Once we were the last venue on earth, now Finland is seemingly a band magnet
Strong currency, Europe's changed geopolitical situation, and increased equipment rentals all factors
By Jarkko Jokelainen
This coming summer promises promises to be the busiest yet for Finnish fans of popular music.
The tip of the iceberg is the arrival - her first appearance in Finland - of Madonna in August, and the #1 name in heavy metal Metallica will be playing no fewer than three dates in Finland in June and July.
The traditional round of summer festivals ensures that the weekends will be full of foreign names on stage.
But weekdays, too, are booked nearly solid - at least in Helsinki, where The Eagles, AC/DC, Faith No More, Morrissey, Pet Shop Boys, Korn, Britney Spears, and electro-pop diva Lady GaGa are all scheduled to appear in a hectic two months from the beginning of June until Madonna’s mega-gig in Jätkäsaari.
It used not to be like this, but the growth in the number of artists putting Finland on their calendar is no accident.
There are several sound reasons.
1. There are a record number of artists available
The music industry’s revenue structure has undergone some thoroughgoing changes of late.
In past years, big tours were made, often with a measure of reluctance, as a marketing vehicle for a new album - and touring was seen as a kind of “loss leader”, like cheap coffee or beer in the supermarket.
Now, however, with record sales on a seemingly irreversible decline, live gigs are a means of improving the finances.
As a result, bands tour ever more intensively.
At the same time a good many stars of yesteryear have found it hard to stay out of the limelight, and they have returned to the live concert market, tapping in to the older generation's free time and money.
Right now Finland is also benefiting from the strength of the euro against sterling and the US dollar.
“There is a lot on offer, but the biggest acts are still a very tough call”, says Juhani Merimaa, who pulls the strings at Tavastia [a popular club venue in Helsinki with a capacity of 700], the Ruisrock Festival in Turku, and Ankkarock in Vantaa.
“In some countries the recession seems to have hit hard, but up north in Scandinavia there is apparently still money in the punters’ pockets, which attracts the artists like moths to a candle”, adds Merimaa.
“Uncertain economic times show up in the fact that if you can pay well, it is less difficult than it once was to persuade acts to come here”, says Juha Kyyrö of promoters Fullsteam.
2. There are more agencies importing bands than there once were
In earlier decades, foreign acts were as a rule brought to Finland by just one or two promoters. Now the big stars can pick and choose among four decent agencies: the multinational market leader Live Nation Finland (formerly Welldone Agency & Promotions), the traditional events organiser EastWay, and two newcomers in Fullsteam Agency and Speed Promotion.
Fullsteam has gone for rising names, and this summer the agency’s biggest enterprise is its own two-day Long Hot Summer (Pitkä kuuma kesä) festival in Helsinki at the end of June, with Social Distortion and The Flaming Lips as headliners.
Speed Promotion, on the other hand, has specialised in arena gigs: upcoming acts include Korn in the Helsinki Ice Hall and Britney Spears in the Helsinki Arena.
“New players have come into the market, which has increased competition and also swelled the supply of available acts”, believes Juha Kyyrö.
“At least the volume of supply has grown. All the same, Finland is still a small market-area, so many of the biggest and hottest names omit it from their itineraries.”
The summer festivals are active, too. Provinssirock in Seinäjoki, Ruisrock in Turku, and Ilosaarirock in Joensuu are all working in collaboration with other events on the European circuit with a view to creating an attractive package of gigs for touring artists.
For many American bands, a summer tour of Europe can be almost exclusively festival dates.
3. There are more suitable venues than there once were
For the first time this year (and with a fairly short window of opportunity before it is redeveloped for housing), Helsinki can boast in the Jätkäsaari docklands site a venue capable of holding 80,000 people.
This honey-trap was partly responsible for enticing Madonna to play the Finnish capital this summer. Suvilahti, too, appears to be developing into a regular festival location in Helsinki, with Long Hot Summer and the Flow Festival (Aug. 13-16) both using the site that once housed an electrical power station.
There are a number of venues in town with a capacity of nearly a thousand, meaning that several gigs can be held on the same day.
Concerts are not the sole property of Helsinki, in any case.
Bruce Springsteen (who played Helsinki twice in 2003 and again last July) is this time bringing the E Street Band to Ratina Stadium in Tampere, Metallica will be playing in Pori along with Linkin Park and Machine Head, and Whitesnake are booked in Oulu Arena at the end of this month.
4. Finland is no longer "the end of the line"
This is possibly one of the most significant changes in the concert landscape.
Years ago, during the Soviet era, Finland was seen as the last Western outpost, and its peripheral status made life difficult.
In part because of the sea trip required (see below), artists often thought twice about going further east than Stockholm and Sweden.
In practice, Finland often lost out, or at best got the first date of a tour - when the bands were still a bit ragged and under-rehearsed - or the last - when they were often eager to fly home.
Now things have changed dramatically. Helsinki has become just another stop on the way to and from the big cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow in Russia, and also the capitals of the Baltic States have added to the drawing power of the region.
To take just one example, Madonna will be playing dates in Tallinn and St. Petersburg just before her Helsinki appearance.
5. You can fly over the Gulf of Finland, too
Finland is not really an island, but it might just as well be.
For years, tour managers looked at the map, did some simple arithmetic, and came to the conclusion that wasting a day each way lugging the band's equipment on the ferries from Sweden simply wasn’t worthwhile, when one could play an extra two or three dates in Germany instead.
Finnish fans looked wistfully at the names who came as far as Stockholm’s Globen or the Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg but then turned south and west.
These days a large number of the acts arrive here by plane and use rented P.A. equipment. Rental of speaker stacks and even some instruments has become a professional business hereabouts, and the artists get what they ask for. Only the biggest acts bring all their own gear, and in some cases - The Rolling Stones are a good example - their touring show is SO colossal these days that they will have two or even three complete stadium stage sets on the go all the time, thereby reducing the annoyance of downtime from the sea crossing.
But the gear rentals aspect has taken off strongly.
“Things get pretty crazily busy in the summer”, says Risto Järvelin of Backline Rental, and he calculates nearly 40 dates in the calendar this year. “Our biggest customers are probably the acts coming to Pori Jazz, like Duffy.”
6. Public demand is holding up
The recession is not showing up, at least not yet, in ticket sales.
The bulk of gigs have been sold out, often in a matter of hours, as happened with Madonna, Metallica, and Bruce Springsteen.
To be fair, there have been one or two signs of oversupply, as for instance Limp Bizkit and Primal Scream both had to move their dates to smaller venues than were originally planned.
“Well-known names have no difficulty shifting tickets”, says Juhani Merimaa. “For the newer faces it has been harder to drum up an audience.”
To some extent, demand for tickets has been kept buoyant by an expansion of the potential audience.
If rock music used to be the sole province of the teenagers, now there is interest right up to pension age, particularly towards artists who have been around for decades and who might themselves be as old as the grizzliest of punters.
Bob Dylan (last here in 2008) is still touring intensively at nearly 68, and the likes of Deep Purple, Lou Reed, The Eagles, Bruce Springsteen, or albino guitar virtuoso Johnny Winter (coming to Helsinki in June) are no longer exactly spring chickens.
Since many of these people wrote the soundtrack to the baby-boomers' youth, it is hardly surprising that they draw in some of the old-timers.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 13.5.2009
More on this subject:
 Foreign acts offered up practically every day of the week
JARKKO JOKELAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
jarkko.jokelainen@hs.fi
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| 19.5.2009 - THIS WEEK |
Once we were the last venue on earth, now Finland is seemingly a band magnet
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