Darren Herman... Ramblings

Musicians historically made a lot of money by touring.  Over the past few years, labels have been dipping into the touring revenues and have been taking more than their fair share.  Agents are driving around Beverly Hills in their Aston Martin’s and some top artists can’t afford their mortgage.

What if we created a place where people could come together to plan and execute a private concert?

One one end, I’m a huge fan of the Dave Matthews Band and I’d love to have them play a private show for 50-100 major fans.  I’d gladly pay a few thousand of dollars which would never interest them on it’s own, but collectively, we might be able to raise enough to have a private show.  Since it would be closed door and private, it would not affect their current tour schedule which would upset an Clear Channel or Live Nation agreements.

Or, lets flip to the opposite end of the spectrum (less expensive concerts).  How much would you pay to have GirlTalk play a private show for you and our friends at Crash Mansion here in Manhattan?  I’m sure you could round up a few dozen people willing to pay $50-100 for a private show and would be a lot of fun.

This is the way we envision the site:

• Fans can register a profile and list the artists (or could pull from Facebook/MySpace) the artists that they’d like to see in concert
• Using sliders, fans could input the maximum they’d spend to see a show
• Fans would be able to send out an email to create demand around a private show
• Their inputted information would be pooled and matched against other fans who like the particular artist in a geographic area and the demand meter would display certain data
• CncrtDmnd would work out deals with different booking agencies and record labels to have them actively monitor the site (or we’d alert them) and try to orchestrate deals

Record labels would find this interesting for a few reasons:

• extra revenue for their artists
• access to the concert demand data would be priceless for both up and coming artists (for A&R purposes) and for pricing of concert tickets
• creates another avenue to communicate with fans

Biz development deals would be struck with:

• Record labels
• Management & booking agencies
• MySpace Music (and other large music services)
• EventBrite or other large digital event organizing technology
• Last.fm/Pandora for use of extra inventory to promote private shows
• Venue management company

The way that tour schedules and private shows are booked today is much of a closed system and would like to see people creating their own experiences and have the opportunity to influence the music world show by show.

Think it has legs?