Today Jeremy "JJ" Johnson and I gave a presentation on Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. We discussed How New Technologies Help Create An Innovative Business Model.
Over the last 10years, the music industry has seen a steady decline in record sales while live music and large festivals thrived. Today, the average music fan listens to a broad range of music ranging from hip-hop to r&b to country to alternative.
In 2002, the idea of promoting a music and arts festival on a large 700-acre farm area in Manchester, TN seemed like a daunting task. At the time, music fans already established an intricate network of sites and blogs for exchanging tour dates, like/dislikes, downloads etc. Superfly and AC Entertainment wanted to tap into this and bring a Program Concept with a Web-minded vibe. Bonnaroo managed to be a success in its first year with no traditional advertising. Everything was word of mouth and online. Tickets were even sold only on their website to cut out cost.
In its first year, the festival sold out its then 70,000-seat capacity and made a $10million profit. Today, Bonnaroo executives are constantly exploring different opportunities to reach their fans. In order to re-engage their fans, Bonnaroo 2010 lineup was announced through the individual websites, MySpace pages, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages of the performing acts. This sent a surge of excitment through fans who wanted to know who was perfroming weeks before the offical list was actually posted. Today, Bonnaroo is the 3rd huighest grossing music event in the world and has been named one of the "50 moments that changed the history of Rock and Roll" by Rolling Stone magazine.
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