L'industrie du live, dissertation en anglais

With all the changes which the music industry has been through, and the progress of technology over the past 10 years, the live music scene is still an experience that you’ll never be able to download or reload, and this is one of the reasons why this sector tends to increase and make more and more profit. Now with collapse in sales, important net losses for record labels, new digital media... In this full-blown discography crisis, is the live music scene becoming a safe haven?

England is the place where artists absolutely need to stop off if they are on tour, as the depth and quality of live music is available week-out and week-in all across the country. Live music contributed £924 million of Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2014, an increase of 17 per cent.
Some of the world's best music venues are in the UK: with the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, the O2 in London and the Phones 4U Arena in Manchester, we can say that this is a big advantage for the UK music scene and industry, as these are some of the three best-selling music arenas.
In 2015, live music events in the UK were attended by 27.7m people. Of this total amount approximatively 10.4 million of them were music tourists and they have generated £3.7 billion in total direct and indirect spend in the UK during this year, going up 7 per cent from the previous year.
Furthermore, 39,034 full time jobs were sustained by music tourism during 2015; All these figures prove that the sector is in perpetual progress, however to ensure the security and the pleasure of audiences, there are a lot of rules and regulations, especially when there are more and more shows every year in the UK and all over the world.

This essay will focus firstly on the legal aspect of setting up music events in the UK, then we will take a look at  the key role and the financial aspect of this sector of the industry.

HEALTH & SAFETY

As long as we are mindful of others and improve safety conditions we can ensure that concerts remain about the music. It is really important for the people in charge to be aware of their responsibilities. There are several laws which help define and target the main issues which we can be confronted with when we try to put on an event.

The safety at an event is primordial, it is the number one rule and probably the reason why the Health & Safety at Work Act is fundamental. This Act applies to employers, employees and extends the contract to its visitors and even members of the public. It has been part of the UK legal system since 1974 and this piece of legislation, which was drafted over forty years ago, is still very much relevant in the modern world we work in.
There are four main sections in terms of duties which employers owe their employees, or others  who may be affected by the conduct of their undertaking:

Section 2: being a duty of the employer to all his employees.

Section 3: the duty that the employer owes to any other person, other than an employee who may be affected by the conduct of their undertaken, including member of the public, contractors or any visitor to their premises.

Section 7: is the duty that all employees owe to each other and anybody who can be affected by acts or omissions.

Section 37: is the duty of directors or senior officers of the company and they may be prosecuted under this section if it can be proved that the offense which was committed was done so with their consent, their connivance or was attributable to their neglect.  

The second most important law text is the Employers Liability Insurance Act of 1969.
If you employ members of the public, you need to have an Employers Liability Insurance as it is compulsory by law in order to insure against your liability for injury or disease to your employees, caused in the course of their employment. As an employer you are responsible for the health and safety of your employees whilst they are at work; if they are injured or if anything happens and they believe that you are responsible, they may try to claim compensation from you. This claim can go into the hundreds or thousands of pounds and even millions in some cases, so it is very important to have the protection and insurance in place.

In case of a live event, Public Liability Insurance is also needed. This is for claims made against your business, in case it has damaged someone else’s property or caused direct injury to someone. You need this if you go out to see clients or if visitors come to see you, as even innocent looking objects can cause more trouble than you may think (expensive trouble):
-What if a client falls over on your wobbly step?
-What if there is a technical problem and the lead singer on stage gets hurt?
-What if there are bad meteorological conditions, causing external and internal damage to your venue, injuring customers?

The unwritten rule of where there is a blame there is a claim mean that someone somewhere has to face the charges. However, if you have a Public Liability Insurance your policy pays for you, and you are given a specialist in legal help to defend you, as well as compensation for the person claiming damages and the helping hand to fix or replace what’s broken. Having this Insurance means your business won’t slip up even if someone else does.

So many events have been marked by death, danger or destruction instead of amazing memories of the music or the performance. For example, the Guns N’ Roses/Metallica stadium tour: after Metallica singer James Hetfield was accidently burned by an elaborate stage effect involving pyrotechnics, the heavy metal group cancelled the rest its Montreal shows. Matters deteriorated further when co-headliners Guns N’ Roses were late and Axl Rose cut the set short citing sound and vocal problems. Angered fan expressed their displeasure with violent street rioting, where the police had to resort to tear gas in order to push away rioters.

We have to be aware of any problems which could occur, whether it’s on stage or in the crowd, which can be just as dangerous, and this is the reason why it’s important to target audience habits in order to avoid the problem or be able to deal and respond to any risks, even at the very last minute

Twelve years ago, a Great White concert killed hundreds of people at The Station nightclub, which was set on fire. This was caused by pyrotechnics set off by the tour manager of the evening's headlining band, after foam insulation inside the station caught fire as a cause of the pyrotechnics which went wrong. Within a second, the two hundred capacity night club was engulfed in flames and over four hundred people were trapped inside in the mad dash to the main entrance. Over a hundred people were injured and a further hundred were killed including the Great White’s guitarist Ty Longley.

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