If there is one thing Croatians can be excited about this year, it is a stacked concert calendar, which is more than welcome after two years of cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the return of music festivals on the coast, Croatians are particularly looking forward to three massive shows this year announced at the end of 2021 – Sting at Arena Zagreb, Arctic Monkeys at Pula Arena, and The Cure at Arena Zagreb.
TCN spoke to the man responsible for making these gigs happen – Nick Hobbs of Charm Music, a concert division operating under the Charmenko group of companies specialized in international music organization.
How did you get into promoting concerts?
It’s a long story. When I was 23, I organized an Italian tour for Henry Cow, and I promoted one of the shows myself. They asked me to be their manager.
I moved to London, and a year later, the band split. I carried on working with them on offshoot projects, then I moved to Stockholm for a year and worked for a promoter as their international buyer. Then I moved back to London and joined Rough Trade in about 1985 as an artist agent for their roster outside the UK. I then started managing David Thomas and Pere Ubu and some other acts and gradually, over the years, developed an interest and contacts in Eastern Europe. By about 1995, EE was my main work, so it has been since. In 2003 I moved to Istanbul.
Tell us about Charmenko and Charm in general. What are some of the biggest acts on your roster?
I can’t remember when I came up with the name, but it was maybe around 1990. It was just me plus a small crew of London-based staff for a long time, and we worked from my home in Brixton. Now we have our own offices in Turkey, Serbia, Croatia, Czechia, and Poland and clients all over EE. We also have our own roster of artists that we represent more or less worldwide.
I’ve worked with many big acts over the years, but off the top of my head…
Radiohead
Muse
George Michael
U2
Ed Sheeran
Rihanna
Beyoncé
Elton John
David Bowie
Lou Reed
Nick Cave
Oasis
Blur
Rammstein
and many others.
Really exciting concerts were announced in Croatia this year, from Sting to Arctic Monkeys and The Cure. How are the interest and ticket sales so far? Do you expect sellouts?
We expect Sting to sell out, Arctic Monkeys are already sold out, and we hope The Cure will sell out; they’re a great live band!
Croatia is not always viewed as a desirable destination for touring musicians, as many acts choose other cities in the region. Why do you think that is?
It’s a small country…and the further south you go into the Balkans, the more straggly concert possibilities become. Anyway, the Balkans are much more developed than they were 20 years ago. So the trend is positive – as long as Bosnia doesn’t fall apart – we hope not!
What difficulties have you encountered when promoting and organizing shows in Croatia?
Mostly no special difficulties and generally we’ve not had disasters in Croatia and, with one minor exception, the clients we’ve worked with have always paid us – that’s nice. One particular difficulty is that Serbia and Bosnia aren’t part of the EU. Once they become part of the EU, all kinds of opportunities will open for Croatia too. Borders are stupid, just like nationalism is.
Charm has announced concerts in Zagreb and Pula – anything planned for Split or the Dalmatia region? If not, why?
Zagreb is the capital. Pula has the arena. I’ve done shows in Split; not easy to make them work financially. Usually, provincial shows with international artists rather depend on municipal support for them to be viable. Split is also further from Slovenia, which is an overlapping market with Zagreb and Pula.
What would make promoting and organizing concerts in Croatia easier for Charm Music?
I hope we will develop our own office further. In the end, the concert business depends on ticket buyers. My own wish is for us to be able to work with more left-field artists, but we worked with Terra Neo, for example; it wasn’t a commercial success. Better connections with venues and municipalities would be good, too.
What else can we expect from Charm in 2022?
There’s a lot of great music around that we’d love to promote but selling enough tickets to cover the costs is very, very tricky and very, very risky. So we have lots of discussions internally, and we have lots of ideas.
Learn more about Charmenko and Charm Music Croatia.
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