Making money as a local venue in 2024: Dhruv Chopra, founder of Brooklyn venue Elsewhere, talks memberships, building community, and how Gen Z gig-goers want more than cheap beer

Music Ally Focus

Ep. 159: Dhruv Chopra, co-founder/CEO of Brooklyn venue Elsewhere, joins Joe Sparrow to talk about finding new ways of running local independent venues. Dhruv and Elsewhere are reaching around to find a new business model in a new gig-going world. Today, music is consumed, created, performed, played, discovered, experienced and valued differently – and yet, the basics of live music are the same: a group of people in a room while some music happens.

So Elsewhere is trying something that is both the same, and yet different – by exploring what a local live music venue can be in 2024, and how it can make money. The model that they have landed on involves a subscription membership, a digital Discord community, and a real-life “cultural epicentre”. It’s perhaps all the things that local venues have always been, but with more explicitly-defined models and platforms.

Dhruv also talks about the state of the small venue ecosystem in a post-pandemic era, when young consumers are demanding more from their live experiences than cheap beer, and $150 stadium show tickets are monopolising the budget of gig-goers.

Elsewhere: https://www.elsewhere.club

Dhruv's music pick: Herbie Hancock, Michael Brecker & Roy Hargrove - Directions In Music - Live At Massey Hall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8nB_kzUf2w

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