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In 2007, Neumos co-owner Steven Severin was determined to keep a rabid bunch of dance fans from tearing down the Seattle venue. Capitol Hill Block Party — the annual three-day festival that takes over the neighborhood — had booked Girl Talk before he blew up on the dance scene, and now the 650-capacity Neumos, which was hosting the performance, was facing an overcrowded show with headliner-sized demand.
“People are outside trying to rip the doors off. We’ve got bicycle barricades pushing people so that they can’t get in,” Severin recalls. “I am standing on the bicycle barricades screaming at everybody to get the f–k away from the building, like, ‘Back off! Nobody’s getting in.’”
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At the time, Severin was only a few years into co-owning Neumos alongside Mike Meckling, current managing owner Jason Lajeunesse and Jerry Everard, who also owns the property and founded the club, originally known as Moe’s Mo’Roc’N Café, in 1992. Seattle entrepreneur Marcus Charles was brought in early on but sold his share of the business to Severin, Meckling and Lajeunesse in 2003, when the venue took on the name Neumos (pronounced New Mo’s).
Despite weighing in at “a buck 65,” as Severin puts it, he was trying to dissuade the thousands of festivalgoers from damaging the then-15-year-old club, only to find the venue’s wall of security guards laughing at him. “They’re laughing because they know if one of these people comes over and pushes me, I’m gonna fall over,” he jokes.
The show went on without issue, but it was not the first or the last time a sold-out performance threatened the venue. Later that same year, Neumos hosted a now-legendary show — the kind everyone in the city recalls attending despite the venue’s minimal capacity — that boasted a stacked lineup of Justice, Diplo and Simian Mobile Disco. The rectangular room was filled to the brim with sweating fans (“It was like an earthquake went off in that place,” according to Severin), and one of the only places from which the owners could get a view was the crow’s nest opposite the balcony, accessible only by ladder. While they were up there, Severin says he noticed the crow’s nest pulling away from the wall and threatening to collapse due to the energy of the jumping, dancing crowd below.
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“We’re like, this is going to fall down. It’s going to kill people. We’re going to get sued, and we are going to lose everything. We are done,” says Severin. “So, we tell [the crowd] to stop jumping. We didn’t get down out of the crow’s nest, because there’s nowhere to go.”
He adds, “The next day we came in and reinforced it so that a metric ton can be up there and it won’t fall down, and we built a spiral staircase [to get to it]. You ask people their favorite Neumos show, and a lot of times people will say that one.”
Despite Neumos’ momentary brush with catastrophe, it’s nonetheless that punk, home-of-grunge ethos that makes the storied venue a perfect fit for Seattle. Over more than 30 years, the venue — housed in the same building that once hosted an auto dealership called Hugh Baird, among other businesses — has hosted countless popular acts, including The Shins, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Iron & Wine, Ben Gibbard, Vampire Weekend, Feist, Cat Power, The Raconteurs, Rilo Kiley, Metric, Damian Marley, El P and Dizzee Rascal.
Neumos
Grace Lindsey
Sitting at the corner of 10th Avenue and East Pike Street, Neumos is an iconic sight in Seattle, with its black brick and painted murals of the famous faces who have graced the stage. The venue helped forge the Capitol Hill neighborhood into the cultural epicenter it is today by building community — not only at its concerts but also through an attached bar called Moe Bar, later renamed The Runaway.
“We did a whole remodel [of the bar] when we stepped in because it had been called the Bad Juju Lounge before and there really was some bad juju in there,” Severin says. The New Orleans-themed bar was transformed into a cocktail lounge with elevated style, complete with fun wallpaper and comfy booths. “[We] made it so it became a destination,” he adds.
Open seven nights a week, the 100-capacity Moe Bar packed its schedule with DJ sets, trivia nights and more. Consistent attendance there also helped Neumos, which benefitted from spillover from Moe patrons who decided to catch one of the venue’s shows on a whim, lured by the low ticket prices: $5 a ticket for a local act and $10 for a national one.
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“That made it so that we were able to get people to come and see some things that they might not have,” says Severin, adding that it also allowed the venue to host acts in “more styles of music, because people would just come and check it out.”
The venue thrived on its eclectic bookings, from hip-hop and punk to country and metal. Among other shows, it hosted Oasis’ first U.S. headlining gig and in 2009 welcomed a 19-era Adele. “She was so nervous and not wanting to go on stage,” Severin says. “Then she comes out and starts singing and everyone is like, ‘What the f–k?’ It was incredible.”
With genres and trends fluctuating in popularity over the three decades of Neumos’ existence, adaptability has been a key to its survival. The attached bar has changed names. In 2012, the owners renovated a below-ground storage space into the 200-capacity Barboza venue. And in 2017, Neumos’ owners updated the main venue with new state-of-the-art lighting and sound systems, and knocked out a wall to create more space at the balcony bar — which resulted in a telling discovery.
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“We did find $5,000 when we ripped [the wall] out. We rip it out and there’s all this f–king cash in small bundles,” Severin says, adding that the money was found behind a beer fridge where he assumes an employee was stashing stolen funds. “Everybody stole from us,” he continues. “I had to fire the same bartender twice.”
Three years after the nearly $1 million in renovations, Seattle was one of the first major cities to enact mass gathering bans as COVID-19 hit the U.S. Like everyone else, Severin believed the shutdown would be over a matter in a weeks. At the time, he got a call from Jim Brunberg, the owner of Portland venue Mississippi Studios, who was reaching out to entertainment and nightlife establishments — including those he regularly competed with for shows — in an effort to determine what everyone was going to do.
Steven Severin
Leigh Sims
After the call with Brunberg, Severin and his wife, Leigh Sims, worked with local businesses to create the Washington Nightlife Music Association (WANMA), which formed Keep Music Live Washington, a coalition that raised more than $1 million in relief funds to support struggling venues statewide with support from artists including Sir-Mix-A-Lot, Brandi Carlile, Macklemore, Kathleen Hanna, Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan and Foo Fighters. But with rent, utilities and other expenses remaining due during the shutdown, Neumos and other independent venues still found themselves on the brink of permanent closure.
With so many venues in dire straits, Severin joined calls that eventually launched the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), marking the first time venue owners across the nation came together to collectively fight for federal assistance. Severin took on a government advocacy role — something he had become accustomed to from working with King County officials on behalf of WANMA — and began to fight for what would later become the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant.
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“I spent the pandemic just working. While everybody was learning how to bake bread, I worked every day figuring out how we’re gonna get money to keep our doors open,” Severin says — though he admits there was a point when he believed Neumos would never open again. Then, on one of the NIVA calls, he says that Tom DeGeorge, the owner of Tampa venue Crowbar, “ talked about running through a brick wall for me. He doesn’t know me. We’ve been on a call like five times. He doesn’t know me. And I was like, ’I’m gonna do the same for you.’ Then I was like, ‘I’m gonna save Neumos because this guy wants to save Neumos.’”
By December 2020, NIVA had successfully lobbied the federal government to provide more than $16 billion in relief to independent venues, as well as promoters, theatrical producers, live performing arts organizations, museum operators, motion picture theater operators and talent representatives. According to NIVA data, the funding saved 90% of independent venues from shuttering for good.
Earlier this year, Severin and Sims were able to attend their first NIVA conference in Milwaukee while proudly wearing badges with the Neumos name. “People would walk up to my wife and be like, ‘Thank you for saving my business,’ and my wife would be looking around, like, ‘Who are you talking to?’” says Severin. “Festivals, promoters, music venues, theaters, museums, aquariums, agencies — all those people got money because of the work [NIVA] did. We saved the f–king live music industry.”
NIVA ‘25 — the fourth annual conference for the National Independent Venue Association, slated to take place June 22-25 in Milwaukee — is happening against the backdrop of some of the fiercest ticketing battles heating up around the country. According to NIVA executive director Stephen Parker, this year alone throughout the U.S., there have been nearly 70 bills introduced in almost 30 states pertaining to ticketing, and the conference is set to address the good, bad and the ugly amid the fight.
“Ticketing continues to be the singular focus,” Parker tells Billboard. “Ticketing is turning into the proxy battle in legislatures — federal, state and local — for the future of live performance.”
The conference will include panels such as “Battling Scalping Goes to Washington, D.C.”; “Turn the Tables: Make the Ticket Resale Market Work For You”; “How We Solve a Problem Like Chargebacks”; and ticketing network sessions, all of which will focus on different ticketing issues facing independent venues. The subject of ticketing will also be part of conversations about local and federal regulations and be weaved into various other panels.
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“This conference is an opportunity and a catalyst for us to come together, assess what’s happened this year — our wins and losses in states fighting against predatory resellers,” Parker continues, “and come out of this conference with a plan to make sure that any sort of anti-consumer policy that’s being pushed by predatory resale platforms and brokers, we have a renewed strategy to address it and make sure that the freedom that fans should have from deception and fraud continues to reign supreme.”
Poor ticket buying experiences are impacting fans’ desire to attend more shows and hiking prices so high that many can only afford a limited number of shows each year. And on the venue side, credit card chargebacks have become a major issue.
One of the conference discussions will be “what can we do to make sure that that credit card chargebacks don’t take us down,” Parker says. “Especially given that most of those chargebacks, it seems, are coming from predatory resellers that have sold the tickets and are just trying to maximize their profits that they’re making off the backs of small venues and independent artists.”
While the subject of ticketing will take center stage at the conference — which is being held across the city at different independent venues — the conversations will touch on many other topics. After every conference, NIVA reaches out to its 1,500 members and asks them what subjects they would like to see represented at the following year’s gathering — and the organization, through programming director Jamie Loeb, has managed work more than 100 issues that affect independent venue owners into this year’s program. Among them, NIVA ‘25’s programming will also address declining alcohol sales, the purpose of middle agents, the performing rights and licensing landscape, marketing, and breaking through in the attention economy.
“If I were to say what the theme of this conference [is], it’s ‘How do we break through?’” says Parker.
One of the key methods for breaking through is telling the story of independent venues and the impact they have on local communities, as well as globally. During the conference, NIVA plans to unveil extensive data on the economics of independent venues, which the association hopes will help tell that story.
“I can tell you that it’s a mixed bag,” Parker says of the data. “There’s such promise and optimism and potential growth for the sector, but that growth and optimism is suppressed by the continued threats of predatory resale and monopolies and inflation. We’re going to talk about what we do moving forward in terms of how we address those monopolies.”
Attendees will be able to learn about best practices for dealing with government entities, from city councils to state legislatures, as well as hear about how other countries are moving to save their own cultural spaces.
The association will also use the conference to detail the expansion of its collective bargaining agreements. While NIVA introduced its collective bargaining program nearly 18 months ago, its efforts are continuing to expand.
“At least a quarter of our members have taken advantage of this program, either for discounts for food, discounts for equipment, discounts for sound and lighting. We’re thinking beyond just the physical and going to services and fees and things that every venue has to pay every day,” says Parker. “We will be announcing some exciting new opportunities for our members on that front to try to make the cost of doing business lighter for them.”
NIVA ‘25 kicks off this Sunday with an opening keynote from My Morning Jacket’s Jim James. Other discussions will include producer Jimmy Jam, former Capitol Music Group CEO Michelle Jubelirer and High Road Touring founder Frank Riley. For more information on NIVA ‘25, head here.
Jim James will kick of NIVA ‘25 with a keynote address on Sunday, June 22. The My Morning Jacket frontman will take the stage at The Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, Wisc. to discuss touring and open up the National Independent Venue Association’s fourth annual conference. In addition, legendary producer Jimmy Jam will address the conference […]
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) is set to collect data on the economic impact of the independent live sector with the launch of its State of Live survey, the organization announced Tuesday (Jan. 7). The initiative will seek to capture the economic contributions and operational challenges of independent venues, promoters, performing arts centers and […]
Venues across the nation can now show off their independent status. On Tuesday (Sept. 10), the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) announced the launch of “Live Independent,” a first-of-its-kind certification program for independent venues, promoters and festivals nationwide.
The new initiative, supported by event discovery platform Bandsintown, is aimed at strengthening and unifying the live entertainment community by “offering a seal of certification that recognizes excellence and commitment to the independent ethos,” according to NIVA.
Certified venues will receive physical posters, stickers and decals of the Live Independent seal to display, along with virtual seals and assets for websites, marketing materials and social media. Partnerships with ticketing companies will also enable the Live Independent seal to be displayed on event tickets.
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The Live Independent program will include a dedicated website serving as a hub of information and emphasizing the importance of supporting certified Live Independent venues and events. Fans can use the site’s search feature to verify if their favorite venue is certified independent and find shows at certified stages.
“This certification is a testament to the power of independent stages as sanctuaries for human connection. In an era dominated by publicly-traded live entertainment conglomerates, these venues and festivals are the final strongholds of authenticity, where the heart of live performance beats strongest,” said NIVA executive director Stephen Parker in a statement. “When fans and artists choose independent stages, they’re investing in the soul of their community. Live Independent is our collective promise — to the artists, to the fans, and to the communities that cherish these spaces — that the spirit of independent venues will not only endure but will continue to flourish.”
As a partner for the program, Bandsintown is committed to educating fans about what Live Independent means and promoting independent venues through dedicated placements on the Bandsintown app and at Bandsintown.com. Every NIVA-member independent venue will have the Live Independent seal on its Bandsintown venue page while a map of Live Independent-certified venues will be featured on Bandsintown’s homepage to help fans locate and support these independent entities.
“Bandsintown’s ethos is independent at the core, serving artists since day one of their journey,” added Bandsintown co-founder/managing partner Fabrice Sergent. “Independent venues shed light on those artists early in their career and we’re proud to work alongside NIVA to help them find the audience they deserve.”
To become certified, venues, festivals and promoters must demonstrate a mission centered around delivering music, comedy and performance to audiences; maintain fair pay practices for all artists, performers and creators; be independent from multinational conglomerate or publicly traded company ownership or exclusive operation; show support for a transparent, competitive marketplace and a diverse, inclusive community; and be a NIVA member. NIVA members will not pay additional fees to join the program.
More information on the Live Independent certification program, including details on how to apply and the specific benefits of certification, can be found here.
Live music experts are anticipating the antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against Live Nation to take years to resolve, given the wide scope of the claims against the concert giant and the various stakeholders in the live music ecosystem.
“It is going to take a couple of years, at least,” Lee Hepner, senior counsel of anti-monopoly group the American Economic Liberties Project, said at the NIVA 2024 conference in New Orleans on Tuesday (June 4). The conference is put on by the National Independent Venue Association, which formed in 2020 to secure federal funding from the government during the pandemic. The upside, for Hepner and other speakers on the panel called Ticket Tyranny: The Unseen Grip of Market Dominance, is the “massive potential in restructuring the industry.”
Ant Taylor, founder and CEO of ticketing competitor Lyte, agreed on Tuesday saying, “Given how big the scope [of the DOJ lawsuit] is, it is going to be challenging to see it through… What excites me about this moment is the opportunity we have as an ecosystem to look — not just at Live Nation — but to look at the way we do business together and the conditions in which Live Nation has thrived.”
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Specifically, Taylor added, “What’s the business model of ticketing and why, for 40 years, has there been so little innovation around it?”
Ticketmaster has been a dominate force in the ticketing business for decades — its 2010 merger with Live Nation only strengthened its position in the U.S. market. The DOJ lawsuit claims that Live Nation-Ticketmaster has “unlawfully maintained monopolies in several concert promotions and primary ticketing markets and engaged in other exclusionary conduct affecting live concert venues, including arenas and amphitheaters.” A major concern for the DOJ and the group of 30 states that jointly filed the suit on May 23 is Live Nation’s “flywheel model,” which the DOJ describes as a “self-reinforcing business model that captures fees and revenue from concert fans and sponsorship, uses that revenue to lock up artists to exclusive promotion deals, and then uses its powerful cache of live content to sign venues into long term exclusive ticketing deals, thereby starting the cycle all over again.”
Unlike the consent decree that Live Nation has been under since the merger, which was designed to prevent the company from abusing its position, Kevin Erickson, director of Washington D.C.-based nonprofit organization Future of Music Coalition, told the audience that he believes the DOJ lawsuit is focusing on the correct parties impacted by the alleged monopoly: the artists, venues and fans.
“Even with the best intentions, a consent decree is inadequate to address the potential for harm,” Erickson said. “It shifts the enforcement burden onto the people who have the least amount of power. It forces artists and artist representatives and venue folks to monitor for violations of antitrust law.”
Hepner explained that Future of Music Coalition has been collecting such complaints against Live Nation for years and encouraged those in the room to reach out on how to connect with the DOJ with additional complaints as the lawsuit works its way through the justice system.
If the DOJ’s lawsuit is successful and Live Nation is forced to divest Ticketmaster, the panelists expressed hope that without the promoter’s financial backing, competition in ticketing will flourish, allow for innovation and end exclusive ticketing contracts often used by Ticketmaster and other major ticketers.
Panelist Gary Witt, president and CEO of Pabst Theater Group, stressed the importance of eliminating Ticketmaster’s dominance due to growing customer dissatisfaction. “It is not about your experience when the customer comes through the door. It is not about the artist’s experience when they come backstage. It’s about the initial experience of buying a ticket,” Witt said to the audience.
The primary ticketing market has become “a closed market and allows for zero innovation,” Witt said, adding, “We have an industry to save here.”
Nonprofit foundation Live Music Society has announced the recipients of its second annual Music in Action grant.
The Music In Action grant provides funding for venues to program events that build community and promote accessibility for marginalized groups, create opportunities for both local talent and touring acts to grow and find new audiences, and increase their revenue and customer base. The number of small music venues benefitting from the program is up from 17 in 2023, while the funds have grown from $500,000 last year to $710,000 this year.
This year, 24 small performance venues across the United States have been granted a total of $710,000 to program events that build community and boost revenue. The 24 venue grantees include Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans, Nocturne Jazz & Supper Club in Denver, Cole’s Bar in Chicago, Drkmtter Collective in Nashville, The Lost Church in San Francisco, The Royal Room in Seattle and Chris’ Jazz Cafe in Philadelphia.
The 2024 recipients will use their funds over the next year to launch concert series, put on family-friendly festivals, build out membership programs, develop spaces for LGBTQ+ musicians to gather, create educational programming and host monthly Latinx dance parties.
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“People are trying to open their stages to new voices: women, BIPOC, LGBTQ and even just different styles of music that they are not used to presenting,” says Live Music Society executive director Cat Henry. “It’s really exciting for people to take a philosophical risk to make sure that they’re not just staying in one lane the whole time and providing opportunities for more voices at the table.”
For Live Music Society founder Pete Muller, the Music In Action grant is about giving people who love and know their business the ability to take a swing at something new and help build a more sustainable business for the long term. “If you have a 200-seat venue, you are not going to make a lot of money. Even if you run it well. The best shot you have is to figure out how to raise a lot of philanthropic local dollars,” says Muller. “Most of the time, it’s going to be shoestring and we can help.”
While Live Music Society does not intend to fully fund any venues, Muller says the nonprofit created the grant for them to take risks on new musicians, pay their musicians and staff reasonable wages and remain an integral part of the live music ecosystem.
“200-seat venues or 100-seat venues are an amazing place to start your musical career,” says Muller, who is also a touring musician. “I actually prefer smaller venues. You can really connect with the crowd. The only problem is, it’s very hard to make a good living.”
Live Music Society, which began handing out grants in 2020, hopes to continue growing the number of venues that receive funding through the Music In Action grant, with the amount of funds reflecting the need. With the 2024 Music In Action grant and its annual Toolbox grant, the foundation has now disbursed $3.7 million in funding to small venues.
To further its mission to recognize and protect small venues and listening rooms across the United States, Live Music Society is also looking to help venues by developing and sharing best practices. In partnership with its venue grantees and involvement with organizations like the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) — Live Music Society will host a panel at this year’s NIVA conference in June — the foundation plans to collect expertise that it can share with small venues to help them succeed in a tough live music economy.
“One of the goals of gathering in New Orleans [for NIVA ‘24] is to help create an informal network of companies and club owners because they aren’t really competing with each other. They are in different markets,” Muller says. “If one of them finds a great musician, sharing it with a different club is helpful to both. The more you interact, the more you create community.”
Full list of 2024 Music In Action grantees:
118 North – Wayne, PAB Side Lounge – Cleveland Heights, OHBlue Jay Listening Room – Jacksonville Beach, FLBossa Bistro – Washington, D.C.Chris’ Jazz Cafe – Philadelphia, PACole’s Bar – Chicago, ILDevil’s Backbone Tavern – Fischer, TXDrkmttr Collective – Nashville, TNFogartyville Community Media and Arts Center – Sarasota, FLGrand Annex Music Hall – San Pedro, CAJilly’s Music Room – Akron, OHLa Peña Cultural Center – Berkeley, CAMaple Leaf Bar – New Orleans, LAMOTR Pub – Cincinnati, OHNocturne Jazz & Supper Club – Denver, COOne Longfellow Square – Portland, MERebel Rebel Studio & Lounge – Berea, KYRoots Music Project – Boulder, COThe Acorn Center for the Performing Arts – Three Oaks, MIThe Jalopy Theatre – Brooklyn, NYThe Lost Church – San Francisco, CAThe Parlor Room – Northampton, MAThe Royal Room – Seattle, WAThe Spot on Kirk – Roanoke, VA
The Maryland bill targeting speculative ticketing in the state was signed into law by Gov. Wes Moore today. The consumer protection bill focuses on the sale and resale of live event tickets and was supported by the Recording Academy, National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), National Independent Talent Organization (NITO), Eventbrite and more.
The bill bans speculative ticketing (the practice of listing tickets on secondary sites before a reseller owns a ticket), as well as require ticketers to present “all in” pricing for consumers, meaning the full price of the ticket — including all fees — must be present in the price first shown to fans. The law will go into effect on July 1.
“In addition to Senators [Dawn Danielle] Gile and [Pamela] Beidle and Delegate [C.T.] Wilson, we’re also grateful to Marylanders who spoke out and let their elected officials know that they want protection from parasitic scalpers who use acts of deception to gouge concert fans,” said Audrey Fix Schaefer, communications director of Merriweather Post Pavilion and I.M.P. in a statement. “Nearly 17,000 letters were sent by Marylanders to their state legislators, letting those in Annapolis know they want protection from the rampant deception and abuse that’s taking place now. We applaud the entire State legislature for this groundbreaking legislation, and we look forward to working with the Attorney General’s office to help ensure enforcement.”
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The bill requires resellers to provide the zone and seat number for non-general admission events, eliminating the common practice of resellers listing an unspecified seat and procuring a ticket — for a lesser price — once a consumer has purchased the “unspecified” seat from a secondary site. It also reduces resellers’ ability to list generic tickets on resale sites before on-sale for the actual event has occurred.
A standout of the bill for proponents like NIVA, NITO and others, is that the bill makes it illegal for secondary ticketing platforms to provide a marketplace for the sale or resale of tickets that violate the law. If a consumer purchases a ticket that is counterfeit, canceled by the reseller or fails to meet its original description, the secondary platform would be responsible for paying the consumer back for the total amount paid, including any fees. Platforms selling or offering to sell speculative tickets can be fined up to $10,000 for the first infraction and $25,000 for each subsequent infraction.
Additionally, the bill mandates “all-in” ticket pricing — where consumers see the full price of the ticket, including fees, from the beginning of their transaction — and require those fees to be itemized so fans know where their dollars are going. The passage of the bill also means Maryland’s attorney general’s office can conduct a review of how resellers are procuring their tickets, the price difference for fans on the primary versus secondary market, fraudulent tickets, the use of bots, what measures other states have enacted to protect consumers during the ticket buying process and more.
The AG’s study is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) has unveiled programming for its third annual conference. NIVA ‘24 will take place in New Orleans from June 3-5 with speakers from Eventbrite, National Independent Talent Organization, Wasserman, Live Music Society, Spotify, Meta and hundreds of independent venues and promoters from across the country.
This year’s speakers will include IAG’s Marsha Vlasic, United Talent Agency’s Nick Nuciforo, Grammy Award-winning Rebirth Brass Band, Eventbrite co-founder/CEO Julia Hartz, Bandsintown’s Fabrice Sergent, NPR Tiny Desk Contest winner Tank and the Bangas and George Porter, Jr., founding member of the band Meters.
The 2024 edition will also spotlight NIVA’s New Orleans venues including Generations Hall, Tipitina’s, Republic NOLA and d.b.a.
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“The nation’s independent live entertainment community has finally found a home to focus on the preservation and elevation of our industry at the annual NIVA Conference in New Orleans,” said Jamie Loeb, chair of NIVA’s conference programming committee and senior of marketing at Nederlander Concerts, in a statemenet. “Agents, bookers, venue owners and operators, promoters, and festivals will come together to showcase the vibrant voices and experiences of the live entertainment ecosystem. This year, we gather to celebrate our past successes and to chart a collective path towards a more dynamic and inclusive future for independent stages nationwide.”
The wide range of panel topics will include community programming, marketing, performing rights organizations, sponsorships, comedy booking, ticketing, breaking emerging talent, safety, and food and beverage. This year, the National Independent Venue Foundation (NIVF), in collaboration with NIVA, will offer a certified harassment training workshop, delivered in partnership with Calling All Crows and Spotify Plus 1.
NIVA ‘24 will also feature an opening night party presented by Lyte on Sunday (June 2), NIVA Gras presented by Eventbrite on Monday (June 3) and NIVA Night in NOLA featuring a Live Music Society lounge at d.b.a. on Tuesday (June 4).
The conference will also include an operations networking session presented by Protect Group on Monday, a booking networking session presented by VenuePilot on Tuesday and a working lounge presented by Live Music Society for the duration of the conference. Programming will conclude with a happy hour each day presented by Etix on Monday, Prekindle on Tuesday, and Live Music Society with D Tour and Midtopia on Wednesday (June 5).
A full list of panels, speakers and more information on the conference can be found here.
Nine months before Live Nation made the headline-grabbing decision to cut merch fees at 77 of its clubs and theaters across the country, Ineffable Music Group did it first. Now, the company’s CEO, Thomas Cussins, has a piece of advice for other independent venue owners and operators concerned that the concert giant is using this tactic to curry favor with artists and agents and squeeze out their businesses: Everything will be OK.
“Merch money is not what is going to keep us in business,” says Cussins, whose company oversees 10 venues across California, including The Catalyst Club in Santa Cruz, the Ventura Music Hall in Ventura and the Golden State Theatre in Monterey. “What causes independent venues to go out of business is the one in 10 shows where venues pay way too much relative to the draw and end up losing everything they made on the previous nine shows.”
Cussins made the decision to stop charging acts performing at his venues a cut of their merch sales — a standard industry practice — while watching a Jan. 24 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about Ticketmaster. Cussins says it was members of the band Lawrence’s testimony about how much bands rely on merch money for touring that moved him to change the company’s policy: “It is money that most directly gets into the band’s pocket and the idea that we were taking away from that did not sit right with me.”
Since then, he says the decision has not hurt his business “at all.”
Still, independent venues remain concerned about what Live Nation’s new “On the Road Again” program will mean for them — how can they compete with the deals Live Nation is offering? The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) released a statement on Wednesday (Sept. 27) following the news, saying, “Temporary measures may appear to help artists in the short run but actually can squeeze out independent venues which provide the lifeblood of many artists on thin margins.”
Thomas Cussins
Daniel Swan
The statement continued, “The initiative announced yesterday may seem like a move to follow the lead of some independent venues. It is not that. Instead, it appears to be a calculated attempt to use a publicly-traded conglomerate’s immeasurable resources to divert artists from independent venues and further consolidate control over the live entertainment sector. Such tactics threaten the vitality of small and medium-sized venues under 3,000 capacity, many of which still struggle to keep their doors open.”
A NIVA member since 2020, Cussins says he understands why some NIVA members may be upset that Live Nation’s policy might put pressure on their businesses. But, he adds, eliminating merch fees is a net positive for the entire live music ecosystem — one where everyone is benefiting.
“It’s difficult to operate a single venue in a market against Live Nation,” says Cussins. “Venues are low-margin businesses. I’m not here to say that no one should charge merch fees. What I am here to say is that it is my opinion that if you waive those fees, it is an overall healthier ecosystem and you will actually do better in business because you are doing something that makes the process easier.”
What was your reaction when you heard the news that Live Nation was going to waive merch fees for artists?
I was ecstatic. It’s something I’m very passionate about because it fosters a healthier concert ecosystem.
Were you worried about the financial hit Ineffable would take when you decided to eliminate merch fees at Ineffable venues?
No, because merch money is not what is going to keep us in business. What causes independent venues to go out of business is the one in 10 shows where venues pay way too much relative to the draw and end up losing everything they made on the previous nine shows. I think it’s more productive spending one’s time fostering a healthier ecosystem where everybody has a chance to make money. To me, that means not taking artists’ merch money and artists taking more door deals, where the artist has an opportunity to make the most money.
But is that realistic? For many artists, taking a door deal with no guarantee is too risky.
Correct. Some can’t take that risk. But many other artists understand they can make more money on a door deal and lower the risk the venue faces. For independent venues to be healthy, we need volume, which means we need bands to be healthy and touring and making enough money to support themselves. And the money made from merch most directly affects their ability to be out on the road and do well.
What is your reaction to the statement NIVA issued, saying the On the Road Again program is just an attempt to squeeze out indie venues?
They’re doing what they think is in the best interests of their members. We’re members of NIVA and they have done an incredible job for our business. I’m a huge fan. But my take is that merch money is not what’s going to keep these independent venues in business. What’s going to keep them in business is a healthy concert ecosystem, where we’re keeping the bands healthy and keeping them on the road with deals that are fair so that everyone can make a few bucks and eat at the table together and nobody is gouging the other person.
What is the biggest challenge facing artists on the road right now?
It is the travel costs — the price of gas, vehicle rentals, the price to pay crews. If you are going out there and you are doing the same business and your costs have increased 30%, how can you possibly make that up? You might just not tour. I know a lot of bands that have told me they were doing 80 dates a year and now they just want to do 40. They just want to pick the 40 best markets. That hurts independent small businesses. I’m seeing that firsthand. Artists that are in the prime of their career saying, “I want to work less, but each one has more meaning.” And I can’t blame them. But if they can do a longer tour and amortize those costs and play those small secondary markets, then I can be their partner on the ground in markets where I operate venues and keep my hands out of their merch money.
What advice do you have to other venues considering dropping their merch fees?
It’s not one-size-fits-all and it might not be the right solution for everyone. But I am so happy that we made that move — not only from an ethos standpoint, financially as well. It has not hurt me at all.
