The team met up to interview Mr Michael Hosking, founder and CEO of Midas Promotions, who has brought artistes like Avenged Sevenfold, Rihanna and Avril Lavigne to Singapore. He has also organized the biggest music festival in Singapore, SINGfest.
Before he was due to arrive, the team met up earlier to do some last minute preparation and to go through the questions one last time to see if any additional questions need to be added or any existing questions need to be taken out. Ayn and Hafiz were slated to lead the interview as Ayn had done some background research on the company for our report and Hafiz is good at asking questions.
When he arrived, i accepted him and introduced myself. I also bought his drink. I think that was the least i could do for the man.
Once we got started on the interview, we didn't really need the questions much. We rarely got a chance to ask the questions but gained alot of other insights from other areas which we never thought of asking Mr Hosking. We all asked alot of impromptu questions based on what he had said.
Some of the insights he shared were:
- Tickets for Maroon 5 and James Blunt were sold more in Singapore that it did in UK
- Audiences in Singapore goes for either top tier or bottom tier price tickets
- The company adds on 15% to production costs to come up with ticket pricing
- Number of events coming to Singapore increases by 20% a year, but only an increase of 5% of tickets annually
- Music lover not equals to concert goer
- Lose money on 30% of shows done
- Midas do not deliberately cater to one target segment
- Local vs International artistes
- Have to pay more for international artistes to cover production costs like transportation and airfare
- Local bands will have to raise their game to be better
- Can watch local for free
- By asking audiences to pay, it is a commitment to watch the band play
- Should not concentrate on being opening acts for international artistes
- Sponsors helps in cutting costs. No sponsors, ticket prices will be higher
Observations: Noticed that the team was very pumped up for the interview. It was good that we realised how valuable this meeting with Mr Hosking was and made sure we were all well prepared for the interview.
However, i felt that it was a tad annoying that most of us still reverted back to our interview questions time and again to ask Mr Hosking the next question. It totally breaks the flow of what we were talking about previously and sometimes, had to link or relation to what he has spoke about before. At times, he kept repeating that he has already explained that or answered totally different from the question. It is important that all of us keep the flow going when interviewing someone.
However, at times, we did have impromtu questions to Mr Hosking which i thought was awesome. Myself, i didn't even bother looking at the interview questions when he started answering the first question. It is important to 'read' the interviewee while the interview is going on.
All in all, one of our better meetings. Very productive.
No comments:
Post a Comment