have to compete with
Speaker 1: people within the company to get my you know, my
Speaker 1: lane of talent. And I just got to do a
Speaker 1: ton of shows across a lot of different genres, and
Speaker 1: I had the support of Sherry. We would work together
Speaker 1: and whatever Greg was working on, And those guys turned
Speaker 1: me onto their relationships of people they had worked with
Speaker 1: a long time and probably some of the fun most
Speaker 1: fun I've ever had in the business. And how do
Speaker 1: you end up in the main office in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: So as the consolidation happened and it rolled out, UM
Speaker 1: Greg and Sherry left around two thousand three to start
Speaker 1: another Planet Entertainment. Um Lee came back out of the
Speaker 1: out of the business development world of what he was
Speaker 1: doing UH and was running the office. I was working
Speaker 1: with him booking shows. I eventually got promoted to run
Speaker 1: the San Francisco office UH there and in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: Jason Garner, who was running Live Nation for North America
Speaker 1: at the time and as a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: I had started doing Latin shows with in San Jose
Speaker 1: when he was a local promoter in Northern California, UH,
Speaker 1: recruited me to come down and oversee the Los Angeles office.
Speaker 1: In addition, to still having some oversight of San Francisco.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand and eight, I had the opportunity
Speaker 1: to come to l A. Uh. My wife is from
Speaker 1: Redondo Beach. We talked it over and it's kind of
Speaker 1: a good time in life. With our daughter about to
Speaker 1: go into the school, going to school, she was four
Speaker 1: years old. We said, you know, we've been in San
Speaker 1: Francisco for a while. It's spent my entire life except
Speaker 1: for college, up in in Northern California, and it just
Speaker 1: felt like the right time to make a move. And
Speaker 1: it was a good job opportunity down here. So you
Speaker 1: work for a Live Nation how long, well, if you
Speaker 1: count their early days counting Los Angeles, how long you
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles two thousand and eight to two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven for a Live Nation? Okay, and then you leave
Speaker 1: to go to a g correct And what is the
Speaker 1: job they're offering you at a When I was leaving
Speaker 1: Live Nation at that point, the economy kind of rode
Speaker 1: the economy down when I moved to Los Angeles. You know,
Speaker 1: the bottom fell out in two thousand eight, and it
Speaker 1: was pretty bad. You know, it was a tough time
Speaker 1: in the concert business from eight to two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: a lot of belt tightening going on at a public
Speaker 1: company in terms of there was ten percent layoffs of
Speaker 1: couting back staff weren't selling. They weren't selling and um.
Speaker 1: You know, that was the early days of the Ticketmaster merger,
Speaker 1: and there was a little bit of competition I think
Speaker 1: between A's Off and Rappino, and being right in the
Speaker 1: middle of that l A got to be a tricky navigation.
Speaker 1: So I just was a little bit burnt out on
Speaker 1: that part of the job and running that business UM
Speaker 1: and wanted to start working on different projects and step
Speaker 1: away from the scenario that I was in. So I
Speaker 1: called Paul to Let who I used to intern with,
Speaker 1: and we started talking about opportunities and he UM he
Speaker 1: helped facilitate a discussion with a g which owns Golden Voices,
Speaker 1: and I went over there to start working on projects
Speaker 1: with Paul and the Golden Voice team throughout. So he
Speaker 1: did not go all over as any kind of hands
Speaker 1: on booker. You were going over with what to go.
Speaker 1: I went over to book and do create new projects.
Speaker 1: And I also they needed some help organizing their UM
Speaker 1: some of their venue platforms and stuff in l A,
Speaker 1: so I came UM to help them a little bit
Speaker 1: run the Golden Voice business and really to focus on
Speaker 1: new projects. Okay, and then how do you end up
Speaker 1: being head of North America. So in two thousand and thirteen,
Speaker 1: I think Randy Phillips was let go and so was
Speaker 1: Tim Lowicky Ja Marciano was brought back from running the
Speaker 1: O two in London to oversee a G Live at
Speaker 1: the time, which now presents UM, and he put myself
Speaker 1: UH in as President of North America. So I had
Speaker 1: kind of come in saying I want to get out
Speaker 1: of running the day to day operations and budgeting and
Speaker 1: forecasting and the business side of UH of Concert Pony
Speaker 1: and focus a little bit more on events UM. I
Speaker 1: did that for a year and a half. Two years
Speaker 1: the change happened in management and Jay said, hey, I'd
Speaker 1: really like you to take on this role overseeing the
Speaker 1: entire country. I had connected with Jay when he came
Speaker 1: back to a G just in a very social way
Speaker 1: and we we connected. So when he asked me to
Speaker 1: take the job, obviously it's a very good job. It's
Speaker 1: back to more towards what I had been doing it liveation.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't opposed to it, and I felt good
Speaker 1: about jumping right back in. We're having a good time
Speaker 1: talking about the music business. Rick Mueller and me. Let's
Speaker 1: pause for a moment, get right back into it. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this week's edition of the Bomb Left
Speaker 1: Sets podcast. If you want to see photos and videos
Speaker 1: of my guests arriving in the Dude in studios here
Speaker 1: in Venice, California, check out tune in dot com or
Speaker 1: at tune in on Twitter and Instagram and now more
Speaker 1: with a G presents North American President Rick Mueller. So,
Speaker 1: I know that part of your job is to scout
Speaker 1: and sign new venues. Correct, how much of your time
Speaker 1: is that? Probably spent a third of my day thinking
Speaker 1: about venue deals, where we're going to open them, where
Speaker 1: new markets we can get in um acquisitions, or if
Speaker 1: we're gonna build them from the ground up. So how
Speaker 1: many have you either purchased or started building on since
Speaker 1: you've had this gig a dozen eight new venues? And
Speaker 1: how do you decide um? There's a lot of variables.
Speaker 1: I think what services in a marketplace? So some you
Speaker 1: know there's an example of the venue you purchased. So
Speaker 1: we bought two clubs in Richmond, Virginia and uh Norfolk
Speaker 1: called the National and then orv a beautiful rock clubs.
Speaker 1: So they existed pre existed. UM. The guys who built
Speaker 1: them did a great job. I think they were probably
Speaker 1: more visionary than they were business people, and they had
Speaker 1: trouble with covering the financing and the debt was catching
Speaker 1: up with them, and we started talking about with them
Speaker 1: about UM coming to join a g and we looked
Speaker 1: at that and in that case, we purchased two existing
Speaker 1: clubs and we put our infrastructure behind it, and the
Speaker 1: clubs are doing great today. UM. We just bought the
Speaker 1: Agora Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio, which was kind of a
Speaker 1: storied one of the storied rock rooms in the early
Speaker 1: days of rock and roll that has fallen off and
Speaker 1: being you know, it's become a little bit dilapidated, and
Speaker 1: we're renovate current renovating it right now and we'll reopen
Speaker 1: it this uh the spring. We bought that building as well.
Speaker 1: It turns out real estates in Cleveland is still more
Speaker 1: affordable than Los Angeles. UM. And then we've done other
Speaker 1: deals where we took over at lease at the Shrine
Speaker 1: Auditorium here in Los Angeles where um after the Universal
Speaker 1: Lampitheater went away and became a Harriet Potter ride. There's
Speaker 1: obviously a hundred shows a year that uh, we're going
Speaker 1: on up at the Universal Lampatheater that we're going to
Speaker 1: be up for grabs. You know, they're really not making
Speaker 1: a whole lot of new six thousands the venues in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles these days. So we decided, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: to go start having discussions with the shriner about taking
Speaker 1: over that room. And I mean, ultimately, if you dig down,
Speaker 1: there's a pretty storied history of rock and roll at
Speaker 1: the Shrine as well. So I like old classic rooms
Speaker 1: that you can be refurbished. When I had moved down
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles for a two thousand eight for Live Nation,
Speaker 1: I inherited the Palladium renovation which Brian Murphy, who was
Speaker 1: the long time Avalon Tractions promoter, was working for Live
Speaker 1: Nation and they SFS had acquired Avalon le Brian had
Speaker 1: gotten the lease on the Pladium and there was a
Speaker 1: renovation going on there. So I got to be barely
Speaker 1: hands on on renovating the Hollywood Platium, which was absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1: So when you make a decision, how much do you believe,
Speaker 1: look into what the market can sustain, what the competition is.
Speaker 1: What are the factors that go in to decide before
Speaker 1: you put down your money. Well, number one, is it
Speaker 1: a good room? You know, we've we've opened some good rooms,
Speaker 1: we've opened some bad rooms. And there's nothing worse than
Speaker 1: having to book a bad room once it's open, once
Speaker 1: the you know, the word is out on the venue
Speaker 1: and it either feels cold or it isn't well received.
Speaker 1: So I do my best to make sure I feel
Speaker 1: good that whatever the project is going to be, it's
Speaker 1: a good room. Then you're gonna be looking at what's
Speaker 1: the competition in the market, and that's going to dictate
Speaker 1: how much you can spend either renovate, rent by the venue,
Speaker 1: and how good of a business opportunity it's going to
Speaker 1: be for you. You say clubs, Now, in the old
Speaker 1: days a club was somewhere between a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: and four hundred. What do you can sit? Now? They
Speaker 1: called the Wilterner Club, which is almost two thousand. Do
Speaker 1: you these these clubs that you talk about our what
Speaker 1: size anywhere from twelve to three thousand seats? I would think, okay,
Speaker 1: let's just go below that to what degree are you
Speaker 1: involved in under twelve hundred seats at ag Uh, We've
Speaker 1: got so. I mean we we have a lease on
Speaker 1: the Roxy on Sunset Boulevards. So that's probably the smallest
Speaker 1: club that we operate in Los Angeles that ultimately falls
Speaker 1: under my world. UM So we do everything from We
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of those. We've got them in
Speaker 1: l A, Denver, New York. Okay, so you're booking the Roxy.
Speaker 1: Can you make at the end of the day, can
Speaker 1: you make money at the Roxy? You can make a
Speaker 1: few bucks. You have to be really tight and you
Speaker 1: have to be very disciplined on it. But in l
Speaker 1: A where it's very competitive and you want to get
Speaker 1: in early with artists and you want to um so,
Speaker 1: you know, we call it building a vertical and get
Speaker 1: them on the path through your venue system so you
Speaker 1: can grow the band and stay with them through their career.
Speaker 1: The Roxy's iconic. Um it's a great room for a
Speaker 1: band to start out and have a first play. That
Speaker 1: is call it more R and D. From our side
Speaker 1: of the equation, we don't really look at it as
Speaker 1: a huge profit center. We make a few bucks on it.
Speaker 1: It's not what you know, I guess it's to our
Speaker 1: budget every year for sure. Okay. Now, in the old days,
Speaker 1: meaning the seventies, prior to the crash of two thousand
Speaker 1: and Napster, the record companies supported all these clubs. They
Speaker 1: bought tickets, they bought drinks, and that is how you
Speaker 1: got act started. A that economic support doesn't exist anymore,
Speaker 1: correct for the most part. Yeah, okay, but what do
Speaker 1: you believe? I you know, I grew up in the
Speaker 1: pre Internet era where you were staring at the four
Speaker 1: walls and I gotta go out. I gotta have to
Speaker 1: go here a band, okay, whereas today all the entertainment
Speaker 1: is at home if you go back to the pre
Speaker 1: BlackBerry area, so I have to go home and check
Speaker 1: the email. But if I'm sitting at all, I have Netflix,
Speaker 1: I have all these other things. Is there a business?
Speaker 1: Is there an attraction of people going to hear either
Speaker 1: unsigned or marginal talent in a live setting? Are you
Speaker 1: asking the question is people want to just go out
Speaker 1: for the sake of going out? Well, I'm actually asking
Speaker 1: all of the questions. I want to end your your business.
Speaker 1: Had I look at it this way? Okay? It used
Speaker 1: to be in the seventies eighties, you went out, certainly
Speaker 1: on the weekend, the bar had a band, The band
Speaker 1: was tended to be covers unless they were a known entity,
Speaker 1: and then there was a sheered, clear delineation between those
Speaker 1: bands and bands that had record deals, where today anybody
Speaker 1: can make and release their music. So if I went
Speaker 1: to a bar now, chances are they would have a DJ.
Speaker 1: I want to hear recognizable music as opposed to just
Speaker 1: going to hear some unsigned band play their new music.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's that strong as desire to do
Speaker 1: that because there's so many other opportunities to entertain yourself.
Speaker 1: I think it's a little bit different now because with
Speaker 1: streaming services and where music is so ubiquitous that you
Speaker 1: can find it anywhere, that bands are happening now before
Speaker 1: you realize it. So when I first got into the
Speaker 1: concert business, the l a Weekly in San Francisco, the
Speaker 1: SF Weekly, and even the Chronicle Sunday Pink section with
Speaker 1: the strip ads of what was playing at the film
Speaker 1: wore was hugely important to kind of knowing what was
Speaker 1: going on in town. And as you know, as the
Speaker 1: smallest room that we ran in San Francisco was the
Speaker 1: film where we look at what was playing Slims, we
Speaker 1: played music Hall, Rick shall stop. In the smaller rooms,
Speaker 1: you pay attention. You'd work the guys who booked those
Speaker 1: rooms to what was selling out, what was hot. You
Speaker 1: stay in touch with the agent so you'd have a
Speaker 1: better understanding what then presented the film are. Um, Now
Speaker 1: there's bands that can self promote their way into selling
Speaker 1: out a night at the Roxy before most promoters are
Speaker 1: even aware of it. Right, So we'll rent the room
Speaker 1: to anybody who wants to come in and promote a
Speaker 1: show and there, um, for the most part, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: We have buyers to go in there. But now you
Speaker 1: don't rely on the l a weekly. There's there's a
Speaker 1: headline show for all of these bands that are essentially
Speaker 1: baby bands. They don't need the label support to sell
Speaker 1: five tickets at the Roxy anymore. Okay. Two things. So
Speaker 1: you're saying, at this level the band has a built
Speaker 1: the audience, absolutely, Okay, what if you do not have
Speaker 1: a built in audience? Were not as much and we're
Speaker 1: not booking in cover bands. But but but but forgiving you,
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about looking at the business at large.
Speaker 1: If someone the old concept of Hey, I'm going out.
Speaker 1: I'm going to my local bar. I hear a band,
Speaker 1: they're good, I start to follow them. Does that even exist?
Speaker 1: I think the closest it really comes. You see a
Speaker 1: lot at the House of Blues. They book like a
Speaker 1: lot of Journey cover bands and and you know other
Speaker 1: different style cover bands that are kind of like party
Speaker 1: night of rock and roll, and they can do pretty
Speaker 1: good business. Um, we don't do a lot of that
Speaker 1: stuff because we're not just trying to do the turnstyle
Speaker 1: business through our club, So we're really focused more on
Speaker 1: actually asking in societal change. I understand the business, but
Speaker 1: do you believe that on a raw percentage basis, fewer
Speaker 1: people are going out in search of marginal live. Marginal's
Speaker 1: got its own connotation, marginal live talent as they were before.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think they're going out because
Speaker 1: they're going to go see the band they want to see.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're going out just to explore music
Speaker 1: for a night. Okay, so the bands they want to
Speaker 1: see have built they're following online. Do you remember the
Speaker 1: name of anybody you've booked at the Roxy who you
Speaker 1: were unaware of? That comes with their own audience We
Speaker 1: sold out two shows with Russ on the on sale
Speaker 1: before anybody knew who Russ was. And Uh, one of
Speaker 1: our guys who books hip hop uh at Golden Voice,
Speaker 1: you know, put these shows in there. Same with the
Speaker 1: artist Black. These guys just blew out shows, um, long
Speaker 1: before they were internet sensations, long before they were on
Speaker 1: on radio. And how do your buyers become aware of them?
Speaker 1: We've got a couple. Uh, We've got a lot of
Speaker 1: buyers who just have their ear to the ground. That's
Speaker 1: the new part of you know, the same way that
Speaker 1: when I was twenty one coming out of college, he
Speaker 1: had to work hard to keep your ear to the
Speaker 1: ground and talk to the right people who were in
Speaker 1: the scene, and study CMJ and study the that's a
Speaker 1: college music journal. That was an old tip sheet and
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, you know, read the European magazines and
Speaker 1: find out what was happening abroad and what you could
Speaker 1: bring over and and now it's SoundCloud and various sites
Speaker 1: that people go to. And Okay, so let's say one
Speaker 1: of these acts plays the Roxy. What is the journey
Speaker 1: for them? Well, the journey for them is we try
Speaker 1: to help steer them through our venue vertical and and
Speaker 1: get as many as we can in with their We
Speaker 1: also out of Los Angeles, we have you know, Golden
Speaker 1: Voice owes and operates Coachella. So you know, ultimately we're
Speaker 1: trying to encourage bands to kind of be on the
Speaker 1: path to Coachella. But do you believe any of the
Speaker 1: bands that play in the afternoon, not on the main
Speaker 1: stage get a real benefit from playing a festival? A
Speaker 1: festival or Coachella. Let's start with Coachella. I do think
Speaker 1: bands get a benefit from playing that. Is that based
Speaker 1: on being on the poster or is that based on
Speaker 1: the actual performance? Both make no mistake. It is not
Speaker 1: an easy set to play at two o'clock as a
Speaker 1: young band in the desert if it's you know, one
Speaker 1: of those hundreds green days out in the desert. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you can bring it and put in
Speaker 1: a notable show, I think where the mouth starts growing
Speaker 1: from there. I won't say that that's the same one
Speaker 1: every festival. Can you name two acts that you feel
Speaker 1: benefited from that? Coach call me on the spot. No.
Speaker 1: The reason I mentioned is I don't really I can't
Speaker 1: think of a single act that is broken from a
Speaker 1: festival doesn't mean they haven't gotten some notoriety, but people say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the festival is almost like the
Speaker 1: new south By Southwest, although you get paid. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: if you have an investment in the act and you
Speaker 1: have the vertical and you're gonna put him in the
Speaker 1: l Ray whatever, that's a different thing. But I have
Speaker 1: not seen any man get a buzz at a festival
Speaker 1: then ultimately become bigger. There's some acts that have general
Speaker 1: buzz that have never boken through, like Gary Clark Jr.
Speaker 1: And he plays all the festival, but he already had
Speaker 1: visibility by time he played Coachella. Well, look, Stacy V
Speaker 1: who works with Paul, has this phrase of that Paul
Speaker 1: has been very good at buying cream bananas, so he
Speaker 1: buys the banana when it's green, and by the time
Speaker 1: Coachella plays, it's yellow. That visibility in the meaning the
Speaker 1: visibilities happened. And a good example that be would have
Speaker 1: been Gautier. He bought Gautier for an incredibly little amount
Speaker 1: of money to play both weekends of Coachella, and then
Speaker 1: the big song happened, and I think at that point
Speaker 1: he had the number one single uh in the country.
Speaker 1: The tent was packed, so you know, Gautier started happening
Speaker 1: despite you know, before Coachella, but he had his eye
Speaker 1: on there, so you know, did he break it? I
Speaker 1: don't know that, Paul. That was a huge record that
Speaker 1: Coachella was sure on top of the cake at best. Correct,
Speaker 1: But fast forward that or changed that timeline by three months,
Speaker 1: and you'd say he's breaking out of Coachella. Well, let's
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to go down because we
Speaker 1: have so many acts in so many years, but let's
Speaker 1: make it different terms of breaking an act today. Well,
Speaker 1: I will also say, but the act was already broken
Speaker 1: and known. But the legend of Daft Punk is because
Speaker 1: of that set they played at Coachella twelve years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was a headlining set. Well, but I'm standing like,
Speaker 1: from how big Daft Punk was at that time to
Speaker 1: the general public, how big how big they are today?
Speaker 1: I agree totally. Are we at peak festival? Are there
Speaker 1: any more festivals to be built? I think there's lots
Speaker 1: of festivals to be built. I think the question is
Speaker 1: how big they will become? How big in terms of
Speaker 1: will they grow or will they intentionally be seen as
Speaker 1: smaller niche festivals. So we just did the One Love
Speaker 1: Festival down in Long Beach at the Queen Mary and
Speaker 1: the Great Lawn they have out there. Um did fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand people a day with a mixture of different reggae bands.
Speaker 1: And again I would not have guessed that the reggae
Speaker 1: scene was the strong enough in this day and age
Speaker 1: to have sold out fifteen thousand tickets a day in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eighteen. Just doesn't seem like there's a
Speaker 1: scene for that kind of music. So I think there
Speaker 1: are niche festivals. You look at what Tim Sweetwood is
Speaker 1: doing with the Shakingese Festival down in Atlanta, where it's
Speaker 1: all guitar driven rock. There's no hip hop, electronic, other
Speaker 1: genres within there. It's really kind of stays true to
Speaker 1: guitar driven rock kind of build. Does he do He's
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know for sure because he doesn't report,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to guess he's in the mid twenties.
Speaker 1: With the sales. I don't know if in this day
Speaker 1: and age, with the popularity of rock with youth culture,
Speaker 1: if he's going to get to fifty thou people, but
Speaker 1: if he's making money at twenty five people and he's
Speaker 1: servicing the niche. I think that that's the future. If
Speaker 1: he can make money at that, that's really smart. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's break it down the fifteen thousand who went to
Speaker 1: the reggae festival. How was the experience? Were you selling
Speaker 1: food and obviously you're always selling food, but how much
Speaker 1: was the band's on stage and how much was the environment.
Speaker 1: I think the music is driving that one more because
Speaker 1: nobody had been I mean, they the festival took place
Speaker 1: once last year, but for the most part, people aren't
Speaker 1: going to buy into the specific experience, So I think
Speaker 1: that is being more musically driven. You know, Coachella is
Speaker 1: more about the all companies experience Coachella, Lolla BLUSA and
Speaker 1: maybe Austin city limits and maybe outside the lands which
Speaker 1: those are established, those of go out Forever Coachella, the
Speaker 1: brand name being the progenitor of the Granddaddy Lalla Blues
Speaker 1: are the great location in Chicago. Once we move from
Speaker 1: those four locations at that level, okay, where you're trying
Speaker 1: to get, certainly in access of fifty people a day,
Speaker 1: how many can our countries support. I think we're approaching
Speaker 1: the plateau, right and the fact that I'm generally speaking,
Speaker 1: let's leave Cogella a little bit aside, because it's really
Speaker 1: kind of unique. But generally speaking, all of these festivals
Speaker 1: have the same headliners now, so it used to be
Speaker 1: you had to travel cross country to have the experience.
Speaker 1: Now it's coming closer to you. I'd agree with it,
Speaker 1: but I put the distinction as so Outside Lands is
Speaker 1: an incredible experience, The site itself is incredible. Coachell is
Speaker 1: an incredible experience, Lalla Blues is an incredible experience in
Speaker 1: that park, Austin city limits, Austin an incredible party town,
Speaker 1: Zilka Park is amazing. But past that, you know, like Bonnaroo,
Speaker 1: I think it's ruggling a little bit because it's a
Speaker 1: pure camping festival and in the heat and Tennessee, Um,
Speaker 1: maybe it's lost a little bit of its identity as
Speaker 1: a camping festival and it's been a little bit up
Speaker 1: and down the last couple of years. Doesn't mean it's
Speaker 1: by means in the in the toilet are going away.
Speaker 1: I think there's a huge following for Bonnaroo, but what
Speaker 1: does it stand for and is the site special? Uh?
Speaker 1: You look at one of my favorite festivals, his Electric Forests,
Speaker 1: which a company that a g owns Madison House Productions.
Speaker 1: Madison House Presents produces in partnership with the Soomniac. So
Speaker 1: that one is up in uh up in uh Ro Rothberry, Michigan,
Speaker 1: and I think is one of the most unique festivals
Speaker 1: presented in America today. It's electronic music meets jam bands,
Speaker 1: so string, cheese and based nectar up there. But it
Speaker 1: is so experiential in terms of what goes on in
Speaker 1: the forest because the for those who haven't been, it's
Speaker 1: a festival that has three or four stages scattered throughout
Speaker 1: the site that is intermixed with a lot of trees
Speaker 1: and forestry there. So it's you're you're really weaving in
Speaker 1: and out of an experience all day. And for me
Speaker 1: when I go there, it's almost like, oh, there's a
Speaker 1: there's bands playing. It's so much fun to wander in.
Speaker 1: Let's see the art that Jeremy Stein, who who produces
Speaker 1: the festival, puts in every year. He brings in you know,
Speaker 1: Carni traders who have like you know, I could take
Speaker 1: my cell phone and you know leave with a bow
Speaker 1: and arrow if I want to like trade my way
Speaker 1: through the the trading shop the trading post shop and
Speaker 1: he is producing an experience every Saturday night as the
Speaker 1: Pittical Moment with string cheese that is fireworks and acrobats
Speaker 1: and it's really immersive for the weekend. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you're into that kind of camping festival, that's that's
Speaker 1: a festival that's growing. You know, we've gone for one
Speaker 1: weekend selling out a month in advance to adding a
Speaker 1: second weekend. So I do think that there's growth. But
Speaker 1: I think you have to really stand for something. I
Speaker 1: think your site has to be great. I think the
Speaker 1: experience has to be great. Um, otherwise it's going to
Speaker 1: be harder to achieve the scale to get up to
Speaker 1: where kind of these you know, highly law at festivals.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to Bonaru. Did Bonaro lose cashe and
Speaker 1: audience because it muddied the water of what it was
Speaker 1: about it? Originally it was a jam band festival, then
Speaker 1: it just became another festival with bands in Tennessee, It's
Speaker 1: possible they pivoted from jam bands pretty early on to
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're gonna be a jam band festival,
Speaker 1: the talent pool is pretty shallow of headliners that can
Speaker 1: really drive people to your festival. So I think Bonro
Speaker 1: did a good job of pivoting into general use. I think,
Speaker 1: but when they were at their height, there was nothing
Speaker 1: else throughout the south there, and now there's so much more.
Speaker 1: You've got you know, Okachobes, and you've got the Hangout
Speaker 1: Festival down in Atlanta, You've got uh down to the
Speaker 1: Gulf Shores, You've got Shaking Knees and Atlanta, you've got
Speaker 1: you know, festivals to the north of you know, gov
Speaker 1: Ball and Firefly, and there's stuff litter all over, so
Speaker 1: you know, you're competing for a lot more So how
Speaker 1: does Bonnaro distinguish itself as a festival from these other things?
Speaker 1: Because Chance the Rapper, you know, is an act the
Speaker 1: people will point to play a lot of festivals. Last year,
Speaker 1: you know, Florence and the Machine had played a lot
Speaker 1: of festivals. Outcast play a lot of festivals. L c
Speaker 1: D shows up on a lot of festivals. So you're
Speaker 1: right and that these bands are playing a circuit of
Speaker 1: festivals and it's great, but doesn't mean the festival experience
Speaker 1: can't be great. So okay, So as we move forward,
Speaker 1: is it going to be a hundred thousand people in
Speaker 1: a field seeing headliners, or is it going to be
Speaker 1: more about each festival is branded based on the experience. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the bigger ones are going to be all
Speaker 1: about the experience, and they're gonna have to be great
Speaker 1: musically and have to stand for something, but they're also
Speaker 1: going to have to have a great experience to kind
Speaker 1: of sustain at that hundred thousand person level, because if
Speaker 1: you're just talking about a band selling a hundred thousand tickets,
Speaker 1: you're really talking about stadium shows, right, I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about that. Let's go back to the festival. I remember
Speaker 1: this is probably six or seven years ago. Headliner night
Speaker 1: to at Coachella was Radiohead. They came, they brought their
Speaker 1: arena show, which means it's small for an audience of
Speaker 1: sixty people, and they host to audience. Everybody was going
Speaker 1: to the Sahara tent for the electronic music, dance music,
Speaker 1: ETCETERA question becomes in the festival experience. How important is
Speaker 1: the DJ the electronic music experience depends on your festival,
Speaker 1: I suppose. I mean, there's no doubt that electronic music
Speaker 1: is incredibly popular at Coachella. But you know, back going
Speaker 1: back to my reference of Timmis Sweetwood. It well, let's
Speaker 1: put it this way there, Coachella and I only focused
Speaker 1: on this primarily because it's your company. Uh. Coachella had
Speaker 1: a long history of reuniting legendary rock bands. So in
Speaker 1: the last last year, in this year, there seems to
Speaker 1: be a pivot to more modern acts. So the question
Speaker 1: would be, have we seen the sunset on festivals of
Speaker 1: old acts and is it really now about present day acts? Okay,
Speaker 1: so in the last three years, a C d C
Speaker 1: and Guns and Rose's headline coach Ella, Yes, but that
Speaker 1: was two years ago. Last year, Uh, And my point,
Speaker 1: you know, most of the eventional wisdom that A C
Speaker 1: d C was a bust, and when you go last
Speaker 1: year it ended up being Gaga, and this year it's Beyonce.
Speaker 1: That's a far cry from A C d C and
Speaker 1: Guns and Roses. So you're in a very short period
Speaker 1: of time there have been rock bands headlining. No, I
Speaker 1: believe you know, I discussed this when you discussed with Paul.
Speaker 1: You know, I believe two or three years ago, two
Speaker 1: years ago, Bieber should have been the headliner, and everybody said, no,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. I think if you were willing to do
Speaker 1: it and I said, hey, Biber is gonna be the
Speaker 1: headline today. It would be a matter of negotiating the money.
Speaker 1: I think they look the interesting part in the tricky part,
Speaker 1: and this is certainly don't speak for Paul because he's
Speaker 1: done incredible job curating Coachella for twenty years. But also
Speaker 1: Coachella sells out with no lineup announced. But if you
Speaker 1: don't do a good job every year and it becomes stale,
Speaker 1: people will move on. He's you know, we're still selling
Speaker 1: out in advantage. But let's not make it about coach.
Speaker 1: Let's just make it about a change of the audience. Sure.
Speaker 1: I think that the important part to focus on air
Speaker 1: is that as hip hop has become more popular and
Speaker 1: pop has become more popular because music is so ubiquitous
Speaker 1: an easy to get hold of, like a pop act
Speaker 1: as a hip hop act, and hip hop act could
Speaker 1: be a pop act there collaborating together. The boundaries between
Speaker 1: genre are much more gray now than they were, But
Speaker 1: it's very different from reuniting an act from the sixties,
Speaker 1: seventies or eighties. It seems like there's a giant transition
Speaker 1: between the heritage acts and the acts of now, and
Speaker 1: that this is the summer when the festival. People are saying, no,
Speaker 1: if you're an old act, you can play the areena,
Speaker 1: you can play your own audience. But it comes to
Speaker 1: the festival, it's a younger audience and they want to
Speaker 1: see these younger acts, whether they be hip hop or pop. Well,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt. I mean, I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: as much of an appreciation for some of the classic
Speaker 1: rock stuff from what's generally called it the millennial generation
Speaker 1: as previous generations before that. You know, I mean even
Speaker 1: Radioheads a classic rock band at Coachella, right, But you know,
Speaker 1: relatively recent Radiohead and Coldplay and Dave Matthews Beings were
Speaker 1: the last bms to break through on v H one
Speaker 1: for the whole thing blew apart. They were there. They
Speaker 1: were beneficiaries of the monoculture. But let's let's switch gears
Speaker 1: a little bit more. Okay, so I'm a concert goer,
Speaker 1: let's explain the economics of the con business generally speaking,
Speaker 1: or Michael Rapino's head of Live Nation, he would say,
Speaker 1: if I don't pay the act, somebody else will. There's
Speaker 1: always someone who will pony up without money a casino
Speaker 1: or something. Do you agree with that, Yes, okay. They
Speaker 1: will also say that generally speaking, once we get to
Speaker 1: a name talent, let's not talk about the bands that
Speaker 1: are selling the roxy or even playing these clubs. But
Speaker 1: once you're getting to an arena level act that generally speaking,
Speaker 1: all of the money for the ticket revenue meaning not
Speaker 1: the not the up charges, but the ticket revenue is
Speaker 1: essentially going to the act. Correct. Okay, So explain the
Speaker 1: economics to my audience, because you obviously have a business.
Speaker 1: We're making money, right, I guess as a general statement,
Speaker 1: the bigger the act is getting the more of the
Speaker 1: lion's share of the ticket revenue they can command and
Speaker 1: a deal with either a SARTA Live Nation or any
Speaker 1: promoter throughout the world. Promoters are making their money if
Speaker 1: they own an operative venue off of peanuts, popcorn and
Speaker 1: parking for them at part um. If we don't own venues,
Speaker 1: we try to make deals that scale up with artists,
Speaker 1: so we produce a Rolling Stones tour worldwide. So scaling
Speaker 1: up meaning what uh I mean? We're we want to
Speaker 1: do all the dates with a band as opposed to
Speaker 1: the traditional way. Um twenty years ago, was maybe even
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. Is that acts were sold more market
Speaker 1: by market to the local promoter by an agent. And
Speaker 1: in this day and age of concerts, most artists sell
Speaker 1: tours that are arena size a bigger to a single
Speaker 1: promoter who produced their tours uh nationally or internationally. So
Speaker 1: if you're gonna make less per show on doing an
Speaker 1: artist because of the amount of money that the artist commands,
Speaker 1: you want to do more shows to grow your business
Speaker 1: and reach your budget every year. Let's assume you have
Speaker 1: a international tour with one of these acts, you pay
Speaker 1: them a lump sum such that if there's some acts
Speaker 1: some dates that are very successful, others that are marginal losers,
Speaker 1: it all comes out in the wash. I think every
Speaker 1: company has got their own model only I think Live
Speaker 1: Nations of a company and is very revenue driven. We're
Speaker 1: maybe a bit more bottom line driven as a company.
Speaker 1: You know, we approach everything at a g as can
Speaker 1: we make money on this act. I don't think we're
Speaker 1: necessarily looking at anything coming out in the wash. But
Speaker 1: by no, make no mistake, we don't win on every
Speaker 1: show that we go ahead and book. I mean it's
Speaker 1: very much a risk business and it takes a big
Speaker 1: stack of chips to sit at the poker table on
Speaker 1: those games. But I say let's do them. I'm coming,
Speaker 1: I'm act X, and I make a deal with you
Speaker 1: for fifty million dollars. You're gonna pay me that fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars and then a g Some some dates maybe
Speaker 1: do better than others. Correct. If you own the building,
Speaker 1: you have all the concessions, the parking, etcetera, etcetera. If
Speaker 1: you don't own the building, explain to my audience how
Speaker 1: the ticketing fee revenue is split up. So we'll work
Speaker 1: with the artist to set the ticket fee structure and
Speaker 1: what tickets are ultimately going to cost our function of
Speaker 1: you know, what the artist is trying to make, What
Speaker 1: it costs to operate the arena on a given night,
Speaker 1: what's marketing, backstage catering, security, stage hands, and so forth.
Speaker 1: So you're trying to generate a certain amount after you
Speaker 1: pay off all those expenses, and you know, grows as
Speaker 1: much as as much money as you can to make
Speaker 1: as much money that you can split up with the artist.
Speaker 1: If you do a good job with it, here's money
Speaker 1: to split up and everybody's making money. If you do
Speaker 1: a bad job of it, you've guaranteed an artists a
Speaker 1: floor on that deal, and you're gonna be paying them
Speaker 1: whenever you guaranteed them and come up short for the night. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's just say a ticket is a hundred dollars and
Speaker 1: there's twenty five dollars in fees. Where might those fees go? Well,
Speaker 1: the fees go depend on the ticketing companies. Some buildings
Speaker 1: own their own ticketing companies. Ticketmaster will make deals with
Speaker 1: buildings where they will give them advances or help them
Speaker 1: pay for capital projects, and in terms of keeping more
Speaker 1: of the fee themselves, they'll rebate it to the to
Speaker 1: the building. Sometimes the building will then incentivize either the
Speaker 1: artist or the promoter to come there with some of
Speaker 1: those fees. It's just a different source of revenue that
Speaker 1: comes into the game of how deals are made. Okay,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, that's where the profit is the promoter
Speaker 1: and then extra of the fees oftentimes yes, but uh,
Speaker 1: but as you're talking about huge grosses and if you
Speaker 1: do uh, you know, we did a really successful tour
Speaker 1: with Holland Oates and Tiers for Fears last year. There
Speaker 1: was there was plenty of profit beyond ticketing fees with
Speaker 1: the shows. Every show has made money at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. And in those deals, well, you do
Speaker 1: an international tour, national tour, there's a guarantee. Is there
Speaker 1: also a percentage of upside? Correct? They get a split
Speaker 1: at the back. Okay, let's go there, You and me.
Speaker 1: You may or may not remember we're famous as a manager.
Speaker 1: Bruce Allen and Bruce Allen manages, amongst other people, Michael
Speaker 1: Bubley and Brian Adams. He's based out of Vancouver. This
Speaker 1: happened to be Canadian Acts. And he said, hey, Bob,
Speaker 1: I'm always and Bruce a very smart guy. And Bruce said,
Speaker 1: I'm trying something. I'm putting out Brian Adams with uh,
Speaker 1: what's his name? Did uh? One bourbon, one Scotch and
Speaker 1: one beer? Church there? Okay, right, and you said it's
Speaker 1: not gonna work. Okay, What works and what doesn't work.
Speaker 1: That's the intangible of being a successful concert promoter. I'll
Speaker 1: go back to the hollow notes. Teers refers to her
Speaker 1: when that opportunity came across my desk, I looked at it,
Speaker 1: and when it came across you was already hollow, notatees
Speaker 1: and tears for fears. The bands were talking they wanted
Speaker 1: to go out and to her. Their agent was out
Speaker 1: shopping the tour and discussing it with people, and I
Speaker 1: was doing my homework. When the opportunity came up. We
Speaker 1: talked internally about what we thought we could sell, did
Speaker 1: some homework in various markets. Uh, And there was a
Speaker 1: lot of people sitting on the fence, you know, like
Speaker 1: it's it's not very hard to like identify that Beyonce
Speaker 1: is going to sell a lot of tickets for their
Speaker 1: It's how how you can manipulate and maximize the deal
Speaker 1: for the artist and to get earnest she's going to
Speaker 1: do the business. Everybody knows Beyonce is gonna sell tickets
Speaker 1: on hollow notes and tears for fears. It was a
Speaker 1: bit more of a question of it was didn't seem
Speaker 1: like an automatic to everybody at first. So if they
Speaker 1: say up front if they wanted to play big rooms, yes,
Speaker 1: they were clear they wanted to go out and do arenas,
Speaker 1: and you know, then they had a price tag of
Speaker 1: what they were looking for. And in a competitive marketplace,
Speaker 1: you can't just assume that the other guys are going
Speaker 1: to pass and you can low ball your way into
Speaker 1: a deal. So we have to really do your research
Speaker 1: and feel confident about the bet that you're going to
Speaker 1: put down. Okay, so walk us through the experience. So
Speaker 1: we we threw our hat in the ring. Live Nation
Speaker 1: had done the previous tour with Hollow notatees in the amphitheaters,
Speaker 1: but it was a bit of a different model, lower
Speaker 1: ticket price, it wasn't grossing as high. Going into the
Speaker 1: arenas can come with more risk because they tend to
Speaker 1: be more expensive to produce the shows. Um, we went
Speaker 1: ahead and made the bid and came out on the
Speaker 1: right side of getting the deal. Um. At that point
Speaker 1: I jumped in with Hollow Notates manager and and Tears
Speaker 1: and Fierce manager and went ahead and got the marketing
Speaker 1: plan together and launched that tour and ultimately people reacted
Speaker 1: well to the chemistry of the package. I mean, Hollow
Speaker 1: Notates three years ago was more or less playing theaters. Um,
Speaker 1: and that would be how many tickets, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think they were playing anywhere from two to four
Speaker 1: thousand seat venues. And you know, they had a success
Speaker 1: in the circuit. Um and they changed agencies to Pete
Speaker 1: pop Lardo at a g I and Pete had a
Speaker 1: bit more vision of how to get these guys back
Speaker 1: because they were very successful arena band in their day. Um.
Speaker 1: He grew them uh and and really pushed forward to
Speaker 1: push them into the amphitheaters to get them in front
Speaker 1: of more people. I think they went out with Sharon
Speaker 1: Jones and the Dap Kings and Trombo and Shorty that year.
Speaker 1: Good package did business, not huge grosses um, but it
Speaker 1: was ultimately trying to get them back into an arena
Speaker 1: level production and performance. I think that's what the band
Speaker 1: ultimately wanted to get to. It's what he pitched them on.
Speaker 1: So they came up with the Tears for Fears package, uh,
Speaker 1: and that was I think that was Pete's ideas or
Speaker 1: Jonathan's who manages uh Hollow Notes. So they had been
Speaker 1: discussing it already when it came to me, and then
Speaker 1: when the opportunity came to us, we like the package,
Speaker 1: made the bet um and then worked really closely with
Speaker 1: the Hollow Notes camp and teers Fers and like, how
Speaker 1: can we maximize and promote this and launch this big
Speaker 1: and let everybody know it's coming because neither Neat well
Speaker 1: teers re Fiers hasn't had music out there still making
Speaker 1: new music hollow notes is not making the USI so
Speaker 1: you really have to kind of help create the story. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Jonathan is a former PR guy and is a
Speaker 1: great partner in terms of getting the word out and
Speaker 1: made sure John and Darrel were on the phone doing
Speaker 1: phoners in every city and oh yeah they were out
Speaker 1: they were out there working at how much was late
Speaker 1: you know buying walk up business on that tour? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know what, we had a good start and slow
Speaker 1: and steady wins the race, you know was you know,
Speaker 1: you know, a big night on that tour was two
Speaker 1: or three d tickets to night a show, which is
Speaker 1: not good. I mean it's not bad by any means.
Speaker 1: It's not you know, phenomenal based off of what some
Speaker 1: bands can sell day of but uh, but you know,
Speaker 1: I think we averaged close to eleven thousand tickets a
Speaker 1: show on that tour and it was so what do
Speaker 1: we learn ultimately good packaging? Look, a classic rock is
Speaker 1: hot right now? I mean hasn't it always been hot? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: I mean rewind ten years and you'd find more spotty
Speaker 1: classic rock tours out there, you know, wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: Let's put this way, Tom Petty's Uh tour that he
Speaker 1: did right this past year before passed on. It was
Speaker 1: a home run. Um, he was making more money than
Speaker 1: he's ever made in his career before. But you could
Speaker 1: rewind back to two thousand to two thousand and ten
Speaker 1: and Petty's businesses up and down and he'd have good years,
Speaker 1: bad years depends on how far he was away, how
Speaker 1: long it was away. Thanks for listening to the Bob
Speaker 1: Left Sets podcast. I hope you're enjoying the episode so far.
Speaker 1: There's only so much I can get into a podcast.
Speaker 1: But if you simply can't get enough and want to
Speaker 1: know more of my thoughts on the future of the
Speaker 1: music industry, technology and current events, you'll want to subscribe
Speaker 1: to my newsletter. Now I'm not shameless promotion. Let's dive
Speaker 1: back into the interviews. Let's go back. If you look
Speaker 1: at the amphitheater business, there are certain acts that go
Speaker 1: every year. Def Leppard goes every year, Sticks goes every year.
Speaker 1: How does that work? Well, the country acts to the
Speaker 1: country is a different business. Let's start with these heritage acts.
Speaker 1: They're not making new music to anybody's listening to were
Speaker 1: very hardcore fans. Why are people going. I think the nostalgia,
Speaker 1: I mean, but every year, I don't know if that
Speaker 1: they're going every year. I guess some of these juggle
Speaker 1: if they change an act this year it's Aureo Speedwagon
Speaker 1: on I mean, I mean literally Deaf Leppard, I believe
Speaker 1: has been out every year. Sticks is absolutely out every year,
Speaker 1: and if they get it packaged right, it works. You know.
Speaker 1: The first big one that came out like this was
Speaker 1: Journey def Leopard years ago toured together and I was
Speaker 1: at Live Nation then and everybody was a little wary
Speaker 1: of how it was going to do, but everybody poning
Speaker 1: up the money um HK managed the act and drove
Speaker 1: a hard deal. So it was you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the cheapest show um to get at the time, but
Speaker 1: it did phenomenal business. Outperformed everybody's expectations, basically sold out
Speaker 1: every amphitheater in the country that summer, and I really
Speaker 1: think that kicked off the era of classic rock packaging.
Speaker 1: UM So you're seeing a lot more packaging and they're
Speaker 1: doing they're being far more aggressive about getting people out
Speaker 1: for those summertime shows that the amphitheaters now Okay, but
Speaker 1: now that package is playing stadiums. It is what do
Speaker 1: you predict there? I don't know how people. I mean,
Speaker 1: they just went out last summer and did really well
Speaker 1: in the amphitheaters and business was huge. I don't I
Speaker 1: haven't paid too close to attention to how many stadiums
Speaker 1: they're playing this summer, but it's a big bet. Stadium
Speaker 1: aren't cheap to produce that does that audience want to
Speaker 1: go to the stadium. My opinion is I don't think
Speaker 1: that the core classic rock audience wants to go to
Speaker 1: a stadium. They'll go to a stadium for big events.
Speaker 1: But if you give them their Druggs, the smaller the
Speaker 1: venue the better to them, because everybody wants to buy
Speaker 1: a seat close up. They want They don't want to
Speaker 1: deal with traffic and whatnot. But if package correctly and
Speaker 1: you create enough excitement, you know, stadiums have a big
Speaker 1: communal feel to them and it can be done. You know,
Speaker 1: you can drive people there. Okay, so where are we going?
Speaker 1: It used to be five or six years ago pop
Speaker 1: acts would have a number one record. They play the
Speaker 1: House of Blues. Now pop acts play arenas. In addition,
Speaker 1: hip hop not only sells arenas, it sells festivals. Are
Speaker 1: we at a tipping point here? Yeah? Well, I think
Speaker 1: everything is more accelerated right There. Used to be much
Speaker 1: more of a developmental path where an artist might play
Speaker 1: a club to start, and then play a venue like
Speaker 1: the Novo or the will Turn, work up to the
Speaker 1: Greek and then be playing Staples Center, form Hollywood bol
Speaker 1: or something like that Los Angeles plays. Now you're seeing
Speaker 1: bands that are accelerating so fast they skip right past
Speaker 1: the initial steps. So they might play a club underplay
Speaker 1: to launch, and then it gets so big so fast,
Speaker 1: you're going right into arenas, which um can work sometimes
Speaker 1: and maybe not. Okay, you know, if you go back
Speaker 1: to the MTV era, there was the uh, the cliche
Speaker 1: that yes, MTV will blast you to the moon, but
Speaker 1: you'll fall back just that fast. So these acts play
Speaker 1: arenas very soon. Do you think that hurts the longevity
Speaker 1: of their career? Not if they keep putting out good music. Well,
Speaker 1: it's more competitive than ever. But let's you know, let's
Speaker 1: segue to the hip hop acts, because they put out
Speaker 1: a lot of product and they're continuing to go. So
Speaker 1: what how do you envision the future of the hip
Speaker 1: hop business? I think it's going to continue. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: Spotify and streaming services have made this a singles culture, right,
Speaker 1: So if you look at an act like they're not
Speaker 1: hip hop, but the Chain Smokers, they their success is
Speaker 1: putting out a series of singles. Um. To a large degree,
Speaker 1: Drake is about putting out a series of singles. UM.
Speaker 1: So it's timing those announcements and and what their plan
Speaker 1: is to promote whatever brand artist or group together and
Speaker 1: and what's the strategy for this cycle of touring, this
Speaker 1: cycle of music. And I don't think I think the
Speaker 1: album has become irrelevant. I don't think you know, call
Speaker 1: kids today, but kids today don't really care about your album.
Speaker 1: They care about the songs. So but let's say you're
Speaker 1: an act that has a couple of songs. Can you
Speaker 1: then and there's a huge bus, can you then sell
Speaker 1: an arena? It reacts a little bit different. But so
Speaker 1: that's reading the tea leaves. You gotta read how hot
Speaker 1: something is and will people make the bet on you?
Speaker 1: And then there's playing promoters will make the bet, But
Speaker 1: you have to kind of understand how hot you are.
Speaker 1: You're looking at a young artist like Khalid who's gone
Speaker 1: from barely playing clubs and theaters right now too. He's
Speaker 1: out doing amphitheaters this summer, UH for Live Nation with
Speaker 1: a package which is, you know, really ambitious. But he's
Speaker 1: got a huge following already and the kids are are
Speaker 1: chasing him. So he may have success the summer. I
Speaker 1: bet you he will. Um, but you know what does
Speaker 1: that mean for the future. I think he's got to
Speaker 1: come back with more good music if he wants to sustain.
Speaker 1: But you say the album is irrelevant, someone will say
Speaker 1: there's a monster hit song. I'll go to the show
Speaker 1: just to hear that monster HITNG think so yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it takes a few monster hit songs to get
Speaker 1: to an arena level success. But I don't I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody's were like, oh man, I really hope they're
Speaker 1: playing track seven. Okay, so then let's go back. You
Speaker 1: talk about doing these tours with the top line acts
Speaker 1: all encompassing. Okay, we make an international or national deal,
Speaker 1: Why does that act be the major depending on who
Speaker 1: their manager is and what other services. I think if
Speaker 1: you look at what if you talk to Geiger at
Speaker 1: William Morris there putting together deals with that artist that
Speaker 1: encompassed so much more than just the live experience, right,
Speaker 1: So they're tying in sponsorship brands into the live experience,
Speaker 1: or tying in movie deals not necessarily to the live
Speaker 1: experience with their tying the movie deals and potentially um
Speaker 1: brand launches, integrating all of these things into their total
Speaker 1: relationship with the artists. So I think that as the
Speaker 1: artists get bigger and bigger and command more revenue and
Speaker 1: business lines, that that if the agencies are servicing them all,
Speaker 1: they have a very important value in the equation. And
Speaker 1: since you brought up sponsorship, how big is sponsorship part
Speaker 1: of promotion for a g Oh, it's a big part
Speaker 1: of what we do. It's it really drives our venue platforms,
Speaker 1: which allows us to be aggressive with these that we
Speaker 1: pay artists. So yeah, it's a big part of our business.
Speaker 1: How about any tour where you are not uh, well
Speaker 1: you don't own all the buildings, will you have? Will
Speaker 1: you put together a sponsorship deal for that tour? We
Speaker 1: try to. It depends on, you know, can we find
Speaker 1: the right artists that's excuse me, the right sponsor that's
Speaker 1: suitable to the artists, and while the artists accept it,
Speaker 1: and can we get a deal put together in time
Speaker 1: to kind of make it worthwhile to take the cash
Speaker 1: and do the tour. I mean a lot of times
Speaker 1: tours come together not last minute, but shortly before they
Speaker 1: go ahead and launch the on sale cycle. So sometimes
Speaker 1: brands are spending their money long before and acts decided,
Speaker 1: you know, what their tour plan is. So what's going
Speaker 1: on with the country business, because these country acts are
Speaker 1: out every year and some of the business got a
Speaker 1: little bit soft. Look, a lot of the artists have
Speaker 1: been out doing the same thing for years and years
Speaker 1: and years, and it's starting to wane a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I just think you also went from you know,
Speaker 1: when I was at Live Nation probably left in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, there was probably eight country headliners. I
Speaker 1: think the country music has blown up so much more.
Speaker 1: There's far more headliners out there, and there's competing for
Speaker 1: not the same dollar. I think the dollar has grown.
Speaker 1: The audience has grown some, but it's not exponentially grown
Speaker 1: with the with the number of acts out in the
Speaker 1: country scene. So the artists that you know haven't been
Speaker 1: putting out interesting music or have a story to tell
Speaker 1: might be feeling might be feeling it at the box
Speaker 1: office when they're not selling quite as much as opposed
Speaker 1: to a guy like Stapleton, who has been a phenomenon
Speaker 1: in the last couple of years. And just you know,
Speaker 1: here's a guy who doesn't fit the mold of country
Speaker 1: music of the last few years. He's you know, Luke
Speaker 1: Bryan's essentially a pop act right and has pop appeal
Speaker 1: and whether you want to calm you know, bon Jovi
Speaker 1: style to what you know bon Jovi was, to Rocky
Speaker 1: is the country. Um, those are all great things and
Speaker 1: that service a certain audience and it's scales up nicely. Uh.
Speaker 1: Stapleton was the singer songwriter and had this pinnacle moment
Speaker 1: on uh the A M A's or C M A
Speaker 1: s with the like and it was phenomenal. I mean,
Speaker 1: we had him on sale at the l Ray, which
Speaker 1: is an eight hundred seat love in Los Angeles with
Speaker 1: I think we're sitting after a month with three tickets
Speaker 1: left to sell on the show, so it wasn't knocking
Speaker 1: down the doors. And he had that performance in those shows,
Speaker 1: those tickets sold in about thirty seconds and we're going
Speaker 1: for three sho of the next day. And his rise
Speaker 1: has been phenomenal. Sin there I'm a huge fan, So
Speaker 1: I just think that he's putting out incredible music, and
Speaker 1: really that opportunity opened everybody's eyes is like how great
Speaker 1: he is because you know, to me, he he fulfills
Speaker 1: that somewhere between like that southern rock to Tom Petty
Speaker 1: vibe of rock and roll style with you know, country souls.
Speaker 1: The fascinating thing about Stapleton is on every metric he's victorious.
Speaker 1: When he had that moment and he won the award,
Speaker 1: he's the favorite of everybody in Nashville who are playing
Speaker 1: the game when he isn't. But in addition, his consumption
Speaker 1: numbers and sales exceed everybody else's, even though he until
Speaker 1: recently hasn't got much radio played, which seems to say, hey,
Speaker 1: we want this credibility. It's like the inmates, you know,
Speaker 1: who feel that they're incarcerated in the walls that don't exist,
Speaker 1: so we can't break out. But look at this guy
Speaker 1: who broke out. Now, why is it? The country is
Speaker 1: play stadiums more than any other genre. Taylor Swift originally
Speaker 1: was country. Kenny Chesney goes out every year of country,
Speaker 1: you know, Jason Aldan, they go out with packages, but
Speaker 1: they're the ones we're pushing the limits on stadiums. Well,
Speaker 1: I think country is still largely driven by country radio,
Speaker 1: which is of that format still pretty healthy. UM, so
Speaker 1: they've had a pretty Country music has had much more
Speaker 1: of a developmental system in place, um relative to rock,
Speaker 1: pop or the other genres, and it has kind of
Speaker 1: propelled these guys. And as country music has become crossed
Speaker 1: over a bit towards pop, it's it's really gone mass appeal.
Speaker 1: So the genre is very accessible right now. I'd say
Speaker 1: that's a big part of the reason you're seeing more
Speaker 1: stadium shows with artists like that. But I'm I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking that you're starting to see more classic rock tours
Speaker 1: and stadiums again. You're seeing more you know, the Beyonce's
Speaker 1: and jay Z's and Eminem's having played stadiums recently. I
Speaker 1: don't know that countries out pacing a lot of other genres,
Speaker 1: right I think the other ones are coming in. There
Speaker 1: were not many people going up and failing. They just
Speaker 1: weren't even going into that marketplace. So as we look forward, Hey,
Speaker 1: is rock dead? No, it's not dead. What I just
Speaker 1: it's just not as popular as it used to be
Speaker 1: with a younger demographic right, so classic Roc Hotter and
Speaker 1: ever doing some of the best business. So again you're
Speaker 1: retretting on nostalgia there, but it's still very much alive
Speaker 1: that people are enjoying it. But you have you know,
Speaker 1: we just put two shows with cretiv on Fleet on
Speaker 1: sale this morning and blew them out in two minutes.
Speaker 1: Okay there, uh John Anson Ford amphitheater here and that's
Speaker 1: very small first place in reality. If Geiger said how
Speaker 1: big can we go? I would have said, like, let's
Speaker 1: put it at the Greek Theater and we would have
Speaker 1: sold six thousand tickets in a day. It's they're playing
Speaker 1: anywhere from hous and theaters. How about some of these
Speaker 1: acts that have renowned but have not broken through mass consciousness,
Speaker 1: like the War on Drugs not compelling enough? I guess,
Speaker 1: I mean, I love the War on drugs, but it
Speaker 1: just hasn't resonated at a level that Well. A great
Speaker 1: Evan Fleet, which the record is certainly original. Hep is great,
Speaker 1: and it's it leads up when retread. Can you name
Speaker 1: one or two other acts that are burgeoning in that way? Burgeoning? No,
Speaker 1: there's I mean, rock is not developing a ton of superstars.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've seen Portugal. Demand is a rock band
Speaker 1: that's been around a long time, had a huge hit
Speaker 1: this year, great rock band, and they're just finally starting
Speaker 1: to break through. It might take longer to get through it.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a poppit. That's that if someone did
Speaker 1: not someone did not know Portugal the man, they would
Speaker 1: not say this is rock music. Fair fair enough. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think gret Evan fleets and a novelty act,
Speaker 1: but you can say that's a novelty song because it's
Speaker 1: got such thing. The interesting thing with Greta van Fleet
Speaker 1: is the original people created that music. The classic rockers
Speaker 1: were listening to the blues masters, where the tracks, the
Speaker 1: songs were somewhere between years old. It's been more than
Speaker 1: thirty or fifty, forty or fifty years since Creams, since
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin, So on some level, younger generation picking up
Speaker 1: on that, we could see the same paradigm. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's ultimately going to play out, but uh
Speaker 1: we saw a dip in two thousand and ten with
Speaker 1: live business. Anything gonna happen, but what do you foresee. Look,
Speaker 1: I think that dip was the economy was was in
Speaker 1: the worst recession since the Great Depression. I mean, discretionary
Speaker 1: income went out the window. So I think that in
Speaker 1: large part I wasn't like all of a sudden people
Speaker 1: became less interested in music. I think people have less
Speaker 1: dollars to spend. Flip it over. There's many people who
Speaker 1: believe that it's all about experiences now and then the
Speaker 1: only place you can get it is that the live show.
Speaker 1: So that's driving business. Certainly, the live business is king
Speaker 1: in this day and age, you know, in a sense
Speaker 1: of I think two thousand seventeen was the first year
Speaker 1: that recorded revenue for two years. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: the live business revenue has been growing for for years
Speaker 1: and been growing rapidly since the economy picked up in
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve, and the live business has been phenomenal.
Speaker 1: You read a lot of articles and you hear a
Speaker 1: lot of things about everybody wants the experiences, and I
Speaker 1: think that is true to a large degree, and the
Speaker 1: festivals have helped propel that culture where it's music is
Speaker 1: computal right, So when you are by yourself listening to music,
Speaker 1: it's one thing, and when you want to spend time
Speaker 1: with people, and as we spend more and more times
Speaker 1: in our homes with our big screen TVs or iPads
Speaker 1: and our Netflix and all of those things like how
Speaker 1: do you get your communal fix? I think that the
Speaker 1: live experience in large part supports that. Now the number
Speaker 1: one talking point amongst attendees is the availability and price
Speaker 1: of tickets. Where do you stand on should the fan
Speaker 1: be able to get in at a cheap price or
Speaker 1: should tickets be whatever the market value is. So a
Speaker 1: few years back, Neil Young did a theater tour and
Speaker 1: I got myself in trouble responding to the left sets letter.
Speaker 1: So Neil was out there and I think he was
Speaker 1: charging close to to in her fifty dollars for the
Speaker 1: top ticket at his theater tour, which Neil Young should
Speaker 1: not be playing. If it's if you're just talking about
Speaker 1: the demand in a given market, Neil Young consent saw
Speaker 1: out a theater and any town he goes to, the
Speaker 1: minute it goes on sale, it's it's a what you
Speaker 1: generally call it underplaying our business. So Neil plays it.
Speaker 1: He's charging to seventy five and people are a gas because, um,
Speaker 1: they feel they should be paying whatever fifty bucks thirty
Speaker 1: five bucks whenever they felt the right Neil Young price,
Speaker 1: which is those prices are probably what you call the
Speaker 1: bore traditional uh rock and roll ticket prices. But the
Speaker 1: reality is scalpers for years have been getting tickets and
Speaker 1: reselling them on the secondary market, whether that was Barrious
Speaker 1: tickets back in the day or today stub Hub or
Speaker 1: Vivid or any of the other Internet platforms that are
Speaker 1: driving the market. So at the time I replied back
Speaker 1: to you and said, you know, I actually think Neil
Speaker 1: Young is doing the right thing because this is a
Speaker 1: flying demand economics. Um, this show is going to sell
Speaker 1: it instantly. If Neil Young prices them at seventy five dollars,
Speaker 1: there's going to be people that are professional scalpers, and
Speaker 1: you know, weekend scalpers in a sense of the get
Speaker 1: tickets say wow, I could make you know, I got
Speaker 1: I bought two tickets or four tickets or so many
Speaker 1: five They can sell two of them for two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty bucks and either pay for my night at
Speaker 1: a show, or you know, put profit in my scalping business.
Speaker 1: And ultimately, who's not sharing in that Neil Young's not
Speaker 1: sharing in that, the promoters not sharing in that his
Speaker 1: manager doesn't share, and that that lift of the scalper
Speaker 1: is keeping. So I said, look, if the market value
Speaker 1: is two hundred fifty dollars for a Neil Young ticket,
Speaker 1: I'm okay with them charging it because people are happy
Speaker 1: paying nobody's nobody's upset that they spent two hundred fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: If you if you get the seat you want. And
Speaker 1: that's how stuff help came to prominense because the constant
Speaker 1: industry for years was under pricing their tickets right. So
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of market pricing your tickets correctly,
Speaker 1: and that's that's gonna work two ways. And a smaller
Speaker 1: venue with Neil Young, there's not gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: of cheaper tickets in that experience as a venue gets bigger.
Speaker 1: Um jay Z. There was a lot of talk about
Speaker 1: jay Z's tour, whether it's a success or not. And
Speaker 1: from what I gather, they had really respectable grosses and
Speaker 1: he was selling tickets, but he had tickets going from
Speaker 1: you know, five hundred to a thousand dollars maybe all
Speaker 1: the way down to like twenty in the back of
Speaker 1: the arena. So to me, if your expectations, I want
Speaker 1: to pay twenty dollars and sit in the front row
Speaker 1: and arena to see jay Z. Well, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: a little unrealistic. But if I want to go see
Speaker 1: jay Z live and I want to spend twenty dollars,
Speaker 1: there's a place for you in that scenario. So I
Speaker 1: think you're seeing more and more price points within arena
Speaker 1: which have really existed for years, because if you think
Speaker 1: about it, we would roll out uh any kind of concert.
Speaker 1: Take your pick a Tom Petty show. Um, if you
Speaker 1: put that show on sale, we might have picked four
Speaker 1: or five price points. You could go to StubHub the
Speaker 1: next day and look at all the people who were
Speaker 1: speculating on reselling tickets and there would be a thousand
Speaker 1: different price points. But but they did not go under
Speaker 1: the nosebleed price. That's not always the case. No, No,
Speaker 1: they did as they approached the show correct but not
Speaker 1: the next one. One would say, I don't want to
Speaker 1: make this about you, but this is a relatively recent
Speaker 1: phenomenon to drop the price of the nosebleed seats to
Speaker 1: a very low price in music, not not in like
Speaker 1: it's been going on for sports. You gotta lose your team.
Speaker 1: People are like, you know, I've gotten to plenty of
Speaker 1: baseball games where you know, you just buy some tickets
Speaker 1: on StubHub for the upper deck at Dodger Statium for
Speaker 1: ten bucks. You know, like I don't, I don't even
Speaker 1: know what the face was, but you can you know
Speaker 1: anybody is paying for a nupper back ticket at Dodger
Speaker 1: Stadium for more than ten bucks is like I guess
Speaker 1: the Yankees are in town or whoever is super popular.
Speaker 1: But in concerts is happening more and more, especially as
Speaker 1: you're pushing the price. So if it's not a hot
Speaker 1: tour and people need to sell those tickets, and there's
Speaker 1: more and more speculators in the game now than there
Speaker 1: ever was. The Stones, who are one of your racks,
Speaker 1: legendarily flex price. They change the price during the core
Speaker 1: so the on sale correct. What is the future of that?
Speaker 1: I think dynamic pricing is already here. It is that,
Speaker 1: I mean the future is already here. It's you're seeing
Speaker 1: more and more shows being priced dynamically based off of
Speaker 1: what the market demand is. So if you know, if
Speaker 1: a front row seats worth a thousand dollars, you're going
Speaker 1: to see it get charges thousand dollars. And if it's
Speaker 1: not moving at that. It might move down, um, and
Speaker 1: a price might a price point might move up. Basically
Speaker 1: email from people who are piste off. I paid to
Speaker 1: fifty and now the seat next to me's on sale
Speaker 1: for a bucket a quarter. Uh you know, it's like
Speaker 1: an airline price. The only thing is everybody hates the airlines.
Speaker 1: It's just the models, supply and an end pricing though. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have we have a couple of things going. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that the first row shouldn't be a thousand dollars, right,
Speaker 1: I'm saying that when I have a seat that I
Speaker 1: paid five for and the person next to me paid
Speaker 1: two and fifty dollars for, I'm not happy about that.
Speaker 1: I accept it with the airlines, I have a model,
Speaker 1: But the airline business is different from going to see
Speaker 1: a live music at so you paid five. This is
Speaker 1: my hypothetical. The number one ticketing site on the Internet
Speaker 1: is stubb Hub, right, and the music business. For a
Speaker 1: long time they were hated because they were seen as
Speaker 1: the scalping site, right, But from a consumer perspective, they
Speaker 1: love it because a lot of people are frustrated going
Speaker 1: to Ticketmaster not being able to get the ticket that
Speaker 1: they want when they are there promptly at ten am
Speaker 1: for the on sale and they type in you know
Speaker 1: b O B L and the entire lower bill sold
Speaker 1: out before you can type the rest of your last
Speaker 1: name right. So they're upset, or it's like six months
Speaker 1: before the show and they don't know where they're going
Speaker 1: to be. They really want to go see their favorite
Speaker 1: band the hell, you know, like, who who would want
Speaker 1: to do buy the ticket? In that experience, it's a
Speaker 1: terrible selling experience as opposed to, uh, three weeks before
Speaker 1: the show, I really want to go see my favorite band.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to stub Hub quickly found a
Speaker 1: seat in the tenth row. It's five bucks. Cool, I'm
Speaker 1: happy with five hundred bucks and get the seat I want. Honey,
Speaker 1: let's go out. It's date night. Let's let's rock. Um.
Speaker 1: You might be sitting to somebody who got through on
Speaker 1: their initial on sale when the ticket was two or
Speaker 1: fifty bucks, and I agree with everything said, And let
Speaker 1: me try to break the points across. Let's start with
Speaker 1: the first point. Does it hurt the act charging what
Speaker 1: the market value is? The market value is going to
Speaker 1: charge what it is regardless of the act. Different issue.
Speaker 1: There's a whole guy wrote a whole essay. I think
Speaker 1: it happened to be in poll Star one of the
Speaker 1: economists that said in terms of longevity of act, and
Speaker 1: I always felt the opposite, that to charge what the
Speaker 1: market will bear actually hurts the longevity of the act.
Speaker 1: You're saying leaves some meat on the bone, right, don't
Speaker 1: don't you know, don't kill your audists. You never attacks him, No, No,
Speaker 1: My point is the perception will be that you're fan friendly,
Speaker 1: even though these third parties will be making bank and
Speaker 1: it won't go to you. But in the long run
Speaker 1: you will have a longer career. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: a premise. I don't think the Stones have charged less
Speaker 1: over time, and they're and they're still doing okay because
Speaker 1: it's started with tickets were under ten. Next question becomes,
Speaker 1: where does paperless fit in this equation. Well, look, there's
Speaker 1: two paths that you're going to go down to as
Speaker 1: far as the purchasing experience. A. There's market value, right,
Speaker 1: which is gonna drive up the best seats um at
Speaker 1: the you know, at the highest price, and try and
Speaker 1: get the maximum yield out of that. And some of
Speaker 1: it may yield cheaper seats in the back, but it's
Speaker 1: really going to fluctuate as to what true market pricing
Speaker 1: demand is. The second option is there's a lot of
Speaker 1: bands out there who feel I don't want my fan
Speaker 1: basically following up what we were talking about paying more
Speaker 1: than thirty five dollars for this ticket. And maybe a
Speaker 1: great example would be Adel who topped out her ticket
Speaker 1: prices of a hundred fifty dollars. So she used paperless ticketing,
Speaker 1: which is a format of ticketing that you don't actually
Speaker 1: get a physical ticket. You have to show up with
Speaker 1: your I D and a credit card and then go
Speaker 1: right into the venue. And what that is intended to
Speaker 1: do is prevent um a secondary market from transferring the
Speaker 1: ticket to another party. So I think it's technology gets better.
Speaker 1: Artists should have the ability to not to limit or
Speaker 1: control the pricing on their ticket. Right now, scalpers and
Speaker 1: technology have far outpaced the industry and their ability to
Speaker 1: thwart systems like paperless ticketing from working at a high
Speaker 1: success rate. So you know there's our company, ticketing company
Speaker 1: Access is working on ideas. Ticket Masters hard at work
Speaker 1: on ideas on how you can secure the ticket. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other reasons to talk about securing
Speaker 1: the ticket because as you see UM attacks happen over
Speaker 1: in Europe at the Ariana Grande show and in Paris
Speaker 1: where the people came, well, that was charging through. But
Speaker 1: like to know who's in the building UH at any
Speaker 1: given time and have that customer data handy is becomes
Speaker 1: much more valuable as well. So will a ticket in
Speaker 1: the future become much more transferable to person to person
Speaker 1: and you'll be able to track that ticket. I think
Speaker 1: that's where the technology is going. Okay, then also talking
Speaker 1: about UH, you know, let's go back, so in terms
Speaker 1: of prices changing after the original on sale goes on,
Speaker 1: do you envision that happening more? And then there's very
Speaker 1: little transparency. The average person sitting at home believes when
Speaker 1: the on sale goes on Saturday morning that all the
Speaker 1: tickets are available, when in reality may be less fewer
Speaker 1: than ten percent of the overall UH ticket availability. So
Speaker 1: first explain where all those other tickets go. Usually there's
Speaker 1: you're seeing far more stage staggered on sales as I
Speaker 1: would call them. So you're seeing artists fan club preise
Speaker 1: sales as you're seeing UH sponsor pre sales. American Express
Speaker 1: sponsors a lot of pre sales, will contribute marketing dollars
Speaker 1: to help promote the show. So if you have an
Speaker 1: ann X cards, you'll have access to buy tickets early.
Speaker 1: For there's venue pre sales, there's radio station pre sales,
Speaker 1: they're Spotify pre sales. How those choose to get rolled
Speaker 1: out are really a decision between both the artist promoter
Speaker 1: and everybody in the business side of the equation. And
Speaker 1: some people feel they're great because they help them sell
Speaker 1: more tickets and get more people access to the tickets,
Speaker 1: and then there's other people who don't participate in them
Speaker 1: because they feel it limits the access to tickets. Well,
Speaker 1: I can say is a lot of this although baked
Speaker 1: into the business for historical reasons, not fan friendly in
Speaker 1: an Internet era where a site that is not the
Speaker 1: unfriendly usually is you know, bombarded with criticism and might
Speaker 1: go down. So what is the future We're just going
Speaker 1: to continue to have this opacity or is it going
Speaker 1: to change? Well, look, I think you're gonna see slower
Speaker 1: on sales. I think you're going to see what the
Speaker 1: demand is for, you know, for artists that want to
Speaker 1: maximize the gross and are really focused in on how
Speaker 1: much I can gross the concert and get what the
Speaker 1: real market value is for this concert. You're going to
Speaker 1: see a mix of technology supporting that, and you may
Speaker 1: see a slower rollout of tickets in a sense of
Speaker 1: not every ticket may go on sale at the onset
Speaker 1: while you're determining what market pricing is. And then on
Speaker 1: the flip side of it, as you be able, as
Speaker 1: we are able to buckle down the technology to the
Speaker 1: point where you can really control transferability of a ticket,
Speaker 1: then the artist that it's very important to that their
Speaker 1: fan don't pay over a certain price point will be
Speaker 1: able to do that as well. And really technology is
Speaker 1: going to drive this. So one of the two biggest
Speaker 1: challenges you have in your day to day job, Um, well,
Speaker 1: we have a very big business. We do over twelve
Speaker 1: thousand shows a year. So one of my biggest challenges,
Speaker 1: just as I generally call it cat hurting, I have
Speaker 1: a lot of details to follow up on a day,
Speaker 1: and so staying organized and focused on the goals of
Speaker 1: the month, the year are it's probably my number one challenge.
Speaker 1: But um you know, we we we compete every day
Speaker 1: against the biggest conscert phone in the world. So I
Speaker 1: have to sharpen the knife and come with a lot
Speaker 1: of focus and try and move quickly to uh to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, fight for our piece of the pie that day.
Speaker 1: And one or two things you've learned in years? Two things, um,
Speaker 1: that I've learned in twenty five years, Um, that I
Speaker 1: don't always want to meet every artist I used to
Speaker 1: admire because you don't have time or they're disappointing. You
Speaker 1: were what Sometimes they disappoint you, you know some Sometimes
Speaker 1: I've I've loved a band less after meeting them. It
Speaker 1: could be a big fan of a band, and I've
Speaker 1: I've met an artist or have done business with them
Speaker 1: and or other people to the point where it kind
Speaker 1: of put a little tarnish on my view of the
Speaker 1: band and enjoyment of the music. So I think the
Speaker 1: old adage is careful, careful about meeting your heroes. Right.
Speaker 1: Have you ever met anybody who's lived up to the legend? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I look, I've met a lot of great artists along
Speaker 1: the way. UM. I mentioned earlier that one of the
Speaker 1: first bands that I promoted kind of from big are
Speaker 1: Small to Big was No Doubt And the guys in
Speaker 1: no doubt. Tony Canal and Adrian and Tom are all
Speaker 1: good friends of mine and like I just I root
Speaker 1: for them and any project that they do. So um,
Speaker 1: I've got a special place in my heart for for
Speaker 1: them in that band because uh, you know, they were
Speaker 1: they were with me in the early days. I was
Speaker 1: with them in their early days, so it was went
Speaker 1: through the war together. Yeah, and and they're and they're
Speaker 1: good people, so they deserve all the success that they had. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the biggest acts who lives up
Speaker 1: to the legends, Steven Tyler. The moment I met him,
Speaker 1: he is that guy. He's the rock star. He's very
Speaker 1: quick with the language, you know, whereas there other people
Speaker 1: very disappointing. Yeah. Well, and and look, I've been really
Speaker 1: fortunate because I want to say, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say it's bad meeting artists. It's been great. But you know,
Speaker 1: when you get to meet you know, I get to
Speaker 1: meet a lot of artists in the business, and that's
Speaker 1: a fun part of it. And when you go to
Speaker 1: a party with friends who aren't in the business, that
Speaker 1: sounds incredible. And I don't really care who I meet
Speaker 1: for the most part. For day to day but every
Speaker 1: once in a while, like you know, I got to
Speaker 1: George Landau introduced me to Bruce Springsteen after a benefit
Speaker 1: show and I had to make small talk with Bruce
Speaker 1: for what was What was the nature of the small talk? Uh,
Speaker 1: he was performing at the Shrine. I talked about some
Speaker 1: of the renovations we had done at the Shrine and
Speaker 1: the nature of the benefit. And you know, he was
Speaker 1: coming to do the River that that next year at
Speaker 1: the Sports Arena, which we were producing. So we talked,
Speaker 1: you know, for a minute about that. It was three
Speaker 1: minutes of that. But as you know, you're just sitting
Speaker 1: there the whole time, like I'm sitting three ft from
Speaker 1: Bob having this converse. Imagine he was Bruce Springton and
Speaker 1: the whole time Bruce is talking to me. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to sound not sound like an idiot going fucking Bruce
Speaker 1: Springsteen in front of me. The factor actually having a
Speaker 1: conversation is what I'm focusing on. Because frequently, you know,
Speaker 1: frequently they give the limp musician Handshakeen, that's it, We're
Speaker 1: all start talking to you have They have no idea
Speaker 1: who I am. They don't care about it. But when
Speaker 1: you're actually engaging in the conversation. Your heart pitter powders circumountain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing to watch some artists. I tell this
Speaker 1: story a lot is um We've produced Katie Perry's last
Speaker 1: few tours and uh sheep, you know, on the on
Speaker 1: the two tours ago, Uh, we were getting hit left
Speaker 1: and right with uh meet and greet requests. So she
Speaker 1: ultimately made the decision that she was only going to
Speaker 1: um do meet and greets for kids that were in
Speaker 1: bad he make like make a wish style requests, and
Speaker 1: it limited it because you know, it would be an
Speaker 1: endless stream of people, uh that wanted to meet her.
Speaker 1: And at st Staples was ended up being one of
Speaker 1: her tour sponsors that year. So when she did play
Speaker 1: Staples Center, there were some you know Staples executives that
Speaker 1: were part of that and a few other people, and
Speaker 1: so it kind of broke the rule for that night
Speaker 1: and there was a row of people meeting there and
Speaker 1: my my daughter at that time, was probably around ten
Speaker 1: years old, and I set it up with Steve Jensen,
Speaker 1: Katie's manager, to meet her, and so we were standing
Speaker 1: there at the end of the line, you know, watching
Speaker 1: her do the meet and greet with the kids and
Speaker 1: working her way down and you know she I just
Speaker 1: watched her and she was so locked in instantly on
Speaker 1: what every kid was saying to her. Uh, and she
Speaker 1: connected with them in a way that I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't surprised to me why she was such
Speaker 1: a big star, you know. And we were towards the
Speaker 1: end of the line and she, you know, she she
Speaker 1: walked up to my daughter, whose name is Katie, and said,
Speaker 1: your name is Katie, My name is Katie. You know,
Speaker 1: made a big to do about that, started talking about
Speaker 1: instantly locked in on what my daughter was wearing. And
Speaker 1: they had a nice little chat for like maybe a
Speaker 1: minute and a half, and you know, you get your
Speaker 1: courtesy picture and I go to take I take up
Speaker 1: my phone to take a picture of the tomb, and
Speaker 1: she grabs my phone and she flips it around and
Speaker 1: she shoots the selfie with my daughter and like a
Speaker 1: kid my daughter's age, that's far more valuable than like
Speaker 1: the fact that it was shot selfie style, and it
Speaker 1: was so smooth and so connected in and I go, man,
Speaker 1: she is just locking in this fans, Like she's just
Speaker 1: like that personal connection is that that that charisma and
Speaker 1: touch that she had. I was just like, I was
Speaker 1: so taken with how she each one of those things.
Speaker 1: And I mean that line had to be for two
Speaker 1: people long, and there's a lot of artists that will
Speaker 1: do even more than that, and like she just connected
Speaker 1: with each other. And I go, man, that is that
Speaker 1: is amazing? And the you see, you know, the artist
Speaker 1: personal touches. For years, the country rule has been, you know,
Speaker 1: you go out on the road, you're the first to
Speaker 1: three on one of those country packages in the MP
Speaker 1: theaters and the openers up at the concessions, sorry, the
Speaker 1: merch stand selling T shirts and sign an autographs for
Speaker 1: everybody there. And I you know, it's it's interesting the
Speaker 1: bands that will put in the work to go connect
Speaker 1: with people, um and talk to him, because I think
Speaker 1: that breeds a lot of loyalty and longevity, you know, right.
Speaker 1: Speaking of your daughter, we've talked about this before. She's
Speaker 1: a huge Hamilton's fan, Yes, and you've seen Hamilton's a
Speaker 1: couple of times. Is that a unique property? Does it
Speaker 1: have lessons for the rest of the business. Look, I
Speaker 1: think Hamilton's a great example of it's just great music, right,
Speaker 1: So lin Manuel made an incredible score. I before we
Speaker 1: went to go see it, I had listened to that
Speaker 1: soundtrack no less than three hundred and fifty times uh
Speaker 1: in a year period. We listened to it every day. UH.
Speaker 1: And so when we when we got tickets to it, it
Speaker 1: it was a big exciting thing. But you know, I
Speaker 1: thought it was my daughter at first, who's she had
Speaker 1: a predisposition to musicals, and she's into the Broadway seeing.
Speaker 1: She's performed in a few kids theaters and things of
Speaker 1: that nature. So I didn't think that much of it
Speaker 1: at the time, and I just liked the soundtrack myself.
Speaker 1: As we got closer to going to see the play
Speaker 1: at the end of the year in New York, UM,
Speaker 1: I was paying more and more attention to what was
Speaker 1: going on with with Lynn, and I just hadn't opened
Speaker 1: my eyes wide enough, and I realized what a phenomenon
Speaker 1: was and how it was, you know, one of five
Speaker 1: albums that year to sell over a million copies, UM,
Speaker 1: which I think is saying something Broadway soundtrack of all
Speaker 1: the pop records with no hits. And where it really
Speaker 1: blew my mind is we uh were on a family
Speaker 1: trip after the New Year, and I uh in Vale, Colorado,
Speaker 1: and we were I met up with a friend that
Speaker 1: I had went to high school with, and she brought
Speaker 1: up her two daughters and we all the families hung
Speaker 1: out for a few days. In the first night, at dinner,
Speaker 1: the the kids were talking about Kay brought up how
Speaker 1: we went to go see Hamilton's over the hall days,
Speaker 1: and they started, everybody loved Hamilton's, And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there's three kids and units at the table start word
Speaker 1: for word wrapping the first, second, and third songs like
Speaker 1: I just it was. It was, And then as it
Speaker 1: kind of pushed Katie on more and more of her friends,
Speaker 1: like it's a It was just a phenomenon through all
Speaker 1: these junior high kids that were just fully into a
Speaker 1: musical of hip hop about warning the about one of
Speaker 1: the founding fathers. I found it fascinating even so much
Speaker 1: like Uh. This past Valentine's Day a few days ago,
Speaker 1: I came home and I was looking at her lunch
Speaker 1: box and one of her friend had made Hamilton's Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: It was like Linn Manuel and it says, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to waste my shot on you with a little
Speaker 1: hard around it. So like it's It really is kind
Speaker 1: of a phenomenon of how this musical has like all
Speaker 1: the way down to like young kids. Wow, it really sustains.
Speaker 1: Now you've been doing this for twenty five years, you
Speaker 1: like music as much I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: In fact, I was last weekend just making mixed well
Speaker 1: you know, make masage, make playlists now, but it was
Speaker 1: making playlists and digging around. And that's what one of
Speaker 1: the things I love about Spotify is that my music
Speaker 1: collection is so much bigger now so it was. It's
Speaker 1: way more fun than when I was eighteen in my
Speaker 1: bedroom with limited by how much I could afford to
Speaker 1: buy of music in a given day. Well, Rick, this
Speaker 1: has been wonderful. We've covered a lot of ground both
Speaker 1: for the people on the inside and on the outside.
Speaker 1: You missed the pra seed before we turn on the
Speaker 1: mics where we discuss chocolate chip cookies and soda. We'll
Speaker 1: have to have a comeback for that. But thanks so
Speaker 1: much for doing the Bob left Sets pods for having
Speaker 1: me Bob. That wraps up this episode of the Bob
Speaker 1: Left Sets Podcast with my guest Rick Mueller of A
Speaker 1: G Presents. I really enjoy getting to hear his path
Speaker 1: through the music business. But I know, based on the
Speaker 1: fact that so many people listen to and comment on
Speaker 1: the Nathan Hubbard podcast, that this ticketing conversation is an
Speaker 1: interesting one. If you want to take a deep dive
Speaker 1: into ticketing, go back to episode two with the Thin
Speaker 1: if you haven't already and get his perspective. Don't miss
Speaker 1: an episode of my podcast by subscribing on tune in,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcast, or your app of choice. Until next time,
Speaker 1: I'm Bob left steps. He reason don't know exactly one
Speaker 1: must be it's out of this seas