Thirty-year-old Metal Hammer magazine and stablemates Classic Rock and Prog have been given a new lease of life after being saved from closure by Future Publishing, owner of titles including Guitarist, Total Film and T3. The titles, along with the Golden Gods Awards and the Classic Rock Awards, suspended publication and faced closure after owner TeamRock, the self-styled “home of rock and metal”, went into administration in December. A Just Giving campaign launched by Orange Goblin frontman Ben Ward before Christmas, to help the 73 Team Rock staff laid off by administrators, exceeded its £20,000 target by 317% within three days of launch. Future Publishing, the publicly listed digital, events and magazine company, has struck deal to buy the magazines, events and licence for the Team Rock digital radio service for £800,000.
ATP is closing down and going into administration, the company has announced. The company's Iceland festival, scheduled for July 1-3 and which had already seen a number of artiste cancellations, will no longer take place but its other UK shows will go ahead with new promoters: “It is with deep sadness we are announcing that ATP Festivals and live promotions are closing down," the firm said in statement on its website. "After months of speculation, our funding for Iceland has been pulled and we are no longer able to continue so will be closing down the entire live side of ATP festivals and live promotions with immediate effect and going into administration" adding “ATP Iceland festival is no longer happening, but all our other UK shows will have new promoters appointed and tickets transferred (all purchased tickets remain valid with the new promoter). We will post details of the administrators and what to do for festival ticket refunds over the next week.
Accountants Deloitte, who were appointed administrators of UK music retail giant HMV, will invoice for a total of £11.7 million, though the accountancy firm says it is likely that 'only' £8 million will be paid. Meanwhile two law firms who advised on the administration, particularly on employment law matters, will receive more than £3 million between them, Linklaters getting £2.3 million and Simmons & Simmons £1.1 million. Another intersting payment is £2.7 million invoiced by Retail Agents 260, a retail industry consultancy that provided advice to the accountants. It's interesting because Retail Agents 260 is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hilco the company who then bought the HMV business and took a streamlined version of the company out of administration. HMV's unpaid creditors are likely to see only nominal payments, if anything. Amongst creditors owed about £230 million are HM Revnue & Customs, former landlords of shops, one-time HMV owner EMI, and the HMV pension scheme, which may have to rely on the government-backed Pension Protection Fund to plug the gap.
Virtualfestivals.com reports that three outdoor events due to take place at Hylands Park in Essex this month have been cancelled as the organisers claim the site isn't "acceptable". Last Night of the Proms, which was due to take place this Sunday, September 7, and feature Aled Jones and the Philharmonic Orchestra, has been cancelled by the event producers (UK Events & Production) today. The same production company have cancelled two more Hylands Park events this month: Flashback Festival on September 13th and Wet Wet Wet on September 14th. Flashback Festival was to feature some of the top selling acts of the eighties, including headliner Billy Ocean, Marc Almond, ABC, Hue and Cry, Go West, From the Jam, and The Doctor (of Dr & The Medics). In a statement, UK Events and Production indicated that the V Festival, held on the same site (16-17 August) was contributing factor in the decision to cancel the concerts saying "The site was recently used for the V Festival and after a recent site visit we do not feel that the area within the park we are using is acceptable to put on our concerts."
And residents in Clapham, London, are voicing concerns about the number of festivals on Clapham Comon afre recent rainfall hit the end of an event and turned areas of the park into a 'quagmire'. The Evening Standard reports that South West Four (SW4) attracted 50,000 party-goers on the August bank holiday weekend and starred DJs Deadmau5, Eric Prydz and Pete Tong. Heavy rain hit the clean-up, with lorries churning up turf and creating vast patches of mud as they picked up equipment. Campaigners are urging local authority Lambeth to introduce a cap on the number of major events, as Westminster did at Hyde Park last year. They also want a 20,000-a-day limit on the number of revellers. Similar complaints have been made about Finsbury Park after it hosted three-day Wireless Festival in July – which saw rappers Kanye West, Pharrell Williams and Rudimental perform – just six weeks after band Arctic Monkeys rocked the green for two days.
AlJazeera America hosts an interstung article on Adam Auctor, the founder of the Bunk Police, an organization that travels to summer music events in the USA to help test the purity of festival goers’ drugs. His business came about amid a unique set of circumstances over the last decade: a 2003 law that held club owners and music festival promoters criminally responsible for knowledge of any drug use at their events, the revitalized big business of music festivals, the rise of electronic dance music and the ascendance of the drug Molly. ..... more here. Bunk Police website here.
Bestival’s magnificent disco ball has set a new GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title! Topping the tape at 10.33 metres, the dazzling disco beauty is as high as a three storey building, is covered in 2,500 mirrored tiles that would stretch out for a kilometre if you laid them end to end, and is filled with 350 cubic metres of air; equivalent to one thousand beach balls! Verified by Mark McKinley from GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS, the Disco Ball was measured by surveyor Ollie Salter at midday on Sunday (7th September), before clinching the record when it was raised and spun, with a suitably disco-tastic light show, at the start of Chic featuring Nile Rodgers’ epic finale set on the Disco themed Bestival Sunday evening. And Bestival now holds the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title for the Largest Disco Ball.
The company behind Guilfest 2014 has gone into insolvency, Blaming, primarily, a lack of time to organise this year's event resulting in low ticket sales, and a forecast of bad weather (whIch didn't transpire).
Organiser Tony Scott also confirmed that certain artists on the 2014 bill, which featured headliners in The Boomtown Rats, Jedward, Kool & The Gang, Fun Lovin Criminals and The Human League, have yet to be paid. First established in 1992, Guilfest ran every year till 2012, when it went into administration due disappointing ticket sales), with its parent company Scotty Events facing debts of over £300,000. Live Nation staged an event in the town in 2013, but Scott regained the use of Stoke Park after a social media campaign, and his new company Trowfest Ltd was, back in February, given the green light by Guildford Borough Council. Interviewed by Get Surrey this week, Scott said despite this year's event being "fantastic", Trowfest Ltd had needed to sell a couple of thousand more tickets to cover its costs. He told the site: "Unfortunately we didn't get enough ticket sales to pay all the bills we have got to pay. One of the reasons was that we were a bit short of time to do it all in. We have never done a festival in three-and-a-half months before".
London's Playground Festival has been cancelled after poor ticket sales - with the festival's seven year-old promoter Mediaground Ltd going into administration.
The UK's last remaining music retail chain, HMV, is about to into administration, with the future of the 240 strong chain and 4,300 jobs at risk.
Previous CEO Simon Fox had spearheaded a failed attempt to move into live music, and recent reports said that it was only credit lines from the major record labels which were keeping the ailing retailer alive. In the run-up to Christmas HMV's boss Trevor Moore warned the entertainment group was in trouble as he revealed the chain was in talks with banks over its future following worse-than-expected trading over the festive period. HMV joins camera and photography group Jessops and electrical retail chain Comet in the growing number of UK retail casualties,
Tony Scott's Scotty Events, promoters of the 20,000 capacity Guilfest, has gone into administration, following poor ticket sales for this year's event. In an announcement on Facebook Scotty Events said: "Scotty Events Ltd regret to announce that Guilfest has ceased to trade due to poor ticket sales at this year's event in July. We assess that this was down to the worst weather conditions we have experienced in history of the festival, combined with intense competition presented this year from other events. On-going matters now lie in the hands of the insolvency practitioner Leigh Adams LLP". Launched, in 1992 the family friendly festival has become a key fixture on the UK festival calendar. Founder Tony Scott told the BBC that poor ticket sales this year - due in part to locals holding off buying tickets in order to see how the weather turned out - had left the festival with debts of £300,000, pointing out that over the weekend the weather was indeed dire and the site very muddy, and that "The Olympics were on, a lot of people were going to that. Farnborough Air Show was on the same weekend as us for the first time this year. There was Tom Jones playing up the road at Sandown Park, Bruce Springsteen was playing in London, and there was an awful lot going on around our weekend, as well as the bad weather" adding "I'd love to see Guilfest keep going, but I think it's got to be somebody with deeper pockets ... to make sure it goes through".
The organisers of the London Bloc weekender which was shut down on police advice because of serious overcrowding, have put forward their explanation of the cancelled event in a statement which puts the blame on "serious delays associated with the building of the London Pleasure Gardens site, leading to non-completion of groundwork, venues and general infrastructure" saying that "The Hub', a 2800 capacity high-spec venue that we had contracted to host one of our main stages, was not going to be ready for us to us". The organisers also point to the event's ticketing system although the providers of that, Crowd Surge, had previously said the were not at fault. Bloc organisers say that "we did experience problems with the management of the admission control systems" and the statement says that there were problems with both the checking of e-tickets (with scanners) at the gates saying "Knowledge of the suspension of scanning combined with ticket touting enabled people to gain entry to the event without having purchased a ticket from our website. We'll never know exactly how many people [did this]". Bloc is in administration, as are the London Pleasure Gardens holding company, and ticket-buyers will not be able to get any money back from Bloc and are advised to apply for a refund from the bank or credit firm who provided the card with which they made payment.
Baselogic Productions Ltd, the organiser of the Bloc Weekend, has gone into administration. A statement on festival's website read ""It is with great sadness that we announce Baselogic Productions (who you all know as Bloc) has been placed into administration following the events of Friday evening. The team are working hard with the administrators to investigate the issues that led to the closure of the event and people will be updated as and when we have new information. We ask that you allow the administrators time to conduct a thorough investigation so we can establish the facts. Once again we would like to apologise for all of the frustration and disappointment this situation has caused and thank everyone who has supported the team over the years, your continued support means so much to us". The appointed administrator is Jamie Playford of Parker Andrews Insolvency Practitioners. As it appears that all ticketing funds had been paid directly to Baselogic, customers may be in a very poor position when it comes to refunds - artistes will have been paid deposits and all site costs would have been incurred - with perhaps the only recourse for punters being with credit card companies.
