Rock The Bells:Hip Hop Festival Grows and Grows

The Rock The Bells festival was created a few years ago to address the absolute dirth of quality hip hop shows and the total absence of hip hop festivals (yo, what happened to the HoB tours ofthe 90s??) .


This year's festival will take place over two days, August 5th in San Bernardino, California and August 6th at Sleep Train Ampitheatre in Northern California. The festival features Wu-Tang Clan, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Redman, De La Soul, Living Legends, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, and many more (including rapper, Supernatural, who plans to beat the Guinness world record for longest freestyle rap by rapping for nearly 9 hours straight). The event will also feature the other elements of hip hop with stages for turntablism, b-boying, and graffiti.

The promoters plan to tour the festival later in the year.

Articles here and here

Brief: Live Nation acquires CPI/ Cohl

Concert industry trailblazer Michael Cohl will now sit on the board at Live Nation as part of a an agreement following Live Nation's recent acquisition of controlling interest in Concert Productions International. Cohl brings over 30 years of experience in the promotion business and is widely known as a pioneer in the area of global touring. Cohl has produced 5 of the top 10 highest grossing concert tours of all time. Live Nation's head of global touring is Arthur Fogel, founder of TNA, and in adding Cohl to the board, Live Nation has brought together two of the heaviest hitters in the industry.

Full press release here.

Two Promotion Companies to Watch

Independent Indianapolis-based promotion firm Live 360 is breaking into the St. Louis market and further into the midwest, providing some healthy competition for Live Nation. Helmed by former Co-CEO of Clear Channel Entertainment, Dave Lucas, the company boasts a roster of employees (almost all poached from Live Nation and CCE) with "over 100 years combined music industry experience." Upcoming concerts include Rob Zombie and All-American Rejects.

"There will be a bit of competition between all of us, but everybody will get their piece of the pie," says Live-360 CEO Dave Lucas.

Article here.

Starland Ballroom in New Jersey is the fourth most popular venue in the world. With a wise shift to the younger demographic through elimination of alcohol sales at all ages and booking increasingly popular emo/pop-punk bands, the popularity of the venue has grown in leaps and bounds. Asbury Park Press profiles the men at Concerts East who make the magic.

What the clubs found in the early 2000s was a shift in who was buying concert nightclub tickets.
"The music industry is not aimed at people over 21.....It's really 10 to 20 years old because those are the kids who are buying stuff and in particular merchandise — it's serious money. I remember we had one band in here who in two days sold $7,500 in merchandise. Every little girl lined up bought a T-shirt and a hat."

"The post-punk movement has been good to Starland," Pallagrosi (co-owner of Concerts East) said.

Full article here.

Live Nation's Cannonball: Pool Becomes Venue to One Neighborhood's Chagrin

High times at McCarren Park Pool- pic from Pool Project

Here in my very own neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn we have a massive 7,000 person swimming pool just waiting to be used. Trouble is it was closed a few years back and has since fallen into grave disrepair. In the past few years local activists have banded together to call for the pool to be rehabilitate to its former glory. A local dance company staged a massive fundraiser performance inside the pool and our local Live Nation outpost Ron Delsener (who run the Warsaw, a large club only a few blocks away) put $200,000 up to have the area cleaned-up.

In appreciation of this donation the city has given Delsener use of the pool for a summer concert series. Acts like Bloc Party and Deerhoof will be rocking out in the pool, but not every one is stoked.

Williamsburg choreographer Noemie LaFrance, who will present the second annual installment of her "Agora" dance series at the pool this September, said ...she is .. pleased that the company's involvement is currently limited to this summer. "This community is really not interested in having corporate America insert itself in our resources," she said.

For my part, I can say that while I am interested in alternative venues, I don't think I want Delsener to get use of the pool for any longer than the summer. Not only do they have full use of a theater two blocks away, but there is also a really great underused ampitheatre on the east side of Manhattan just screaming to be exploited. While Greenpoint is a major hipster haven, I still think that this pool stands to service much much more of the hood's population than a few concerts by indie rock flavors of the month.

So though I do like some of of the bands Live Nation is bringing to the pool I'm not going to be paying to see any of these shows. I doubt I'm missing much since there will be so many great FREE concerts all around the city during that time. I sure hope next year round this time, I'll be sunning next to the refurbished pool!

Article in NY Daily News
McCarren Pool Project

MTV talks about gas and gigging

MTV discusses how a few bands are challenging soaring gas prices

Band Sailing to Battle Gas Hikes

Seek and ye shall find. Just as I was lamenting the lack of news about how rising gas prices are affecting touring bands, I stumble across this article discussing a couple of artists who are planning to boat to their gigs!

One group of bands has planned a two-week August tour by sailboat, traveling along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, which runs along the East Coast between Cape Cod, Mass., and Miami. The plan was hatched by musicians Red Hunter, lead singer of the indie-rock band Peter and the Wolf, and indie musician Jana Hunter.

"It sort of started as a joke — we were playing pool and drinking beer and talking about how cool it would be … but then Jana e-mailed me and told me she thought she'd found a sailboat," said Red Hunter.

The only way this could be more awesome is if the gigs were on the boat as well. ..Hmm, don't steal my idea! Peter and Wolf's myspace lists all the places where they've already received press for this novel idea (MTV, ABC, and PopMatters are just a few), and though I am certain their star is already rising, the fact that they are touring with (Asthmatic Kitty recording artist) Castanets probably won't hurt either. I-- for one-- will definitely go see them on the boat tour!

Full ABC article here , links to other articles on Peter and Wolf Myspace page here.

Pioneering Agent: Ian Copeland Dies

(Via Billboard) Trailblazing booking agent, Ian Copeland died today at age 57 after a battle with melanoma. Copeland, who grew up the son of CIA agent, is best known as founder of Frontier Booking International (FBI) where he worked with such seminal hitmakers as R.E.M., The Go-Go's, Black Sabbath, The Police, and Oingo Boingo. Many credit Copeland with helping to carve out a real touring circuit for rock acts. In 1995, after leaving the booking business Simon & Schuster published his memoirs, “Wild Thing: The Backstage, On the Road, In the Studio, Off the Charts Memoirs of Ian Copeland.”

Copeland who was, of course, an avid music lover when on to become the proprietor of Backstage Cafe', a Beverly Hills venue which was a favorite among many top musicians.

Copeland is survived by his two daughters Chandra and Barbara, his mother Lorraine, his brothers Miles III (founder of IRS Records) and Stewart (drummer for The Police) and his sister Lennie.

Touring influences The Zutons

While other bands blame hectic touring schedules for long delays between albums, other bands take the touring in stride. In a recent interview with Billboard, frontman/songwriter Dave McCabe of The Zutons spoke about being influenced by their recent touring and life on the road.
"The [title track], I actually wrote that on a plane in America. It's about transport -- waiting for someone to pick you up and they don't turn up on time," he tells Billboard.com. "[It's also about] people being ignorant when they do turn up, [coming] with attitudes and bringing it with them."

Other songs, including the upcoming U.K. single "Valerie" and "Oh Stacey," came out of meeting people at U.S. shows supporting Keane and Muse.

The next time we hear a band complain that their album would have come much sooner or been much better if it weren't for the hectic touring(ahem Yeah Yeah Yeahs), we might point them in the direction of The Zutons. While I'm sure the public is not scrambling to hear songs about the contents of the hotel mini-bar, life is happening all around us if we open our eyes and there are millions more songs just waiting to be written. No excuses!



Full article here

Oversized pavilion gives away free tickets

In a further indication that massive arenas are headed for extinction, The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, a 16,500 person venue in Texas is giving away free tickets to a number of shows in an effort to fill seats.

Full article here

Live Nation Gets Wired

True to their word, Live Nation is well on their way to wiring all 120 of their ampitheatres in the coming year. Alas, they are not doing it so you can catch up on your telecommuting during the Jimmy Buffett show but rather so that they can broadcast that Buffett to the world through television, mobile phone, satellite and other mediums. This wing is known as Instant Live.

"Live Nation is involved with more than 29,000 live events reaching more than 60 million fans a year," said Live Nation Chief Executive Officer Michael Rapino. "Our venues are natural platforms for transformation into live studios, particularly given recent advancements in recording technology which have dramatically reduced costs. Lower production costs coupled with the proliferation of distribution channels hungry for live content, have created a unique opportunity for Live Nation to help artists
connect with their fans in a brand new way."

The infrastructure was first tested out during LiveAid, and I understand that it also provides the audience members with a CD or DVD copy of the show immediately following the performance so they can walk away with a great memento. I am curious:

1) How the artists are cut in on this deal
2) Since the infrastructure is so low on the Live Nation/InstantLive side, how much of a cut are they taking and is it fair
3) What is the price point at which they are finding a fair amount of audience members willing to buy this
4) If they are available immediately following the show, are they at all aesthetically pleasing.

My initial reaction was that this is an idea drawn from the idea that the concert industry is in a battle to the death with television and video games and the internet for people's valuable and extremely limited attention, but on second thought it does appeal to sentimentality. I look forward to hearing how this project progresses through the next few quarters. It might be a model that can work for some of the larger club bands. I could definitely see bloggers paying for clear show recordings and posting some tracks from the night underneath their reviews of the show.

Full press release here.

Other Digital Concert Delivery platforms

O'Reilly digital blog has a brief overview of the available digital concert delivery services out there.

Concert Tickets for A Song

In this article from the Orange County Register, the writer predicts that with many heritage acts taking the summer off, this might be the year for newer artists to prove they--too--can pack the ampitheatres. From country acts like Keith Urban to new pop stars like Shakira, these acts are breaking through to arena sized venues.

On the negative side, there also seems to be a glut of these younger artists filling the large clubs and ampitheatres (see my musing on Pink's club tour below), to the point that it is causing a backlog at agencies where they have more bands that want to tour than venues to place them. The one saving grace is the package show; from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Steely Dan to Counting Crows with Goo Goo Dolls to the countless radio shows, there are many opportunities for agencies to double up their artists and get them out there.

Many artists are also reserving low-priced seats for the lawn areas.

"That's something that's overdue," (Pollstar's Gary) Bongiovanni says. "Everyone in this industry realized that as they were pushing the price of the reserved seats up, they were also raising the price of the lawn seats past what their real value is."

While the better tickets will still likely be at a premium, every concert-goer at a package show will go away with more bang for their buck, and that might just be the ticket to more sold-out shows.

The Biggest Tickets

BusinessWeek profiles the most expensive concerts this summer.

This interesting article not only lists the hottest tickets this year, it also explores some of the mechanics of how ticket prices are set. They quote Sam Craig, the director of the media & entertainment program at NYU's Stern School of Business,

"The sky is not the limit, it is about getting demand and supply in equilibrium."

According to the article, Ticketmaster and other ticket outlets have a system for gauging ticket value: they are letting customers bid by seat. This is supposed to keep the bidding out of the hands of scalpers, but it doesn't mean the tickets are going to be any cheaper. If anything I think it is just moving the scalping business onto the internet.

Full article here

Pink to Do Club Tour

OK, now I'm confused and a little peeved.. If people who can sell out ampitheatres and play large arenas as part of sold out radio shows want to play large clubs do the bands that play large clubs get bounced to small and mid-sized clubs? I don't know, but I guess we'll find out. Pop star, Pink, is set to do a club tour this go around. She'll be playing such small rooms as Fillmore in San Francisco and 930 Club in Washington DC.

She said to MTV: "It's the only time I can ... let go and stop thinking and worrying and analyzing and processing,"

And performing in smaller venues makes it even more special for the singer: "Small gigs, that's where it's at, you can feel everyone's sweat, it's just so close and intimate. It's stinky, it's smoky, it's good."

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that I don't think MTV regulars should be cluttering up the clubs unless they are gonna take up and coming indies along as support. It's like driving backwards in a Hummer and running over all the compact cars for fun.

Full article here

Gas Prices Put The Brakes On Touring

I've been eagerly waiting for someone to write this story on behalf of all the poor little struggling touring bands who've been absolutely beaten over the head by these astronomical gas prices.

While I've yet to see anything in a US press outlet (I think I'll have to write it myself!), here's news from Australia where artists are finding it to be almost a financial impossibility to tour (with gas at nearly $6 a gallon!). In addition to gasoline, it's important to remember that even plastic CD cases are made from petrochemical bases (I completely forgot about that--no joke!) .

Mr Watters (Stuart Watters, chief executive of the Association of Independent Record Labels) said the price of petrol wasn't just affecting the cost of touring, but the price of CDs themselves.

"CD cases are made out of a petrochemical base, and that's already gone up," he said.

"With CDs, they're already charging $25, so it's always problematic to try and ask for an increase in price."

In Oz, a group called VROOM has formed to provide resources to touring artists. I hope groups will come together to facilitate more cost-effective and enjoyable touring stateside. We'll see.

Full article here.

Tom Petty calls do-overs

(Via LiveDaily) Tom Petty and his camp nipped ticket re-sellers in the bud this week when they cancelled all tickets that were being re-sold at marked up prices. According to Petty's manager, a number of tickets were made available for pre-sale to members of the fanclub, Highway Companions. However some people decided to make it suck for everyone by violating the rules and re-selling the tickets at inflated prices.

"Those tickets have now been canceled along with the associated Highway Companions Club memberships," Dimitriades wrote on the website. "We will make these tickets available to club members who comply with the conditions of club membership and are willing to pick up their tickets at a special fan club Will Call window on the night of the show. In order to accomplish this, a new Internet on-sale of these tickets, open only to fan club members, will be announced shortly."

In an oversaturated market like the music business, it is exceedingly important for bands to make special effort to reward their true fans if they want to have successful tours. It is ashame that a few fans (or more likely scalpers posing as fans) tried to take advantage of this kind gesture, but I'm glad to see Petty was able to catch it early. I'd hate to see these special fan perks eliminated.

Sports presenters get into the concert game

As concert attendance dwindles and large arenas continued to be shunned, promoters and developers are looking towards 5,000 seater spaces as the wave of the future. In Seattle, a collaboration between (former Microsoft honcho) Paul Allen's company First & Goal and AEG (the nation's second largest promoter) could bring more concerts to the space south of the city's football field known as Qwest Field Event Center.

The event center could fill a potentially lucrative niche in the Seattle market, which now lacks a venue geared for shows that typically draw 5,000 to 7,000 people.

"That's the sweet spot for concerts," said Bill Alves, a Seattle City Council analyst who has studied KeyArena's finances.

Pollstar, a publication that tracks the concert industry, reported that half of the 100 top-grossing concert tours of 2004 had audiences of 2,501 to 7,500.

"There seems to be a decreasing number of acts capable of selling out a major arena," said Gary Bongiovanni, Pollstar's editor in chief.

"Many of them that fueled the concert business today date back to the 1960s and '70s, and soon that gravy train is going to end."

While the space meets the capacity needs, many artists and concertgoers have criticised the venue as having terrible sound and being unfit for musical performance. Julian Casablancas of The Strokes called the venue "fugly".

A spokesman for AEG declined comment on any event-center plans. Fuller (Martha Fuller, chief financial officer for First & Goal) acknowledged the Qwest center has some "acoustic challenges." Seattle Times' music critic Patrick MacDonald, for instance, has called it the "worst venue in town."

"Conceivably, we'll be making some improvements," Fuller said.

As more non-theater venues begin to transition over to keep up with the mid-size concert trend, it will be interesting to see how/if they can make the structural and acoustic changes that will keep fans coming back for more.

Complete article here in the Seattle Times.

(BTW, sorry for not posting yesterday. It got hectic over here.)

Great White Case Closes

As the Great White case winds to an end, I wonder whether I am the only person who feels amazed that any one person is being blamed for this.

For those unfamiliar with the situation, Daniel Biechele was the manager of Great White, a hair metal band from days past. In 2003, the band mounted a big show in Rhode Island, and as part of the show, (the wholly unqualified) Biechele, set off extremely dangerous pyrotechnics that ignited the club. The fire resulted in the deaths of 100 and caused injury to about 200 others.

While the whole incident was extremely unfortunate, if blame is going to be passed around I can only imagine there must be about a dozen or more guys who were party to the stupidity of trying to start a pyrotechnics show inside a medium sized wholly unsafe club. The road manager didn't walk in with a firecracker tucked underneath his shirt and then chuck it into the crowd. They set up an elaborate display in full view of many, and now Biechele has to sit there and bear the brunt of it as one teary family member after another comes up to basically treat him like an outright murderer. Meanwhile, somewhere across town the club managers' trial is still pending and they've plead not guilty.

I worry that while many people think "just let the hair metal guy take the fall" this case may be setting a dangerous precedent of blaming band tour management for decisions that were agreed upon and carried out by an entire team of people.

Get Plugged into Live Nation

Sorry that this is becoming a bit of a Live Nation-centric blog these days, they just have a lot of interesting stuff going on.

True to his word, Michael Rapino is taking customer satisfaction extremely seriously. Last summer, the company retained LRA Worldwide, a consulting firm specializing in "Customer Experience Management" (also known as CEM for eery sci-fi mindcontrol sounding effect), to collect information about the guest experience and how/where it could be improved. After analysing the information gathered by the "mystery shoppers" the company's consultants worked with Live Nation execs to create a "universal guest service culture to apply enterprise-wide".

“We had always been wary of creating universal ‘standards’ to apply to all of our venues, for fear of creating a ‘cookie-cutter’ feel,” explained Tracy Tucker, a venue General Manager for Live Nation who is spearheading the “guest experience” effort at the company. “LRA’s Customer Experience Management methodology will allow us to create a common guest service culture and gain efficiencies in training and best practices sharing while allowing each of our venues to maintain their distinct personalities.”

According to the article, the "experience design" will be implemented for the first time during this summer concert season. It all sounds kinda like the Matrix, but--y'know--in a good way.

Complete article here.

Lollapalooza's Blunted Blunder

In what I can only assume was some ill-conceived attempt to get down with the Boonaroo set, promoters of this year's Lollapalooza decided to distribute rolling papers called Palooza papers in a Chicago city park during a press conference. The real rub is that the promoters were there to award the city a large contribution toward improving all city parks. Officials from the parks department were outraged and the promoters apologized almost immediately:

Lollapalooza producer Charlie Jones was first shocked at the response to the advertising pieces. “Is there something wrong with them?” he asked the paper. He said they were created as part of an ad campaign and first handed out at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, TX.

Later, Jones phoned the Sun-Times with a mea culpa, calling the rolling papers “a horrible mistake.”
“It’s not the way we want to be represented,” said Jones, adding that the papers were created as “a joke.” Lollapalooza is “very family friendly …This is not what we’re about.”

While the packs of rolling papers advertised the concert as "fully baked rock and roll", with a line up that includes 130 acts on 8 stages, fans will be whizzing around so much that I think they'd do better to pass out cans of Gatorade and Red Bull and call it "fully energized rock and roll". You can have that one for free, guys. (Via Encore)

Pearl Jam Keep On Truckin

Saturday's New York Times featured a short profile of Pearl Jam and a review of their Irving Plaza show.

....Pearl Jam, is the lone survivor among Seattle's multimillion-selling grunge bands of the early 1990's, and it has held onto its audience in the most old-fashioned way, through constant touring.

I was an avid Pearl Jam supporter in the early days and was dubious when the band decided to take on Ticketmaster and headed in the DIY direction. In some ways, they've been more punk rock than any so-called punk band out there. I am consistently amazed at their sheer staying power and exceedingly devoted fans.

Overview from Live Nation Earnings Call

Live Nation's first quarter earnings call reflects a company that is still very much in transition. The focus over the first quarter has been in reducing wasteful spending, hiring appropriate staff for the venues, and putting the necessary maintenance into the venues for the busy quarters ahead. This period has been referred to as Phase 1 of Live Nation's strategic plan.

In today's call, CEO Michael Rapino outlined the companies 3 divisions/priorities which are:

1) Events - promoting and producing events
2) Venue Management
3) Digital/ Brand Initiatives - boosting the company's online presence towards more effective marketing and advertising

On the events side, the company reported an increase in profits and believes that profits will be even greater for the next two quarters. Live Nation CFO, Alan Ridgeway, stated that the first quarter is "the quietest quarter" due to weaker content and the fact that they are not able to use many Live Nation-owned venues (which are primarily ampitheatres) in those first 3 chilly months. Revenue will ramp up as the summer season rolls out with concerts by Madonna, Jimmy Buffett, Kelly Clarkson, and many other big ticket acts.

Venues, which are the company's biggest source of revenue, had a 4% increase up from 1Q05 to $48million, primarily due to the acquisition of majority stake in Mean Fiddler (the largest promoters in UK). Moving forward, venues should show an even more impressive increase in profits with big name acts rolling through this summer and early fall. Additionally, Live Nation is rolling out many enticing new test products and services during this season including more diverse food offering, wired venues, value priced meals, "aggressive sales of beer, soda, water" (yikes!), and a global staff newly trained in customer service (a company first!). Rapino also noted that they have relinquished all of their interest in Planet Hollywood Las Vegas as well as interest in the touring productions of Phantom of the Opera and Cirque du Soleil's Delirium. These divestments have freed Live Nation to make investments in more fruitful areas.

With regard to the digital/brand initiatives, the company is working to poise itself as a more visible and trustworthy brand. While the company has an exclusive deal wherein Ticketmaster sells 100% of the tickets to Live Nation events, the company has increasingly been using their site as the storefront for the sales. The deal with Ticketmaster is due to expire in 2008, at which point Live Nation will have to sit down and have a "long discussion" (Rapino's words) with Ticketmaster. Whether Live Nation will jump into the ticket selling arena remains to be seen.

Rapino reported that he is very pleased with the progress the company has made in only four months; and he continued to stress that the hope is that Live Nation can build a relationship with the customer "beyond a 2 hour event".

A link to the recording of the call can be found here.

Live Nation earnings call reminder

Just a reminder that the Live Nation earnings call is this morning at 10:45.
You can listen in by calling 973-582-2785 at 10:45am. I will post a summary of the call later today!

Building for Intimacy

Last November, I attended the annual Billboard Roadwork conference, which is a meeting of many of the movers and shakers in the concert industry. While many managers, agents, promoters, and venues shook their fists about the dip in profits over those two days and wondered where the next arena acts were going to come from, a few promoters accepted the idea that perhaps arena rock is dying. A few posited the idea that maybe the benchmarks will be lower; instead of selling out a 20,000 person room, a band will aim to sell 10,000 seats or sell out two nights at a 5,000 person ampitheatre.

I've recently noticed a number of bands scaling down and doing tours in smaller rooms, or special dates in smaller clubs. From Pearl Jam to Red Hot Chili Peppers to Radiohead, many bands may be noticing that there is no need for their show to be coated in glitter, flashy light shows, and 50 truckloads of stage equipment. That maybe the fans just want to see them do the songs.

This article discusses the debate taking place in Tacoma Washington over what to do with the 23,000 person Tacoma Dome. A plan on the table calls for the venue to shrink down to less than a 1/3rd of its current size.

The plan calls for borrowing money from the city’s general fund to purchase new turf with a price tag of $750,000, and spending $1.9 million to fit the Dome’s ceiling with a structure that would create a smaller, theater-style setting for concerts -- shrinking the Dome from a 23,000-seat facility to a facility seating some 5,000 to 8,000 people.

A smaller Dome could mean bigger profits for the 23-year-old facility, said Dome officials. According to Rob Henson, deputy director for the Dome, the top 100 U.S. concert tours drew an average of 7,940 people.

I am interested to see whether this becomes a trend. I--for one--have many questions: Will the smaller rooms encourage people to come see more shows? Or will the ceiling for band success and profits just be lowered? What are the long-term plans on the promoter/agent side? Is everyone giving up on US arena rock?

Radiohead plan an intimate tour.

For their summer tour, the world's hottest unsigned band, Radiohead, will embark on a series of shows in smaller rooms (via Pollstar).



Brooklyn Vegan took the time to research the room sizes.

Philly Tower Theatre : 3,500
Boston Bank Of America Pavilion : 5,000
Toronto Hummingbird Center : 3,223
Montreal Salle Wilfred Pelletier at Place des Arts : 2,982
New York Theatre at Madison Square Garden : 5,600
Chicago Auditorium Theater : 3,929
Berkeley Greek Theatre : 8,300
San Diego Bayside : 4,700
Greek Theatre : 6,162

I guess the shows (which I believe are all already sold out) are small compared to the 50,000 people who'll see them at Boonaroo.

Decorporated merges with Billions !

Congrats to Adam Voith at Decorporated!

Effective June 1st, Decorporated (home to such great acts as Celebration, Mark Eitzel, and Two Gallants) will be swallowed up by awesome indie booking behemoth, Billions. Voith will remain in Seattle where he will join Ali Giampino and Mary Brabec at Billions' western outpost.

This is the second agency merger in less than a year for Billions. In November of 2005, they brought in Mary Brabec and her roster from MB Booking, another Seattle-based agency.

(Official announcement here and here)

Pitchfork In The News, Under The Microscope

Pitchfork founder and influential tastemaker Ryan Schreiber was recently profiled in The Washington Post.

"Honesty is such an important journalistic attribute," says Schreiber, who had no journalism training when as a 20-year-old former record store clerk he launched the site as a solo operation. "And you have to be completely honest in a review. If it gets sacrificed or tempered at all for the sake of not offending somebody, then what we do sort of loses its value. . . . That's so the opposite of what criticism is supposed to be.

"So I think we maybe have this sort of snobbish reputation. But we're just really honest, opinionated music fans. We might be completely over the top in our praise, or we might be cruel. But to anybody who reads the site, it's clear that we're not pulling any punches."

Blogger Good Hodgkins does an in-depth analysis of Pitchfork and determines that there is no bias. I'd be curious to learn more about Pitchfork writers. I have an image in my head of what type of person writes reviews there, I'd be interested to know close my assumptions are.

Superfly Productions in Fast Company

Superfly Productions, producers of the world's highest grossing music festival, Boonaroo, are profiled in the May issue of Fast Company.

The article outlines the group's meteoric rise to concert industry superstars, and their plan to branch out in an effort to combat declining profits.

Speaking of their stable of sensitive, furry musicians, they use phrases such as "profit center" and "economics of regional promotion" without irony. Farman, whose sartorial dishevelment belies an Apprentice-like intensity, desccribes their business model with Trumpish candor. "It comes down to numbers," he says. "We sit there and lock at our spreadsheet and see how many people we need to draw to make a profit."

While Superfly has their detractors and skeptics ( Gary Bongiovanni of Pollstar was quoted as saying, "Jimmy Buffett can have his Margaritaville, but what can Superfly sell other than raingear or mud boots?"), the group insists it plans to move ahead and build Superfly as a lifestyle brand. They are looking into real estate, hotels, resorts, and restaurants.

"We are in the business to make money," says (Superfly's Jonathan) Mayers..."Why do you think businesses diversify?"