Internet Radio Concert Promotion — 100,000 more attendees, no extra porta-potties

Eighteen years ago this week, in a previous life, George and I helped produce and broadcast Woodstock ’94 (Mudstock), and it was quite an experience, with 350,000 people in attendance. This week, we got to participate in another weekend concert, Outside Lands in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, and I marvel at how differently big events can now be covered.

outsidelands logoAt Woodstock, we had dozens of television trucks and vans with satellite uplinks, requiring connectivity to and between the two stages, which was our primary responsibility as “fiber optic gurus”. For the most part, all of these broadcasters were on site to provide live news feeds for networks and local stations, as well as the occasional celebrity interview.  The complexity and cost was huge, while virtually none of the concert entertainment was broadcast live.

Outside Lands Stage - 2012Fast forward to 2012.  Over the last few months, in partnership with TuneIn, we’ve enjoyed exploring how today’s music festivals can build their reach to a worldwide audience, without breaking the budget of the event promoters.  We started out with New York’s Hot 97 Summer Jam hip hop festival in June, helping Emmis Communications promote the event exclusively on TuneIn radio the week leading up to the concert, then live Internet radio coverage of the show, and then best-of the concert the week following.  It was a major hit.

So, with that success, Emmis decided to do similar promotion for their Power 106 concert in Los Angeles later that month. It, too, was a big success.

That brings us to Outside Lands–August 10-12, 2012.  TuneIn assembled the team for this broadcast, with not only Backbone Networks but also a professional broadcast team with deep experience in branded radio stations, RFC Media from Houston, TX.  Unlike Woodstock, this concert was broadcast live, and it required no trucks, no satellite uplinks and a minimal crew…all with just “a Mac and a mic”.RFC Media Tent - Outside Lands

Results?  It was unquestionably another big success.  While Golden Gate park only holds about 65,000 people for an event like this, through Backbone Internet radio and TuneIn, over 100,000 unique listeners around the world tuned in for nearly half a million listener sessions.  What amazes me is that a regional concert in San Francisco can pull listeners from all over the world, as you can see in the listener cluster “hot spot” map for the concert week (click to enlarge).

Outside Lands Listener MapLike every other business activity, concert promotion has now been changed by the Internet, specifically Internet radio in this case. Going forward, we will learn even more about how to have the greatest impact and highest return on a very small investment.  We’ll share that with you.

Next up for TuneIn, RFC Media and Backbone: The Bumbershoot Music Festival in Seattle on Labor Day Weekend.

Peace, love and radio.

Internet Radio — “By This Time Next Year” Survey Results

survey55-listen_to_one_year_from_nowHere’s something you already know in your gut, but you probably haven’t visually seen yet. The recent article by Audio Graphics summarizes “the trouble around the bend” for terrestrial broadcast radio, and how Internet radio continues to capture its listening audience. This one graph displays what online radio listeners say they will be listening to by mid-2013.

When you look at the additional survey data, you see that most of the music discovery occurs with Internet radio, which leads you to believe that Internet-only channels account for the majority of new artist coverage, since that rarely occurs on simulcast FM stations.  Not Pandora, but real Internet stations.

We are all very fortunate to be in an industry that’s on the rise, not in decline.

Third Annual CHAMPSFEST – Arts & Entertainment Radio fund raiser

Champsfest 2012With tomorrow being High School Radio Day we wanted to tell you about the efforts of one of our High Schools.  Arts & Entertainment Radio (AER) presents the 3rd Annual CHAMPSFEST 2012 featuring 12 hours of non stop music from noon to midnight Saturday May 19th at CHAMPS Charter High School located at 6952 Van Nuys Boulevard, Van Nuys, CA 91405

The Beat Lab, Boom Room and Main Stage will feature the best of LA’s Underground Hip Hip, Electronica, Rock n Roll, and eclectic music scenes with headliners such as Blu, Shlohmo, Jonwayne, Doll-E Girl, Kosha Dilz and Canto. Food Trucks and fun activities will be available throughout the day and evening. Here are some of the activities:

25 Solo Performances
16 Bands
6 DJs
6 Food Trucks
2 Stages
12 Hours of Non-Stop Music
Video Game Room
Champs Charter Academy and Club Booths
Mehndi & Face Painting Area
and scores of other Champtivities

 

Tickets are $7 Pre-Sale and $10 at the door.  Order yours NOW at Brown Paper Tickets or CALL: 800-838-3006

For more CHAMPSFEST 2012 info visit the CHAMPSFEST website

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Artist links:

Blu

Shlohmo

Jon Wayne

Doll-E Girl

Kosha Dilz

 

Radio panel at the 2011 Boston Area Definitive Audio Student Summit

BADASS2011-NoidsFLYERI participated in an interesting panel at the Boston Area Definitive Audio Student Summit (BADASS) summit last weekend at the New England Institute of Art (one of our IBS-SRN member stations).

The subject of the panel was “Radio Promotion”. Participants included Tai Irwin from the New England Institute of Art, Steve Theo from Pirate! Promotion, a professor in the Entertainment Management program at Bay State College and myself.  We provided a brief history of the radio industry and music promotion and then launched into a discussion about the future.  Though somewhat tainted by the past we came away with some hope for what lies ahead.

The record and radio businesses have changed quite dramatically over the last 15 to 20 years.  Radio is fighting more and more for the attention of a new audience and the record business is working to transition from selling physical objects and adapt to the new digital world.

Badass-panelWhile many believe that the music industry is down that is not actually the case.  It is the traditional record industry that is down, the broader music industry is doing quite well, even in this down economy.  On the radio side that is true too, the old way of broadcasting a local signal terrestrially is changing due to the internet.  A station’s ability to aggregate a like minded audience outside of its terrestrial footprint is much easier with the internet.

There are still challenges for the industry though. On the radio side it is the change in their business model for digital broadcast.  When broadcasting terrestrially there were no payments for performance royalties because they were viewed as promotional.  Your business wants to reach as large an audience as it can.  When broadcasting digitally you need to report each “play” to Sound Exchange and pay a royalty for that particular play.  Under this model your expenses grow dramatically as you grow your audience.  Further as per stream royalty rates continue to escalate so will a station’s future expenses.

Even with these challenges there is a dramatic shift to digital distribution and the Internet. Creative promotors and broadcasters are finding a way to work together to help their constituents grow.  Overall the future is quite bright.  We just need to find a way to get there together.

PS I’d like to thank the organizer of BADASS, John Krivit at AES for hosting the event and Julie Viscardi-Smalley at Bay State College for inviting me to the panel in our special “industry room”.  It was great fun seeing the interest radio and music still generate!

Rock Shop Boston – College Radio Event

I attended the Rock Shop Boston 12 event on college radio the other night.  It was quite well attended with lots of local colleges and universities in attendance.  Thanks to Steve Theo from Pirate! Promotion for putting it on . . . and thanks for the spread of food.

Rock Shop Boston logoThe Rock Shop panel discussed the college radio and music in depth with panelists Phil Flemming of 91.5 WMFO, Ali Donohue of 89.3 WTBU, Liz Pelly of 90.3 WZBC, Eric Roberts of 91.7 WMWM, and Rob Duguay of 990 WBOB.com.  The main focus of the discussion focused on the ins and out of getting new music submitted to their stations and what it takes to get on the air.

The interesting thing is that every station was different in their own way and view their main goal is to get air play for the music they find interesting and important.  I won’t go into detail here because Indie Ambassador has done an excellent job summarizing the event in their blog.

Looking forward to the October event!  Also a shout out to Charles McEnerney from Well Rounded Radio, thanks for the discussion about local radio, hoping to see the growth of the Jamaica Plains Music event in the future.  It would be great to get the bands some exposure on the air.