Music Midtown

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Music Midtown logo

Music Midtown was a large music festival held in Atlanta, Georgia from 1994 to 2005. At its peak, the event drew in excess of 300,000 attendees for its three-day run. Six stages, each typically sponsored by a local radio station, were used to present dozens of bands playing a wide variety of musical genres. In response to falling attendance and citing rising expenses, promoters placed the festival on hiatus in 2006.

[edit] History

The festival was conceived by Atlanta-based music promoters Alex Cooley and Peter Conlon who sought to create an event similar to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and which would present the wide variety of music they both had come to enjoy during their careers in the music industry.

In 1994, the festival launched on a parcel of undeveloped land at Peachtree St. and Tenth St. in the heart of Midtown's business district. After a few years at this site, the festival was forced to move to make way for the construction of the new Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. The new festival site chosen was in downtown just north of Centennial Olympic Park and consisted mainly of closed-off streets and surface parking lots which made for a hot and somewhat unpleasant daytime concert-going experience. This site is now home to the new Georgia Aquarium and the future World of Coca-Cola museum. This led to a brief stay of two years after which the festival moved to the current 42 acre (170,000 m²) location adjacent to the Atlanta Civic Center and SciTrek. After finding this new home, the festival grew dramatically and attracted around 300,000 attendees in its peak years.

Music Midtown crowd

Although independent promoters when the festival was created, Cooley and Conlon sold their company, Concert/Southern Promotions, to Clear Channel Communications' subsidiary SFX Entertainment in 1998. In November 2004, Alex Cooley was released by Clear Channel Entertainment in part due to his unsuccessful assimilation into the corporate culture. His age and health problems (diabetes) prevented him from working full-time which also played a role.

Traditionally on the first weekend in May, the 2005 festival was moved to June 10-12. This was supposedly done for better weather, though this was counterproductive, as it put the festival into even more heat and humidity and at a greater risk for thunderstorms with dangerous lightning. Most of the 2005 festival was rained on by remnants of Tropical Storm Arlene, repeating many of the May rains it was rescheduled to avoid. Special outdoor tiles were put down in front of the stages to protect the grass and keep it from turning to mud.

Music Midtown stage

The 2005 festival also doubled the talent budget and raised 3-day ticket prices from $45 to $75. Conlon cited media reports of potential traffic problems from Music Midtown and the concurrent Vibe MusicFest at downtown's Georgia Dome as "killing" advance ticket sales in the week before the event. Others believe the higher ticket pricing raped and pillaged the pocketbooks of younger concert-goers and their parents. The addition of country music in the 2005 festival added to the murder of a once prominent music festival. The slated 2005 dates were also concurrent with the increasingly popular Bonnaroo music and arts festival in neighboring Tennessee, which may have had an impact on both attendance and artist booking.

On January, 5, 2006, citing the growing expenses of the festival in its current form and location, Conlon announced that there would be no Music Midtown in 2006 although he left open the possibly of a return at a different location in the future.