Juelz Santana Live at The Blockley
Alexander Azar
Blog Post 1
Nearing the end of January, I began my internship with Campus Night Out LLC, a small yet successful company that specializes in event planning and promotion. More specifically, the majority of Campus Night Out’s revenue is created through “booking” artists or DJ’s to play at a given location, then ultimately profiting off of ticket sales and or drink purchases made throughout the night. This formula has proven to be lucrative for Campus Night Out as the up-start company has quickly gained notoriety throughout the city for their consistent rate of success in terms of ticket-sales and audience approval. Soon after I began contributing to the company, my first real assignment was given to me; one that came hand-in-hand with great responsibility. As a group, Campus Night Out had come to the agreement that the next act they would bring to town would be an acclaimed hip-hop artist. Being a hip-hop artist myself, I was immediately intrigued by the names that were being tossed around as well as astounded by the astronomical prices that some of them were requesting. Eventually, my research and insight proved to be very influential in the selection of the artist that we eventually chose, Juelz Santana. It was during this brainstorming session in which I realized the vast amount of factors that go in to selecting an artist to book. I looked over everything from what the weather would be like on the date of the event to the amount of times Juelz had been played on major Philadelphia radio stations in the previous six months. The night of the concert, nervousness set in as I realized exactly how much depended on the event’s success. For a company like Campus Night Out, financial stability is only slightly more important than maintaining a strong reputation amongst their peers. In other words, a lot was at stake to say the least. As show time drew closer, a line began to form outside the door and everyone’s mood seemed to change from stressed to relieved. It seemed as though the tireless online and physical promotion that Campus Night Out had implemented the previous weeks proved to be successful again. Ultimately, the show nearly sold out and proved to be another victory for Campus Night Out as well as the city of Philadelphia.
