We had a brief discussion on Sunday with IBMA Executive Director Dan Hays about attendance at this past week’s events in Nashville. As always, Dan was careful not to be too specific since final numbers aren’t all in, but early counts point to some big increases in attendance.

Dan said that the trade show looked to have increased registration by about 7%-8%, and that attendance at Fan Fest was up in the order of 40%! I’m sure that the actual attendance figures will be released when final accounting has been completed

Those are great numbers, and everyone involved in planning and promoting the event should take a bow.

WARNING: Inside baseball follows. If you aren’t an IBMA member or don’t work in the business in some capacity, much of this lengthy post may not hold much interest for you.

IBMA 2005 is now over. Most of us are home and sleeping in our own beds again. John and I had a lot of conversations throughout the week about the event, and people’s impressions of it. Overall, it seems that attendees found a lot of good things that happened with this year’s move to Nashville. There were also a few downsides that were mentioned.

Perhaps the biggest positive we saw was the increased focus on the “business conference” aspect of the event. That was a point raised repeatedly by exhibitors and folks who work in the industry, and as a business person in attendance myself, I appreciated the increased security and the clamp down on unregistered persons crashing the event. There are festivals all year long where a focus on jamming and hanging out are part of the scene, but the IBMA Trade Show is not meant to be the place for that. Nothing wrong with jamming, I enjoy it myself. It’s part of the music and should be facilitated, but might perhaps not be the primary reason people attend during the week. The increased focus on this being a business conference made it eminently easier to conduct business. (more…)

Here, with our apologies for tardiness, is another gallery of photos that Dan Loftin took at the IBMA Awards Show last Thursday evening.

The recent IBMA Awards have been covered in the mainstream press here in the US, and we have posted links to a few stories that we found.

This morning, we found one on the BBC News web site, originally posted on Friday October 28. What a marvelous thing to see our IBMA covered in so many areas of the new media, and so soon after the awards were announced.

We would love to post any other links that people may find, especially any additional coverage in the US entertainment-specific media. Please send us anything you may find via our Response Form.