Kilimanjaro Live CEO has told Music Week that the live sector will one day see the end of ticket touting.
Speaking in the wake of his business taking home the Live Music Promoter (Company) trophy at the Music Week Awards, Galbraith noted the power currently surging through the live industry.
“I think it’s in a period of strength and has been for the last decade. It’s getting stronger and stronger,” he said.
But Galbraith couldn’t ignore the issues facing live music businesses and noted, “there are certainly challenges”.
However, he sees a bright future, particularly when it comes to secondary ticketing. “I think they’ll all be overcome. I think technology will rid us of secondary ticketing, eventually.”
Galbraith has previously expressed his optimistic views on secondary ticketing; following news the Google’s certification process on resellers was coming into effect.
His latest comments come in the wake of this week’s revelation that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has referred secondary ticketing site Viagogo to National Trading Standards. The ASA said the company had failed to make changes to “misleading” pricing information on its website.
The live sector is in a period of strength and has been for the last decade
Stuart Galbraith
Galbraith, who spoke to Music Week alongside Kilimanjaro Live promoter Steve Tilley, issued an impassioned cry for the safeguarding of small venues.
“A major concern at the moment is making sure we can protect and preserve grassroots venues, that’s where Steve and Stuart [Camp, Grumpy Old Management] first discovered Ed Sheeran,” he said.
“It’s where we’ve worked from the very start with many of the acts that we promote. It’s the feeder of the entire industry. For example, the Stoke Sugarmill and Oxford Zodiac, without those two, Kili wouldn’t exist.”
Kilimanjaro Live work with a raft of acts including Sheeran, Catfish And The Bottlemen and Bastille, and the company celebrated its 10th birthday with a Music Week cover appearance earlier this year. Subscribers can read the interview in full here.
Tilley told Music Week that the company aims to develop new artists from to “be as big as possible”.
“To be part of a journey with an artist [such as Sheeran], to go from The Barfly and The Borderline to Wembley Stadium and beyond is just… You imagine it might happen, and when it does happen, it’s like, ‘Wow!’”
Catch up on the best moments from the Music Week Awards here.
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