Leisure: How People Spend Their Free Time

Here's a good resource to get you thinking about American society and what we do and don't do with our free time.

Focusing on music, or even entertainment, can often be too limiting. If you are selling these concepts, you need to take into consideration all the various activities competing for a person's time, attention, and financial resources. The academic field of leisure studies gives a broad overview of time/recreation consumption.

In particular you might want to look at the PDF file, "Leisure in America: Searching for the Forest Amongst the Trees." It has culled data from a number of different research studies to give you an overview of American culture and leisure time activities.

The Compleat Leader (Getty Leadership Institute)

The economic impact of the arts

If you want some economic data on the value of arts non-profits, here's a good resource.

Arts & Economic Prosperity III: The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts and Culture Organizations and Their Audiences

Here's some of the summary report:

RATIO OF LOCAL VS. NONLOCAL AUDIENCES

While the ratio of local to nonlocal attendees is different in every community, the national sample revealed that 39 percent of attendees traveled from outside of the county in which the event took place (nonlocal) and 61 percent were local (resided inside the county).

VISITORS SPEND MORE

In addition to spending data, researchers asked each of the 94,478 survey respondents to provide their home zip codes. Analysis of this data enabled a comparison of event-related spending by local and nonlocal attendees. Previous economic and tourism research has shown that nonlocal attendees spend more than their local counterparts. This study reflects those findings. Local audiences, who live in the county in which the event occurred, spent an average of $19.53 per person, per event in addition to the cost of admission. Nonlocal attendees, those who live outside the county, spent twice this amount, or $40.19 per person. As would be expected, nonlocal attendees spent significantly more in the categories of lodging, meals, and transportation. These findings demonstrate that when a community attracts arts and culture tourists, it harnesses significant economic rewards.

Attendees are 61% LOCAL / 39% NONLOCAL

NONPROFIT ARTS & CULTURE ATTENDEES SPEND $27.79 PER PERSON PER EVENT

Spending Breakdowns

Residents (Residents are attendees who live within the county in which the cultural event occurred.)

Meals/Refreshments $10.77
Gifts/Souvenirs $3.32
Lodging $1.08
Child Care $0.34
Transportation $1.62
Other $2.40 $3.45
Total $19.53

Nonresident (Nonresidents live outside of the county.)

Meals/Refreshments $16.35
Gifts/Souvenirs $4.78
Lodging $10.91
Child Care $0.33
Transportation $4.37
Other $3.45
Total $40.19

All audiences

Meals/Refreshments $13.00
Gifts/Souvenirs $3.90
Lodging $5.01
Child Care $0.34
Transportation $2.72
Other $2.82
Total $27.79


ARTS & CULTURE TOURISTS SPEND MORE AND STAY LONGER

As communities compete for a tourist’s dollar, arts and culture have proven to be magnets for travelers and their money. Local businesses are able to grow because travelers extend the length of their trips to attend cultural events.

Travelers who include arts and culture events in their trips differ from other U.S. travelers in a number of ways.

Arts and culture travelers:
• Spend more ($623 vs. $457)
• Use a hotel, motel, or bed-and-breakfast (62 percent vs. 55 percent)
• Spend $1,000 or more (19 percent vs. 12 percent)
• Travel longer (5.2 nights vs. 3.4 nights)

A 2001 research study by the Travel Industry Association of America and Partners in Tourism indicates that:
• 65 percent of all adult travelers attended an arts and culture event while on a trip that was 50+ miles away from home.
• 32 percent of these cultural travelers stayed longer because of the event.
• Of those that stayed longer, 57 percent extended their trips by one or more nights.

Creating IPod Tours of Your Music Scene

Here's a site that makes available audio tours via iPods. Some people sell them, others give them away for free. I don't see a lot being done with music yet, it would be make sense. Combine a tour of local venues with music from local bands that play there frequently. Find interesting little facts about the venues that would appeal to tourists and locals who want to know more.

Denver would be a perfect location because some of our hippest venues are in colorful parts of town and have long histories as converted bars, failed past music experiments, etc. For example, the Family Dog, which existed briefly in the 1960s and featured the Doors, Janis Joplin, and the like, is now a strip club.

And Denver, famous for "On the Road," is intrinsically colorful anyway.

AudioSnacks.com: Podcast and MP3 Audio Tours for Travel, Museums, and More!

A showcase for teen art and music

5/19/07, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER'All Ages Art Night' offers teens space to make music and fashion statement: "In one corner: teen bands covering Nirvana and The Killers.

In another: a hip-hop fashion show with local youths in their modeling debut.

In between those two areas: spoken-word performances, masters of ceremonies spitting original verse and 60 community organizations that brought together hundreds of teens from all over the city.

'Seattle is really successful at creating innovative programs to work with teens, but there are not a ton of places to show what they've done,' said Jennifer Bisson, who organized the annual 'All Ages Art Night' at the Central Library and helped transform it into a performance venue Friday afternoon and night. 'There are so many negative images about teens. This is a positive thing in a public forum, which is serendipitous, because it also builds community.'

Under thousands of diamond-shaped glass panes in the Fifth Avenue lobby, roaming bands of teens wandered to tables piled high with information and talked with helpful volunteers from groups such as Readergirlz (a local writers collective for teen girls), Youth Speaks and Emerging Voices (poetry workshops for teens), Skate Like a Girl, the Girl Scouts, the events-and-program-packed Redmond Old Firehouse and the Richard Hugo House.

Programs such as this, Bisson said, give them a sense of ownership, especially with the Teen Advisory Board the library created to help bring more teens into the system."

How a jam festival got started in NJ

Drew Wajnert started out as music fan who decided he could improve upon the festival experience. One of his complaints was the lack of portable toilets. At his own events he has gone so far as to set aside some just for women and others just for mothers and kids.

Phanphest Takes A Leap Of FAITH on UpstageMagazine.com, 5/25/07"Phanphest Entertainment started out as a backyard tradition in late 2002 as Phan Phest 1.0; an intimate group of friends from The Gathering of the Vibes message boards were encouraged to gather on one acre of property for a barbeque, some keg beer, and some great music. Attendees were invited to camp out overnight on the property. Everybody had a great time, and the feedback encouraged the group of friends to do it again six months later but this time with two days of music.

Phan Phest 1.5 was held in May of 2003. Featuring two bands on both days, as well as many other acts, the backyard party maxed out the little acre with 62 tents. A larger, extended group of friends gathered for the event and were pleased with the results. But, it was pretty clear that the event had to move.

Friends helped make Phan Phest 2.0 happen in October of 2003, and realize the dream of a three-day music festival, so the event was moved to 2 acres. Thirteen bands played over 3 days on a stage that the company constructed.

The following May, Phanphest put together a festival featuring 22 bands over a 4 acres area. This was the show that truly launched the company and solidified its future. The festival was such a success that Phanphest began searching for a larger location to work with. They began producing indoor festivals and regular weekly shows in Asbury Park, NJ. Steadily, they were assembling a roster of acts dedicated to the Phanphest mission. Acts that will now be rewarded by a spot in Phanphest 3.0 this August.

Phanphest 3.0 will be held at Indian Lookout Country Club in Mariaville, NY. This was the location for The Gathering of the Vibes for the last several years. When that festival decided to move on, Phanphest eagerly moved their festival to the location.

'It's 200 plus acres of property,' said [promoter/creator Drew] Wajnert. "We're shooting for 3000 people. Our vision for it is to be family friendly. We're going to welcome Deadheads and Phishheads with kids who want to bring them to a safe environment. There's a great security solution that's already built in and they have existing facilities. This is the total package. It allows me to be the talent buyer and just focus on the production.'"

Another way to market local music

NYTimes, 5/25/07 - Facebook Expands Into MySpace: "In its new effort, which was to be unveiled on the site Thursday night, Facebook will be relying on the work of entrepreneurs like Ali Partovi, the chief executive of iLike, a company in Seattle that gives users the opportunity to hear and buy the music their friends are listening to.

Facebook does not have a music feature, but iLike, which along with Amazon and Microsoft was one of 65 companies that appeared at Facebook’s event, is one of several that plans to make music-related tools available on the site.

If users choose to add iLike to their Facebook pages, the software will automatically see where they live and what bands and songs they say they enjoy. It will then recommend songs and local concerts.

ILike will get a commission if the user acts on either recommendation, and it will also show its own ads."

The lure of the live music experience

San Francisco Bay Guardian, 5/23/07 - Show me: "Pavlov's e-mail robot knows what gets me salivating — aside from those wolf beach towels on Amazon.com (wintry wolves and hot sand go together about as well as infants and live grenades): namely, live music. Drive blearily into the Mojave for Coachella, jump through hoops to get to Seattle for Bumbershoot, make the red-eye to Austin for South by Southwest, take the midnight train to Tennessee's Bonnaroo, hock yourself for England's All Tomorrow's Parties, hazard reindeer sashimi for Reykjavik's Iceland Airwaves — take note of the chart; I have a history of doing anything for a life-altering show."

Creating a music promotion business from the ground up

How a college student went from club booker to full-time music promoter.

Promoter helps rock scene thrive - Chico Music Guide, 5/16/07: "Devil Kat Rock Productions founder Katie Perry has always been passionate about music, but it wasn't until she moved from Redding to Chico to attend college that she found her ardor for music promotion.

'I love rock 'n' roll,' Perry said. 'I honestly think I would be entirely lost if I didn't do this.'

Perry is a music promoter who promotes, stage-manages and books various music talents, both local and national, to perform in Chico and Redding. Since starting in 2002, she has had a full calendar of shows. On top of her 40-hour-a-week day job, she pumps out another 30 to 50 hours under her alter ego Devil Kat Rock Productions....

'Having shows is like rolling the dice, I really don't know how many people are going to come,' she said. 'Some people are going to talk shit and critique - telling me how I should do things - these people are generally the ones that don't get off their asses and do something.'"

Happenings in Baltimore

This is an excerpt from a long article on an art/music collective, its performance space, and how it gave rise to much of the current indie music scene in Baltimore. It's quite a good profile of how a group of friends can have a significant impact on a community.

Feature: Wham City Doesn't Want To Take Over The World--But It Just Might Anyway | 5/16/2007 | Citypaper.com: "... Wham City was a rented industrial loft space squatting somewhere between Mount Vernon and Charles Village. (Its members have requested we don't divulge the exact location in print.) In its first incarnation, it was often filled with garbage. Smashing plates in a sink with a baseball bat was a popular activity when bored. But especially after it moved one floor upstairs in the same building, it was a crucial local space for "music shows, variety shows, TV talk shows, video productions, theatrical productions, lecture series, potluck dinners, photo shoots, fashion shows, [and] dance parties" in the words of Wham City member Adam Endres. Wham City united many young people in the Baltimore art and music scenes who maybe didn't even know they needed uniting

In fact, the Wham City collective is but one spiky tip of a massive, tangled ball of creativity currently lurking just under Baltimore's liquor-licensed layer of legit bars and venues, galleries, and theaters. Bands are multiplying like sui generis bunnies in little warrenlike warehouses all over the city, and they're being formed by folks either too young to be squatting and making a racket five years ago, or not even living in the city, or both. These bands do intersect occasionally with the city's longstanding free improvisation/noise crews, but with their vestigial connections to punk rock and their continual reification/recycling of the pop-cultural junk they grew up on, they're not really experimentalists. They're making pop music that bends at various wonky, acute angles.

And though the music is the loudest and most obvious manifestation of all this energy, you can feel it in everything from local T-shirt designers to zine makers to video artists to sculptors to performance-art shenanigans yet to be named. More often than not, they're the same kids in the bands. Wham City has been, if not quite at the center of all this attention, certainly a central node.

Since you can hum along to some of it, the indie-music world outside Charm City is taking note of Baltimore's young underground. National media outlets have started to glom onto Wham City and its satellites as another installment of the Baltimania that's given us a hundred half-assed articles on club music and The Wire in the last 18 months. Just a week ago, Deacon was featured in the The New York Times, where he was hilariously described as a 'sensitive electro-party rocker.' Baltimore bands recently swarmed the annual South by Southwest music industry clusterfuck in Austin, Texas; Deacon played no less than five shows that weekend.

Locally, evidence of this explosion is increasingly easy to find on the records released by labels such as Wildfire Wildfire, Creative Capitalism, and recent Washington transplant Carpark (which is sucking up Baltimore bands at a quick clip); at exhibitions and performances at Current Gallery; at the biweekly Are We Not Men? dance party at the Depot; at the Talking Head club until its closure; at shows in the artist-riddled H&H Building; at house parties and one-off loft gatherings; at Baltimore institutions of 'high' culture like the Walters Art Museum; and at Wham City itself, until recently. See, all this celebration comes at a strange time, because Wham City, as it was, is no more.

All illegal venues live on borrowed time; last September--after a string of shows plagued by assholes pulling fire alarms, smashing windows, and setting fires--Wham City was forced to stop holding shows following alleged complaints by the fire marshal to the building's management and threats of eviction from the building's owner. The collective rallied and is hunting for a new, potentially legit, space, but at the moment there's a feeling that the local arts community has lost something important just as its intensity is peaking.'...

The collective initially formed around six friends, but its ranks have swelled to include anywhere from 16 to 24 people in Baltimore, and 11 of them are here today. It's two days before everyone has to be out of the building for good....

Stranded in a city where they knew almost no one, the Purchase kids developed a drunken bunker mentality, holed up in the space that would become Wham City with no phones, blowing what little money they had at the local liquor store, and destroying personal property when boredom threatened.... [But, as the article explains, things got better.]

The past six months alone have already seen a Wham City theater night, a cross-country tour, sundry live shows around town (and their attendant poster art), two episodes of in-house talk show The Ed Schrader Show, several records released by various WC-related bands, a gallery exhibition, a museum showcase, various videos, two issues of Catatac (a traditionally folded-and-stapled zine published by Kate Levitt, Mark Brown, and Kevin Sherry that's full of contributions from Wham members), and a bunch of stuff not yet ready for prime-time consumption. "I know of at least two board games that are being developed," Connor Kizer says. Sure, not all of it needs to be documented, but the irrepressible, overwhelming mass of stuff that Wham City churns out is always impressive."

Putting jazz clubs into perspective

An interview with Branford Marsalis.

MetroTimes Detroit, 5/16/07 -‘Jazz has never been popular’: "Marsalis: Jazz music has never been popular. I think that we need to get away from that lie. Jazz clubs back in the day, were considered places of counterculture. If you listen to records like John Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard and Bill Evans Live at the Village Vanguard, what you will hear is a lot of people talking and treating the music with relative indifference. In the '50s, if you wanted to go to a cool place to hang out and have some drinks and talk, you went to a jazz club. Where were you going to go? Lawrence Welk didn't have a club where you could go to. Now they have all kinds of clubs that didn't exist back then. Whoever heard of a cigar bar or a wine bar?"

MT: In those venues the music is secondary to the ambience and the socializing.

Marsalis: The music has always been secondary; that is why you hear people talking. Jazz has never been popular. I think that is just a common thing to say, and I don't know why. Just for research purposes, you should get the Time magazine with Thelonious Monk on the cover [from 1964] and read the entire article. What you'll notice is there's very little in that article about jazz music. It's more focused on the personality and jazz as a lifestyle. The American aesthetic has always viewed all music as a form of entertainment. Any idea of music as an art has always been something that America has rejected since we have had a country.

Live shows in movie theaters

Movie complexes get in tune, will offer live music shows - BostonHerald.com, 5/15/07: " National Amusements Inc. plans to launch its own branded live music venues within its chain of movie theaters, according to president Shari Redstone.

The Dedham company is developing the concept with guidance and booking assistance from the Bensusan family, owners of the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in New York City’s Times Square and the renowned Blue Note Jazz Club in Greenwich Village.

'What we see is creating auditoriums in several of our theaters that are primarily devoted to live entertainment,' Redstone said....

The as-yet-unnamed venues would be modeled after the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, which offers patrons both dinner and entertainment. ...

National Amusements is testing a live music program at its Showcase Cinemas Buckland Hills in Manchester, Conn., which is being turned into a Cinema de Lux entertainment concept. The venue’s Chatters Bar & Grill hosted a four-week run of a cabaret-style show with Carol O’Shaughnessy this month and last, and is starting to feature live bands on Saturday nights."
"

The Arcade Fire likes churches

5/14/07, Pitchfork Feature: Interview: The Arcade Fire:"Pitchfork: The Arcade Fire seems drawn to churches, both as performance spaces and as inspiration. Can you talk a little bit about the churches in your life?

WB: ... Most buildings aren't really built with acoustics in mind, and small churches definitely are. Voices need to carry. But also just architecturally-- there's something going into the architecture that's very inspiring.

Pitchfork: Sure. And even taken out of all religious and spiritual contexts, there's something peaceful about being in a church. Church is one of the few places left in America where there's no noise, no television, no radio, no advertising. It lends itself to contemplation.

WB: Right, the purpose of the building is totally different than, like, an office building. It's designed to have an atmosphere. If you think about it, if you've ever been to a Catholic service, it's practically a laser light show. It's very dramatic, very theatrical. The outfits they wear, it's all designed to be impressive."

Concert promotion using mobile phones

This article discusses how Fall Out Boy and other bands are using mobile phones to promote themselves and particularly to enhance the concert experience. The assumption is that teenagers want to get messages via phone rather than email.

While the idea of taping into cellphones at concerts makes sense since that's the best way to communicate with audiences during the event, some of the other ideas seem a bit too gimmicky and too youth-specific.

My feeling is that mobile promotions are good when they appeal to audiences' this-concert-is-really-about-me mentality (e.g., allowing them to post messages and photos to giant screens during the show), but don't add much when they are just used as a way to create faux intimacy between a band's promotional department and the fans who sign up. It kind of reminds me of those 900 numbers where you could listen to a photo message from your favorite star for a fee.

Rocky Mountain News, 5/5/07 - Bands SPK 2 GR8 fans:

"• One fan will have the opportunity to go backstage and meet the band via a text-messaging contest held live during the performance.

• The band is encouraging fans to take camera-phone photos during the show and upload them to a section of their Web site called "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs," text-message shorthand for "thanks for the memories" and also the title of their current single.

• In some tour venues, fans will be able to send the photos directly to video screens on either side of the stage, a multimedia upgrade from the now-common practice of displaying audience text messages.

It's all part of a text messaging fan club campaign the group launched in late March. Fall Out Boy developed a set of five mobile trading cards that fans can only receive by signing up for the service and texting in updates on a regular basis. Each time fans text in a message, they receive one randomly selected card. Some are rarer than others, so the odds of getting the rarest card increase with the number of messages sent.

The trading cards are in the form of Tarot cards, designed around graphic themes from the band's new album, Infinity on High. Once downloaded, fans can use them for their phones' wallpaper images.

After joining the text-message fan club, fans will get updates on Fall Out Boy news such as when the band's next video will premiere, ticket alerts for local secret shows, updates about about the band members, and other information - all delivered directly to their mobile phones....

The group uses Mozes to manage its text-messaging efforts; the Palo Alto, Calif., company claims another 700 artists also use its service.

Mozes CEO Dorrian Porter said Fall Out Boy has signed up 'tens of thousands' of fans since the Tarot card promotion began, and recently had the fifth-most subscribers on the service, after Hinder, Korn, hellogoodbye and Boys Like Girls.

Mozes also runs the backstage pass contest at FOB tours. The company first tested the concept last fall with rockers The Plain White T's. For each show, roughly half of those attending responded to the content to get a backstage pass - a staggering response rate.

'It looked like a sea of teenagers pulling out their phones at once,' Porter said....

Concerts offer a variety of ways for bands and fans to interact using mobile phones. Artists already let fans choose which song they should play during their encore via text-message voting. Or they can remix a song played live that night into a custom ring tone available only to those who attended that specific show....

Kevin Lyman, the brains behind the [Vans Warped Tour] alternative rock festival, has already begun integrating wireless alerts into the tour - everything from announcing the day's lineup to giving a heads up on autograph sessions or exclusive backstage acoustic shows. Eventually, he hopes to send concert tickets directly to fans' mobile phones, scanning a bar code on the phone screen like a ticket to get in."

Auditioning for subway gigs

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority held auditions to find performers for its subways.

NYTimes, 5/12/07 - It’s Not ‘American Idol,’ but Subway Station Auditions Draw Crowd in Washington : "An average of 700,000 commuters in the greater Washington area ride the Metro to and from work each weekday. Visitors bump that number up considerably on weekends and during the tourist seasons, making the system the second-busiest in the country after New York City’s, which also features performers chosen by audition.

In Washington, performers will need to keep their day jobs — panhandling will not be allowed.

But the musicians will be paid $200 for each two-hour performance. The Arts in Transit performances will begin in early June and last through October, before returning for the winter holiday season. The number and times for performances have not been set, nor have the stations been chosen that will feature the artists. But there will be twice-daily appearances, in the late morning and then again in the early evening, close to the morning and afternoon commutes, at the selected stations."

Mexico City and indie rock

Los Dynamite Noiselab Mexico City Rock - New York Times, 5/13/07: "Thanks mostly to the downloadable avalanche of globalization and the rise of MySpace the current independent rock scene is full of artists who may be from Mexico City but sound as if they could be from New York, Stockholm or Paris....

The debut of MySpace in 2003 couldn’t have come at a better time for the Mexico City indie scene. In the 1990s major labels could still afford to be interested in a diverse swath of rock and alternative acts, but by 2003 they were no longer signing bands whose sales weren’t projected to reach gold in their first month or who weren’t easy matches for telenovela soundtracks. In response a string of indie labels emerged to fill the void, and suddenly it seemed that there were more bands than ever. There were more young people making music on home computers, more places to play (galleries and storefronts as much as clubs) and more international acts — like the White Stripes, which made Mexico City a heralded early stop on a 2005 tour — coming to town.

Most in the scene agree that the watershed moment came in 2004 with the appearance of Reactor, a taste-making, state-supported radio station. Unlike previous Mexico City alternative rock radio ventures, Reactor made breaking independent and underground bands from Mexico as central to its mission as playing the latest from Franz Ferdinand. 'If a band has a strong following, we take notice,' said Raúl David (Rulo) Vázquez, the station’s lead programmer.

Everything, then, was in place for an indie explosion. MySpace just struck the match.

'There’s always what we call the Mexico City lag,' said Luis Arce, a member of Chikita Violenta, whose debut album, 'The Stars and Suns Sessions,' was recently released on Noiselab. 'In the U.S. there was the college rock boom — Pavement, Sebadoh, even Nirvana — and now in Mexico City we have our own version of that. This is our own ’90s indie boom, just a decade or so late.'...

'In previous generations the goal was to present yourself as part of the city, to define the city and express the city,' said Jorge Hipolito, a veteran of the Mexico City scene who works at Noiselab. 'Now that doesn’t matter so much.'...

One particularly controversial result of Nafta has been the growing number of young bands choosing to sing in English, even if the members don’t speak it particularly well. Most of these bands claim that it’s not a bid for crossover success, but a direct reflection of their musical upbringing. 'We’re more comfortable singing and writing in English,' said Mr. David of Chikita Violenta. 'We’re proud of being from Mexico, but this is the way we like to do music. It would be dishonest for us to sing in Spanish.'"

Alternative venues for indie music

Music venues have been closing in NYC, but shows in non-traditional locations are doing well.

New York Night Life - New York Times, 5/11/07: "'Anything is a venue,' said the promoter Todd Patrick, known professionally as Todd P. For six years he has made it his mission to program music in far-flung places, from divey bars in Greenpoint to Lutheran churches to private lofts. Now New York’s alt-location guru, he has recently expanded to work with bands on the verge of stardom (Animal Collective, which he booked in 2005) and even nationally known acts (Oneida, Trans Am) at large clubs like Studio B in Brooklyn, winning the attention of the music industry.

But Mr. Patrick’s hallmark remains the cheap, on-the-fly, do-it-yourself concert, promoted through his Web site (toddpnyc.com), his e-mail list (13,000 strong) and MySpace, blog and newspaper and magazine listings. Essentially a one-man band, Mr. Patrick, 31, has interns who work the door (ticket prices rarely go above $10) and stamp hands (he only does all-ages shows) while he helps set up.

'Because the idea is about D.I.Y., I like to show the strings,' he said. 'I want people to come to the show and see me build the P.A. system, see that there’s nothing glossy about what we’re doing. I think alternative venues are a great way of doing that. It just kind of throws it off. If a club is the quote-unquote appropriate place to see music, why do people have so much more fun in a warehouse?'...

Nearby, interns counted the door money; Mr. Patrick takes 10 percent before expenses (security, interns) and the rest goes to performers....

Along with low overhead other common traits of this scene include out-of-the way locations (a long walk from the subway is common), online promotion, candles instead of spotlights and a high tolerance for graffiti: GlassLands, where the Yeah Yeah Yeahs performed as part of a video shoot, has two rooms where anyone can scribble on the walls, markers and paint provided. Many places lack proper licensing; Mr. Patrick switches locations often to avoid the authorities. (Don Pedro is a legal establishment with a liquor license; the loft space was not.)"

Using music on Second Life to promote tourism

This article mentions concerts being conducted at a Second Life site as a way to promote tourism at a real world location.

Lst night three Denver bands played a concert which was simultaneously broadcast live on Second Life and on ManiaTV. I didn't have a chance to watch, though.

Galveston Daily News, 5/13/07 - Site breathes 'Second Life' into isle tourism: "[Galveston.com co-founder Jim] Cordell’s private company has a contract with the Galveston Park Board of Trustees to promote the island through its official Web site, which the company owns and manages. The park board helps pay for advertising on Google but does not otherwise fund the company’s activities, Cordell said....

Cordell quickly learned that joining a virtual world costs real money, lots of it.

His company has spent almost $16,000 so far buying virtual land and paying a designer to re-create the island. Another $1,600 goes for monthly expenses related to Second Life.

Most of the money — $10,000 — has gone to Adam Gillis, a programmer from Nova Scotia, Canada, who has re-created many of Galveston’s treasured landmarks without ever seeing them in real life.

'The entire process was based on photos, photographic replicas for the most part,' Gillis said. 'I can pretty much build anything as long as I have dedicated photos that show the buildings from a good number of angles.' ...

'We are reaching an audience that wouldn’t come to us otherwise,' Cordell said. 'A lot of people don’t even know the real Galveston exists, until they visit us in Second Life. The whole idea is to get people to come here.'

Coachella history

I just found this, though it came out a few weeks ago. The article gives a good overview of Coachella' history (read the entire article -- I've just included some excerpts). An on-going purpose of this blog is to show how festivals come together: what people have learned along the way in terms of successes and mistakes.

thedesertsun.com 4/27/07| Coachella evolves through the years: "Tollett, a soft-spoken native of the region who wears a trademark baseball cap, had been booking concerts since 1982. In 1993, he and his business partner, the late Rick Van Santern, booked Pearl Jam at Empire Polo Club because the Seattle band didn't want to perform in Los Angeles.

About 25,000 people showed up, but the polo field was so huge, Tollett said the crowd 'looked like 1,000.'

That's when he knew a big music event in Indio could be done. But, could it be successful with less popular bands? ...

In 1997, Tollett sketched some plans for the type of regional festival he'd like to stage.

He and Van Santern had worked the Lollapalooza festivals and knew the logistical problems of a traveling musical marathon. But they saw there was an audience for music that couldn't be heard on radio.

'There's actually a really big crowd of people who like small, different bands. Maybe if you put a bunch of them together, that might be a magnet for a lot of people,' Tollett said.

He began scouting locations, considering the Santa Fe Dam in East Los Angles before returning to Empire Polo Club.

'We were blown away how it was just calling our name to do a festival there,' he said of Empire....

They wanted to pattern their event after European festivals featuring simultaneous acts on multiple stages....

'We just went for it," Tollett said. "We didn't really have any business plan - just do a big show. I'm glad we did now.'

They booked bands they wanted to hear even if they weren't big record sellers or concert attractions like the acts at the recent Woodstock festival. The top bands over the two days were Tool and Rage Against the Machine and Beck and the Chemical Brothers.

'There were two different factors on (programming) - the European festival feel and the rave scene,' Tollett said.

'A lot of that had nothing to do with the Billboard charts. A couple of the bands were on radio, but the other 80 weren't, and I knew it was those 80 that were going to make the show really have a life in the future.'

... 20,000 people showed up the first day ...

'The show turned out so well - not draw-wise, but just how fun it was,' said Tollett. ...

Tollett later said Goldenvoice lost $800,000 that first year."

Revitalizing Denver's "Harlem"

A new theater is opening in what was once Denver's center for black culture. Now the neighborhood is a mixture of 25% black, 43% Latino, and 27% white, so this theater plans to draw upon its neighborhood history but also expand to showcase a variety of cultural influences.

5/10/07, The Denver Post - New theater opening in Five Points neighborhood: "The Denver neighborhood once called "the Harlem of the West" is enjoying a cultural renaissance of its own these days....

Another person who sees the upside on the cultural front is Denver lawyer Kurt Lewis, who sold his house to open a new live theater, Crossroads at Five Points Theatre....

Five Points developer James Ellis is one of his biggest fans.

'One of the things we really like about Crossroads is that there are no boundaries, and that is implied by the name,' said Ellis, who plans to restore the facade of the historic Rossonian Hotel next door and reopen it as a live jazz venue with an upscale restaurant by summer 2008....

Five Points once boasted more than 50 jazz clubs and earned the city's first-ever designation as a neighborhood of 'cultural significance,' Ellis said. It was not only a favorite destination for such legends as Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday, it was a respite from the racism that pervaded just 10 blocks to the south....

And now Lewis, a white man, has leveraged his future to build an 84-seat, $450,000 theater in a building owned by a black man.

Everyone involved with Crossroads believes the theater, and the neighborhood, can best survive into the future if it celebrates its cultural past while also welcoming, even encouraging, all those who dared not go there before. That means celebrating diversity in a rainbow of colors.

That's one reason Lewis' 3,600-square-foot theater is opening with an Irish play. 'Bold Girls' will be followed by a one-woman jazz musical, and the world premiere of 'The Sisters, Sweetwater,' the story of two black women in the 1920s written by Hugo Jon Sayles of Shadow, Denver's only black theater company.

But Lewis envisions a melting- pot community resource open all day every day for classes, jazz, cabaret, poetry, fashion shows and even weekly 'open- mic dance.' Theater performances will start no later than 7 p.m., followed by late-night spoken- word artists Café Nuba and late- late-night screenings of the cult film 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show.'

Allowing many visions

'Denver doesn't really have a place that embraces the creative class, and it doesn't have a place that celebrates ethnicity,' Ellis said. 'Crossroads is a place that plans to do that and then some.'

Crossroads board member donnie l. betts said the theater will be unique because it seeks a convergence of creative cultures with differing values."

The World's Top Festivals

Among US festivals, Burning Man made this list.

The World's Top Festivals -- Country Life:

The Young Season's Pick of the Festival Crop
Stanley May 26
Kimberly June 14
Glade June 22
The Secret Garden July 26–29
St-Tropez, Mykonos, St- Jean-De-Luz July/August
Ibiza (Space Opening Party June 3) August
Lyford Cay August
Burning Man End August

Just think what else the money could have been used for

In what amounts to a giant publicity stunt, Dr. Pepper is paying for a band to live in a glass bubble in NYC for three weeks while they record an album. We can watch them on-site, on the Internet, and on MTV.

Aside from the fact that I think all those involved (the band, the sponsor, and MTV) will look more desperate than cool, this plan strikes me as a huge waste of money which could have been used to promote music in many more effective ways.

Adweek Magazine In Print 5/7/2007- Dr Pepper Rocks Out With Big Idea From MEC: "NEW YORK A year in the making and carrying an estimated price tag of close to $20 million, Band in a Bubble, a new Dr Pepper reality show and special event created by WPP's Mediaedge:cia, shows just how far some media agencies and clients will go to cut through the clutter....

Dr Pepper is funding the entire project, which accounts for 22 percent of the $90 million the company spent on ads last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence. The company wouldn't comment on specific figures or say from which budget the money was taken."

How Gen Y consumes media

This was a survey of more than 2,200 Americans 13-75. Here's the part about Millennials (13- 24) and how the differ from other groups in terms of online use.

TV Week, 5/7/07 - 'Millennials' Defying the Old Models: "According to the survey, Millennials invested 51 percent of their Internet time with user-generated content and only 49 percent on company-generated content. The survey average was 34 percent of time to user-generated content and 66 percent to company-generated content. Millennials, therefore, invest 50 percent more time with user-generated content than the average user.

... In response to the question 'How often would you say you are doing the following activities in a typical week?' the interaction-based activities skewed highly:

Sixty-two percent of Millennials said they frequently or occasionally socialized on the Internet, versus 38 percent of the rest of the participants in the survey, a 63 percent advantage.

Other prominent Millennial online activities include watching content created by others: 71 percent vs. 51 percent (+39 percent); reading or posting on message boards: 51 percent vs. 38 percent (+34 percent); reading blogs: 55 percent vs. 36 percent (+53 percent); creating personal content: 58 percent vs. 34 percent (+71 percent); maintaining own personal Web site: 36 percent vs. 22 percent (+64 percent); and keeping a web log (blog): 35 percent vs. 18 percent (+94 percent).

Among the more mainstream Web activities, Millennials invest significant time in the following: searching, downloading or listening to music, 78 percent vs. 50 percent (+56 percent); visiting gaming sites where games can be played online, 66 percent vs. 49 percent (+35 percent); and watching You Tube or other video-streaming sites, 62 percent vs. 36 percent (+72 percent). Further, almost half (48 percent) visit a television Web site in a typical week."

Limited funding to promote New Orleans music

New Orleans CityBusiness, 5/7/07 - Sour Notes: "The New Orleans Tourism and Marketing Corp. receives $1 million annually from the city general funds and less than $100,000 went to the music office’s annual budget.

'We didn’t have the money to follow through on great ideas,' [former head of Office of Music Development Scott] Aiges said. 'If you don’t have the money you can’t do anything, and that was before the hurricane.'

NOTMC President Sandy Shilstone said her organization’s budget was cut from $10.7 million in 2004 to $5.2 million in 2006 following the hurricane. Since Katrina they haven’t had any money available to fund a music office even if one still existed.

But the NOTMC hires musicians for events and commercials whenever it can, Shilstone said, and donated $100,000 in advertising to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2006 and 2007. It has also partnered with WWOZ to produce live music shows featuring local musicians to broadcast on 50 public radio stations nationwide for 18 months starting in the fall."

Free digital music with a concert ticket

Press rlease, 5/7/07 - Ticketmaster Gives The Gift of Music: "With every concert ticket purchased online at Ticketmaster.com, Ticketmaster is providing a complimentary ten-song digital music sampler showcasing a variety of emerging and established artists. In addition, with the purchase of every ticket to any summer concert scheduled to take place between Memorial Day (May 28) and Labor Day (Sept 3) Ticketmaster.com ticket buyers may download one complimentary song of their choice from the iTunes Store (http://www.itunes.com)."

Marketing New Zealand music to the world

A good look at government support of the New Zealand music industry and whether it is worth the effort. The justification in doing so is that there are far more potential customers outside New Zealand than within the country.

New Zealand's source for entertainment news, gossip & music, movie & book reviews on Stuff.co.nz - Printable: " This year taxpayer funded NZ on Air will spend $2.15 million helping musicians make videos and recordings. The Music Industry Commission will spend $500,000 helping artists market their products overseas. ...

So far the commission has helped 42 artists with overseas marketing costs through its Outward Sound programme, now 14 months into a three year pilot. Its annual budget of $500,000 is small, but by matching artists' contributions dollar for dollar it gets more leverage.

The difficulty for New Zealand exporters, as ever, is distance from markets. A German artist seeking exposure in Britain can travel back and forth relatively easily. For New Zealand artists, particularly big bands like Phoenix Foundation, the cost and logistics are a huge problem."

Hotels, tourism, and local music scenes

A big hotel chain may not want to bother with pairing with local musician (too much trouble overseeing quality control as it relates to the brand), but this idea could be used for smaller, independently run hotels. Local bands/musicians could make songs available for guests to download and take with them.

Design: Music: In tune with guest expectations - Hotel & Motel Management, 5/7/07: "Hyatt Hotels & Resorts introduced a digital download music program that will roll out to properties throughout 2007.

Each property will have a unique music library while meeting a set of music standards for the brand, said Walter Brindell, assistant v.p., rooms operations, Hyatt Hotels Corp. Different music collections are used in different spaces of the hotel, so the spa has a different mood than the lobby.

Guests can download the collections from both brands' collections and take their experiences home."

Music festivals are a growth industry in Scotland

Sunday Herald - The best venue in the world? It’s Scotland: "Experts are even claiming that the events are creating a new social trend of serial festival-hoppers and enriching Scotland's cultural life.

'This summer will be amazing,' said Paul Bush OBE, chief operating officer of Event Scotland. We are keen to demonstrate that, while festivals are economic benefits, they also bring social and even environmental opportunities.

'Festivals are economically important - as a snapshot, the MTV awards, which were hosted in Edinburgh in 2003, brought in £8.8 million to the Scottish economy.

The economic boost that the various festivals will bring is likely to run into hundreds of millions of pounds by September. While a strong appreciation of music and a culture of live bands in Scotland are contributing factors, the boom has also been fuelled by a supportive public sector and no shortage of talented music entrepreneurs.

'Festivals of all kinds are definitely a growth area, and Scotland is very lucky in that local authorities and other public bodies actually want to help events,' said Jane Ali-Knight, head of the festival and events management degree programme at Napier University. 'South of the Border and elsewhere, organisers quickly run up against a lot of red tape. There is encouragement for festivals in Scotland which is a huge plus, and we are also lucky to have entrepreneurs such as Geoff Ellis and Pete Irvine who have pushed and pulled some events into being.'"

Music is happening in Denton, Texas

PopMatters Music Feature | Could Denton, Texas, be the nation's next hot spot for indie rock?: "Is Denton ready to elbow aside the flashier, bigger cities of Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston and, yes, Austin, to take its place atop the Texas-music food chain?

Could it be a town on the verge? Is the next Seattle or Omaha (home of Bright Eyes and the whole Saddle Creek label scene) brewing right up Interstate 35? ...

There are some who would say that Denton, home to an estimated 104,000 people and three universities, including the well-regarded University of North Texas with its acclaimed music department, already has a national reputation as a music mecca. The considerable roster of past and present Denton residents lends credence to the notion. Artists such as Roy Orbison, Norah Jones and Don Henley have spent time in classrooms on the UNT campus (see story on this page)."

Salt Lake City nightlife, or lack of it

This article discusses the pluses and minuses of nightlight in Salt Lake City. Some of the challenges are no central entertainment district, restrictive liquor laws, and too many empty streets.

Salt Lake City Tribune, 5/6/07 - In search of Salt Lake's night life: "Once you find the places to go, there are some great places here,' said Allison Martin, a development researcher for the Utah Symphony, who moved to Salt Lake City from Austin, Texas, four years ago. 'It's funny - you go out and you see people you know all the time,' Martin said. 'It's 'Small Lake City.'

The relatively small number of Salt Lake night owls means club owners such as Louise Millington have to work harder to woo customers.

'You have to capture a niche for yourself, and I think that's what makes good night life here,' said Millington, who owns The Red Door, a martini bar. 'You have to know what people want here.'

... the perception remains, said Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, that buying a drink is an ordeal.

'There is absolutely no good modern-day justification for a private-club membership requirement,' he said. 'If you want to go to a couple places during the course of the night to hear music, or dine one place and go have a drink somewhere else, it can be very expensive and a huge hassle. And if we experience that as natives, consider how bizarre and inhospitable this is for people visiting our city.'"

Mixing country genres

Here's an interesting review of the first day of the Stagecoach Festival and the challenge of getting audiences to come for both modern country, and traditional country, alt-country, and bluegrass.

Although I wasn't there (friends including The Railbenders and Angie Stevens were -- the text message I got from Angie watching Willie Nelson was "Wow"), I'm going to guess it's just growing pains. Other festivals are able to successfully mix genres and this one will likely do so too as its reputation spreads.

Orange County Register, 5/6/07 - A hootenanny divided: "There were those who came to spend the day - the whole day, from noon till 11 p.m. - clogging up the Empire Polo Field by sitting in their camping chairs at the main (aka Mane) stage, patiently waiting for stoic cowboy icons Alan Jackson and George Strait to perform. ...

Out of roughly 25,000 attendees, this group accounted for at least 20,000. And they seemed to have a big boozy blast, because they had exactly the county-fair kinda day they had hoped for. ...

... some music lovers who came to this hoping for a completely different festival - a diverse, all-inclusive, history-appreciating bash....

Yet these people at most accounted for 5,000 of the total attendance. Spread them out among three stages and their numbers seemed even smaller.

... the overall failure to bridge gaps between these two camps, alt-country fans and the Nashville-controlled crowd, suggests that Goldenvoice's dream of a cross-pollinating über-country fest is a ways away from becoming a reality."

What's a college town?

This is a very thorough look what creates a "college town" atmosphere.

Macon.com | 05/06/2007 | Is Macon a college town?

According to Blake Gumprecht, an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire who studies college towns, a college town usually has at least 20% students. But the article outlines other factors that create a college town atmosphere, which could be adopted no matter the size of the school population.

Entertainment/eating establishments that are open past 2 a.m.
Bars and clubs for ages 18+
Low-cost/free entertainment
Small, funky shops
Large college sporting event
Strong independent music scene
College radio station
Community/college partnerships

Also mentioned in the article, but not listed above, is a specific district, within walking distance to campus, that caters to students.

Coachella and its debt history

Financial risk has played a role in the Coachella Festival. (And according to one account, the first year of the Stagecoach Festival, the country music version that is being held this weekend in the same location, will also start its history with a loss.)

Alexander Haagen III - Coachella - Music - New York Times, 5/1/07: "[Owner of the Empire Polo Club, Alexander Haagen's] first encounter with accommodating a big rock concert was in 1993, when Goldenvoice helped arrange a performance on the polo grounds by Pearl Jam. Six years later, Mr. Tollett sought out Mr. Haagen again when he needed a locale for Coachella. But the first festival posted a loss, forcing Goldenvoice to the edge of financial ruin.

AEG Live, a bigger concert promoter, acquired the company in 2001 by absorbing its debt, which exceeded $1 million, according to executives involved in the deal. Goldenvoice had been unable to mount a festival in 2000, but returned to the polo fields with Coachella in 2001 and has every year since.

... the Haagens ultimately made their reputation by building retail shopping centers in the inner city.

By the late 1990s, though, the company was laden with debt. An affiliate of the investment bank Lazard agreed to purchase a stake in the Haagens’ company for $235 million in 1997, and then bought the family out."

Here's more background. The Billboard Q&A: Paul Tollett

This article says that the first Coachelle in 1999 lost $800,000, and was still losing money after AEG bought it in 2001. This year, 2007, was the first year the event sold out far in advance.

It also mentions how the Stagecoach Festival came about:

"I had seen a small country show at Empire Polo Field in the '90s. It seemed like a fun local event. There were rumors last year that the polo fields were going to be sold, so I talked to the owners and said, 'If I commit to two big festivals, will that be enough incentive for you to not develop for now?' They said, 'Yes,' so we developed the country idea."

How the popularity of rock reunions explains the joys of live music

Rock Reunions - Music - Column - New York Times, 5/6/07: "In fact, if it weren’t for sentiment, if it weren’t for our strong but ultimately inexplicable desire to be in the same room as people making music, we might not bother to go to concerts at all. In that sense, a reunion show is the ultimate rock ’n’ roll concert: a sensory experience overwhelmed by an imaginary one; a musical event that is merely a pretext for a social one. Those people onstage are old friends, in a sense; they have been living in our heads for years or decades. (That’s why substitutions are so irritating: what’s the point of being reunited with someone you’ve never met?) At a reunion show, those figments turn back into real people for a few hours."

The above column was in response to this column, published several weeks earlier.

Not Reunions, Reinventions (Back and Better. Really.) - New York Times, 4/22/07: "Ashley Capps, who helps produce mid-June’s Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn. — which has booked the Police as one of its headliners this year — put it in a slightly simpler way. 'When I was growing up, the release of an album was an event,' he said. 'We’ve moved away from the notion that the release of a recording is an event. Somebody can release a great album and get fantastic reviews and everybody’s talking about it, but how long does that last? Six weeks? In that sense, live performances are becoming the important event.'

Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, the concert-industry magazine, is so used to old acts propping up the industry that he doesn’t believe this year’s picture is substantially different. 'Last year you had Bob Seger, this year you have Genesis,' he said evenly over the phone recently. He is not sure whether new bands — Arcade Fire, say — are striking deeply enough into the soul of the culture to necessitate their own reunions down the road. I think context will determine it. If there are lots of great new bands in the next 10 years, we won’t feel we need an Arcade Fire reunion. If there aren’t, we will.

It seems now that the audience position for rock is coming closer to that of jazz around the mid-1970s. Most of the forefathers are still with us; increasingly, they seem to have something important to teach us. And we are developing strange hungers for music of the not-so-distant past that might be bigger and deeper than the hunger we originally had. That feeling people talked about during the Pixies shows a few years ago — the word 'eerie' was used a great deal — seems similar to descriptions of the feeling generated in the Village Vanguard when Dexter Gordon played his comeback shows there in 1976, after living abroad. Since then, jazz has advanced into a culture of incessant re-experience, endless tributes. Actual reunions are barely noticed: a huge percentage of the music refers to great moments of the past. Yet that doesn’t mean that jazz can’t still be fantastic, even transformative. It is, all the time.

We have to allow for the possibility that Rage Against the Machine — or the Police, or the Jesus and Mary Chain — could be as good as it ever was, if perhaps a little more wizened, a little more skeptical. (It will depend on their practicing of course.) If you’re still looking for something sacred, it probably can’t be found in their values or politics or cult significance. It’s in you: It is your own reaction to how they sound. Nobody can take that away from you."

Churches make great venues

Although this article is about comedians who play the church circuit, the points made apply to musicians as well.

Christian comics change lives one joke at time — JSCMS, 4/24/07: "'Nationwide, there are more than 300,000 churches and less than 300 comedy clubs,' said Lenny Sisselman, 49, a booking agent based in Nashville, Tenn., who specializes in Christian acts. And 'some of these churches have better performance spaces than the clubs. They have better sound systems, lighting and more seats. [The audience members] also have longer attention spans. Remember, these are people who enjoy sermons.'

Some mega-churches, like televangelist Joel Olsteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, seat upward of 16,000 and have an architectural style closer to Radio City Music Hall than a traditional church. They even have giant video screens that allow for close-ups of the speakers."

Commutes, radio, and live music

I stumbled across this article in a blog about radio. That blog suggested that long commutes encourage radio listening because people want to feel connected. By that same token, long commutes probably discourage going out to catch live music because there just isn't time (unless it's a local concert where kids are welcome, which gives families an opportunity to do something together).

The creative class concept, where you encourage people to live at higher densities closer to cultural settings so they spend less time on the road and more time at clubs and in third places, is an attempt to counter the trends described below.

Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker, 4/16/07: "Roughly one out of every six American workers commutes more than forty-five minutes, each way. People travel between counties the way they used to travel between neighborhoods. The number of commuters who travel ninety minutes or more each way—known to the Census Bureau as 'extreme commuters'—has reached 3.5 million, almost double the number in 1990. They’re the fastest-growing category, the vanguard in a land of stagnant wages, low interest rates, and ever-radiating sprawl."

Southern Cities for the Creative Class

This article isn't specifically about music, but cities that attract the creative class also tend to have great music scenes.

Ten Places in the South for the Creative Class: "These places are actively and prominently working to make their communities more attractive to knowledge workers by fostering environments for opportunity, expression and quality of life that creatives expect and demand."

The article lists Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Houston, Lafayette, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, Richmond, Savannah, and St. Petersburg.

Online engagement

This chart shows the level of participation among American adults who go online. Most people are still passive, either lurking or not even checking out blogs, podcasts, social networks, and the like. They might be considered the traditional music audience -- those who are content to be entertained rather than wanting to be part of the show.

Micro Persuasion: The Participation Ladder and Its Impact on Marketing and PR

Here's more about the report that generated the Participation Ladder.

Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li's Blog): Forrester’s new Social Technographics report: "Many companies approach social computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed – a blog here, a podcast there – to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for. Forrester categorizes social computing behaviors into a ladder with six levels of participation; we use the term 'Social Technographics' to describe analyzing a population according to its participation in these levels. Brands, Web sites, and any other company pursuing social technologies should analyze their customers' Social Technographics first, and then create a social strategy based on that profile."

One of Denver's legendary music dive bars

Here's a good profile of Cricket on the Hill in Denver. It's one of those rough-and-tumble neighborhood bars that has attracted its share of "street life" tales, but through it all, it keeps going as a music venue. I'm not sure if Kerouac actually did ever go there, but it is easy to imagine him having spent time in a place like this.

The Denver Messageboard: "Dates and heresay about Kerouac and Ginsberg and Dylan and Hendrix and Judy Collins and Clapton hanging out, here, have been withheld to make a point. I could've killed myself researching such- and I started to- but once my sources proved to be exclusive- and largely irrelevant, upon meeting 'The Man'- I decided to skip all of that."

Organizing a tour

Cyndi Lauper decided to create the True Colors Tour in support of the gay/lesbian/bi/transgender communities.

Pollstar, 5/01/07 - Making True Colors: "So after another year of preparation and hard work, plus bringing in the Human Rights Campaign (which a portion of every ticket will be donated to), The Matthew Shepard Foundation, PFLAG and the LOGO cable network, they were able to pull it off....

[Said Cyndi Lauper's agent Jonny] Podell said that even when there was some reticence from promoters and venues, it was more about the idea of a package tour than the cause behind the tour.

'I think it was more the fear in the music business about 'Do ensemble shows work?' Does the public see a show with five acts and go 'Oh, we're not getting full performances or is this going to be speeches?' That was the challenge we had to overcome in the marketing and the advertising. But we did it together and promoters and venues were very helpful.'...

'And we're hoping the True Colors tour develops into a full-purpose True Colors brand, including a clothing line and cruises, and that we can do more for the GLBT community.'"

Creating arts events to appeal to youth

This is an event in Rochester, MN.

Postbulletin.com: Young people plus creativity equals 'Awesome' art show - Tue, May 1, 2007: "Created by the high school intern staff at the Rochester Art Center, the event, which takes place Thursday, combines live music, performance art, a youth art exhibition and video games....

Hopes are that the 'Awesome Young People Art' event will bring in even more teens, and eventually become an annual event, he said.

The inaugural event, which is open to all ages, will feature dancing on the main floor. David Parisi, a college-age intern, will play various styles and genres, and Stulen and his brother, Jared Stulen, will play dance style mash-ups.

If the weather cooperates, there will also be live music outside on the patio.

Popular video games like 'Dance Dance Revolution' and 'Guitar Hero' will be set up in the third floor classroom where some of the interns' art will also be on display."

Marketing music through relationships

Live music can build relationships. This describes a form of music marketing that creates an "almost live" interaction.

MediaPost Publications - Getting Into The Circle Of Friends - 05/01/2007: "John Huffman, CEO of Real Hip Hop, who distributes indie artist musical ringtones and wallpapers on mobile, continues to push for promotional material that is more sensitive to the specific strengths of mobile. He told me the other day that he is trying to get artists and labels to get beyond their event-based marketing cycles and adopt a persistent connection with interested audiences.

'Marketing should be experience-based,' Huffman said. 'We used to spend four or five months of leading up to a release of an album. But now we should think about someone who shows an interest in your content -- and what mechanism do we have in place via mobile to stay involved and share what they experience. Don't just give me the final version [of the album]. Every other week you need to be thinking about giving me things that will keep me interested in your music.'"

What works for mobile content

A company that has designed 60 WAP sites shares what drives usage:

Wireless Developer Network, 5/1/07: "Specifically, Trilibis Mobile found that the most popular features (in the order of significance) were:

1. Votes/Polls when:
The poll or vote enables the user to influence the outcome of something he/she is passionate about.

The poll or vote enables the user to compare himself/herself to the overall population with respect to something he/she is passionate about. It appeals to the user's ability to be seen as an 'expert' in the population.

2. Blogs led by experts in the field (such as sportswriters). In addition, if users can contribute to blogs wirelessly, the stickiness of the site is enhanced.

3. Branded storefronts: Branded collections of ringtones, wallpapers, call tones, etc., continue to be popular, especially as the carrier decks continue to grow in size, making the navigation to specific content more difficult.

4. Informational content (e.g.): Most effective if content is valuable when 'on the go' and easily navigated.

5. Trivia: Particularly effective for sports and television shows, where consumers want to test their knowledge on something they're passionate about."

Ways to make money in music these days

Nothing really new here, but a good summary.

Analysis: What is the Role of the Artist in a Digital Age? | Digital Media Wire

Promoting unsigned artists on radio

Although lots of radio promotion concepts seem to come with some sort of catch, this sounds like a good idea. I'm not sure why this hasn't been done before.

CHUM Limited | Press Releases | CHUM Television: "Each month beginning May 1, 2007, CHUM Radio programmers across Canada will vote for the best emerging Canadian artist. The winning artist’s song will be added to playlists at all participating CHUM stations, reaching over 2 million Canadians. The initiative will provide independent artists with mass exposure through airplay, advertising time and promotion.

The Emerging Indie Artist Initiative is developed as part of the launch of CHUM’s newest radio station, Calgary’s ENERGY 101.5 FM. During the term of its license, the station will invest $640,000 annually to the development and promotion of Canadian talent."