News From Down Under: Vaccinations, Humm Events, Audience Republic, Festival Postponements

With a high rate of vaccinations see as the solution to a return of the live sector, a number of ideas were put forward.

New Zealand’s COVID-19 response minister Chris Hipkins wanted live concerts be held at mass vaccination centers to provide a “relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere” for those in queue.  

Golden Robot Records, headquartered in Sydney and Los Angeles, offered a free album from its catalogue for those furnishing proof of a shot in July. Its roster includes former Guns N’Roses members, The Church, Rose Tattoo and LA Guns. 500 took up the offer on the first day of the Rock The Vax campaign.

The Perth Royal Show offered vaccine walk-ins. The Windsor Hotel in South Perth is shouting a free glass of beer.

Radio broadcaster Kyle Sandilands recorded a track “Vaxxed Baby” to the tune of Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby”. It’s getting national airplay and spots on Ten Network and MTV.

Australia’s leading event management, logistics and production planning companies, Humm, was rebranded Humm Events by its new owner 

Cedar Mill Group. 

The latter, owned by Newcastle, New South Wales (NSW) based property development firm Winarch Capital, is expanding into live entertainment, tourism and event management.

Since lauched in 2001 by Iain Morrison. Humm Events offers event, site and production management for promoters as Live Nation and TEG, councils and the NSW government; creative concept development; COVID-19, crowd and risk planning; and strategic consulting for event owners, with feasibility planning a major growth area for the business. 

“It’s been an amazing ride for the team and the business to date but for Tara (Whitfield, business partner) and myself it was an opportunity too good to let go,” Morrison said. 

”We now have the capacity to resource the business how and when we need to.”

Plans are to increase the team and push further into the Australian and New Zealand.

Morrison and Whitfield remain with Humm Events as event directors, Cedar Mill Group’s Kyle McKendry is named general manager. 

Cedar Mill Group is preparing to build two new purpose-built venues in the Lake Macquarie/ Hunter Valley Regions in NSW to include multi-million-dollar entertainment and cultural precincts. Cedar Mill Lake Macquarie will have a 30,000-capacity amphitheater and Cedar Mill Hunter Valley a 22,000-capacity amphitheater.

Audience Republic is a new Australian-made marketing platform for promoters, festivals, artists, and venues to rally their fans and harness their data to sell more tickets.

“Many are just so over-reliant on social media to sell tickets,” said co-founder and CEO Jared Kristensen. “However, people are waking up to the fact they don’t own the followers they’re building up on social media.”

UK and Europe’s The BPM Festival, MADE Festival and Weird Science have already signed on. Designed to work with all ticketing platforms, its Fan CRM is a single place to bring together sales and audience data from the platforms event professionals already use. 

“We offer a way for them to actually use their data to sell more,” added Kristensen. “That includes tickets for physical events or livestreams, as well as merch, album launches, and memberships.” 

With coronavirus’ Delta strain causing temporary border closures and NSW set for a lock-in until September— were festivals the Gympie Muster in Queensland and The Lost Lands in Melbourne.

The Muster, which draws 23,000 to Amamoor Creek State Forest, sold out its 40th anniversary edition. It booked country music’s A-list including Lee Kernaghan, Kasey Chambers, Beccy Cole, Troy Cassar-Daley and Adam Brand.

Muster chairman Greg Cavanagh explained that with one-third of the audience and most of the artists coming from outside Queensland, it would have been irresponsible to go ahead.

“We are in a strong financial position and we do have the cash to run an event in 2022. We would put the entire future of this festival in jeopardy if we charged ahead this year — it would be financially catastrophic for us.”  The Muster rescheduled to August 25-28, 2022.

The Lost Lands moved back from November to October 28—30, 2022.

“As a young festival, it has been both an exciting journey and a tough few years finding our feet. A more established festival can weather the risks and uncertainty our industry faces at this time a lot more easily,” promoters posted, adding they would apply for government financial support.