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.... What? Place was packed every day. Very hard to imagine that fest didn't make money.

Coachella fest hits record, All Points faces ax

Reuters, Apr 21, 2010 6:00 pm PDT

Records crowds attended last weekend's Coachella music festival in the southern California desert, promoter AEG Live said Wednesday.
An aggregate 225,000 people bought tickets to see a roster headlined by Jay-Z, Muse and Gorillaz during the April 16-18 event at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio..

The previous attendance record was set in 2007, when the headliners included a reunited Rage Against the Machine. Final figures are still being tallied, but AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips said the gross will exceed $20 million..

Phillips said the future looked bleak for AEG Live's nascent All Points West festival, which took place in 2008 and 2009 across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, N.J..

"We're probably going to kill it," said Phillips. "As beautiful as (the site) is, it's very hard to get New Yorkers to cross that river. All Points West is an experiment that just didn't work."

Would be very disapointed if no APW this year. Went in '09 all three days and it was a BLAST!!! Despite the rain, it was beautiful, well organized, and had a great energy. I was definitely hoping to go again.

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I am watching Palladia right now. The Gaslight Anthem is playing with Springsteen right now at Hyde Park from this past summer.

How about scaling it down and making it less commercial.

Rather than spending mega money and having all these corporate vendors, why not have a bunch of up-and-coming artists with some alternative or even LOCAL vendors? Maybe even some LOCAL artists. No shortage of them with the largest city in the country across the river.

Might not make as much money, but hey .... it could still be successful...if nothing else it might gain some street cred.

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Headliners. Bands people know about. Bands that have sold perhaps worldwide or certainly at least gone platinum in the U.S. None of those artists you named come even close to that, aside from mgmt, which at least most people have heard about.

I have trouble believing that APW didn't turn a decent profit the past two summers, so I doubt that's the reason behind this.

Maybe big acts just don't want to play APW? As far as I know, it's one of the only multi-day festivals that doesn't include on-site camping. And unlike many single-day festivals, this one is at a temporary venue that includes no shelter for the crowd in the case of rain. In a sense, APW combines all of the worst elements of multi-day and single-day festivals.

NAFCO ended his post with: " get on the ball Loews theater!"

and I say Dude, WTF? why you throwing Lowes under the bus on this one? They do book music acts, and they have nothing to do with whatever is wrong with the Points West thing. Loews is your friend, they are one of the few things RIGHT with this town.

Damnit ... both 2008 and 2009, I could not make it.

They got Jay-Z 2 weeks before the last show when Beastie Boys cancelled...

This just upset me.... I dont even know how they can say that it would be impossible to get a headliner this late. Of course this is my opinion but who cares whos headlining? We go for all the bands, to hear new music and have a good time. Get some local bands to headline. Target the Jersey bands that made it big. Gaslight Anthem? Bouncing Souls? MCR? What about the local New york bands? Matt and Kim, MGMT. What bands woldnt want to play around here, if not for new Jersey, deffinately for NYC!

i can understand not having beers allowed by the stages and high prices being an issue, but were fans really complaining about the rain last year? that seems like an unfair stab at the venue. i went the last two years and it was great to finally have ANY kind of music event in JC that i could just ride a bike to, especially one of this size. i hope they dont cancel for the year, and if they do, that they consider coming back in the future. damn this garbage economy and damn JC for not having any place to watch well known bands. get on the ball Loews theater!

Outlook for All Points West Festival in Jersey City This Summer Is in Doubt

New York Times
By BEN SISARIO
Published: February 23, 2010

It may be only February, but for the concert industry the summer is already here, with artists completing their tour schedules and festivals releasing their lineups. Bonnaroo, in Tennessee in June, has announced most of its 100-plus acts, and blogs have been buzzing for weeks about who is expected for Lollapalooza in Chicago in August.

Fans negotiating a field of mud at the All Points West festival in Jersey City last summer.

One name, however, has been conspicuously absent from the chatter: All Points West, the three-day festival at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. Begun two years ago by the promoters behind Coachella, the trend-setting event in the California desert, All Points West got off to a rocky start, with fan complaints in 2008 about slow ferries from Manhattan, and heavy rain last year.

Executives at AEG Live, the promoter of All Points West, say they have not yet decided whether it will return for a third year.

?There is no question that our biggest challenge is finding suitable headliners, and it has been more challenging this year than in the past,? said Mark Shulman, a veteran talent buyer for AEG. ?No final determination of any kind has been made for 2010.?

But many in the music industry doubt whether All Points West, which has been held in August, will return this summer. A number of prominent booking agents and other executives, most of whom requested anonymity because they did not want to jeopardize business with AEG, said that nothing had been booked and that it would be very difficult for AEG to put a lineup together this late in the year, since most artists? plans for the summer were already set.

?It seems more and more clear these days that a headlining artist is a necessity to run a productive and successful festival,? said Frank Riley of High Road Touring, which represents Wilco, Feist and Ryan Adams, among others. ?Without a clear headliner in place at this point, it seems unlikely that the festival will take place in August 2010.?

In its first year All Points West was headlined by Radiohead and Jack Johnson; last year it was Jay-Z, Coldplay and Tool. Officials at Liberty State Park said that AEG had applied for dates there this summer but that none had been confirmed.

For many years the summer concert field was dominated by amphitheater and arena tours, but over the last decade festivals have sprouted up around the country. With thin margins and a challenging economy, however, some of them have already begun to disappear: Rothbury, a two-year-old festival in Michigan presented by AEG and others, has been postponed for 2010, and Pemberton, near Vancouver in Canada, was put on in 2008 but has been on hiatus for the last two years.

The New York market has proved particularly difficult for festival producers, who cite high costs and competition with the city?s rich cultural calendar as obstacles to establishing a successful event. Over the last 10 years a number of festivals have been tried in and around New York, including Field Day, Bonnaroo N.E., Across the Narrows and Vineland, but none have taken root.

AEG executives acknowledged difficulties with All Points West and indicated that it would need an overhaul to continue.

?I don?t know how great an experience it was for the fans,? said Skip Paige, a vice president with Goldenvoice, an AEG affiliate that has been involved in All Points West. ?If we?re going to do that show again, we want to be able to make it great and have it be something that people respect.?