Billboard Country Summit Kickoff
Follow The Money: Who Is Investing In Country Music & Where. (L-R) Billboard’s Glenn Peoples with Paul Brown, Mike Farris, Mark Montgomery, David Robkin and Rick Stevens.
Billboard’s 3rd Annual Country Music Summit (June 4-5) kicked off this morning at the Cannery Ballroom in Nashville, TN. Attendance seemed robust with estimates in the 175-200 person range. This year’s sessions are tagged “Get Plugged In” and feature panels on a wide variety of topics concerning the country music industry. Management, Touring, Venture capitol investment, corporate branding, International prospects, plus social networking are all covered in the expansive 2012 agenda. (Click here to find more details about company affiliation.)
The Monday (6/4) morning sessions began with three panels. Industry Keynote: The Manager Roundtable moderated by Country Weekly’s Ken Tucker and featuring T.K. Kimbrell, Clarence Spalding, Will Ward and last minute addition Ken Levitan started the day with few new revelations but some good perspectives. (Clint Higham and Mark Rothbaum were both scheduled to appear, but had last minute conflicts.)
Ken Levitan: We do really everything in house now except strict radio promotion. We try to surround artists with a team. I have about 50 people that work for me in a number of offices. We have a social media department, a ticketing side and strategic brand marketing. Money is tight at the labels these days.
TK Kimbrell: Big artists and big hit songs take care of themselves at radio, but we’ve got to find a way to give new artists a better chance.
Clarence Spalding: If radio doesn’t listen to these records and really believe as opposed to giving us lip service, then it just becomes harder and harder to break an artist.
An attendee asked, “What could business managers do better to serve you?”
Clarence Spalding: I have a great business manager, but if they could sit the artist down and say “Clarence is worth 25% and not 15%,” I would appreciate that. [laughter…] We deal with the business side of everything, but sometimes it can be a challenge keeping the artist’s personal finances in check. For example, if after a few hits an artist buys a farm and then hires his three brothers at $100,000 each per year to run it, that’s when the business manager should step in with some advice. There is a curve to a career, it never stays the same.
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Monday morning’s second act was Touring Part 1: Buyers (and an Artist) Talk Business. The panel featured Moderator Ray Waddell with Shooter Jennings, Tony Conway, Ali Harnell, Brock Jones, Jason Kane and Brian O’Connell.
Most quotable from that session was O’Connell’s response when asked about how country ticket sales were doing this year.
Brian O’Connell: Tickets in the country market are absolutely on fire. Do the research and you’ll see that as a genre we have about 11 major headliners this year. It’s the most I’ve ever seen. And each one is very very healthy doing 10k seats a night and up. That’s a lot of strength, a lot of cooperation and a lot of hard work. Also a lot of people running into each other on the road although we try to keep everybody away from each other. Next year you will be looking at 18 country music headliners. (New additions will include Luke Bryan, Kenny/Tim will be out separately and more…) Having 18 headliners also means 18 No. 2 acts and 18 No. 3 acts. That’s 54 bands!
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Closing the morning session was Follow The Money: Who Is Investing In Country Music & Where. This discussion was moderated by Billboard’s Glenn Peoples and featured Paul Brown, Mike Farris, Mark Montgomery, David Robkin and Rick Stevens.
Words from Robkin, CEO of Bigger Picture Entertainment Group and FLO {thinkery} Founder Montgomery caught my ears.
David Robkin: Typically we form a joint venture and separate company with each artist. We make all the business decisions and operating decisions together. So Bigger Picture supplies capital and resources and the artist provides their brand and talent. Together we make decisions about the best way to build the brand. We review the plan and budget on a regular basis. The artist knows they have a strong investment and say in how their career goes. Each of our deals is different, but generally we recoup and then split proceeds. We have seven artists including Zac Brown Band, Craig Campbell and Chris Cagle. When we raise capitol it is for the enterprise as a whole not artist by artist.
Mark Montgomery: In my view these different platforms, Kickstarter, Topspin or Facebook, are all plumbing. My curiosities are around watching traditional incumbents attempt to regain control of the plumbing. And the war between those people; and the ‘60s-era, hippie hacker community that now has become Google and Facebook and its desire to keep the plumbing free of tolls for as long as possible.
