Comments about Ohioprog and Kickstarter . . .

[Conrad]

I just made my pledge to Kickstarter for Ohioprog. Check out www.ohioprog.com for the bands and venue. It looks like a great lineup and will not overlap with ProgPower. Since it is the weekend before, I am going to Canton for the weekend and then jet down to Atlanta to continue the party. How can this be bad?

For those of you new to Kickstarter, let me just recommend you give it a look. In a nutshell, you pledge to buy your concert tickets (many different levels to choose from). If the promotor gets his goal, then you get your tickets and a great show. If the promotor does not reach his goal, then you are not charged a cent. No harm, no fowl. It really is a win/win situation.

Check out the websites and decide for yourself. It really is an innovative business model that has been working well for others and I am really interested to see if it will work in the concert promotion realm.

Conrad

 

[Harvester]

Moved to Lounge per forum policy on other festivals.

 

[5150]

Count me in. Several of the bands are my favorites and the rest sound interesting.

You are right about it not competing with PP, both by date and musical style. OhioProg is more traditional prog rock and not metal.

 

[5150]

Pledge made on Kickstarter. Still plenty of tickets and good seats available.

 

[Harvester]

The OhioProg 2012 three-day progressive rock festival — which was scheduled to take place September 7-9, 2012 at the Canton Palace Theatre in Canton, Ohio — has been canceled.

Commented the organizers: "OhioProg 2012 turned to crowd funding platform to make tickets available for the three-day progressive rock festival in an attempt to ensure enough people would attend to cover the costs and expenses of holding such a grand event. The Kickstarter campaign ended on January 2, 2012 with only 60 tickets pledged. A total of around 400-450 tickets pledged at the various levels would have reached the funding goal.

"The festival adopted Kickstarter's project criteria in that, it is all-or-nothing funding. So, since the goal was not reached OhioProg 2012 has been canceled. Also, because funding on Kickstarter is all or nothing, all pledges have been automatically canceled.

"We thank the many that did pledge and committed to attending the festival. The support meant a lot. We'd also like to thank those at the Canton Palace Theatre and those in the Canton area who have been very gracious to our staff and efforts. And, of course, all of the bands who were invited to perform at OhioProg 2012, we thank you for believing in our event!

"To join the OhioProg mailing list to be notified of future related events, please visit the OhioProg web site at www.ohioprog.com."

OhioProg 2012 was slated to include a Friday pre-show, "A Tribute To The Classics," and a Saturday and Sunday full-day main event featuring eleven bands spanning five countries. Scheduled performers included FM, GLASS HAMMER, NIGHTINGALE, ARENA, PERSEPHONE'S DREAM, ORPHAN PROJECT, AFTER THE FALL, CRYPTIC VISION and KINETIC ELEMENT.

 

[DuchessOfDork]

:*( That's so sad. I hate seeing this happen to good shows. God bless the promoters and I hope they have success in the future.

 

[Justin G]

Too bad.

You know, if Nightingale was already planning on being here and has visas squared away...

 

[TheLongshot]

Going to be a lot of second-guessing on this one, whether they were too ambitious with their lineup, whether using Kickstarter was a turnoff, whether there were too many festivals to compete with...

I know for me the main issue was when it was scheduled (Between ProgDay and ProgPower) and there are a lot of things going on this year (The last NEARFest blowout, the Flower Kings alumni association at ROSFest...)

Edit: Gotta say, I like Rob LaDuca's response on the PE board:

EASIEST: hitting "LIKE" on Facebook, SAYING 'yeah I'll go', watching a youtube video of an artist chosen for the festival

EASY: buying (or illegally downloading) music from one of the festival artists, having a honest intention to go, start to look into logistics, price plane tickets

HARD: convincing reluctant domestic partners to allow you to attend yet another festival, carving another 3-4 days out of your life, reaching into wallet to pull out credit card to rack up a four-figure bill in order to pay for festival ticket, hotel, travel costs

HARDEST: running your own festival, convincing hundreds of people to do the 'HARD' thing above

 

[PureXul]

You know, if Nightingale was already planning on being here and has visas squared away...

That's the first thing I thought too...I actually wouldn't be at all surprised if OhioProg had yet to even start working on the visas, not to mention the fact that the plans for Wed/Thur are presumably complete (or damn close) since they're being announced this month.

I definitely would love to see Nightingale though...

 

[Justin G]

That's the first thing I thought too...I actually wouldn't be at all surprised if OhioProg had yet to even start working on the visas, not to mention the fact that the plans for Wed/Thur are presumably complete (or damn close) since they're being announced this month.

I definitely would love to see Nightingale though...

I know. A guy can dream though. I missed PPUSA II and not seeing Nightingale is a big regret.

 

[PureXul]

I know. A guy can dream though. I missed PPUSA II and not seeing Nightingale is a big regret.

+1 to everything you just said. If I ever win the lottery, I'd give Glenn a huge chunk of money to just give Dan the entirety of Thursday night. Some Nightingale, some Moontower, some Edge of Sanity w/ Rogga on vocals...whatever he wants to play. He could play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" for all I care...

 

[AeonicSlumber]

I don't think he would play EoS or Moontower material for most amounts of money. You'd probably have to win multiple lotteries I'm afraid...

 

[PureXul]

I don't think he would play EoS or Moontower material for most amounts of money. You'd probably have to win multiple lotteries I'm afraid...

I'm dreaming here, not making logical prediction...now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to return to dreaming about Dan Swano.




Seriously though, I know that he's basically closed the EoS chapter of his career and that he's more or less finished growling aside from the rare studio work, which knocks out Moontower-era material...I'd just kill to see some of that stuff live.

 

[5150]

Edit: Gotta say, I like Rob LaDuca's response on the PE board:

What is the PE board? Link please

 

[Harvester]

What is the PE board? Link please

http://www.progressiveears.com/

 

[Pellaz]

Too bad.

You know, if Nightingale was already planning on being here and has visas squared away...

Oooooooooooooh. I could get a higher-res pic of Dan's shoes this time!

 

[Cheiron]

Nightingale should play at ProgPower, again. Or just a Dan Swano special. But Dag has to show up.

This is a shame that it didn't happen, but relying on something like kickstarter is a risk, but a very interesting way of trying to do this.

The problem as I see it is that he didn't pick the best date for starting a new festival, particularly with the bands he was getting, and his bands, while good, are not necessarily the ones to generate a lot of funds. Further, the very mystery if the event would occur or not, definitely hurt. I don't know if a concert can successfully work through kickstarter.

 

[TheLongshot]

Nightingale should play at ProgPower, again. Or just a Dan Swano special. But Dag has to show up.

This is a shame that it didn't happen, but relying on something like kickstarter is a risk, but a very interesting way of trying to do this.

The problem as I see it is that he didn't pick the best date for starting a new festival, particularly with the bands he was getting, and his bands, while good, are not necessarily the ones to generate a lot of funds. Further, the very mystery if the event would occur or not, definitely hurt. I don't know if a concert can successfully work through kickstarter.

There is less risk with Kickstarter, since you only pay if the project reaches its goal. Course, there is still a risk if it does meet its goal and it doesn't come off, but that's true of any new festival.

 

[Cheiron]

There is less risk with Kickstarter, since you only pay if the project reaches its goal. Course, there is still a risk if it does meet its goal and it doesn't come off, but that's true of any new festival.

Through kickstarter yes, but you are still asking bands to commit to a festival when you have no money to pay them and there can be fees to reserve a location for the festival, advertising costs.

 

[dcowboys311]

There's also the part where you're expecting your fans to fund the festival by nine months in advance in a city in Ohio....people don't make plans that far in advance unless it's for something like ProgPower where hotels always fill up QUICK due to location and reputation.