The arts and economic growth

The whole premise of the creative class is that they enrich an area and attract high quality economic development.

Here's a bit on that from the blog that covers the subject in depth.

The Creativity Exchange: The Bohemian Factor:

"Arts, design and related occupations are very highly correlated with regional wages, income and housing values. They are more closely correlated with income than life scientists, engineers, and management occupations. Only two occupations - computer scientists and business and financial professionals - outperform them.

The core arts occupations of fine artists, musicians, dancers, and so on are most important of all. The correlations between them and regional wages, income and housing values are far far higher than for designers and decorators, entertainment and media, and sports where the correlations are low or insignificant.

The top 10 regions for core arts occupations are: New York, DC, LA, Honolulu and San Franciso.

Santa Fe tops the list for fine artists.

LA leads in actors with Orlando second.

Honolulu, San Fran, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City top the list for dancers.

Honolulu, New York, San Fran and Nashville lead for musicians."

economic development
creative class

The history of Las Vegas as a rock town

I was doing some research on Peter Morton, the founder of Hard Rock. I went to school with him at the University of Denver. Though I didn't know him well, we were all the the business school together and I knew some of his fraternity brothers.

At any rate, I ran across these two 1997 articles about the Las Vegas rock scene. One talks about the challenges that venues faced in promoting local music and the other about the rise of Las Vegas as a stop on the national concert circuit. What the two articles together point out is that you can bring in lots of national acts and still have nothing to offer local bands.

Las Vegas SUN: To build a rock mecca, start from the ground up

Las Vegas SUN: Vegas rock finally on a roll?

music scene
economic development
live music
clubs
music promotion
Las Vegas

Las Vegas festival still trying to find its focus

Las Vegas Business Press: "To counterbalance initially slow ticket sales, Vegoose promoters are focusing part of their efforts on the Las Vegas fan base. Last year, only 10 percent of the attendees were from Southern Nevada (compared to 32 percent from Southern California), something everyone involved would like to see change....

"Despite an increased focus on local patrons, the primary goal of Vegoose is still to boost tourism on Halloween weekend, a traditionally lackluster period for the area's gaming properties. According to post-event analysis compiled by R&R Partners, a total of 36,825 visitors came to the area for the first Vegoose. Of an estimated total economic impact of $37.3 million, $30.4 million came from non-gaming revenue; 27,150 hotel rooms were utilized, 78 percent of those on the Strip, 24,425 by out-of-town fans who came to Las Vegas just for the festival. For 16 percent of the out-of-state attendees, it was their first trip to Las Vegas."

Using events to deliver traffic in the off-season

This article isn't about music events, per se, but it does talk about an organization responsible for creating or attracting events to fill calendar gaps. It's a strategy worth considering for other locations: When do you most need to attract visitors and can you create an event which accomplishes this?

Q and A Pat Christenson, president of Las Vegas Events, 8/4/2006:

Q "Your organization works directly with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to bring special events to Southern Nevada and to sponsor some of those events. What is the criteria for sponsorship?"

A "I think the most important thing is the time of year. We also focus on a more adult-oriented audience. Sometimes what we'll do during the summer — for instance with our basketball events — when occupancy is a little lower, we will shift a little bit. We currently have 1,100 basketball teams in town, close to 20,000 visitors with all their followers. But for the most part, the National Finals Rodeo, the World Cup Finals, we produce the fireworks on New Year's Eve, so we're looking at a time of year, especially in December — we're involved with the Las Vegas Marathon now — where we can bring an event that is going to drive incremental guests. That's the major criteria, pick a time of the year that we need it (visitors), that it's an adult-oriented audience, but we also look at co-branding, like the NBA All-Star Game and the USA Basketball game. Those have such great co-branding promotional value for the market."