The loose alliance of midrange festivals that began taking shape more than a year ago put some meat on its bones with the announcement of a networked sponsorship sales program. The Music Festival Alliance includes seven independent festival brands from around the U.S. By aggregating their audience of more than 300,000 annual attendees, they hope to be better able to compete for national sponsors against big national festival companies like AEG, Live Nation, C3 and Festival Network.

The Alliance named music magazine publisher Zenbu Media as national sponsorship coordinator. Zenbu is the publisher of Relix Magazine, Jambands.com, and a variety of other print and online music media. it is also co-producer of its own festival, Green Apple Music Festival, which is not a part of the alliance.

Zenbu president Steve Bernstein explains the value proposition this way. "By consolidating sponsorship opportunities, it's a great way for brands to coordinate their marketing programs and physical presence while reaching hundreds of thousands of core music fans all summer long."  Read more »

As of today, organizers of the annual Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival are still searching for a place to hold the event for June 2009. After its first five years in Lawrence KS at Clinton State Park, the festival planned to move to a new site at Circle S Ranch in Jefferson County, 12 miles north of Lawrence, but the county commission yesterday rejected the festival's permit application to hold a festival on that site.

Festival promoter Brett Mosiman said alternative sites are under consideration. It's possible the festival could relocate outside the immediate area or even the state.

The Circle S Ranch alledgedly "lacks infrastructure to host thousands of cars and people", even though Wakarusa is far  Read more »