The  CMA Music Festival in Nashville and the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, wrapped up simultaneously on Sunday, a bare 60 miles from each other, after hosting a combined 150,000 music fans for four days.

Bonnaroo

Bonnaroo, held on a 750-acre farm, sold out 80,000 tickets and is estimated to have a $20 million economic impact on Coffee County. On average, that’s $1,440 spent at Bonnaroo by each attendee.

The CMA Music Festival hosted 70,000 country music fans, for $24 million in economic impact on Nashville.

A Belmont University study (pdf) on the economic impact of the music industry in the Nashville metropolitan area found that music tourism accounts for 35 percent of total visitation, and 73 percent indicated music attractions to be “somewhat to extremely important” to their decision to visit Nashville.

Music-related tourism in the Nashville also is responsible for direct sales revenue of $1.12 billion (total impact of $2.4 billion) and supports 14,995 jobs.

The tourism aspect of music festivals seems to be gaining importance, and not just in Music City. Last month, UKMusic.org published a study (pdf) that says music tourists contribute £864 million ($1.402 trillion) to the U.K. economy, and it called for a “live music tourism strategy” to increase overseas visitor numbers.

The Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California, sold out 75,000 three-day passes in April 2011 and packed 146 nearby hotels.  For 2012, it’s being held over two weekends (April 13-15 and April 20-22). With thousands of fans attending from all over the world, the three-day festival just turned into a 10-day party for Coachella’s tourism service providers.

From August 5 to 7, 2011, Grant Park in Chicago will be invaded by music fans from all over the world for Lollapalooza, which last year attracted 150 bands and a daily attendance of 80,000 for a total of 240,000 over three days. A day pass costs $90, a three-day pass $215, of which the Chicago Parks Department gets 10.25 percent. The overall economic impact for Chicago exceeds $70 million.

The traveling bands who perform at these festivals have their own concert tour economy. Ian Hogarth, Songkick CEO and co-founder, says there are two different parts to this economy. One is established acts, like Bon Jovi, who topped the charts in 2010 with $201.1 million in total concert tour revenue ($108.2 million in North America), or AC/DC, who clocked in second with $177 million.

The second is bands who travel a lot and are using social media to build a fan base at tour locations before they arrive. A study done by Songkick of the hardest-working bands of 2010 shows that pop-punk band Mayday Parade toured more than any other band—71,000 miles for 194 concerts.

Hardest working bands for 2010

Indie rock band Vampire Weekend played 159 tour dates for which they traveled a total of 150,000 miles, which is nearly two-thirds of the way to the moon. Their fans would probably be willing to travel all of it, and the remaining one-third too, if the band landed a gig on the moon.

Photos – Jason Anfinsen; Songkick.com

Related posts:
Concert Travel – U2 Draws No Line on the Horizon for 360° Tour
Bonnaroo Music Festival Announces 2011 Concert Line-Up for 10th Anniversary

Gang Wars: This ain't your father's gun show

You’ve heard of Star Wars? A new travel group in Los Angeles is about to turn that phrase on its head.

For years, tourists have hopped on buses and toured celebrities’ homes — much to the dismay of many celebrities. Our particular tour caught a glimpse of Nicholas Cage walking out his front door — that is until he spied our big wheels on the curb, and he ducked back inside the mansion. We sat there almost 30 minutes trying to outlast Mr. Cage’s need to go wherever he was headed originally, but eventually we had to roll on. He won that round, if you call being trapped inside a mansion winning.

Hugh Hefner fought back, installing a security system at his home that included a cursing rock that announced to tour buses guides to “get the f— off my property.” Tour guides love to set it off for their passengers’ entertainment.

Now a non-profit group known as LA Gang Tours will begin offering a similar agenda in January, but this time the theme is gang related. According to the press release, this stroll will be “a true first-hand encounter of the history and origin of high-profile gang areas and the top crime scene locations.” Think LA County Jail, the L.A. River, the Metropolitan Detention Center, Skid Row, Florencia 13, Florence Avenue, and the Pico Union Graff Lab.

The men behind this idea are civic activists who believe  the poor economy in the interior of Los Angeles is a social injustice, as they like to phrase it. The hope is that Gang Tours can create jobs for folks in South Central Los Angeles and give back to the community overall. You can’t change without some green.

Of course, the real question is whether the idea will bring in real dollars. Sure, people play gang strategy games on the Internet, and the National Geographic Channel saw fit to make this a show topic. But there’s still a distance between the consumer and violence. In this version, participants shell out $65  to wear a flak jacket and sign a waiver on your life during the next few hours. Organizers say they’ve struck a deal with the gangs not to shoot off their guns between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., when they might hit one of these paying guests.

Even the founder, Alfred Lomas, a guy who turned his life around from the gang wars to a food ministry, understands the skepticism. “Well, the purpose of going into [Florencia] is that when this idea was first birthed, it was the result really of what’s known as a one-dimensional approach to a three-dimensional problem. And that is that for generations and decades now, our approach is putting people away in jail, incarcerating them. There’s no prevention, very little intervention, and the gangs are actually growing,” he tried to explain to CNN when its reporter came calling. Somehow, getting them to cooperate on this tour project brings awareness of the problem and that translates into change.

Tourists and gangs don't mix

God bless Mr. Lomas’ heart, because such loyalty and dedication is humbling. But I’m more in line with Dennis Zine, the Los Angeles city councilman who rebutted, “I think it’s a crazy idea. I think that if something moves forward on that, you’re going to jeopardize a lot of people. What are those gang members going to do when they see people coming by and looking at them and gawking at them?”

So while I’ll gladly recommend Alcatraz tours to clients,  hook up travelers with Chicago‘s crime history, and encourage people to take London Walk’s Jack the Ripper tour, I won’t make a peep about LA Gang Wars to my LA-bound clients. I don’t know that I have enough insurance to protect me in the case of an unfortunate incident. That, and the f-word is not entertaining in this setting.

Photography: Michael (mx5tx), DieselDemon