[Dixielandjazz] Music Festivals are BIG BUSINESS

[Stephen G Barbone]

While Trad Jazz festivals shrink, it seems that music festivals, especially those promoted by professionals, are proliferating. The below is excerpted from the New York Times and explains why and how. Perhaps there is a lesson here for trad jazz festival operations?


Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


Music Festivals Make a Move Into New York


NY Times - By James McKinley Jr

If you think there’s a new pop music festival every couple of weeks in New York this summer, you’re not imagining things.

For years the conventional wisdom among concert promoters was that music festivals face impossible hurdles in the city, where the cultural calendar is crowded, large public spaces are hard to reserve, and costs are high.

But this summer entrepreneurs have started three new for-profit festivals in New York, including the CBGB Festival that begins on Thursday and features the bands Guided by Voices and Cloud Nothings. Over the last four years three other large-scale festivals have taken root and prospered.

With album sales in decline, festivals of all sorts have become big business, and promoters in New York look with envy on the success of large urban festivals like Lollapalooza in Chicago and South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Several said they see a huge potential market in the nation’s most densely populated major city for a big festival, if the right formula can be found.

“Lots of people are running at New York, both local promoters and, for that matter, out-of-town promoters,” said Mark Campana, a co-president for North American concerts at Live Nation, the largest concert promoter in the country. “They are all looking to try to find a way, but it’s expensive. This is not something for the faint of heart.”

This week the first CBGB festival, organized by a group that bought the rights to the famous punk-rock club that closed in 2006, kicks off with concerts in Times Square, Central Park and at 40 clubs around the city. Last month two music-industry veterans resurrected a concert series at clubs to accompany the New Music Seminar. Later this month the Black Keys and Snoop Dogg will anchor the first Catalpa Festival on Randalls Island, booked by Dave Foran, a young Irish impresario. . . .

Now in its second year, Governors Ball drew 40,000 people over two days in June to Randalls Island Park with a mix of electronic music and indie rock bands. Electric Zoo, a festival devoted to electronic dance music, returns to the same park over the Labor Day weekend for the fourth year and is expected to draw 100,000 people over three days, promoters said. And the Northside Festival in Brooklyn, started four years ago by the publishers of L Magazine, went off in June without a hitch in Williamsburg, drawing some 80,000 people over four days.
The sudden abundance of music festivals in the city echoes a national trend. More than 20 major festivals were started this year across the country. Live Nation alone has plans to stage eight this year — more than doubling its festival business, and starting outdoor events in cities like Philadelphia and St. Paul, Mr. Campana said. . . .

The promoters behind the CBGB, New Music Seminar and Northside festivals have all adopted as a model the CMJ Music Marathon, a long-running music industry conference and concert series held each fall in New York. These promoters are making deals with existing clubs to present lineups that put obscure and emerging bands on bills with better-known headliners.

It’s a flexible design, promoters and club owners say. People can buy a pass for the entire festival or just pay a cover charge at a club for a particular night. Generally the clubs make money from the sale of drinks and, in some cases, take a percentage of door charges, while the promoter books the acts and pays the major artists out of the sales of festival passes. Some of the lesser groups play for a small stipend or a percentage of the door receipts.

Such a blueprint works well in New York with its plethora of clubs and lack of open space, said Tim Hayes, the lead promoter behind the CBGB festival. . . .

Promoters wading into the business have studied the failure of All Points West, a large three-day festival that was held in Liberty State Park in Jersey City in 2008 and 2009. That event, produced by the promoters behind Coachella, featured big-name artists like Jay-Z and Coldplay but did not make a profit and was canceled in 2010.

Tom Russell, one of promoters behind Governors Ball, said a lesson he and his partners took from All Points West was to stage a smaller event and to book acts with proven track records. This year the festival made a profit by presenting 27 groups over two days with no overlapping sets, and relying on headliners like Fiona Apple, Beck and Kid Cudi to pull in crowds.

“You have to find that balance where your event can do well,” he said. “Is there really a need for 5 stages and 70 bands a day? It’s expensive to do that, and the crowd doesn’t respond well to it.”