By BEN SISARIO – NY Times
One Friday afternoon last month, 60,000 tickets at $100 and up went on sale for a major music festival at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., before the headliners had even been announced.
It sold out in three hours.
The festival with the fervent following was the Electric Daisy Carnival, a two-day event next month dedicated to the concert industry’s new favorite genre: electronic dance music. Long considered a marginal part of the music business that subsisted in clubs and semi-legal warehouse raves, dance has now moved squarely into the mainstream, with a growing circuit of festivals and profit margins that are attracting Wall Street.
For an industry increasingly reliant on aging headliners — like Bruce Springsteen, Madonna and the Rolling Stones — the appeal of a genre with fresh stars and a huge young audience is undeniable.
“If you’re 15 to 25 years old now, this is your rock ‘n’ roll,” said Michael Rapino, the chief executive of Live Nation Entertainment, the world’s largest concert promoter. [Read More]