3 Steps to Saving Sunset Strip

Before I start, I should give the disclaimer that I don’t claim to have any specific expertise in managing a live music venue, and there could be significant factors in this sub-segment of the live entertainment business of which I’m not aware.

But I do know how tickets get sold and what makes live entertainment venues overall successful or unsuccessful.

Yesterday, I read that the Key Club joins The Knitting Factory as another club on the famous Sunset Strip to close its doors.

The story also paints an overall negative picture of live music on the street that many consider to be the music equivalent of Broadway.  The manager of The Roxy, another well-known club, says in the piece that business is “worse than you can imagine.”

So here’s my advice.  It could be worth as little as you paid for it:

1.  Forget the past. Like the record business, it feels like the club scene is looking to recapture former glory.  Stories of Motley Crue on Sunset getting discovered and becoming multi-million selling recording artists poison musicians and club owners alike today.  You’ve got to forget that happened, because it’s not happening anymore.  It’s hard to let go of something that still seems so possible, but it’s like that carnival game where you have to knock over the 4 milk jugs with one shot.  You can almost do it, and you’re sure it will work next time.  But the game’s not set up for you to win.  It’s time to move on and do something else.

2.  De-Commoditize.  I get that the scene is about stumbling onto great new bands and following bands you love, but unfortunately, that’s not a particularly user-friendly model.  In a way, what the Sunset Strip clubs offer is Some Band at 10 PM, followed by Some Other Band at midnight unless you are deeply in the know.  It’s hard to build new audience, which is obviously what is needed here, with what to the outside world is generic content.  One of the cornerstones of marketing is differentiation and giving people reasons to buy.  I don’t see a lot of that kind of creativity coming out of Sunset Strip.  Why should I go if I’m not already going?  (Not me.  I realize I’m not the target market.  I’m just speaking generically.)

By the way, you can’t just say: this is an awesome band, and that’s the reason you should come.

3.  Improve the experience. I know, I know, people used to line up for hours to see…whoever was hot in 1983.  But that’s over.  People don’t want to be inconvenienced and vaguely insulted as a condition of going to your venue.  I say this to music purists all the time, but when you focus on the music and not on the human being coming to the show, you’re missing the point.  You’ve got to put something great on the stage, but that’s just the price of a ticket to compete for the buyer’s time and interest.  You’ve got to make the whole experience great, and my feeling is that these kinds of clubs (not just on Sunset) pretty much neglect that.  It could be a lack of expertise or it could be a kind of arrogance, but either way, somebody stands to make a fortune by putting the club patron first in all things.

And those three things would make a good start.  Certainly, the economy is bad, but you’ll notice if you look around that businesses and organizations that focus on delivering something valuable and special to a group of people are doing ok.  They’re even thriving.  The fact that half of the Sunset Strip’s customers have left it this year (as one of the club managers in the piece said) shows that when the dollars got tight, a night at the club was easy for them to cut.  That’s because those clubs didn’t do enough to be valuable to that person.

And finally, don’t sit around waiting for the economy to get better.  Sure, it will get better someday.  Fancy waiting 3 years for things to return to the way they were in, say, 2005?  Are you sure 3 years will do it?  I’m not.

More importantly, it’s not really about the economy.  It’s about the fact that the way these clubs do business has to change with the world.  A commoditized product suitable only for insiders, a poor or at least thoughtless experience, and an orientation to the past not the future doesn’t add up to a winning formula.

Think of this slow period as a time to start loading in the future, as you tear down the stage that the past played on.