Archive for 31 July, 2010
No promoters, no fees … too good to be true? Try up to 20%
I am all for cutting out the middleman and producers or event owners dealing directly with their fans/patrons/supporters etc. It is encouraging to see Topspin assisting music artists to develop a relationship with fans by providing a variety of online marketing tools
However, here is a very questionable example of ‘journalism’ Matt Rosoff on CNET.com regarding Topspin. It looks like Matt bought the press release and blog entry hook line and sinker. No research, no clarification or verification and definitely no industry knowledge.
Here is part of Mark’e breathless enthusings:
“Here’s the brilliant thing: the show had no promoter and no ticket broker. No service fees, no big markups. Topspin explains the details in a blog entry and video posted Thursday morning.“
hmmm “no service fees“? See below. “No big markups“ maybe no outside charges, but there are inside charges. Read about the inside fees on the Topspin site.
“Direct-to-fan ticketing isn’t going to take over right away: artists planning massive stadium tours will probably still need to use a ticket broker like Ticketmaster to serve large numbers of customers quickly, and Live Nation does a lot of marketing to build demand. But in five years, I wouldn’t be surprised if most touring artists are using platforms like Topspin’s to sell their tickets directly to fans, no middlemen required.“
I guess he has not heard of venue exclusive ticketing contracts?
Some more background to the misunderstanding of “no fees” is provided by an interview on Hypebot with Topspin CEO Ian Rogers.
“We aren’t public about our pricing yet because to be honest we don’t know what our pricing will be long-term.“
“As far as our pricing right now, we’ve been taking a rev share of 20% of retail which decreases as volume increases.“
Ian Rogers is quite in frank in this more balanced journalism and an actual interview:
“I agree we’ve been a bit over-hyped, actually. … We’re just a young company, building software, working with artists, trying to figure out what marketing and distribution looks like in the future, just like y’all. But we’re also a good group of music-loving people who have been very approachable — if you have issues with how we’re pricing, let us know. There’s nothing secretive or shady going on here.“
Sounds like Topspin may be worth watching and we wish them luck.
31 July, 2010 at 12:17 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
