Tour revenues:
Blur in Hyde Park 2012: recorded by Abbey Road’s Live Here Now
There’s no shortage of immediate, post-concert CD producing services for today’s industry. But what kind of impact has been made by the emergence of additional post-performance activities... or do bands stand to make more cash by flogging t-shirts? Paul Watson reports
YOUR FAVOURITE band has just played their last encore, and no matter how much you scream and shout, they just aren’t coming back onstage. So, happy, exhausted and a little hoarse – perhaps a little deaf too – you gather your bag and coat, and head for the merchandising stand by the exit. That was such a brilliant night, wasn’t it?, says your friend. It was, you agree. If only we could live through it all again… And of course, increasingly after gigs, you can do exactly that. More and more, the concert- going public has been given the option of the ‘post-show CD’. A mere few minutes after that joyous last performance, piles of packaged, labelled,
32 l PSNLIVE 2013 DIGITAL DOWN-LOW: OLD MILL STUDIOS
There’s a grass roots aspect to the ‘post-gig CD’ trick. Take Marshall Marcellus’ Glasgow-based Old Mill Studios, for example. His method is simple: an hourly rate for his services, taking splitters from FOH to minimise his kit list, providing the CDs on the night, but taking nothing more from the bands’ revenue. “I charge a fee of £35 per hour, then set up and record; I take a MacBook Pro and a flightcase which contains an Apogee Ensemble that allows me to record 16 channels at once,” he explains. “It’s a budget service, and it’s mostly unsigned acts; many of them will also take away the raw files and remix it themselves, but as bands make so little playing live these days, it’s good to be able to offer an affordable on the night service.”
professional-looking CDs magically appear on a merch table.. of that very gig! Amazing! Relive the night in your own living room, for just a tenner!
A whole industry has grown
up around services that turn up on the night, take a feed to a remote truck, mix the show, duplicate the finished master to
banks and banks of CD burners, then frantically ferry the packaged discs into the venue for the punters to buy before they head home. Abbey Road’s Live
Taking your heroes home
Here Now and Battersea-based Concert Live, are two operations specialising in this kind of super- quick turnaround production. Googling ‘live production gig services’ or similar uncovers many more. And not just in the UK: in Belgium, for instance, the Live is Life mobile has been recording and selling gig CDs since 2006 and can now duplicate at least 1,000 discs in 30 minutes.
PLATTER MATTERS But the nature of technology means there are alternative and emerging means of distributing the live gig – and therefore, more routes to creating revenue, which is fundamental to a band’s existence in an era of pirated recordings and decreasing album sales. USB, DVD and digital downloading all have their part to play in this. Concert Live’s co-founder, Adam Goodyer, says CD is still his company’s primary revenue generator, despite the fact that it also deals in USB sticks and downloads. “CD is 75% of all on-the- night sales, because it’s still the most recognised physical product, running in comparison
www.psneurope.com
Pic: Neale Smith
Pic: Linda Brownlee
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