The Next Big Thing

Just got word that the Lollapalooza festival tour is canceled due to poor ticket sales. With festivals here in Holland suffering from dramatic drops in attendees as well, this seems to be an international trend. Couple that with the ever declining record sales, and we just might see the day when the corporate honchos will drag their sorry asses over to another field for faster turnovers and leave this music stuff to livin' 'n breathin' human beings. I'll tell ya, this biz is fucked beyond belief, if they can't make money these days from discs that sell "only" 50.000 copies, while just about every small label would be overjoyed with such figures, they're obviously doing something wrong. And what about this festival stuff? You axe. Well just think about it; bands might tour again from town to town playing relatively small clubs and you won't have to fork over a weeks pay to spend two days in the desert or a mudfield to watch 60 bands while there's actually only two you really wanna see. Nutty as it may sound, but the future is in DIY, small specialized operations that are in direct contact with their, uh, "target audience". Look at Hightone, Yep Rock or even Soul Jazz for proof positive. And the same goes for this festival stuff, the smaller specialized ones are doin' fine, it's these something-for-everybody barf fests that are no longer pullin' in the numbers. Hey, you may say I'm a dreamer, but...