The biz's brightest new talents tell their stories. This week it's the turn of Dice music team member Pat Mills.
How did you break into the music business?
I spent a lot of time during the latter part of school and university writing about music for various publications and DJing a little bit, while spending a lot of time at gigs and and club nights across London. At this point, I was offered an internship with former Old Blue Last events manager Russ Tannen, now our chief revenue officer. Fast forward a few years, I shot him a speculative email and he mentioned the new company called Dice that he’d set up and I’ve been here ever since.
What’s the best thing about your job?
Working with an artist from the start of a new project and being a part of their team on the live side, arming them with the insights they need to make great decisions. We saw it pay off with Bicep last year. From having the first meeting with their team about their idea to play a live show, we used Dice features like Remind Me and Waiting List to help guide pre-sales and venue choices along the way. In the end they went on to sell out three nights at Printworks and we still had thousands more fans on the waiting list looking to snag tickets. We also gave a few superfans who had been to every show free tickets for the Printworks night, so it was great to reward them.
What can Dice do for music?
In simple terms, we can get people out more. People know us as a ticketing platform as that’s where we entered the market, but the event discovery side of the app is huge. New Shows Thursday, a feature we’ve just released, is a great example of this. Now fans can open Dice on a Thursday to check out the best new on-sales personalised just for them. The knock-on effect of this is more revenue for artists and venues, and better experiences for fans.
What bugs you most about the biz?
People follow traditions that have existed since the music industry began, even though the way we consume music on both the recorded and live side of the industry has changed dramatically, a few times over. It feels like things are starting to change now though...
What’s your best music biz story?
Being stood between [footballer] Lukas Podolski and Kylie Minogue at the Rihanna show where she held all of those journalists captive on the 777 tour was a pretty weird one. Other than that, I once asked Mike Skinner for guestlist on Twitter for a Streets show in Birmingham. He got me into the afterparty when I was definitely too young to be in the room, and then sent me a postcard afterwards.
PAT’S RECOMMENDED TRACK:
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