Live Nation in Australia has published a lengthy statement ahead of the airing next week of a TV programme about the live giant’s influence over live music within the country. That programme, an edition of current affairs show ‘Four Corners’, will show an “inaccurate and unbalanced” view of the Australian live sector and Live Nation’s role in it, the statement issued to The Music Network claims.
“To understand the ‘Four Corners agenda’”, it says, “it’s important that you know we provided written responses to all of their questions at 5pm on Wednesday”. Just three hours later a promotional video for the programme, which will air on Monday, was published on YouTube. “The programme was obviously fully formed without any input from Live Nation”, it adds.
That punchy promo includes a number of short emotive quotes from interviewees. Midnight Oil frontman and former politician Peter Garrett says, “I don’t think Live Nation cares at all about Australian artists and they are basically calling the shots”. Rapper Barkaa adds, “we have to beg for scraps”. And Australian live music veteran Michael Chugg says of Live Nation’s entry into the market, “they fucked it up, basically”.
Live Nation’s response seeks to pre-empt specific criticism likely to be made in the programme, including that it dominates the market, is responsible for high ticket prices and fails to support new talent within Australia. None of these claims are true, insists Live Nation.
In terms of market dominance - and how it uses that market dominance - that’s an area of criticism that Live Nation frequently has to respond to, especially back in its home country, the US, where the live giant is currently fighting an antitrust lawsuit filed by the government’s Department Of Justice.
In the US, a lot of the allegations of anticompetitive conduct comes from the fact Live Nation is a dominant player in tour promotion, venue management and ticketing via Ticketmaster, with a lot of the scrutiny focused on how the different strands of the business interact.
In Australia, Live Nation - while definitely a major player - is not quite as dominant across all three of those strands of the business. As it is keen to point out in its statement, Ticketmaster rival Ticketek “is the largest ticketing agent in the country”, while it only operates six out of Australia’s 2700 venues, less than 1%. And on the tour promotions side, TEG and AEG-Frontier are both sizable competitors.
Live Nation is also used to being blamed for high ticket prices. Its statement on the ‘Four Corners’ programme has the standard response. “Ticketmaster does not set prices”, it says. “Ticketing companies do not control how artist teams and other event organisers price their shows or whether they adjust prices up or down based on demand”.
Where ticket prices are high, it insists, that is outside its control. “Artists are increasingly reliant on live music for their livelihood and to support their crew and rising production costs", it argues. And not only that, “it’s costly for most international artists to add Australia or New Zealand to their tour, and those costs have dramatically increased after COVID. Ticket prices need to compensate touring artists and ensure that Australia continues to attract many of the world’s most popular artists”.
As for the claims that its presence in the Australian market has had a negative impact on new talent in the country, Live Nation insists that, since 2016, it has “promoted over 900 shows for developing artists in venues with less than 1500 capacity - reaching more than 556,000 fans”.
In addition to that, “we’ve successfully advocated for local Australian opening acts in 85% of the international acts we promote here. Our business thrives on nurturing the next generation of talent and we offer programmes like Ones To Watch to foster emerging artists”.
That said, it basically accepts that more could be done to support the grassroots of live music. “We recognise the vital role grassroots music venues play in discovering new talent and applaud efforts to support these spaces”, it says.
“As dedicated operators in this space”, it adds, “we’re eager to discuss measures that strengthen the Australian music industry and ensure artists have the opportunity to grow and succeed”.
It remains to be seen whether Live Nation's pre-emptive statement can mitigate any backlash from next week’s ‘Four Corners’. The company would obviously prefer to avoid formal scrutiny of its business in markets beyond the US, given how big a distraction the DoJ litigation is proving to be back home.
But there could be more scrutiny. During a recent inquiry in the Australian Parliament, representatives from the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance urged the country’s government to ask the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission to investigate the level of power exercised by the big corporate players in live music, by which it mainly meant TEG, AEG-Frontier and, of course, Live Nation.