Quiet In Church

The new Music Week Live & Direct conference in St. Mary’s Church, central London, pulled about 200 delegates, which Ajax Scott – the weekly trade paper’s publisher – said was "a good starting point."

The reaction of delegates from the live music sector was mixed, with some saying it wasn’t a good value for the money, at £345 for the day compared with £420 for three days at this year’s ILMC. Scott said a like-for-like comparison is not valid.

Apart from pointing out the Live & Direct registration fee included entrance to the Vodafone Live Music Awards, which took place at London Earls Court later the same day, he said the two conferences target different audiences.

"ILMC is a live music conference for live music people from all over Europe, while we’re looking at a live music conference for people from several different disciplines," he explained.

"We attracted a lot of record company people from major and indie labels, publishers, managers, lawyers and media and public relations people."

The September 19 conference, which had sponsors including Go Events, Kings Ferry Travel Group and Ticketmaster, started with Emma Banks (CAA), John Giddings (Solo), Ruth Barlow (Beggars Group), Shabs Jopantura (Relentless Records) and Max Lousada (Atlantic Records) discussing the breaking down of industry barriers.

It was an appropriate subject: About 50 miles away in Hook, Hampshire, what’s left of Sanctuary staff was arriving at the Four Seasons Hotel to begin a two-day session with their new bosses from Universal Music Group.

None of the six Live & Direct sessions produced a real battle, apart from an ongoing one with the cavern-like building’s acoustics, although all the obvious issues in today’s live music business were covered.

The panel format was different from ILMC – much shorter at about 45 minutes – with a couple topics resembling ILMC regulars.

"The Next Generation" was similar to the "Meet The New Boss" session that Heather McGill from 19 Management does at ILMC. "We Did It Our Way" – Ed Bicknell interviewing veteran manager Chris Morrison – was a direct take on the Sunday morning session the William Morris Agency head of international and former Dire Straits manager does at the annual March conference.

Morrison has just taken on the management of U.S. disco legend Grace Jones, with Ian Huffam from X-Ray Touring as European agent, but his history is mainly with U.K. acts including Thin Lizzy, Ultravox, Blur, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Gorillaz and Morcheeba.

In contrast to Bicknell’s ILMC interviews it stuck closer to current issues, inevitably touching on how managers might get marginalised by record company expansion into the live music business, although there were still a few of those maybe apocryphal tales of rock ‘n’ roll stupidity and excess.

The secondary ticketing panel with Viagogo founder and chief exec Eric Baker, Nick Blackburn from See Tickets, Graham Burns from Asta (the U.K.’s secondary ticketing agents’ association), Vito Iaia from Ticketmaster and Geoff Ellis from Scotland’s DF Concerts and T In The Park Festival never really got going.

By the time the panelists introduced themselves to such a wide audience and explained exactly where they stood on the matter, little time was left to discuss the subject.

It demonstrated the difficulties in presenting a panel for delegates from such a wide range of businesses.

Scott won’t say how many of the 200 or so in the audience paid to go, but said the event did well enough to return next autumn.

This autumn’s U.K. conference season continues with another new platform called The Summit, a three-dayer organised by the publishers of the London-based monthly Audience and Live UK magazines.

It’s at London’s Park Lane InterContinental Hotel, formerly the home of ILMC, October 22-24. Registration costs £315.