Making A CounterPoint

MCP Presents’ Jonathan Fordin talks about the very first CounterPoint Music & Arts Festival taking place later this month near Atlanta.

Presented by MCP Presents and C3, CounterPoint is scheduled for for Sept. 27-29 in Fairburn, Ga., at a 350-acrew area on the Chattachooche River that was the location of MCP’s “The Echo Project” in 2007. The festival’s lineup includes Bassnectar, Skrillex, Pretty Lights, Avicii, Steve Angello, M83, Excision, Big Gigantic, Wale, Ghostland Observatory and more.

But while Counterpoint is EDM-centric, the festival’s creators do not consider the event to be 100 percent electronic. Fans will also find hip-hop, indie rock and many live bands on the three-day lineup.

Or, as Fordin says, “You can go to the festival and not see a DJ the entire time and still have an amazing experience.”

With the amount of multi-day events already available for music fans, why start a new festival now?

When the economy went down, we instantly saw a spike in festival summer sales. Our club tickets, our arena tickets all went down when the economy went down but the festival ticket went up. I think it’s because, to the customer, it’s an investment. You’re investing $150 to $200 for three full days of all of your senses being activated and seeing multiple levels of talent and different styles of music all under one roof as opposed to the traditional $30, $40, $50 tickets for one or two hours of a band and then you go home.

I think in … ’08 and ’09 we started to see the spike in the festival market and it became a smarter purchase for the customer. I think that has gotten us to where we are today. It’s a major reason why we’re seeing the success throughout the United States in the festivals and why you’re seeing more and more pop up. Obviously they’re going to pop up as they get more popular and the ones that aren’t quality … are going to fall off, and the ones done correctly are going to continue to grow.

The Atlanta market has Music Midtown but it was gone for a very long time. We did the Echo Project in ’07, right when the economy was going down, and took a few years off to see what was going to happen. Then with the resurgence of the dance-music world and the way that it’s become so mainstream and tied so well into hip hop and into the hipster and indie rock acts, it seemed like a perfect form, so to speak.

Regarding fans spending two or three days immersed in musical performances, do you see festivals as kind of kindred spirits to music cruises where fans spend four or more days at sea with a shipload of bands?

I think it’s the exact same concept. We’re working on several cruises right now for 2014 and ’15. It’s about experience. That’s how festivals became as popular as they are. You go to a concert, you sit down in your seat, you watch the show, you hear the music, you get up and you leave. That’s the end of the experience. You and me could go to a festival together and we could have two completely different experiences every single day. You’re never going to have a different experience at a theatre show than the person sitting next to you. You don’t have that sensory overload, you don’t have that ability to make different decisions and go to different places. And that goes with the cruises as well. You could lock yourself on a ship for four days and have a totally different experience than I have on that same ship. And that’s unique, that’s something special, there’s value to that.

Instead of going to 10 concerts in a month, they’re going to go to one festival. And they’re going to get a better experience in that one festival than those 10 concerts and they’re going to spend less money going to that one festival than going to those 10 theatre shows.

Are single-day tickets purchased mostly by people living in the area?

Yeah. A lot of them [single-day tickets] are purchased by people living in the area, people who want to see it but aren’t into camping. Again, in Europe, camping at music festivals is the norm. You could go to a non-jamming, non-hippy, non-electronic event in Europe and they’re all still going to camp. In the States it’s not so much like that. Either country shows or originally the jam-rooted shows were the camping shows. Everything else was city in-and-out. Lollapalooza – there is not one vehicle on the entire festival site. You go to our show, CounterPoint, you’re going to have 10,000 to 12,000 vehicles on site.

There’s a difference with that and also with the people who just can’t afford a $200 ticket. We have lots of people coming from Nashville, Knoxville, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida, that are going to come for one night because that’s all they can afford to do, where they have to work on Saturday but they have Friday off, or vice versa. I would say 70 to 80 percent of the single-day tickets will be people who are within an hour drive of the festival site.

While not completely an electronic music festival, CounterPoint does have a lot of electronic acts. Are there different challenges when it comes to presenting an electronic music festival as opposed to doing a traditional band festival?

There are parts that are tougher and parts that are easier. It’s a lot easier to deal with DJs who are one person as opposed to a 10-person band where you have to take care of 10 different individual needs and manage all those expectations. We don’t consider ourselves an electronic-only festival. The reason why the name of the festival is “CounterPoint” is so it can constantly change. Electronic music is what’s big right now so the majority of our event has electronic music. But … you can go to the festival and not see a DJ the entire time and still have an amazing experience. We have a lot of awesome live bands, awesome hip hop, rock, indie rock; we have a lot of quality music on the lineup.

This event to us is not like an EDC (Electric Daisy Carnival) or an Electric Zoo where it is strictly a four-on-the-floor rave from 11 a.m. until it’s over. We have live bands on the main stages pretty much all day long that are headliners because of what’s big right now. Then our late-night music is obviously the heavy electronic.

The biggest [challenges are] the DJs and everybody’s production. That’s probably the toughest part of throwing an electronic show versus another kind of show. Most of the other shows, the bands go up there and play their set and then it’s over. These DJs, they want fireworks, they want lasers, they want CryoJets, they want LED walls and it’s competition. One DJ hears what the other DJ wants, and he wants that.

I say it’s easier to deal with one person than an entire crew, but at that point all of the ego is on one person, and their image and their vibe. One DJ watches another DJ’s show, sees his production and then now you have to do it for him on the next set. Keeping them all happy is probably the hardest part about it.

Do you think this year is the biggest-ever so far for electronic music?

Without a doubt. No question. I don’t know if you’ve looked at Live Nation’s report. [In] their first half of the year report they basically said electronic music has saved their year. Their sales in electronic music is up like 95 percent from, like, 60 percent from last year. That’s pretty impressive to see that movement. It’s becoming mainstream. Rihanna sells 30,000 tickets a night to her show and most of her show is electronic music. Top-40 radio, Calvin Harris has four tracks that are on the Top-40. It’s definitely becoming the norm. It used to be the underground, now it’s normal. Now it’s what everyday kids are listening to. You go to bars and you hear them playing it. There used to be a separation between the remixing of the Top-40 at the dance clubs and what these electronic fans listen to. Now it’s kind of melding into one.

With electronic music moving into the mainstream, are there elements of the underground or rave scene that have survived the transition?

Without a doubt. I think the community vibe has survived the most.

You see a lot of these parties nowadays that aren’t even built around the headliners. They’re built around the community and the vibe. That’s something that was around during the rave culture and was obviously around heavily during the jamband culture.

You look at the band Phish. They can sell 30,000 tickets to their own summer festival with no other act on the lineup. That’s about the culture, about the vibe; you’re seeing that within the dance music culture. At the EDMbiz Conference (Pasquale) Rotella from EDC told everybody … that next year he’s going to have no headliners at his festival. Paying this big money for all these headliners, they don’t need it. It’s about the culture, it’s about the experience, it’s about what’s happening. It’s not just about who’s on stage.

Most of the press coverage of CounterPoint mentions an earlier festival – The Echo Project – and that CounterPoint is somewhat of a descendent of that event. Is that a fair statement?

It’s a fair statement in the fact that it was my festival in ’07. MCP produced it. It was on the same piece of property. In essence, this is the reincarnation of that event. That event was at a different time in the music world. Unfortunately, the month that event took place was the worst month in our economic downtown. … October 2007 was when that crash began.

We have a ten-year permit on that property [and] we were in no rush to force that event to happen again. We decided, as a company, to take a step back. There’s no point in growing a new brand when the economy was so much in shambles and there was so much unknown.

We’ve been spending the last five years developing the site, doing improvements and figuring out what we’re going to do for the rest of our permit. With the resurgence of dance music and this whole culture, we looked at each other and said, “This is the time. Let’s do it.”

The Echo Project was a different lineup, was a different vision, a different everything. But this is on The Echo Project’s beautiful piece of property, and the same people who put on the quality event that The Echo Project was are behind this. Plus, the help of C3 which is one of the largest promoters of the world, obviously the owners of Lollapalooza – Brazil, Chile, Tel Aviv, Chicago – Austin City Limits and they then they book somewhere in the 3,000 shows a year, I would assume. It’s a great coming together to build this new brand. It’s definitely not The Echo Project. It’s a new, completely different brand, but it’s from the brainchild of The Echo Project.

What does C3 bring to the table for CounterPoint? Are duties clearly defined with MCP handling certain duties while C3 handles others, or is it a mixture?

There’s a certain mixture but it’s definitely clearly defined. There are roles that are under their team’s discretion and roles under our team’s discretion. Working with a company like C3, they bring a lot to the table with their level of commitment, their level of experience, their level of large-scale music festivals. They have a very, very large year round team that works on all of their music festivals. They bring a lot from the marketing, the activation and the onsite experience aspect that a company of our size just couldn’t put together in a first-year event. You’re going to see things at this festival that you don’t see at first-year festivals. That’s what we’re most excited about. A lot of that is [thanks to] C3 for, for sure.

Traditional channels – radio, TV and print – do they still work for you?

I would say print is few and far between on what works and what doesn’t. Buying ads in a newspaper, not something that we really do anymore … 10 years ago we would buy ads in the entertainment weeklies in every paper within a six-hour radius of the festival. That doesn’t work these days. With Facebook and the reach that you have in the social media world – Twitter, Facebook – all these online music aspects – Spotify, Grooveshark – that’s the true, true reach.

But we definitely get a lot from radio. We have probably 15 to 20 solid radio partners all over the country on this show that are constantly talking it up, but not in the traditional way. Not “I want to buy 65 30-second ad spaces.” That doesn’t work. Again, engage the DJs to talk about the event, give away tickets, run contests through the radio station, make people go log-on and like the radio station in order to enter contests. It’s all about engagement.

On the more exclusive print stuff, Spin Magazine? Of course. That’s a huge one for us. Rolling Stone? Huge one for us. Those are within the industry. People who are opening those want to find out about our event. They’re looking to see what’s happening. It differs between where you’re advertising and what you’re trying to get out of it.

And then TV, we have a great partnership with Fuse TV. You’ll see CounterPoint stuff on Fuse TV over the next six weeks. Fuse will be coming out to the show, running live feeds from the event.

Running an ad on local TV? Not so much. Running a contest that uses Fuse TV and their online networks and their live-stream networks, that’s something worth talking about. Print, radio and TV work, but not in the traditional way it used to be. It’s got to be different and it’s all about engaging. The more you engage people, the longer the impression lasts. You can get a million impressions looking at an ad in a paper or you can get 50,000 and engage them. And those 50,000 that got engaged are going to translate into a lot more ticket sales than the million who saw it.

What are you planning for next year’s CounterPoint?

Come this year, first, and use your imagination. That’s all I can say. It’s not going to go anywhere. It’s just going to get bigger and bigger and better. We’re on one of the most beautiful pieces of property in the entire southeastern part of the United States. We’re using about 325 acres of the 12,000 acres we have access to. Everything you see this year is going to be amplified ten-fold as the event continues to grow.

Ticket options for the CounterPoint Music & Arts Festival include three-day general admission and single-day. VIP offerings include access to a private VIP lounge, cash bar, free refreshments, massages and more. To learn more about CounterPoint, click here for the festival’s website, here for its Facebook page and here for its Twitter feed.