Hope & Glory organisers to blame for event's collapse, council investigation finds
Liverpool City Council has completed its investigation into what went wrong at the city's inaugural Hope & Glory Festival back in August. And I'm sure it will come as a surprise to no one to find out that the Council's conclusion is that the event's organiser Lee O'Hanlon fucked up royally.

As previously reported, although plenty of bands did play on the first day of the city centre Hope & Glory festival, gates opened late, stages ran behind all day, sets were cut short and Charlotte Church's set was cut entirely, while festival-goers reported massive queues at the gates, bars and toilets. It was also tricky moving around the festival's site, and many expressed concern about the dangerous levels of overcrowding.

Day two was cancelled via a social media post that simply read "no festival today". The festival's official Twitter account then began sparring with angry ticket-holders, while on Facebook a statement told punters to direct their anger at a single production manager who had allegedly failed to complete the event's site on time.

A lengthy and rambling statement from promoter O'Hanlon published the next day did apologise for the shambles, but spent much more time laying into the aforementioned production manager and Liverpool City Council. It also dedicated plenty of page space to complaints that council officials had sent food intended for day two's riders to a local charity without the permission of the festival's management.

Prefacing the council's report into what went wrong, Liverpool's Assistant Mayor Wendy Simon writes: "I am rightly proud of Liverpool's cultural programme - from the city-council run events right through to those run by external organisations. Our incredible track record means we are renowned for staging large-scale, successful events, but when something jeopardises that hard-won reputation we have to take action".

She continues: "In the days that followed the debacle that was the Hope & Glory Festival, it became apparent that issues which occurred largely pointed to action (or lack of) by the organiser ... The report clearly states that the failure of the event was down to the event organiser's mismanagement and as a result, a catalogue of errors were unavoidable. Our staff did tremendous work on the first day sorting out a wide range of issues which enabled the event to continue".

The report concedes that the council should have had a more robust system in place to assess "the suitability, capacity and track‐record of independent event organisers", noting that "more substantial checks at the initial application stage would be an effective means of assessing applications before they become too advanced".

It also includes a detailed timeline of events, showing that council staff first became concerned about the organisation of the festival shortly before it was due to open on the Saturday. By midday, a rep for the council on site had expressed "concern over the management of the event, and the apparent absence of an operations manager".

The report also claims that O'Hanlon attempted to open the site before safety checks had been completed. Shortly afterward, the concerned council rep was placed in an operational role at the festival.

At around 4.15pm, police were called to deal with "crowd crushing", at which point it is claimed that O'Hanlon said that "he had lost control". The site was closed, and reopened shortly afterwards, although walk-up ticket sales were suspended.

As council and security staff attempted to manage issues including over-crowding, people jumping over the fence without tickets and congestion at the entrance gate, an emergency meeting was called just after 6pm. At this, the report says, O'Hanlon "appears to break down emotionally and leaves the meeting. He is not contactable either by radio or mobile phone".

After this, council staff "effectively take over full operational management of the event", and O'Hanlon is not see again until 2am, when he returned and told technicians setting up the main stage for the next day that the remainder of the event would be cancelled. This is seemingly not information he relayed to anyone else involved.

"It appears that the LCC team [who were] working to save the second day were unaware of these developments until at least 9.30am [on day two]", says the report. Although it admits that the cancelation of Sunday's activities was the appropriate action.

Speaking to the Liverpool Echo, O'Hanlon maintained that he was not to blame for the collapse of the event. He again blamed council officials and Richard Agar, the production manager who was mentioned in the festival's aforementioned social media posts as day two was officially called off.

It seems Agar had been employed as both Production and Safety Manager at the event, despite these being two distinct roles normally carried out by separate people. The report shows that tensions grew between the two men after the opening of the event was delayed. It also states that Agar remained on site for an hour and a half to assist with the event's ongoing problems even after being "dismissed" by O'Hanlon, before finally being "ejected".

"Richard Agar Productions - I maintain that they were a professional company that had wholesale failings in the festival and delivery of the festival", says O'Hanlon. "That company also chose the people in key positions that were part of the delivery and I also state that there were failings of Liverpool City Council. I have said that I accept there were failings in the festival but it would be unfair and inappropriate not to attribute those exact failings to the appropriate bodies and professional services that were employed to deliver the festival".

As previously reported, after the company behind the event went into liquidation it left behind debts of nearly £1 million. Among those owed money are ticketing companies Eventbrite and Skiddle, which paid out refunds to ticketholders after it became apparent that the organisers would not do so.

You can read Liverpool City Council's full report here.

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Nelly arrested over rape allegation
Rapper Nelly was arrested over the weekend over allegations of rape. A woman alleges that he attacked her in Auburn, Washington, where he was performing on Friday night. Police stopped his tour bus the following morning.

A police report states that a woman made a 911 call shortly before 4am on Saturday morning, saying that she had been raped by Nelly on his tour bus. The rapper was released without charge a few hours after being arrested, but a scheduled performance in Ridgefield, Washington that evening was cancelled.

The rapper's legal rep Scott Rosenblum said in a statement: "Our initial investigation clearly establishes this allegation is devoid of credibility and is motivated by greed and vindictiveness. I am confident, once this scurrilous accusation is thoroughly investigated, there will be no charges. Nelly is prepared to address and pursue all legal avenues to redress any damage caused by this clearly false allegation".

On Twitter, the rapper said: "Let me say that I am beyond shocked that I have been targeted with this false allegation. I am completely innocent. I am confident that once the facts are looked at, it will be very clear that I am the victim of a false allegation".

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Zappa siblings continue to spar over trademark claims
Ahmet Zappa has responded to renewed claims made by his brother Dweezil that the Zappa Family Trust is attempting to stop him from using his own name professionally.

As previously reported, Dweezil recently went public again about the Zappa family's ongoing dispute following the announcement of plans for a hologram of Frank Zappa to tour next year.

He denounced the project, adding that he was not - despite suggestions in the press release - involved in it. He then discussed his ongoing legal issues with the Zappa Family Trust - operated by his siblings Ahmet and Diva Zappa - claiming that they are attempting to stop him from using the Zappa name professionally, despite it being his actual surname.

In a statement published last week, Ahmet Zappa writes: "Let me start by saying, I would rather be sitting face to face with Dweezil and figuring things out privately and respectfully - like I think families should do. Frank would have wanted that. That fact has never changed on my end. I have repeatedly said my door is open".

Resolving things "privately and respectfully" doesn't sound like much fun, does it? But that's not happening anyway, as this remains a very public dispute.

Ahmet goes on to say that a number of the issues Dweezil has with the trust are out of his hands, because they are the result of rules laid down by Frank himself and their late mother Gail. He goes on to assert that the Trust has "no issue with Dweezil performing under his full name".

"The ZFT has never had an issue with it", he says. "The ZFT and its lawyers have repeated this to Dweezil and his different lawyers multiple times. For him to say that we have tried to stop him from using Dweezil Zappa is untrue and misleading. Additionally, Dweezil is representing that the ZFT owns rights in the Dweezil mark but this is absolutely false".

Ahmet then calls out his brother's PledgeMusic campaign, which he is running in order to raise money to fund his legal battle against the trust. "Our family business is about Frank Zappa", he continues. "Beyond that, this gets into the minutiae of Frank's trademarks since the 1970s".

"For me on a personal level, I think it's disgraceful that Dweezil, a guy who has received millions of dollars, would mislead and manipulate Zappa fans into thinking he cannot afford to handle his own, again in my opinion, completely absurd lawsuit against the ZFT - of which he is a beneficiary - collecting money from many people who may have far less than he does... to fight a battle that if he TRULY wanted to resolve, he could have tried communicating directly with his little brother".

You can read the open letter in full here.

Dweezil responded to Ahmet's open letter over the weekend, disputing his brother's version of events and accusing him of a strategy of "deflection and deception" while "relying on people to ignore the facts".

He adds that he's not against speaking to his brother directly, but adds: "The question at hand is, what is the difference between the Ahmet that speaks to me on the phone and the Ahmet that speaks to his lawyers? There is a clear history of Ahmet saying one thing and doing the opposite. For a phone call to be of any value, there must be some legal closure as a result".

"For clarification, I have not received any recent emails or calls from my brother", he adds. "Ahmet, if you did send a recent email, which address was it sent to? Was it sent it to my [email protected] email address, the one you recently blocked me from and illegally seized and archived all of the contents, claiming it was for the 'protection' of the ZFT? The role of the trustees of the ZFT (you) is to work within the best interests of the beneficiaries of the ZFT (me), so how does stealing all of my emails protect me, I wonder?"

He concludes: "I'm sure you're aware that you could easily make things better right away by signing a trademark co-existence agreement. Why not show good faith in advance of a phone call?"

In short, no one's making up any time soon. The dispute is set to go to trial next month.

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RIAA updates list of biggest pirates
The Recording Industry Association Of America has updated the "notorious markets" list of big bad piracy websites that it provides to the US government each year. The latest version puts particular focus on stream-rippers, the record industry's new big bugbear.

In its new report, the trade body starts off fairly chipper. It notes that a number of file-sharing sites have recently shut down. All of these ran off the Sharebeast platform, the operator of which recently pleaded guilty to copyright infringement charges.

The labels group is also pretty pleased to be able to take YouTube-mp3 off its list, the highly popular stream-ripper having recently agreed to close as part of a settlement with the RIAA.

But there ends the positivity. Because if you can be sure of one thing on the internet, it's that there's always someone willing to fill an open space. Or several people.

"Unfortunately, [following the closure of YouTube-mp3] several other stream-ripping sites have 'doubled down' and carry on in this illegal behaviour, continuing to make this form of theft a major concern for the music industry", says the RIAA. "The overall popularity of these sites and the staggering volume of traffic it attracts evidences the enormous damage being inflicted on the US record industry".

The organisation says that it is now monitoring over 70 stream-ripping services, with the seven most popular - Mp3juices, Convert2mp3, Savefrom, Ytmp3, Convertmp3, Flvto and 2conv - added to its notorious markets list.

It adds that many of these sites use various means to mask their true locations, making legal action against them difficult. One service used to do this masking is the otherwise legit internet firm Cloudflare, which the RIAA has been getting particularly shirty about of late - in particular as part of its legal assault on MP3Skull.

"More sites are now employing services of Cloudflare, a content delivery network and distributed domain name server service", says the report. "BitTorrent sites, like many other pirate sites, are increasing turning to Cloudflare because routing their site through Cloudflare obfuscates the IP address of the actual hosting provider, masking the location of the site".

The focus in the report on Cloudflare, which is used by a great many websites of all types, suggests that the RIAA may be planning to ramp up its pressure on the company to act against the pirates using it.

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Ticketmaster employees named in Songkick lawsuit leave company
Two Ticketmaster employees named in Songkick's anti-trust lawsuit against the ticketing firm's owner Live Nation - Stephen Mead and Zeeshan Zaidi - have left the company, Billboard has confirmed.

As previously reported, Mead previously worked for CrowdSurge, which was acquired by Songkick in 2015. Mead left Crowdsurge in 2012, taking up a role at Ticketmaster's Ticketweb a year later, before joining the main Ticketmaster company as Director Of Client Relations & Artist Services in 2015.

Songkick alleges that he nevertheless retained 85,000 Crowdsurge company documents on his laptop - including business plans, financial information, contracts and more - which he used to create reports for his new bosses about potential new business. It also claims he accessed CrowdSurge test sites created for potential new clients, which were publicly available to anyone who knew how the URLs were formulated.

The lawsuit claims that Ticketmaster then developed a plan to compete with CrowdSurge based on the confidential information it had obtained, including targeting new clients which the start-up was aiming to work with.

Both Mead and Zaidi were named in an updated version of the lawsuit, which Songkick originally filed against Live Nation in 2015. The main focus of the litigation is the allegation that the live entertainment firm - which is, of course, a significant player in tour and festival promotion, and venue and artist management, as well as tickets - was holding the acts it works with to ransom, especially in the US, if they decided to collaborate with the Songkick on fan club pre-sales.

Live Nation said that the extra allegations of hacking added in February this year were "baseless", although Songkick submitted emails from Mead purported to discuss covertly accessing Crowdsurge's system.

With the case set to go to trial next month, it emerges that Mead and Zaidi are no longer working for Ticketmaster. The exact circumstances behind their departures have not been disclosed.

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Mixcloud signs direct licensing deal with Warner Music
Mixcloud has signed its first direct licensing agreement with Warner Music. Until now, the online radio platform has relied on blanket licences from collecting societies like PRS and PPL. It has been able to operate under such licences because it offers only access to mixes and radio shows, not individual tracks on-demand. Though, given the user-upload element of Mixcloud, it was always an innovative use of the PPL licence on the recordings side.

This first move towards direct licensing with the record companies is part of a plan to build a subscriptions-based business around the content uploaded to the Mixcloud platform. According to the Financial Times, Mixcloud is also in negotiations with Sony and Universal, with plans to allow users to subscribe to the output of specific radio personalities or shows. The subscription option will also apparently allow listeners to download content to listen to offline, functionality the company couldn't offer under its collecting society licences.

What the company is not trying to do, stresses co-founder Niko Perez, is "do a SoundCloud" and try to compete head on with existing streaming music services in an already crowded market. "We don't want to do the $9.99 a month [thing]", he tells the FT. "That's done. That market is served. What we're building is going to be very customised".

Speaking at one of the CMU Insights sessions at this year's Canadian Music Week conference, music industry consultant Vickie Nauman said that the cost of entry to the streaming market - in terms of the advances demanded by the labels from innovative start-ups - was stifling the development of a broader range of services. Demanding tens of millions of dollars upfront and pushing services to stick to the standard $9.99 model makes it difficult, if not impossible, for more niche services to compete.

Licensing Mixcloud, which does not, and seemingly will not, compete head on with Spotify et al, may be a sign that the major labels are ready to make it easier for smaller services with more targeted audiences to get into and grow within the digital music market.

CMU's Setlist podcast is on Mixcloud, where you can listen to it for nothing. There's a new episode out today and everything.

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Stuart Freeman launches Think Social
Former Director Of Publicity at Warner Music UK, Stuart Freeman, has announced the launch of a new social media management agency called Think Social.

"As streaming continues to change the music industry, it is imperative artists evolve and change the way they communicate with fans to take full advantage of this opportunity", says Freeman. "Think Social aims to create an 'always on' communications strategy between artists and their fans via social and traditional media built around positioning, reputation and integrity".

Freeman started his career at EMI in 2001, coming to Warner when it acquired Parlophone in 2013. At launch, Think Social is working with Gorillaz, Stereophonics, Kraftwerk, and Jason Derulo, among others.

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CMU's Setlist podcast discusses 'takedown-stay-down'
The latest edition of CMU's weekly music business podcast Setlist is out today. This week's episode sees CMU's Andy Malt and Chris Cooke discussing the European Commission's new guidelines on illegal content online, Spotify's ongoing mechanical royalty woes Stateside, and what Calvin Harris made of his music opening Theresa May's disastrous Conservative Party conference speech last week.

Those new guidelines from the EC largely focus on content that incites violence or terrorism, but also include new recommendations on how copyright infringing material should be managed by internet platforms that inadvertently host such content as a result of automated or user-initiated activity.

The document comments on the 'takedown systems' that internet companies must operate in order to enjoy safe harbour protection, ie so that they can't be sued over the copyright infringing content they inadvertently host. EC officials advocate more sophisticated takedown systems that ensure that once a piece of copyright infringing content has been taken down once, it cannot then be uploaded again by another user - much like YouTube's Content ID system.

"That's the irony here", says Cooke on the show. "Because normally when we're talking about safe harbours, and the music industry's dislike of safe harbours, we're laying into YouTube. But that's not about the takedown system bit. The issue with YouTube is that the music industry doesn't think that it should have safe harbour protection at all, however good its takedown system is. The argument being, it's a user upload platform, not an internet service provider".

He continues: "When it comes to all the other internet companies, where the music industry isn't saying they shouldn't have safe harbour protection - so internet service providers and server hosting companies - there they're saying the takedown systems aren't good enough. So it's sort of ironic that when it comes to the whole takedown issue, YouTube is doing exactly what the music industry wants".

Of course, these new guidelines are just that, and do not place any new legal obligations on internet companies to offer more robust takedown systems. However, adds Cooke, this report could be a step towards that happening: "As is often the case when governments or the European Commission put out guidelines ... there is an implied threat at the bottom, this maybe an opportunity for the internet companies to put their houses in order. If they don't, then maybe next year [the EC will] actually start putting some new laws in place to try to make this happen".

Setlist is available wherever you find podcasts. Find out more and listen here.

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Sam Smith announces new album, The Thrill Of It All
Samuel Frederick Smith - you can call him Sam - has announced that he will release his second album, titled 'The Thrill Of It All', on 3 Nov.

The album sees Smith work with producers Jimmy Napes, Timbaland, Malay, Jason 'Poo Bear' Boyd and Stargate. There's also a collaboration with unsigned artist Yebba, so that's nice. Cynics can assume that she'll have her own album out on some Universal-owned label, probably the Universal imprint to which Smith himself is signed - Capitol - next year.

As previously reported, the new record will be promoted via your TV licence fee, with a one-off hour long special on BBC One to coincide with the release.

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The Hoff comes to Noel Gallagher's defence
If you thought the never-ending battle between Liam and Noel Gallagher was starting to swing in Liam's favour, his older brother's team just got a lot stronger. Noel now has The Hoff on his side.

Currently touring the media organisations of the UK to tell them just how much he dislikes his brother (not sure if he's doing anything else at the moment), Liam was recently moaning about Noel's new solo album on Radio X. What he'd heard of the new Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds record was "designer psychedelia", he reckoned.

"If you're gonna do psychedelic music, at least take mushrooms", he said. "I hate the kind of people who sit there and read a book on how to do psychedelic music. You're meant to take loads of mushrooms, start dribbling and see what happens. Designer psychedelia is not what it's about".

In illustrating what someone reading a book on psychedelia might look like, Liam picked up a flyer for David Hasselhoff's upcoming cruise (a genuine thing that is happening), causing him to note: "He's more psychedelic than Our Kid".

To be fair, he has a point. But then, David Hasselhoff is more psychedelic than anyone. The existence of David Hasselhoff is the nagging doubt in all of our brains that we all took too many mushrooms once and have never come down again. Still, the man who may or may not be a collective hallucination got wind of this incident and had something to say about it.

"Why trash your brother Noel Gallagher of all people and then include me", he wrote in a tweet to Liam. "If Oasis had done a cruise I would have gone".

The tweet's now been deleted. Possibly because The Hoff decided he didn't want the fight. Or possibly because he realised he didn't need to clarify to Liam Gallagher who is brother is. Or maybe even because the retort about the cruise doesn't make any sense. Either way, nothing has been resolved between anyone. As you were.

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