All Points West Most Likely Cancled

All Points West (pictured above in it's debut year), New York's answer to Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Bonnaroo will most likely not return in 2010 says AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips. The festival located in Liberty State Park (across the Hudson from Manhattan)started two years ago presenting Radiohead for two nights along with Jack Johnson, has had trouble finding appropriate headliners for 2010, sources say. AEG Live's flagship festival, Coachella, recorded a record setting attendance of more than a quarter of a million people last weekend. All Points West never exceeded 75,000 customers in either years of its existence. Also, concert-goers complained openly about the long ferry lines to get to the venue from NYC, and the amount of mud on the festival fields.

In my opinion I think festivals should focus on long term draw-oriented business plans rather than dumping money into an uncertain project. Bonnaroo for example started out as a jam-band-oriented music festival, mainly because the promoters knew they were likely to sell a lot of tickets if they catered to a specific market segment. Over time however, as the lineup expanded to include such acts as Radiohead, The Police, Tool, and Neil Young, but only after 4 years of Widespread Panic and/or Dave Matthews Band. Basically their business strategy was to establish themselves as a kick-ass festival and then let the word of mouth spread. Now, Roo is a festival destination for many Americans regardless of the lineup- people want to have the Bonnaroo experience. This strategy cannot be applied to non-established festivals like All Points West. No one went to the first two years of All Points West to experience the festival- they went because of the lineup. Which leads me to what I think was APW's second problem: lineup relative to the price. In 2009 a three day pass to APW cost "$239.00 + applicable service fees" and a one day pass cost "$89.00 + applicable service fees." Considering that the average Jay-Z, Vampire Weekend, Tool, or Coldplay fan is a 15-25 year old, its not surprising that many would-be concert goers would be deterred by the price. Also, I doubt that Jay-Z, Vampire Weekend, Tool, and Coldplay share a very large audience pool. And for a $100 day pass, one was likely to feel ripped off for paying to see 3 bands they like. Simply put- All Points West tried to go big without paying its proper dues, and without assembling a synergistic lineup. After two years of blasting music right across the Hudson from the country's most populated city, the promoters are calling it quit. Hopefully other giant companies launching festivals will learn from APW's mistakes, and focus more on starting small- and building a brand that consumers find authentic.

Google finally reveals govt's frequency of demand of information

Google announced today a new tool for tracking the number of times a government requests information from the Search Company. They make the distinction between the number of times that a government asks for information, and the number of times a government asks them to remove content from Google, Blogger, or YouTube. For the latter Google provides detailed statistics on where content was removed from, but they give no details on what types of information governments requested, nor do they disclose whether they complied with the government’s requests.

Firstly, let me say this is a huge step in the right direction for pressuring other Internet companies to reveal their relationships with national governments. Also, hopefully as more accurate information is released on Google there will be a clearer picture of governments (including the US government) prevalence to censor information and unlawfully request information without a warrant. The numbers that are currently available do not tell us for example how many people a government requests information on since sometimes a request is for multiple people, or multiple requests are for the same person. Still, Google has said that they will reveal more comprehensive statistics as time goes on. A new update is expected in 6 months (the current statistics are from the 6 month period between July 2009 and December 2009). Now that Google has stepped forward to help improve transparency regarding internet privacy and internet censorship, other internet giants will be pressured to do the same. Microsoft, Yahoo, and AT&T all hold a lot of user data on their serves that I’m sure the government finds valuable.

So how did the US fare in the newly released statistics? From a privacy standpoint, possibly shitty. The US has the second most requests at 3,580, following only Brazil, but without detailed information we can’t really evaluate their rate of censorship. Google has long been known to cooperate with the US government, and the statistics for the content removal requests support this assumption- Google cooperated with 80% of the US’s requests. The average percent of cooperation is around 75% however, so once again that statistic provides very little relevant information.

FAQ on the new tool, with a breakdown of what the statistics do and don’t mean.

Ustream streams first concert to iPad

Ustream, the internet’s leading streaming website is currently streaming the 4/11/10 Bon Jovi concert straight from the American Airlines Center in Dallas TX to iPad owners nation-wide. Although the company bases much of it’s business plan on streaming live concerts for free, the release of the iPad earlier this month provided Ustream with the first high quality, portable platform to broadcast their streams. The event would be unimportant for Bon-Jovi-haters like myself if it were not for the implications of streaming concerts directly to people’s portable devices. The problem with live concert streaming up to this point has been that as accessibility of content online increases, people are less willing to view content at a scheduled time. An example of this trend is how TV programs are being viewed more and more online on websites like Hulu. This is because the viewer has control over the time and place of viewing, unlike traditional TV, so it is more convenient for them. Watching concerts live online is similar to traditional TV as in one must tune in at a specific time. But with the iPad, and presumably other portable tablets, one can stream a concert on-the-go: which makes streaming concerts more accessible. Who knows if this will become a trend, or maybe no one cares. So in closing, I hate Bon Jovi. Here’s a video of some good music…

Rhapsody lowers it’s subscription price

In it’s first move as an independent company, Rhapsody music subscription service has lowered its price from 15$ a month to 10$ a moth. Shortly after separating itself from parent organization RealNetworks the music service company is vying to compete more affectively in the ever changing music sales market. Competing against rival subscription service Napster, online stores like ITunes and Amazon MP3, as well as illegal downloading, Rhapsody is doing all it can to attract new customers. Last year the company began including iPhone and Android phone apps that make it easier for subscribers to access their music away from their PC or laptop.

Subscription music services are cool ideas, but they have yet to become ‘big’ in North America. In Europe there is Spotify which offers legal peer-to-peer sharing for 9.99 Euros a month. Imagine having access to all the music you could ever want, and keep it organized as you would like for one price. The subscription model doesn’t sound too bad- unless of course, you don’t pay for your music anyway.

So why hasn’t Rhapsody caught on? In part its because Apple has done such a good job at marketing their music products, and because people seem resigned to still want to ‘own’ their property. My guess, however, is that Rhapsody’s price cut can only attract new customers to the more efficient model for music sales.