Should the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival Continue to Be Free?
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The Hardly Stricly Bluegrass festival is a wonderful addition to the city of San Francisco. However, it seems to be approaching a crossroads.
This year, some estimate that as many as 750,000 people (that’s almost as many people who live in San Francisco!) motored and biked and walked their way to Golden Gate Park to watch bonafide musical living legends pick up their guitar or banjo and contribute to what has to be the most interesting and unique music festival to spring up in these great United States in the past decade. And, it’s all completely free. It’s a premier example of what makes San Francisco one of the best places to live (at least culturally; lots of opinions lately about the good and sometimes bad of San Francisco).
But, it can’t continue this way. As any tech-savvy music nerd who hangs around with the Internet start-up crowd will tell you (even if you didn’t ask) — this thing simply won’t scale. So, why not charge for admission?
I’m no music promoter, nor do I want to argue the social merits of free versus paid w/r/t the spirit of this great city, but I do know this: The performances I’ve seen at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass over the years have to at least be worth $10 per day. I mean, c’mon. I’d easily pay $30 per day, and I’m cheap.
I didn’t attend the Outside Lands festival this year, nor last year. I probably won’t ever show up for that party. The musical acts are top-notch, I suppose, although the line-up this year — including the Beastie Boys, Dave Matthews, and Pearl Jam — seemed like a retread of a 1992 Lollapalooza show. That festival is clearly, inherently a money-making enterprise put on by skilled music promoters, with all of the attendant commercialism, security, and over-priced t-shirts and “beer gardens” that I’ve come to loath. For much more than $30 per day. Fuck that shit.
I don’t say such things about Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. I truly believe in its purpose. But, I find that I’m not really excited about going. This year, I couldn’t be bothered to go on Friday, and I couldn’t go on Saturday (Henry’s birthday). I only went on Sunday to see Dr. Dog, who played first, at noon-thirty. After they got off the stage, it quickly became a bum rush of people entering the park, and I didn’t have the get-up-and-go to battle them for space near the stage, along the walkways, or in the lines for the facilities. I got up and went.
So, let’s charge $20 per day to attend this festival. It would turn that 750,000 freeloaders into (let’s just halve that and more) into 300,000 paying customers. That’s $6 million. Per day. Heck, let’s not even charge for Friday. Then, let’s give that money — $12 million minus $1 million for expenses — to the park service so they can grow back that grass and make Golden Gate Park even better. They need it, and we need to give it to them for hosting this grand event.
I’d like to give Golden Gate Park $11 million. Every year, some of the best living musicians spend 45 minutes in succession unloading their best performances in one of the prettiest parks in the country to people who respect and cheer what they do. It’s worth it to me.
Okay, let’s make it $10 per day. That’s $5 million for the park. What’s your price?
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Mister Curious conclusion: There should be a nominal fee for people to attend the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, and the money raised should be given to the city of San Francisco’s Recreation and Parks department to improve Golden Gate Park.
City Haiku
Car alarm sounding.
Outside on the street. Wake up!
The night calls shotgun.
Balls-a-Droppin’
I am dirty. I just can’t help but read into these things.
OMG, GOD
I didn’t know the Bible had daily affirmations. Maybe this is the TXT BIBLE.
What’s Next? Bacon Porn?
Is this ad trying to say that bacon makes “everything” better? Like, sex? That’s just gross.
Totally Gae
This name may work in Russian, but they may want to rethink it in English.
Bathroom Reader
Is it just me? Every time I see this icon, all I see is a dude sitting on the toilet reading a newspaper. Maybe it’s the fact that his face is slightly obscured. Maybe if the bench looked like it was made out of wood it would be better. If you use this RSS icon on your blog, stop.
Embracing the Illegal
I set up a download for my friends this week. Two, actually. I created two links on a page on my own Web site. Clicking on each link downloads a folder of mp3 files of songs I’m listening to these days, which I think (and hope) my friends will enjoy. This is technically illegal, I think, but I don’t care anymore. I really like making mixes for my friends — and getting mixes from them, too. It’s one of the brightest parts of my life.
I’ve avoided setting up a direct download like this for years. Instead, I’ve used services like Pando to share large files because it was less efficient and so felt less wrong. I know that file-sharing is a touchy subject. I have strong feelings about it, and these feelings are often conflicting, but I’ve changed my mind about how I share music. Going forward, I’m going to try to share even more music with my friends, and I’m going to try and find an alternative way to “pay” for it when I do.
I buy tons of music. Some of the songs on the mixes I shared this week are non-DRM versions that I bought from iTunes just to include in these mixes. Some are from old CDs I purchased long ago. A few are from mixes other people have made for me. I bet a few are pirated or were shared with me by friends, but it’s hard to remember or identify them.
The Trio song on one of these CDs I made? I’ve purchased it four (4!) times: on LP (new), on cassette (used at record store), on CD (used at record store), and on iTunes (new). This is not an isolated case. I’ve done this repeatedly for other albums and songs. I purchased the French song that appears on one of these new mixes last year from iTunes and then had to purchase the upgraded version of it just so I could include it in these new mixes. Frankly, it was a pain putting these two mixes together for exactly this reason. Took me a long time. It would have been easier to just steal all of it. I’d be okay with paying someone a mix-only usage license, provided it was reasonable.
Every year, I make a mix of songs for my son’s birthday. I will continue to do this until he tells me to stop. Each year, I make about 20 copies of that CD to give to the kids who come to his birthday party. It’s a takeaway gift for them, and I make artwork for it and CD holders from recycled maps or what-have-you. The songs are a mix of kiddy songs and more adult-tolerable stuff. You have no idea how many parents (in addition to the kids) tell me that they love these CDs and listen to them in their cars all the time. I spend a lot of time trying to come up with the perfect mix for the kids’ age and also try to pick songs that the parents won’t burn out on over time. It’s been a huge success. One parent even asked me to make CD mixes to play (not burn and share) at their kid’s birthday party. Want to encourage an amateur DJ to spend six hours putting together French chansons and African ditties for free for your kids’ party? Just ask. Worked on me.
However — and I’ll be very honest about this — I am *not* going to buy 20 versions of that CD I made at full price. It’s just not reasonable.
So where does this leave me? The answers that are most appealing to me: 1) Give me a mix-only usage license, and 2) Allow me to pay artists directly for the music I purchase (or at least prove to me that a verifiable percentage of my purchase will go directly to the people who created the music). My friend Julie suggests another solution: Set subscription fees for all Internet-available content — newspapers, magazines, television, music, etc., and then trickle down the money to the artists.
Until these things happen (they probably won’t), I suppose I’ll need to pay in some other way. I guess I already pay in some way: The more people who download it, the more I’ll be charged by my hosting company. Perhaps I should create a new type of monetary penance whenever I share a mix. Any suggestions? What would make sense?
I weighed all of this in my mind before setting up this download for my friends. I kept coming to the conclusion that stifling my enthusiasm for sharing new music with my friends isn’t worth it. Being politically correct — or in this case, “economically correct” — has stopped me in the past from doing something I love and am pretty good at: introducing people to music they would never otherwise hear, and perhaps someday might even purchase or spread in their own way.
Wackipedia
Chinese Wikipedia entry about… I have no idea.
Food You Love, in a Cone
Boredom begone, with Skitch.
