Perhaps taking a leaf from hip-hop’s diverse business portfolio in troubled times, indie labels including Saddle Creek, Righteous Babe, and Nettwerk have recently become venue moguls as well. According to Billboard, Saddle Creek’s new Omaha club is “part of a Saddle Creek-owned multimillion-dollar mixed-use complex comprising art house theaters, retail stores, a restaurant and apartments.” Proving that if you pimp midwestern emo long enough, you too can become a real estate magnate. (And as anyone who’s grown up languishing in a place without a decent venue knows, the local kids are probably pretty psyched. I know I would be, whatever my feelings on Bright Eyes.) Unfortunately, despite the fact that the club is doing well, and despite making enough money to buy a glorified strip mall, Saddle Creek will continue to regularly put out recorded music.
Indie Labels Venture Into Venue Business [Billboard]
I’m still shrieking in utter horror over this story. “A Saddle Creek-owned multimillion-dollar mixed-use complex comprising art house theaters, retail stores, a restaurant and apartments”?!?!?!?!?
Well, at least real estate is cheap there, I guess. Which kind of puts things in perspective. Maybe.
I think it’s really good what they are doing.
@Lucas Jensen: So bougie. Welcome to the new version of the indie rock class wars. Something tells me those apartments prolly don’t come cheap. I need to look into this further.
Also, is anyone vaguely weirded out by the vertical integration that’s happening here? Labels owning venues? A long time ago, when the film industry did this, the supreme court ruled it was … illegal! Monopolies and price fixing (which are the inevitable outcome of vertical integration) are not good capitalism, kids. No matter if Conor Oberst is behind it or not.
Lest we forget, Saddle Creek was birthed as a project for Nansel’s business degree. Though, in another article I found, Kubel is a leeetle to hasty to point out that Saddle Creek artists will “hardly ever” play the venue. Doesn’t that kind of blow the Billboard article’s theory and directly contradict the list of upcoming shows? (Count the SC artists!)
Anyway.
More about the development of “NoDo” is behind this link (scroll down); if you check out the web sites of any of these residential projects, you’ll find that none list prices. And we all know what that means — if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
Not that I begrudge anyone their success, because I absolutely don’t — but let’s not get all starry-eyed here. Filthy lucre is still involved.
ps — This NYT travel section article from March actually reveals quite a bit of juicy tidbits about the evolving Omaha “scene.”