This month we speak to Head of Ticketmaster International Artist Services Mark Jansen not only about his role, but also about what he’s looking forward to and who he’s tipping for success in 2017.
When did you join Artist Services at Ticketmaster and what do you do there?
I joined the team a little over five years ago now, arguably around the time that a sea change of sorts was beginning in terms of artists’ involvement with ticketing. A renewed focus on live as a principal tenet of an artist’s career, combined with the evolution of how artists interact with their fans, has driven the need to establish a department within our business whose primary concern is the needs of artists. My role is Head of Artist Services, which means I act as a general manager for the department, leading the team operationally on all of our projects and campaigns; and work with our VP, Sam Isles, to shape our approach across the Ticketmaster International business.
Why did you join Ticketmaster and what did you do previously?
I’ve lived and breathed music since I was 10 years old, and working in this industry is something I’ve always been drawn to. Ticketing is something I sort of fell into after university about 12 years ago, taking a job in a call centre and working in a variety of roles with different ticket agents over the years. Prior to joining Ticketmaster I was Ticketing Manager for MAMA Group, which controls a number of gig venues across the country. I was attracted to Ticketmaster primarily because of the role, the nature of which requires me to help come up with solutions to a variety of challenges and scenarios that sit a little out of the ordinary, and bridge the gap between traditional ticketing and other areas of the music industry. And Ticketmaster is a fantastic place to work – I’ve made some lifelong friends here over the years among the hundreds of people who work here, all of whom continue to amaze me daily with their commitment to delivering for our clients and customers.
Artist Services can be tricky to define, what do you tell people it means?
It tends to mean different things in practice across different parts of the industry I think, but at its heart it very much does what it says on the tin. I always try to position our team as a kind of consultancy service for artists and managers whose primary objective is to get out there, meet our clients and find out how we can help them. We have a huge organisation who deal with the nuts and bolts of ticket sales, from the promoter to the venue to the technology to the marketing – and we want to help artists make sense of that world and take the headache out of what can sometimes seem to be a complex and difficult business. In that way, we end up being a sort of sales-marketing-account management hybrid. And for every client or prospective client we meet, the aim is not to dictate a list of products and services, but find out what matters to that particular artist, and help them to build a ticketing campaign that works for them.
What does a normal day at Ticketmaster look like for you?
Define normal! The fact that there’s so much variety in what we do should hopefully speak volumes as to how great a company Ticketmaster is to work for. But typically, we might have a team meeting or a meeting with internal stakeholders to discuss how a project is going to work, or to discuss and plan our onsales for the week ahead; we might be based primarily out of the office and have a series of meetings with managers, agents, labels, promoters, etc; or just good old-fashioned death by e-mail avalanche! One thing I’m very involved with in particular is liaising with other parts of the business, for instance our counterparts in the OnTour with Ticketmaster team in the US, with whom we work very closely on aligning our respective strategies; and the Product and Technology teams, as the requests and feedback we receive from our clients often drives us to develop new solutions that sit outside of the “standard” product roadmap.
What’s the event you’re most looking forward to in 2017?
I’m planning to attend Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands for the first time next year. It’s a mecca for fans of heavy music, with lots of the doom and black metal stuff I currently listen to. And occupying a somewhat different area of the broad musical spectrum, Angel Olsen coming back to play the Roundhouse. I saw her and her band play at Koko a couple of months ago and it was phenomenal – I’ve rarely seen an audience so captivated. “My Woman” is definitely one of my records of the year. And Guns N’ Roses, with the old line-up finally back together, are playing the Olympic Stadium, which is on my doorstep – I reckon that is bound to be a great show.
What campaign have you worked on that you are most proud of?
Our team works on 200+ tours a year so it’s definitely hard to pick favourites! I mean, in terms of scale, some of the tours that have proved to be most challenging and rewarding are those where I’ve had to co-ordinate presales or campaigns in 15-20 countries all going on sale at the same time; so over the last few years, things like Muse, Placebo, Robbie Williams… it’s always really satisfying to see something like that come together and know that you’ve been instrumental in delivering it.
What has been your favourite ever live show?
Undoubtedly, the best gig I’ve ever been to was a band from Seattle called Botch, who I saw in the tiny back room of a pub in 1999. My friends and I were 16/17 and getting into the local punk and hardcore scene around this time, and this was the gig that changed the way I thought about music in a lot of ways. The scene was all built around a bunch of teenagers who would put on gigs, booking bands to travel half way around the world essentially to play for them and their mates, and just use the money from the door to cover costs and pay the artists – it was a world away from anything I’d experienced before. And the band encapsulated that perfectly – a cacophony of barely contained rage and an unreal amount of energy, with odd time signatures that we shouldn’t have been able to dance to, but did! I was really lucky to catch them on this tour, they split a couple of years later and they’ve gone on to become really influential. Oh, and Kate Bush at the Apollo… and Prince at The O2…
Who are you tipping for success in 2017?
That there Rag’N’Bone Man chap is going to be mahoosive I think, I’m hearing a lot of approving noises there. And The Japanese House is some very charming stuff. There is so much great stuff out there at the moment though, particularly in our home grown independent music scenes. Depending on your tastes, I’d thoroughly recommend checking out the wonderful Svalbard from Bristol, whose brand of metallic hardcore punk I am rather enamoured with; the delightful trio of The Wharves, who have just put out their second record of bittersweet lo-fi excellence; and Strobes, who have just put out a record of electronic-tinged jazz rock that is so nuts it gave John in our office a mild panic attack.
Do you keep your gig tickets?
I tend not to anymore, but I have plenty from back in the day, including the ticket for my first ever “proper” gig, Placebo at Nottingham Rock City. Now that tickets are mainly print-at-home or mobile it’s harder to keep them, and less attractive to do so because they’re not very souvenir-y. If only there was someone in the market offering the opportunity to fans to purchase some sort of Collector Ticket, wouldn’t that be good?
