Abstract
This chapter concerns live music experience design and begins with a case study of British band Radiohead and their lead singer Thom Yorke’s long-term collaboration with visual artist Stanley Donwood. This case study is useful for understanding how visual design symbolically ties together Radiohead’s organisation, and the design objects and experiences this organisation creates, which showcases how design culture is a form of organisational culture. This chapter then examines the economics of contemporary live music experience design through case studies of the work of British stage designer Es Devlin and British folk-rock band Bear’s Den. The chapter concludes with a discussion of merchandise in the live music business.
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Notes
- 1.
As outlined in Chapter 6, Carriageworks is located in a complex of renovated former railway buildings in Sydney and is ‘the largest multi-arts centre in Australia’ (Carriageworks 2019).
- 2.
On their website, Semi Permanent describe themselves as being ‘a platform for business and creativity. It’s where inspiration is born, where careers are started, where innovations are launched, and where radical ideas about the future are shared, dissected and stitched back together again in service of the greater good’ (Semi Permanent 2019a).
- 3.
As I also outlined in Chapter 6, Vivid Sydney is a winter festival of ‘Light, Music and Ideas’ (Vivid 2019). The festival involves light projections on buildings throughout the city of Sydney and it is known for projecting visual imagery onto the sails of the Sydney Opera House.
- 4.
One notable billboard Yorke and Donwood designed involved them convincing the band’s then label EMI to simply have the words ‘Kicking Squealing Gucci Little Piggy’ with no explanation accompanied only by the hexes and doodles that Yorke and Donwood had hand-drawn (Donwood 2019, n.p.). These massive billboards appeared in cities all around the world for the OK computer album release campaign and associated tours.
- 5.
It must be noted here, however, that sometimes Donwood and Radiohead’s visual signs are arbitrary. In his retrospective book that outlines his creative processes Red maze (Donwood 2010), Donwood noted regarding the period on which he worked on the designs for Radiohead’s album Kid A that: ‘Here, any semblance of narrative breaks down. All I have for a period of several years are a pile of battered, torn sketch books and a box of obsolete digital recording media … you will have to find your own way. Draw your own conclusions’ (p. 68).
- 6.
For an additional description of Donwood and the enigmatic Dr. Tchock (one of Thom Yorke’s pseudonyms for attributing his work with Donwood), see Dead children playing (Donwood 2007). This book contains a particularly interesting outline of his creative process for the artwork that became the cover design for Radiohead’s 2003 album Hail to the thief. This cover design features words and phrases drawn from roadside advertising in Los Angeles and lyrics from the album that critiqued the War on Terror and the resurgence of right-wing politics in the West that was occurring at the time.
- 7.
While figures indicate that streaming service revenue in some ways is shifting the economics of the music industry back towards the recording industry, this revenue is ‘increasingly skewed towards international hits with massive spread and appeal’ (Nordgård 2018, p. 38). Indeed, figures from the 2018 International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) report show that use of streaming services, and revenue collected from them, is increasing exponentially. In 2017 alone, there was a 41.1% growth in streaming revenue globally; a 54% increase in the digital share of global revenue; and an 8.1% growth in global revenue overall (IFPI 2018). While this might not seem like a cause for concern, the skewed nature of the distribution of revenues from the music streaming economy (Hesmondhalgh 2013; Elberse 2013; Mulligan 2014) should be and it means that live performance remains fundamentally important for many musicians.
- 8.
As I outlined in Chap. 3, Canadian-born Vince Bannon founded Detroit, USA-based concert promotion company Ritual (which was subsequently sold to Clear Channel Entertainment) and has also worked as a senior executive at Sony Music, and as an executive at Getty Images.
- 9.
While this chapter concerns popular music and live music production, for an extensive analysis of current trends in digital scenography in opera, see Vincent (2018). Vincent not only addresses the dramaturgical effects of digital technology but also the processes by which the operatic productions she studied are created. She used a methodology termed ‘modes of synthesis’, which ‘is based on the kind of visual relationship that emerges between live performers and digital elements on stage, or the synthesis that is created for the audience perspective’ (p. v).
- 10.
- 11.
As I also stated in Chap. 3, Rowan Brand and I co-managed the Australian band Boy & Bear from 2008 through 2012.
- 12.
The Hammersmith Apollo is a prestigious theatre venue in Hammersmith, West London with a capacity of 5,039 (standing) and 3,632 (seated) (Eventim Apollo 2019).
- 13.
The Lexington is a small music venue in London near Kings Cross Station (Lexington 2019).
- 14.
This section focuses on user-generated content (UGC) from live music events and experiences. For an examination of the content produced by music festival organisers and promoters, such as the genre of festival event ‘after-movies’ (Holt 2019, p. 91) that function as folkloric texts on Facebook, see Holt (2019).
- 15.
According to Towse (2008), the English copyright tradition is evident in its former colonies in North America, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, while the authors’ rights approach is evident in former Spanish, French, Portuguese colonies and also in countries such as Japan, China and Russia.
- 16.
Midnight Oil are an Australian rock band composed of Peter Garrett (lead vocals), Rob Hirst (drums and vocals), Jim Moginie (guitar, keyboards and vocals), Martin Rotsey (guitar) and Bones Hillman (bass and vocals). The band formed in 1973 in Sydney. Watson has managed the band since 2013. The band’s website notes: ‘Throughout all this the band wrote their own rules; refusing to appear on popular TV shows like Countdown and shunning all the “music biz” norms. At the same time, Midnight Oil was becoming known for their support of environmental and social justice causes. The singular trail that they blazed set the tone for everything that followed’ (Midnight Oil 2019).
- 17.
Watson mentioned another client of his Gotye here because earlier in the interview he mentioned Gotye as an example of an extreme case in one direction, because he ‘feels very strongly about quality control and gets very perturbed by works of his being in the public domain which are not of quality that meets his standards’ (Interview 6).
- 18.
Albeit in the research interview for this book Music Glue founder Mark Meharry noted: ‘We are looking at ways of maybe making that more of an online experience to remove the queuing. But the difficulty there is that you’ve got to get a message to those people that are having that euphoric moment through their phone and get them excited and then get them to push some button. So there’s a lot of pieces of the puzzle that we have to solve there in order to actually make that an online experience’ (Interview 21).
- 19.
The term ‘split territories’ refers to the patchwork of deals that a musician or band may form with different record labels or song publishing companies in different countries/geographical territories around the world. For example, Rowan Brand and I worked with the band Boy & Bear to negotiate a licence deal with record label Universal Music Australia for Australia and New Zealand only. The band were then free to sign directly to Universal Music Group (Republic) in the USA for the rest of the world. The band’s song publishing agreement with SonyATV was for the whole world. The band and Republic have since parted ways and they are now signed to Nettwerk Music Group for the world excluding Australia and New Zealand. This is what leads to the fragmentation to which Meharry is alluding.
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Morrow, G. (2020). Designing the Live Experience: Stage, Lighting and Merchandise Design. In: Designing the Music Business. Music Business Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48114-8_7
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