For years the conventional wisdom among concert promoters was that music festivals face impossible hurdles in the city, where the cultural calendar is crowded, large public spaces are hard to reserve, and costs are high.
But this summer entrepreneurs have started three new for-profit festivals in New York, including the CBGB Festival that begins on Thursday and features the bands Guided by Voices and Cloud Nothings. Over the last four years three other large-scale festivals have taken root and prospered.
With album sales in decline, festivals of all sorts have become big business, and promoters in New York look with envy on the success of large urban festivals like Lollapalooza in Chicago and South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Several said they see a huge potential market in the nation’s most densely populated major city for a big festival, if the right formula can be found.
“Lots of people are running at New York, both local promoters and, for that matter, out-of-town promoters,” said Mark Campana, a co-president for North American concerts at Live Nation, the largest concert promoter in the country. “They are all looking to try to find a way, but it’s expensive. This is not something for the faint of heart.”
The sudden abundance of music festivals in the city echoes a national trend. More than 20 major festivals were started this year across the country. Live Nation alone has plans to stage eight this year — more than doubling its festival business, and starting outdoor events in cities like Philadelphia and St. Paul, Mr. Campana said.
In New York promoters have adopted two main strategies. Several are following the music-conference model: staging a series of multiband concerts in local clubs and then complementing them with panel discussions, film festivals and free outdoor events. Others are producing more conventional festivals on Randalls Island and in other city parks, trying to avoid the pitfalls that doomed All Points West and outdoor festivals elsewhere in the region.
This week the first CBGB festival, organized by a group that bought the rights to the famous punk-rock club that closed in 2006, kicks off with concerts in Times Square, Central Park and at 40 clubs around the city. Last month two music-industry veterans resurrected a concert series at clubs to accompany the New Music Seminar. Later this month the Black Keys and Snoop Dogg will anchor the first Catalpa Festival on Randalls Island, booked by Dave Foran, a young Irish impresario.
Now in its second year, Governors Ball drew 40,000 people over two days in June to Randalls Island Park with a mix of electronic music and indie rock bands. Electric Zoo, a festival devoted to electronic dance music, returns to the same park over the Labor Day weekend for the fourth year and is expected to draw 100,000 people over three days, promoters said. And the Northside Festival in Brooklyn, started four years ago by the publishers of L Magazine, went off in June without a hitch in Williamsburg, drawing some 80,000 people over four days.
The promoters behind the CBGB, New Music Seminar and Northside festivals have all adopted as a model the CMJ Music Marathon, a long-running music industry conference and concert series held each fall in New York. These promoters are making deals with existing clubs to present lineups that put obscure and emerging bands on bills with better-known headliners.
It’s a flexible design, promoters and club owners say. People can buy a pass for the entire festival or just pay a cover charge at a club for a particular night. Generally the clubs make money from the sale of drinks and, in some cases, take a percentage of door charges, while the promoter books the acts and pays the major artists out of the sales of festival passes. Some of the lesser groups play for a small stipend or a percentage of the door receipts.
Such a blueprint works well in New York with its plethora of clubs and lack of open space, said Tim Hayes, the lead promoter behind the CBGB festival. It also allows promoters to take a chance on more new bands rather than sticking to established acts.
