Australian music insiders take aim at ‘tick-abox’ government funding for festivals
Live music industry operators have called for Australian governments to pause funding for the festival sector in the aftermath of several cancellations.
The Greens have urged the federal government to find emergency funding in the May budget to support festivals through the current crisis, brought into the spotlight by last month’s cancellation of Splendour in the Grass for 2024.
The day after that announcement a parliamentary inquiry into the live music industry was initiated, inviting submissions on “the impact of current grant and support programs”, among other issues affecting the industry.
On Monday the Victorian government announced it would make available grants of up to $50,000 each to established festival organisers.
But some insiders claim that throwing more money at festivals will not address the industry’s structural problems of ownership concentration and lack of competition.
Guardian Australia has reported that the US-based multinational Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Splendour and a raft of other major festivals in Australia, generated US $22.75bn in total revenue in 2023 and posted a net profit of US$563m.
Live Nation bills itself as “the largest live entertainment company in the world”. Its 2010 merger with one of the world’s largest ticketing companies, Ticketmaster, is now the subject of a US Department of Justice antitrust investigation.
In 2019, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, an entity controlled by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, invested US $500m to become Live Nation’s third-largest shareholder. The fund has come under criticism from human rights organisations for allegedly using investment in entertainment, cultural and sporting events to deflect attention from the country’s poor human rights record.
Since 2021, Live Nation Australia and Secret Sounds, the Australian company in which Live Nation holds a majority share, have received more than $16m in state and federal cultural grants.
Brian “Smash” Chladil, co-founder of Oztix, Australia’s largest independent live music ticketing company, said no multinational should be being propped up by Australian taxpayers.
“I don’t know how this happened, but there is no reason at all that any government should be financially supporting any festival, venue or event that is being promoted by these large foreign owned companies,” he said.
The veteran live music operator Paul Curtis, who has spent three decades running festivals and concert tours, said he felt “slightly ill” when he learned how much public money had gone to companies owned by a US multinational.
He questioned why the Greens continued to push for more funding to companies operating in Australia that were ultimately controlled by large overseas corporations.
“It’s tick-a-box funding from a lazy government that just chucks money at the big players because they all still believe in the trickle down thing,” he said.
“But it doesn’t trickle down. It just stays at the top. It’s myopic thinking.”
Paul Sloan is a producer and agent for artists including Nick Cave, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Bon Iver and Amyl & the Sniffers. He said festival goers and artists were losing out because of Live Nation’s vertically integrated business model, where it owns or manages venues, represents artists and holds exclusive ticketing rights through Ticketmaster.
Insiders familiar with contracts offered to second-tier festival acts – typically local artists who see a festival gig as a career-building rather than a money-making opportunity – said they often restrained the artist from performing elsewhere within a specified distance in the weeks and even months before and after a festival.
One agent described the contracts as “commercially preposterous” and exploitative of emerging talent.
Another agent, who declined to be named because “we all want to keep doing business … no one is going to challenge a Goliath like Live Nation”, said a band they represented was left with a huge hole in their schedule when this year’s Splendour was cancelled.
“The band didn’t just lose its Splendour gig, it lost all the other gigs they had to turn down over three months as part of the contract,” they said.
The band received a cancellation fee that was 10% of the performance fee agreed to in the contract.
“That didn’t even cover the plane flights and the accommodation they’d already paid for,” the agent said.
Live Nation declined to respond to questions about its contract practices.
Sloan is one of a number of music industry professionals who have been forwarding allegations of anti-competitive behaviour by Live Nation to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
The ACCC said it did not comment on complaints relating to individual businesses, or whether a business was under investigation.
Sloan said it was unacceptable for companies ultimately owned by global multinationals such as Live Nation to receive government funding, and the fact that more than a dozen music festivals had fallen over in the past 12 months was proof that business models like Live Nation’s would ultimately fail. “Because [Live Nation] is not, at its heart, a real music business,” he said.
Sloan said it was telling that although Live Nation Entertainment claims its core business is “being the largest producer of live music concerts in the world”, it consistently posts sizeable annual losses in that arm of its business – $64m inn 2023. The profits Live Nation posts each year, according to its annual reports, come from the fees charged on top of each ticket and its resale operations.
“The corporate structure works against the only two elements with any value – the artist and consumer,” Sloan said.
“And if you don’t respect and consider the artist and the consumer, they will both at some point turn against you.
“It is only a matter of time.”
It doesn’t trickle down. It just stays at the top.
Live music operator Paul Curtis