Fest season begins with Coachella announcement

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:28:30 -0800

For So Cal music writers, there are few bigger moments of anticipation than the Coachella lineup, released this morning about three months ahead of the festival.

Paul Tollete and his team at Goldenvoice book over 300 bands for the annual party in the desert outside of Palm Springs, and each year, hundreds of bloggers, music journos and hardcore fans spend weeks lobbing about lineup predictions. Coachella’s roster announcement is the first for the summer festival circuit, and offers a peek into artists touring routes around Lollapalooza, Bonaroo and Glastonbury.

Coachella tends to add a few additional artists as the April 16-18 concert gets closer, but confirmed so far are Jay-Z, Muse, Gorillaz, LCD Sound System, Them Crooked Vultures, Faith No More, Tiesto, Pavement and a secretive set for Radiohead singer Thom Yorke. Here are a few quick notes for those looking to attend this year’s festival:

HEADLINERS: The most dissected and discussed bookings for Coachella are always the main stage headliners. While past shows have relied on superstars like Prince and Paul McCartney, this year’s festival really lacks megastar power. Jay-Z is certainly a huge commodity, but it’s hard to put him in the same league as a former Beatle. His new single with Alicia Keys certainly has brought him back some chart relevance, but it will be interesting to see how audiences react to his selection. Saturday’s second headliner, Muse, is an obvious choice. The British trio sell out massive stadium shows in Europe but have yet to complete an American arena tour. Thom Yorke will open for Sunday’s headliner, and you can expect this Radiohead frontman to draw huge crowds, many who will make their purchasing decision based solely on seeing the Briton. The literal question marks surrounding his name on the flyer makes one wonder who will join the master musician on stage.

REUNIONS: After bringing Rage Against the Machine back together for Coachella’s 2007 outing, the Goldenvoice team have shown they have a knack for high profile reunions. Sunday’s headliner Gorillaz is conceivably a reunion — the band hasn’t recorded a single since 2005 and lead singer Damon Albam has spent several years touring The Good, The Bad and The Queen. Word is the band has a new album coming out in March. The other high profile reunion is Faith No More, the early 1990s rock group fronted by Mr Bungle’s Mike Patton. While few people remember any of the band’s songs beyond “Epic,” I expect this act to be a draw and could move a decent amount of tickets for the hard rock crowd. Coachella 2010 also continues the reunion of much-loved British ska band The Specials (they played several festivals in 2009), along with 1990s era indie rockers Pavement. And let’s not forget Orbital, rappers De La Soul (no sure they ever actually broke up) and Sly and the Family Stone (didn’t realize Sly was still alive). An extremely odd choice is Public Image Ltd, fronted by ex-Sex Pistol singer Johnny Rotten.

BUZZ BANDS: Coachella is first and foremost a spring board for emerging and medium sized acts and this year’s lineup is loaded with buzz talent. A sleeper hit will be Them Crooked Vultures, featuring Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters playing alongside John Bonham of Led Zeppelin and Josh Michael Homme from Queens of the Stone Age. Other acts that are gaining huge followings include Vampire Weekend, Passion Pit, Grizzly Bear, MGMT, the Dead Weather, Hot Chip, Florence and the Machine, Phoenix, Spoon and Yo La Tengo. This year’s two hottest buzz acts will be Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas (although he needs to tighten his game if early reviews of his shows are accurate) and pysch-rockers MGMT.

DANCE SCENE: Coachella has become one of the largest showcases for electronic music in Southern California, eclipsing top raves like Electric Daisy Carnival and Hard Music Festival. This year’s star DJ is Tiesto, who will be playing a closing night set on Saturday; other big dance acts to watch are mashup superstar DJ Z-Trip, DeadMau5 and 2ManyDJ’s.

BELOW THE RADAR: As always, there are a handful of bands with names written in the tiniest ink on the Coachella poster that shouldn’t missed. My three underrated picks of Coachella are soul singer Corinne Bailey Rae, Pa. drunk rockers Lucero and indie darlings Matt & Kim.

Mexico makes the comeback pitch

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:56:00 -0700

The Mexican Government has started its recovery campaign to bring tourist back to the shaken country. Concerns over drug violence, Swine Flu and the international recession have grind tourism to a halt, and no one has felt that more than Los Cabos in South Baja.

A lot of big time real estate money has been invested in the market with four new hotels set to come on the market by 2011 along with four new high-end real estate developments. All that money means a full court press by the government, which is hoping to alleviate concerns of visitors with its WeVisitMexico campaign.

Besides the billboards and television campaigns, tourism officials are pulling out their media rolodexes and drumming up travel coverage for Los Cabos through lunches, like todays meeting at the Park Conservancy on the ninth floor of the Montage in Beverly Hills. About ten travel journalists attended the event

Top Picks from BlogWorld 2009

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:26:25 -0700

I got back late Friday night from BlogWorld 2009 with a suitcase filled with promotional swag from the three-day party in Las Vegas.

There were some great panels about developing high quality content for Podcasts, Blogs and Social Media and I will write up some of the sessions in the coming days. Before I do that, I want to share a few new technologies and resources I discovered while working the trade show floor.

Demand Studios :: Freelance writers face a growing dilemma: there’s a wealth of work out there to be had, but many listing services are inundated by hundreds of unqualified writers who can make finding work difficult. Demand Studios is a professional assignment listing service for qualified writers who must go through an application process to take assignments. Find work without the big crowds.

Zen Desk :: Before I describe this help desk solution, a little disclosure is required. Publicist Rebecca Reeve turned me on to this company, gave me a cool Zen Desk t-shirt and even bought me a margarita. Regardless, I’m pretty impressed by this online support application that powers help desk solutions for companies. This is perfect for developers who build popular widgets or mobile apps and are overun with tech questions. Zen Desk is a browser based application with a great aesthetic and multiple interfaces, including an iPhone app for tech support on the go.

Brown Paper Tickets :: Scrappy little ticketing application without the high service fees or pushy tactics. What I like most about Brown Paper Tickets is that it’s not powered by Ticketmaster-own Paciolan, which dominates the software market. A very down-with-the-man solution for indie promoters.

wetoku :: Slick app from South Korean developers that provide one of the easiest to use webcam-interview interfaces available. Invite interviewees by sending them simple URLs and share your content with others using their elegant display widget, or post to Facebook and Twitter. Currently in beta, wetoku developers have plans to offer a premium branded platform in 2010.

PowerPress :: Nice podcasting solution by blubrry. Allows you to add, modify and remove podcasts from blog posts and pages. Plus it works with iTunes and comes with an integrated audio and video player. Great for bloggers who want to post sound bites from their Q&As.

Zemanta :: Blogs need more photos, more twitter links, more, more more! Zemanta is a plug-in that seeks out open source content from sites like Wikipedia and Creative Commons to match key words in blog posts. The easy-to-use interfaces allows writers to quickly add related video and images.

Paperless Experiment Still a Black Swann for TM

Mon, 5 Oct 2009 15:37:58 -0700

Last night, I was lucky enough to attend a semi-secret Thom Yorke show at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. A good friend of mine gave me a ticket to the 90-minute performance, which included the entire “Erasure” album and seven new songs. Stereogum has some great photos and videos from the show you can see by clicking here.

The concert was also a chance for Ticketmaster to show off its paperless ticketing system. Instead of issuing actual tickets, fans simply swipe the credit card they used to purchase the tickets at the door, and an usher prints a receipt with corresponding seat number. There’s no printed tickets to lose or forget at home.

The whole system is designed to battle scalpers; since Ticketmaster implemented a two-ticket max for each person, its becomes difficult for the average person to resell their ticket. I say “average” because there were still scalpers standing in front selling single tickets for $600 (I’m guessing the scalper had to sit next to the person).

Scalpers likely loathe the system, but the real headache will be felt by consumers. Tickets for a high demand show are very difficult to purchase during the initial on-sale. As soon as tickets hit the market, tens of thousands of people log onto Ticketmaster.com to try and purchase 1,000-2,000 tickets; all tickets are typically gone in a matter of minutes.

To get tickets, my buddy will sometimes employ the help of his family and friends, having everyone sit at their computer during the early minutes of the on sale and attempt to make a purchase. For the Thom Yorke show, he was successful at purchasing three tickets (he used two credit cards), while his mother scored two. So now he has five tickets on his hands, way more than he needs, and in the past, he would have simply resold unneeded tickets.

But with the paperless system, he has no way of redeeming the tickets his mother purchased because she needs to be present with her credit card to get access to the facility; he can’t cancel them either, because Ticketmaster.com has a no-refund policy. And although Ticketmaster explicitly warned about this scenario, like most other people in a hurry, he didn’t read the fine print. (Ticketmaster only gives you three minutes to complete your transaction before sending you to the back of the line.)

So now he’s paid for five tickets when he only needs two. Typically my friend would resale any extra tickets he had at face value — he’s a very good guy and doesn’t want to gouge people. But after coughing up $325 for tickets, he needs to find a way to recover some of the cost, and ends up selling his single ticket at TRIPLE its face value – $175 for a single ticket.

In attempt to stop scalping, Ticketmaster is actually turning one of its honest customers into a scalper. Because of the two-person limit and very short supply, it is pushing the price of scalped tickets much higher than they would be using printed tickets.

And my friend now has an even lower opinion of Ticketmaster than he had days before (no one could explain why the box office of the Orpheum can’t cancel his mom’s tickets and sell them to the 100 people in line looking to buy last minute tickets)

The solution? Transferability. Ticketmaster needs to develop a system that allows buyers to electronically transfer tickets to friends and family members. Cleveland-based Veritix already has this technology available with their Flash Seats product, which allows fans to create Facebook-style profiles and transfer tickets onto credit cards or drivers licenses. And while there still is some scalping that exists, Flash Seats actually facilitates the secondary sales and gives the artist a percentage of each transaction. Buyers know the ticket is legit because the transaction is guaranteed by the team.

Veritix currently has NBA deals in Denver, Cleveland and Houston and Major League Baseball’s Tickets.com is considering a similar launch. Something to keep your eye, especially as more ticket buyers revolt against Ticketmaster’s paperless system.

Live Nation merger might have sunk Kanye tour

Thu, 1 Oct 2009 21:45:45 -0700

Ok, this may sound crazy, but just follow my logic for a sec: Live Nation is attempting to get the Obama administration to approve an unpopular merger with Ticketmaster. Obama calls Live Nation’s golden boy rapper a “jackass” in carefully scripted “off-the-record” moment. In a genuflection to Barry, Live Nation sacrifices Kanye’s tour in hopes of currying support for its deal before the DOJ.

Sure it’s got a hint of “Birther” to it, but early reports are that the Kanye tour was selling poorly following his outburst at the VMAs. It’s easy for concert fans to take a moral high ground when they have a lot less money in their pockets for entertainment. Add that to what would likely be a very pricey tour in terms of production and artist guarantees, and it’s easy to see how Live Nation could find justification for quietly euthanizing Fame Kills.

More importantly, the Live Nation/Ticketmaster deal is not going well. CEO Michael Rapino was hoping to have the merger completed by October, but it looks like the Justice Department is far from issuing a ruling and could be building a case against the deal. Blocking the two parties would be a gimme-political move for Obama, and even if he settles for a watered down merger that has Ticketmaster drop its unpopular TicketNetwork subsidiary, Obama still gets rock cred for taking on the Evil Empire. Hopefully Kanye will be out of rehab in time to interrupt the settlement press conference.