Following the problems of last Monday night (when the Reading/Leeds announcement was made) with accessing the forums - they were incredibly busy - I've been looking at how things might be improved before Glasto ticket day.
Some changes have already been made that should see a small improvement of around 5%, and a number of other issues have been identified that should improve things a fair bit more.
Rather than just go ahead and make the changes and then discover that too late that it's ma
This was the first time I've sat thru a licence hearing under the new licencing act, but the procedure was much the same as under the old one. The only noticeable difference is that "interested parties" who are members of the licencing board are no longer allowed to be involved with making the decision.
This meant that a certain Pilton councillor (I won't name him, this isn't meant to be personal) who has been a member of the board in the past was excluded this time around, tho he was still f
So this year the bubble has well and truly burst. Alongside the new festivals that failed to get off the ground there were also some established names that failed completely or suffered from lower sales. Meanwhile, the better festivals held their own or grew as they were hoping to do.
So what happens when Mean Fiddler's Festival Republic's Melvin Benn gets asked about the trends this summer? He doesn't pick on the festivals that suffered, but instead comments that he's heard that sales were d
I have - apparently - a wonderful secretary, who calls festival organisers to arrange access for eFestivals staff. This is the latest scam being tried by some to blag their way into festivals.
Are people really so stupid to think that something like this will work? The answer of course is yes . Does it work? Nope - and these people aren't even clever enough to cover their tracks. Scammers are always a few sandwiches short of the full hamper.
I've just had a PM on here from an old mate, who recognised the name of another old mate in a post I'd made (tho he doesn't remember me, the bastard ).
edit: a few PMs later with some reminders, and he now knows who I am.
I get endless press releases about various bands playing a "secret show" - it's so secret that they're sending out press releases.
What's the score with this idiot tosh? Is it something that's been made up as a marketing tool in a "oooo, I got tickets to their secret show, I'm such a big fan" kind of way, or are they shows that they thought they didn't need publicity to sell tickets for but then found they couldn't sell the tickets?
Either way, they're generally for bands I wouldn't for
Why does the world and their dog think that eFestivals is here to provide their organisation with a special and personal service for free?
Very regularly, eFestivals gets emails from research assistants who want to get us to do their research for them. Very often, the info they're after is easily available and easily findable on the website, but they can't even be bothered to look. Not only that, they are very often offended at being told that us doing work for their commercial benefit will c
I've just visited the official Download forums for the first time in several years and they're hilarious.
First up was me noticing the forums becoming unusable for a while with a "server busy" message ... which happened to coincide with school's morning break time. At a guess - because i've seen it year on year on the eFestivals forums - a large number of the people posting there are not attending the festival and know they're not; they're posting just to pretend to be 'cool'.
Anyway, t
Many people appreciate the tight moderation of the main forums here, as it keeps the forums focused on the festivals they're about - unlike other forums on other websites, they don't become full of posts about what someone had for lunch and other very-off-topic things.
To give those users here who would like more freedom to chat about their favourite festivals and anything else, we've now added MyFestivals Groups. Anyone can create a group along with a forum for that group, and the leader of
Well, today is the first 'busy' day of the year, with T in the Park officially announced in an hour or so. With RATM having already leaked the line-up, traffic has been busy on the site since first thing this morning, and the servers have been coping absolutely fine - no stress at all.
For those who might have been on the site at around 8:30 this morning and experienced difficulties, that was for an entirely different reason - I was doing a little more pruning of non-festie posts, which is ve
With more staff on board, there's more time to spend on doing all those those things which there was never time to do...
The latest change is added eye candy on the main news page.
As time allows, similar things to pretty up the site will be added.
The latest changes to to the website have now gone live, with the re-jigging of the photo albums/galleries now just about complete.
The photo albums pages have now been split into years, and a photo from each photo album added alongside that album. For albums from this year, there's the option to view the album as either traditional galleries or, via a Flash application, as a slideshow.
One result of the changes is that currently the eCards program is a bit messed up. This will be fixed an
The new server is now in place, which adds around 80% to the load capacity that was available last Monday when the Reading/Leeds tickets went on sale.
Had this new server been in place on Monday, then I believe that no issues would have been experienced by people using the site at that time. And as there were around 50% more users online simultaneously on Monday across the whole website than this website has experienced previously and things mostly ran OK, I think that's a pretty good indicat
As a part of the website redesign (which will go live within the next week sometime) there's now an RSS feed available of the latest eFestivals News.
For all the information, please see here.
What you like is what you like; you don't have to agree with me.
Ali Campbell
UB40's ex-frontman is now out on his own. The fall-out with his brother and other UB40 members looks like it's pretty large - perhaps as large as Ali himself now is in his ill-fitting suits - because the set contained absolutely no original UB40 compositions as far as I could tell. All you get linking back to then is the classic covers - 'Red Red Wine', 'Kingston Town', and the like.
Meanwhile, Ali himself puts
I'm not one to get all mawkish about the death of someone I don't know. And if you try juggling knives then why be surprised if they cut you? She did what she did and the consequences are hers.
All the same - and I don't say this lightly - the world of music has lost a huge talent. In the 13 years I've been writing about festivals and the acts I've seen there, I can't think of any act who's talent has jumped out and grabbed me in such a strong way as Amy Winehouse.
I first saw Amy and hear
The cancellation of some of the more major festivals this year have brought a lot of easy headlines for newspapers and the music press, with a raft of reasons suggested as the cause - the olympics, the recession, poor bookings, expensive tickets, and the like.
Those things are of course in the mix and it would be foolish to dismiss the effect they have, but there's much more going on to effect the festivals scene than just those.
Back in 2006 I wrote this article titled "Regulation, Retro
The weather has been dreadful lately, it's hard to believe that the country is suffering a drought. And last summer's festival weather was dreadful too, the worst I've encountered across a summer since I started running eFestivals back in 2000.
With this year's summer festival season just about to start, I'm betting there's lots of festival organisers and festival goers wondering when it'll stop.
For some they're now in the two-week range, when the more reputable weather forecasters are pr
I'd say not, but as I've only viewed it from the M1 what do I know? Is there much to love about Luton?
Anyway, the 'Love Luton' event - I hesitate to use the word 'festival' - offers a line-up including The Wanted. And Olly Murs. I can't say it's top of my own list of where to go this summer.
Tickets are now £15, and anyone who bought at ticket at the previous higher price will be sent a free extra ticket.
Payola was a big thing in the past; it probably still goes on - taking money from record companies to feature their products on mainstream radio to help push sales - but it's probably so engrained into the music biz now that it's no longer considered a scandal. From a moral point of view it probably makes bankers look honest.
There's a second version of payola, which works within what is known as journalism. It's not actually journalists who do it of course, because writing fiction is not wha
My own visits to camping festivals are over for another summer, and despite officially being the wettest summer on record I've not seen that much mud.
Last summer I went to eight camping festivals. In every case there was more rain than any sensible festival goer would want, much use of wellies (tho I did get away with properly-waterproof trainers once or twice), and it was often far colder than you'd expect even with a British summer (the official stats confirm last summer as colder than thi
I once wrote a review saying how dreadful I thought Dawn Penn was as a live act. I saw her a second time and that didn't change my mind. Both of those times she was backed by a DJ and not a live band.
I saw her again yesterday at Bristol's Harbourfest, with a live band. She was great!
That was a hard crowd to win over, too - and she got them.
