LIKE SOME SORT OF MUSICAL TARDIS, Ireland pumpsenough music into the world to fulfil the culturalquota of a country 10 times its size. Open the door andlook inside, however, and you find a beautiful countryof around 4.5m people and a music industry comparedby more than one person to a small village.

“Everyone in the music business knows each other,and we are all supportive of each other,” says UK-born,Dublin-based publisher Steve Lindsey, whose ElevateMusic publishes local acts including Autamata andMundy. “It’s a nice thing to be part of.”

Nice, but not easy. Ireland’s recorded music markethas been hit every bit as hard as that of the UK, from a

Country profile: Republic of IrelandBy Adam Woods

Features

far smaller base. Physical sales in the Republic ofIreland have fallen by more than half in recent years,from 126.5m in 2006 to 60.9m in 2009, while legal dig-ital transactions have gone from 4.5m to 12.9m, offer-ing scant compensation.

Factor in an economic crash that has left Irelandthe most indebted country, per head, of any in the EUstates, with a budget deficit worse than that of Greece,and you have a recipe for straitened times in the Irishmusic business.

As broadcast advertising revenues have sunk by25–30%, TV and radio performance royalties collected bythe Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) have fallencorrespondingly. Likewise, as bar, club and restaurant tak-ings have suffered, says IMRO chief executive Victor Finn,so has revenue from public performance.

And with the CD market down 12% so far this year,good results do tend to stand out. Belt-tightening andincreased market penetration at IMRO – which alsoadministers mechanicals in Ireland for the MCPS – actu-ally increased licensing revenue by 3% in 2009, to !40m(£32.8m).

Amid other bright spots, Warner’s Michael Bublé hastwo nights at the new Aviva Stadium (formerlyLansdowne Road) in September, while Lady GaGa latelywent 14 times platinum (210,000 copies, plus) forUniversal Music Ireland.

“This year feels a little bit better generally than lastyear,” concedes Universal Ireland managing director MarkCrossingham. “But Ireland has suffered particularlybadly.”

What Ireland always has, of course, is a wealth of tal-ent. Acts such as U2, Boyzone, Westlife, Enya, DamienRice, Roisin Murphy, Glen Hansard and Jedward arealready part of Ireland’s gift to the wider world.

Assuming events of the next couple of months go itsway, it may also have something else: the possibility of a unit-ed record industry/ISP action against illegal filesharing.

An initial skirmish between the Irish Recorded MusicAssociation (IRMA) and market-leading broadband sup-plier Eircom early last year resulted in a voluntary three-strikes pilot.

However, the fact that the telco caved in out of courtmeans IRMA still requires a legal precedent to bring theremaining suppliers into line, and a ruling in its suitagainst UPC, the third-largest broadband provider, isexpected on October 11.

The success of the case, according to EMI Ireland man-aging director and IRMA chair Willie Kavanagh, hangs onthe wording of the Irish Copyright Act, which appears tooffer more protection to rights holders than does its UKequivalent.

“It gives us an opportunity to push the boundaries abit, because no-one else in Europe is going down thisroute,” says Kavanagh, who has driven the action.

If the court finds in the record companies’ favour,Kavanagh believes, we will all be hearing a lot more on thesubject. “The IFPI in London are all over this like a rash,”he says. “It will have a knock-on effect, there is absolutelyno doubt about it.”

Amid the perilous fortunes of the Irish economy andthe critical impact of piracy, the base rate of musical out-put has not fallen, of course. In fact, it appears to havesoared, if the Breaking Tunes platform for emerging Irishtalent is any sort of guide.

Run by the Irish Arts Council-funded music informa-tion resource First Music Contact (FMC) director, whichhas seen its own funding slashed to the bone, BreakingTunes has tripled its database of unsigned artist profilesalready this year, up to 1,800.

“The level of talent has gone through the roof,” saysFMC director Angela Dorgan. “With Fionn [Regan],Lisa [Hannigan] and Villagers all coming up, there real-ly is a feeling that we are punching above our weight asa country.”

The Hard Working Class Heroes festival, now into itseighth year, has seen all the above artists come throughthe ranks. Through FMC, Ireland sent 19 bands to SXSWin 2010 – its highest tally ever.

BELOW Ireland’s own: former DamienRice collaboratorLisa Hannigan(middle)is forcing a breakthroughwhile star of TheCommitments,frontman of The Frames, solo artist andOscar winner Glen Hansard(below) has made it big in film and music

18 Music Week 04.09.10

ireland 27/8/10 17:54 Page 18

www.musicweek.com 04.09.10 Music Week 21

“On the ground, the scene is incredibly healthy,” saysNiall Stokes, editor of Ireland’s leading music magazineHot Press. “There’s a huge number of great bands andartists active all over the country. There was a time whenthings were more or less Dublin- and Belfast-centred, butnow there is a really strong scene all over Ireland.”

Local favourites such as Fight Like Apes, Coronas,Jape, Cathy Davey and Heathers all have breakout poten-tial, while Imelda May, The Script, Villagers, Regan andHannigan constitute just a handful of the more promi-nent Irish performers who have already begun to maketheir name overseas.

The latter three all have Mercury nominations, whileThe Script, having quietly amassed 1.8m sales of theireponymous debut, return with second album Science &Faith on September 13, with high hopes at home andabroad.

“I think it is a career-defining album,” says RCA seniormarketing manager Poppy Stanton. “It is a massive prior-ity for Sony and I think it is going to be one of our big-hit-ters for quarter four.”

Villagers, the first Irish signing to Domino, were scout-ed by co-owner and head of business affairs Harry Martin,and demonstrate how Ireland is increasingly exportingtalent in genres other than chart pop, big rock and tradi-tional music.

“From the first moment I saw him, I could see he wasa sensational performer, if we could just get him in frontof people,” says Martin of the band’s focal point, Conor JO’Brien. “Now, it’s building everywhere. It’s not a fad or anof-the-moment thing – it’s just pure talent.”

Signed to a London indie, O’Brien has been up anddown both coasts of the US in recent months, and will beback there and up to Canada in the autumn. All of whichillustrates the fact that a market of Ireland’s size, whilesufficiently significant for all four majors to maintainoffices there, cannot afford to keep its artists at home.

“Anyone in Ireland will tell you there is a huge disad-vantage to being in a smaller market,” says Stokes. “Artistsfind it very hard to be successful purely on their own turf– they really have to go out there and forge a path on aninternational scale. There’s a few exceptions to that – inthe folk area there is a bit more to it – but most peopleneed to go beyond these shores.”

Features

“On the ground thescene is incrediblyhealthy. There’s a

huge number of greatbands and artists... butmost people need to go beyond these shores...” NIALL STOKES, HOT PRESS

One natural consequence is that in spite of a glut of tal-ent, the Irish divisions of major labels are limited in theirability to sign local acts, certainly in significant numbers.

“To develop anything realistically and credibly is avery, very expensive proposition, and with very few excep-tions, would you be able to make your money back in theIrish market,” says Warner Music Ireland managing direc-tor Pat Creed.

Warner’s approach has been to forge marketing anddistribution deals with well-developed local acts, with itsclients latterly including Heathers and Bell X1, Ireland’sbiggest rock band behind U2.

Universal likewise keeps things light locally, but it ispushing hard for Cork’s O Emperor and their debutalbum Hither Thither. Sony has Damien Dempsey andfolk legend Christy Moore, as well as Westlife and TheScript via London. EMI’s Blarney-born troubadour MickFlannery, meanwhile, whose White Lies is touching30,000 sales, is a key prospect for head office.

In infrastructural terms, things are ever improving.Television opportunities are slim after The Late Late Show– the longest-running chat show in the world at 48 years –but daily newspapers find much space for music and Irishradio is particularly strong.

“That was my real surprise,” says Crossingham, whocame from London to step in for industry stalwart DavePennefather, now emeritus chairman, two years ago. “Onthe last figures, the statistic is that nearly 80% of the pop-ulation listen to radio for over two-and-a-half hours a day.

Artist Title Label1 SUSAN BOYLE I Dreamed A Dream Sony

2 MICHAEL BUBLÉ Crazy Love Warner

3 LADY GAGA The Fame/Monster Universal

4 VARIOUS Now...! 74 EMI/Universal

5 BEYONCÉ I Am... Sasha Fierce Sony

6 BLACK EYED PEAS The E.N.D. Universal

7 U2 No Line On The Horizon Universal

8 WESTLIFE Where We Are Sony

9 PAOLO NUTINI Sunny Side Up Warner

10 THE SCRIPT The Script Sony

Source: IRMA

Irish favourites Top selling albums 2009

Online single track 38%

Online album 40%

Mastertones 7%

Mobile single track 7%

Other 8%

DIGITAL SALES BY FORMAT (value)

0

30

60

90

120

150

Physical Digital

RECORDED MUSIC SALES TREND (US$m)

134127

11389

61

58

11

13

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Source: IFPI

A ‘sensational performer’: Villagers, in the formof Conor J O’Brien, have had a fantastic year,culminating in a Mercury prize nomination

High hopes: The Script’s second album is immiinent while their debut sold 1.8m copies. Inset: EMI has big expectations for Cork’s Mick Flannery

For more than 30 years Hot Pressmagazine has had its finger on

the pulse of Irish culture

Source: IFPI

ireland 27/8/10 17:56 Page 21

22 Music Week 04.09.10 www.musicweek.com

And because some DJs have a degree of autonomy, there issome good old-fashioned plugging to be done.”

Publishers do not find much richer pickings thanrecord companies. Most local independents work hard tosupplement their business with overseas deals.

“Unless you are a publisher that has a top-selling artistin Ireland, you can’t really make much here at all,” saysLindsey, who moved to Dublin nine years ago after acareer at Island, Warner/Chappell and others. “So whatyou aim to do is get as much mileage as you can out of theIrish market, but you look to overseas markets to actuallymake the money.”

Reekus Records, the 29-year-old Dublin-based indielabel whose local acts include Sweet Jane, The Radio andPreachers Son, has likewise recently turned more of itsattention to publishing.

“We have had to do a lot more of that in the last fewyears, because relying on music sales at the momentwould be financial suicide,” says Reekus founder ElveraButler. “Whatever Gets You Through The Day by TheRadio has had enormous usage on TV in the States, and

that almost compensates for the lack of airplay, whichindies obviously find hard to get.”

Right across the business, diversification and inge-nuity keep things afloat. Independent distributorsRMG Chart Entertainment and All MediaEntertainment plighted their troth on August 1 andnow trade as “indi entertainment”, specialising in Irishmusic and DVD product.

“We felt that, the way the market has gone inIreland, it was an advantage to both parties to consoli-date our businesses,” says director Peter Kenny, whoincludes The Dubliners, Daniel O’Donnell and SharonShannon among his distributed acts. “Most of what wedo is unique Irish product so we don’t have a lot of par-allel imports, and we supply everyone from big chainsto non-traditional retailers.”

Indi also works with incoming UK independents,including PIAS, and is on the hunt for more since themerger. Its online operation RMG Digital had thebiggest Irish download of recent years, Kenny notes, inSharon Shannon’s cover of Steve Earle’s Galway Girl,which shifted 55,000 copies.

Small successes, piled up, make a big difference in a lit-tle market that needs to work harder than its birthright oftalent would necessarily suggest.

Mindful that too much of the news sounds badafter itemising various categories of falling royalties,IMRO’s Finn musters some fine parting words for theIrish spirit, the strength of which is just as evident asthe country’s problems.

“Ireland is a resilient, resourceful and creative nation,”he says. “Those are qualities we need to draw on to kick-start our economy going forward, and the creative indus-try has a big part to play in that.”

Features

Ireland’s live sector, famously oneof the busiest in Europe over thepast few years, is not immune tothe country’s present woes, but itis not necessarily all that badlyaffected by them either.

A drop in disposable incomedoes not automatically mean alack of live entertainment for Irishgig-goers – it just means a bit less,which is good news for the full setof new Dublin venues commis-sioned during the economic mira-cle and completed not long afterthe bubble burst.

Live Nation has two of them:the 14,000-capacity O2 at NorthWall Quay, co-owned by local prop-erty entrepreneur Harry Crosbie,which replaced his old Point Depoton the same spot; and the 2,111-capacity Grand Canal Theatre, amedium-sized venue in a city thatpreviously had none at all.

The Auditorium at theConvention Centre Dublin hassince joined the Grand Canal in thesame band, while on another scaleentirely, the new !350m (£287m),50,000-capacity Aviva Stadium,opened this year as a replacementfor the old Lansdowne Road rugbyground, will host its first showswhen Michael Bublé comes totown in late September.

If any of the owners of thosevenues have struggled in thedownturn, they are not saying, andThe O2 and the Grand Canal haveboth been notably busy since theirdoors opened in the teeth of therecession.

“I think sometimes it’s fortunateto be in that position,” says LiveNation Ireland chief executive MikeAdamson, who formerly ran thePoint. “We didn’t know there was arecession coming, but when timesare harder, one has to be able tosell harder and have newer, freshfacilities that encourage people togo out. If we were there with theold Point building and no GrandCanal, we wouldn’t be as busy aswe are.”

Ireland’s two leading promoters,MCD and Aiken Promotions, areremarkably strong, taking most ofthe market between them. Of thetwo, MCD is the larger, thoughAiken, while also based in Dublin,still rules the roost in his home ter-ritory of Northern Ireland.

By weighing their decisions

carefully, matching the right actwith the right venue and steeringaround risky prospects, both promoters are keeping on an even keel.

MCD’s Oxegen festival promotesitself on the strength of its 100%carbon neutrality, and it pulls in the

bands, too. Arcade Fire,Muse, Eminem, Jay-Z andtoo many more to men-tion helped to make2010 a good year for thefestival. The promoteralso sold out Westlife inCroke Park and staged aGreen Day show at MarlayPark.

Booking habits are onething that has changed inrecent years, says onelive industry source, whodeclines to be named.“What we keep seeing is that salesin advance are slow, and then inthe week or two leading up to theshow, it just flies,” he says. “A lotof people aren’t paying by creditcard – they just go on and paycash. When the show comesround, you either have the moneyor you don’t.”

On the festival scene, ElectricPicnic has been a rare hit for asmaller promoter Pod Concerts,which still runs the event, though

Festival Republic acquired a majori-ty stake last year after Pod hitfinancial trouble.

In more traditional areas, a smallnumber of other promoters flour-ish. Michael Durkan’s GFDPromotions conducts relentlessinternational tours of its Celtic-flavoured productions, while KieranCavanagh’s KCP – Irish promoterfor Daniel O’Donnell and others –has likewise had success with the-atrical shows.

The recorded industry in Irelandmay not be making anybody rich,but even in hard times, there ismoney to be made from live per-formance.

“Per capita, there’s more peoplego to shows in Ireland than mostother countries in Europe,” saysthe industry source. “And I thinkIrish people love music, they love anight out, and when they go to alive show, for two or three hoursthey seem to forget every otherproblem that they have.”

Looking lively Irish gig-goers find ways around the recession

The new Aviva Stadium replacesLansdowne Road in the Irish capital

A breath of fresh air: the Oxegenfestival attracted the likes ofMuse, Eminem and Arcade Fire

Grand plans: the Grand Canal Theatre has

enjoyed a healthy attendance since it opened

Folk scenesters:Sharon Shannonhad the biggestIrish download ofrecent years and(right) Sony’sChristy Moore is abig draw in both hisnative Ireland andthe UK

ireland 27/8/10 17:56 Page 22

24 Music Week 04.09.10

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Our guide to your free CD featuring 14 tracks from the cream of the current Irish crop

THE IRISH CREAM

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Dirty Epics

Electric Penguins

And So I Watched You From Afar

Aaron James

James Vincent McMorrow

ireland cd 27/8/10 17:51 Page 24

04.09.10 Music Week 25

been dubbed “the coolest band in Ireland today” by HotPress magazine. II, the follow-up to the band’s critically-lauded 2007 debut, arrives in September. Self-producedand recorded in a garden shed, the album features thefolksy love song to London, Highgate Hill, and the kraut-club inspired combo-track Airships/Soundproof 45; Eno-like melodic soundscapes abound. Europe-wide licensingand sync is available.www.electricpenguins.com

8 O EMPEROR Sedalia UniversalContact David Harris | david.harris@umusic.com

Hailing from Waterford, OEmperor is Paul Savage (guitar,vocals), Richie Walsh (bass), AlanComerford (guitar), PhilipChristie (keyboards) andBrendan Fennessy (drums). OEmperor have orchestrated a

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9 FIGHT LIKE APESHoo Ha HenryRuby WorksContact Roger Quail |roger@rubyworks.comHoo Ha Henry is thefirst single from theforthcoming Fight LikeApes album The Body OfChrist And The Legs OfTina Turner. The recordhas been produced byAndy Gill (Gang Of 4,Futureheads, YoungKnives). The band’s debutalbum Fight Like ApesAnd The Mystery Of The Golden Medallion was releasedon Model Citizen Records through PIAS UK in 2009, andwas licensed to Sony (Japan), Shock (Australia) andStrangeways (GSA). Fight Like Apes have toured exten-sively in the UK with the Prodigy, The Ting Tings, We AreScientists and Kasabian, as well as scoring many festivalappearances. www.fightlikeapesmusic.com

10 THE SHOOS Distance UniversalContact David Harris | david.harris@umusic.comThe Shoos are a four- piece band from Dublin whoseself-released track Distance was issued in May 2010.The success of Distance resulted in attention beingfielded from the US in the form of DJ Mormile &James Mormile at Interscope’s associated company,Fakework. The band were invited to join One Republic

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11 SWEET JANE Close Your Eyes ReekusContact Elvera Butler | info@reekus.com

Sweet Jane are a “remarkably accomplished” band fairlynew to the Dublin scene “who transcend their influencesby being bang on the money. The primary case in point isrecently-released debut album Sugar For My Soul whichmanages to blend loaded psych rock and a sweet-natureddream-pop disposition with a clear affinity for the rocki-er, sludgier end of Americana” – that, at least, was theview of influential national daily the Irish Times.www.myspace.com/officialsweetjane

12 VON SHAKES Template OptophonicContact Paul Byrne | paul@optophonic.comA rock‘n’roll four-piece from Dublin formed in 2007, the

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13 PREACHERS SON 26 Years ReekusContact Elvera Butler | info@reekus.com

Dublin-based Preachers Son are Brian Hogan (Kíla) onguitar and vocals and Emmaline Duffy-Fallon (previous-ly of Engine Alley) on drums and vocals. Together sinceearly 2009 and gathering momentum with their dynamiclive shows, they are frequently joined on stage by guestmusicians, including Shane Fitzsimons (Lisa Hannigan,Damien Rice), Tabby Callaghan, Kieran Kennedy (BlackVelvet Band, Hothouse Flowers) and Dara Munnis(Doctor Leaves, The Coronas, Jack L). They describe theirmusic as “like a David Byrne/Scott Walker collaboration,or Queen’s greatest hits circa 1980 vs Morrison Hotel. Abit angsty, a bit Bowie, a wee bit ska, rock, blues, country,punk, croon...”www.preachersson.com

14 THE HIGH KINGS Step It Out Mary UniversalContact David Harris | david.harris@umusic.comThe High Kings are an Irish ballad group that wereformed by the same creators as the Celtic Woman phe-nomenon. Finbarr Clancy (son of Bobby Clancy), BrianDunphy (son of Sean Dunphy, who represented Irelandin the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest), Martin Furey (sonof Finbar Furey of The Fureys) andBroadway/pop/coun-try star DarrenHolden make up thegroup. To date TheHigh Kings havereleased two albumswhich have both goneplatinum in Ireland,the latest beingMemory Lane. www.thehighkings.com

BELOWIrish royalty:The High Kingshave enjoyed twoplatinum albumsin their homeland

Preachers Son

The Shoos

Sweet Jane

Von Shakes

Fight Like Apes

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