EXCLUSIVE: How Stereosonic & Richie McNeill Survived The Festival Turf War

When Future Entertainment and Hardware Corp dissolved Two Tribes in 2006, Hardware’s Richie McNeill says there was a verbal agreement to not go after each others’ festival dates.

With the newly expanded Future Music Festival taking the March slot, Stereosonic – run by McNeill’s Totem and Onelove – had set up shop towards the end of the year. But in 2008, Future brought Global Gathering to Australia and the battlelines were drawn.

“They saw [Stereosonic] as a bit of a threat, they went against our verbal agreement of staying away from each other,” McNeill says. “I let them keep the March Two Tribes date, I was pretty fucked off actually. It was a pretty pissed-off time.”

Together Hardware and Future had put dance festivals on the Australian map, Two Tribes had become an institution and was challenging its rock peers. But working separately tensions were running high.

"I was pretty fucked off actually. It was a pretty pissed-off time."

“I let them keep those March dates that Two Tribes had run for nine or ten years and won awards, ‘best festival’ and blah blah blah, and they just changed the name into Future Music Festival. Kept all the venues, kept all the promoters and kept all the dates and they had an easy run – they just had to change the name and keep booking the thing. I had to start things from scratch again, I had a much harder road from the bottom.

“So this second year [in 2008], while we were still in growth stage and adding Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, they were concerned and tried to stop that. And it backfired, they lost a lot of money – we successfully pulled off Adelaide and Perth and Brisbane and won ‘best festival’ in a couple of those states at that point. But we couldn’t get into Sydney that year because they’d blocked the venue that we had on hold, so we had to do Sydney the year after that was at Moore Park.”

The Global Gathering move wasn’t necessarily a hostile move by Future and McNeill admits that Future’s Mark James’ association with the Godskitchen global super club brand, who own the Global Gathering festival, meant that he was being pushed to promote their flagship festival in Australia.

“He’d actually mentioned Global Gathering prior to Stereosonic and that he was getting pressure from the Godskitchen guys to hold Global Gathering at some point in Australia. It just so happened that it coordinated to happen on the same two weeks as our planned run.”

While Stereosonic had a breakout year in 2008, Global Gathering was not to return.

"And it backfired, they lost a lot of money."

“It kind of solidified to us that we were on the right path because we had the support of the punters, we had a great line-up, it was really current, our finger was on the pulse. I thought [of] the Global Gathering line-up, there were a couple of headliners [Kraftwerk] which were just way off the mark… when the [Global Gathering] line-up came most of the guys were shitting themselves, bracing for losses, but then we were breaking it down going, ‘You know what? Look at this and this and this’. The line-up for me just didn’t do it, the kids didn’t know who half those acts were.

“I knew at that point we were on the right path and we had this connection with the kids and that the Calvin Harris’ and Tiestos were going to break through. Armen Van Helden and Trentmoller – these were the acts of the future.

2008 was not only a turning point for Stereosonic, it also prompted the creation of the Totem Onelove Group, a formalisation of the partnership behind the burgeoning event.

“After two years our accountant said, ‘This is getting really serious, you should set up a new company’,” says McNeill. “So we set up the Totem Onelove Group, which was Totem Industries and Onelove and focused on that.”

Outside of the festival McNeill and Simon Coyle were still throwing Hardware parties, Transatlantics, Belfast rave and touring acts. Onelove had their label with Sony and the successful club nights – the two aspects of the business fuelling one another.

“We came together once a year for the festival basically and worked out of my office in the city for a couple of years. When we set up Totem Onelove Group we moved to Windsor and started doing the festival on a larger scale and started setting up a proper office and now there’s 20-odd staff and some guys in Sydney and it’s going really well.”

One of the key points of difference for Stereosonic was its placement at the end of the year, an attempt to capitalise on a “hunch” McNeill had been harbouring since the Two Tribes days.

“I used to talk with Jason [Ayoubi] and Mark [James] because we used to have all sorts of problems with Two Tribes in March, because of Miami Winter Music Conference and the Grammys and all sorts of stuff. The Grammys are what hit Good Vibrations really hard, they’d always have acts pull out last minute – it really hurt them in the last couple of years.

“So I’d always said ‘Why aren’t we doing this thing in November/December?’ It’s the end of fuckin’ school, kids have just finished high school, uni students are breaking up – it’s the perfect time. There’s nothing before New Year’s Eve… why don’t we be the first ones for summer? Get ‘em when they’re coming out of school before the Christmas parties. And the people who have jobs that want to come to these things, get them before Christmas and before they go on holiday and spend all their money on Grandma and Grandpa and presents. And they thought I was crazy.”

Stereosonic 2011

Between 2009 and 2013 the festival market in Australia became increasingly crowded and large portions of it collapsed. Almost mirroring the dip in the UK market at the turn of the millennium, established brands across all genres began to struggle. Stereosonic managed to consistently buck the trend, headliners like Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren, Calvin Harris and David Guetta capturing the hearts, minds and bank accounts of an Australian public ready to jump on the EDM boom. Having survived the squeeze, Stereosonic expanded to a two-day event in 2013, something McNeill was fighting for until the very end of his reign.

“I was always pushing the envelope, I’ve never been able to sit still. You’ve got to always try and be better at what you do and I just thought the two day thing was the next logical step. It’s what happening all around the world. One day in the city – that’s an Australian thing, there’s not many one-day festivals anywhere in the world these days, it’s been a real Australian thing. Big Day Out – the one day out – that’s a philosophy they championed,” he says.

“I just felt that it was ready for us to go two days because Big Day Out wasn’t getting any electronic stuff, Future were having a really hard time because nobody likes dealing with them anymore, like agents and stuff. The supply was there, everyone wants to play Stereosonic. We had to make it the best event, better value…. I think it worked. Our numbers went down a little bit [in 2013], but we went from 200,000 to 370,000 [punters] or something – so we did 15,000 less tickets around the country across two days, but it went from 200,000 to 370,000.”

In late June 2013 – six weeks after they’d signalled the intention to expand to two days – news emerged that SFX, on an aggressive investment path under the guidance of Live Nation veteran Bob Sillerman, were going to purchase Totem Onelove in a deal involving $60 million cash and $15 million in company stock. The rumours were confirmed when SFX issued their initial public offering prospectus mid-October and the deal was done by the end of the month.

McNeill describes that $75 million sale as like “winning the lottery I guess”, but it had been an almost 25-year slog from those early days bussing in Chasers and hanging around waiting for Central Station Records to open in the morning.

Bob Sillerman wasn’t the only one to look at Totem Onelove, either. Rumours that Live Nation were sniffing around the company were true and there was an ongoing dialogue with their Australian boss Michael Coppel – McNeill’s first festival partner. Sony boss Denis Handlin also considered buying half the business “for a tenth” off what SFX ended up paying for it.

“That came through the Onelove’s connection with the label but they said no,” McNeill says of Sony. “We were talking with Coppel and we actually went through a process with Live Nation but that didn’t make it in the end. Shit happens I guess.”

Was Stereosonic – arguably Australia’s biggest festival at that point – worth the price that its parent company eventually went for?

“I guess so, when you compare with the other businesses, sure… I was pushing for Asia as the next step, obviously I'm not there now and someone is taking that over [but] I’d kind of set most of the dates up before I left. I think that’s the next thing for Stereosonic. I think Asia’s going to connect better with Australian brand over things from Europe or America. Because there’s so many Asian students that study here it just filters back… I was surprised how many people know the brand in Asia. They’re our neighbours and our friends and I think that’s the next logical step.”

In SFX’s initial October 2013 float shares were issued at $13 each. As of December 2014 they were sitting around $4.41. At face value a lot of the company’s initial value has eroded, but McNeill isn’t seeing panic stations.

“With the share price there are losses that have been going on, but that’s just standard when there’s investment in setting the thing up. Initial outlays, and I don’t know how much it takes to put an IPO together but there’s six hundred pages that I read – someone had to put it together!… You look at Live Nation, which is what Bob had done in the past, it’s a long road. There’s a lot of costs involved with setting up a publicly-listed company… putting something like this together with offices in ten countries with 15 companies, doing it in the short space of time that they did is pretty impressive.”

He adds, “Anyone looking to invest in it, you’ve just got to give it time – I don’t know if I can give tips, might be insider trading now!”

As previously outlined, McNeill (his DJ name is Richie Rich) resigned in April to take a long overdue break and connect with his family. It was tough decision for a man who’s spent the past 25 years being unable to stand still, and just because he’s not working in music doesn’t mean he’s stagnant. A non-compete clause means he certainly won’t be working in music until mid-next year, and if he ever does return to his old life it’ll likely be with SFX. McNeill is also a shareholder in Melbourne bar Ms Collins and would like to open another venue, while he’s also keeping himself buying and selling shares with his broker. His wife is a stylist and interior decorator and wants to open a shop with materials and “recycled bits”.

"They changed my life and that of my partner’s."

In December last year the family bought a house that had previously been vacant for eight years. The renovation job should be done by the middle of next year (“The backyard was like Cambodia or something out of Platoon,” he says. “I had my mates round with the chainsaw and slasher and have been turning that into an actual backyard. We had skaters take over the pool and paint it, it’s got a really cool ‘60s kidney-shape deep pool.”) There’s also been offers to be involved with movies.

“I haven’t been able to say much because I'm in a non-compete and, because they changed my life and that of my partner’s, I’ll always give SFX the respect and the chance to propose something and see if we can work together.”

McNeill adds, “If I wanted to go back and work in the [music] industry the first person I’d call is Bob Sillerman. A call one day I hope I’m going to make, and whether that means doing something here in Australia or moving to LA like they want me to, or New York… I’m just going to watch the weather in New York for the next year, it was freezing in January! But I’m just not sure, it’s a tender time at the moment. I'm really enjoying the time off.”

"There was only a little bit of crossover, like some acts on Laneway that we would have liked to have had for example."

There’s a sense that in the past 18 months the old guard, the people that saw a movement in Melbourne and took to Australia and the world, have started to hand the reigns over. Nothing lasts forever, especially in the festival game, and while the rest of Totem Onelove are still in place McNeill’s out and the face of the Future Entertainment has evolved – it’s now being revitalised under the guidance of the Mushroom Group. Never again will the industry see an alliance between the two like in the Two Tribes days. Bluntly, because “Mark’s left”.

“We DJed a lot together, he played at my raves I played at his – my connection with Future was Mark James. He was very passionate about music and at the end of the day Mark James was a DJ. He came down as a DJ from the Gold Coast, got into Chaser’s etc... He shared my passion for music. The rest of Future was just office people and business people, so for me now that he’s gone – he was a bit of an inspiration for me as well.”

If Stereosonic is the country’s biggest dance festival, other genres have found their favourites as well in the past five years. Both Soundwave and the Laneway Festival have emerged as the biggest Australian touring festivals for their own markets.

“Laneway and Soundwave – they knew what they were to their audience, everyone else was trying to be everything to everybody. Future were doing this rock stuff and this indie stuff and techno and everything else, and Big Day Out used to pull it off when it was the only beast around, but now there’s competition. Soundwave did what they were best at, same with us with electronic and Laneway with theirs. They were our competition really, but they weren’t because they weren’t coming for our music and we weren’t going anywhere near their’s. There was only a little bit of crossover, like some acts on Laneway that we would have liked to have had for example.”

If McNeill does return to music and it doesn’t happen with SFX, there’s still one man that he has unfinished business with – his biggest inspiration out of all the ‘rock’ promoters.

“I’d love to work with Coppel, since I lost him that money in ’98. But I have no idea what I’ll be doing. Right now it’s me time and family time!”