ARTICLES

PICK6 - Savina Kim

14 May 2012

It's a brilliant four weeks and believe me, we're all for it, but to be honest, it can be hard to know just how to actually celebrate NZ Music Month, when our daily/weekly/monthly/yearly focus is NZ music!

This year we decided we'd ask a bunch different local music industry participants to give their thoughts on the current state of play. We wanted to cast the net wide, and that turned out to mean a whole heap of questions and lots of pollsters – which all threatened to get right out of hand.

A quick refinement of the concept and we came up with PICK6, in which six commentators/players/opinion holders, from a variety of industry backgrounds, will get given a dozen questions and asked to pick the six that they are most keen to answer. We've asked promoters, bloggers, musicians, journalists, record company types, retailers – all sorts really.

We'll be posting their answers up here throughout the weeks of NZ Music Month and reckon PICK6 should make for some interesting reading.

Introducing...Savina Kim

Savina has worked as a promoter rep and tour manager at Solid Entertainment - concert promoters touring international and local acts throughout the country including System Of A Down, A Day To Remember, Paramore, Gary Numan, The Naked And Famous / Kids Of 88. She has a background in running all ages events in Auckland under her company Savvy Promotions. As a freelancer, she worked as a publicist for Tom Lark and booked local tours for The Checks and Lisa Crawley. Prior to that worked as a music publisher for Native Tongue and Mushroom Music.

Are you doing anything special this NZ Music Month?

Moving to Los Angeles! No dig at NZ Music Month, I've been a massive fan of NZ Music since high school (favourite bands were Breathe, Undercarriage, Fur Patrol etc). It's just time for me to move to a country and learn how things work in a bigger market.

What mistakes are typically made in your own chosen area of expertise?

I think that bands/promoters sometimes focus too much on nationwide marketing and publicity. I think it's really beneficial to cater for each city of the tour and almost treat them like seperate shows rather than a 'tour' so much. Nationwide press and advertising is useful, but you can't beat a push locally, eg Local radio stations, posters at local shops, selling tickets at a popular store, story in the local newspaper, and a local person who can help push it. The most useful thing I have found is to get in touch with a knowledgeable local person who can give you an insight on how their town works and what is/isn't effective. They can also let you know of any local events which may hinder your show.

How has the movement of music into the online markets affected your own role/s in the biz?

Instead of just updating your website, you now have to make sure you are up to date on Facebook and Twitter etc. When your social media pages are maintained, it is a really helpful way to get the information out there and to interact with your audience. It is a lot of work updating various pages, answering questions and running competitions, but I've also viewed it as essentially free marketing direct to your target audience which is really priceless. Also, it gives your company a bit of personality and character rather than a "corporate" brand who only has a one way communication channel open.

What’s your favourite live music venue? Why?

The Kings Arms hands down. Firstly, they have always been dedicated to live original music. It's always pretty easy going at the venue, not so many rules or people yelling at you to line up here or there, they treat you like an adult and in turn I feel like people respect the venue. The sound is always pretty decent there and it's also an easy and inexpensive venue to deal with from a booking point of view.

If there was one thing you would ‘fix’ in the NZ music scene what would it be? Ideas how?

Definitely the way that lots of local shows run in NZ. I think it would be great if bands/venues ran on a schedule and everything didn't start so late. I'm not sure quite how it started - Did the bands never start on time so the audience stopped turning up early or was it the other way around?! I think that if there was a schedule of door times and start times for each band and the main point being that they actually stuck to those times no matter what, more people would go out to watch live music and on time. It can be quite hard to juggle timings to watch bands as you never really know what time they will be on, and it's a bit of a nightmare when you try to go to more than one show.

The one question we really should have asked you is…

What is the state of live music for people under 18? And my answer would be - pretty shambolic. Less and less venues are willing to take a punt on all ages shows and even the venues with a license to do both All Ages and R18 are not really interested in making it work as it all just seems to come down to the bar sales (or the lack of). The only venues you can run all ages shows these days really are not setup to run shows so it takes a lot of work and money to make it work. It's really frustrating as I think it's pretty vital for NZ music and the music industry in general for people to get into going to watch local bands from an early age, not just international bands.