LRFest Recap – March 2023!

Showcase at the Palladium Theater, March 10th 2023. Photos by Phil DeSimone.

Our 13th Annual Listening Room Festival was a celebration of music, intimate venues, and our growing community of music fans.

We had a wonderful festival, and managed to please a fantastic group of performers – Ariella, The Rough & Tumble, Jeffery Straker, A Tale of Two, and Peter Mulvey.

When we started LRFest in 2012, it felt like a moonshot. I wanted to create a gathering to celebrate house concerts, and to create a music showcase opportunity in the middle of a profitable tour. Most importantly, they build a base of friends, fans and potential gigs in Florida that will pay dividends for years to come.

As is the case with house concerts, the sweet, listening vibe and profitability are the obvious rewards that mask the more important developments of community and connection. On this front, each year, we see more hosts and fans travel to Tampa Bay area to attend shows and make new friendships. We see them cooperate for routing, lodging, and even for volunteer help at each other’s events. The festival community is creating a rich, cultural tapestry of music support in our region.

For me, the biggest thrill is the growing number of hosts and fans who travel to St. Petersburg for this event. They come from different cities, different states, and even different countries – to take in a music vacation filled with house concerts and time with their tribe. Thanks to Christine and Michelle Goguey, Jim and Brenda Michienzi, and Alice Schaefer for making the trip this year!

We hope you’ll join us for this one-of-a-kind festival next year!

HUGE thanks to our volunteers, our hosts, and the generous contributors who helped us bounce back from a couple of challenging years!

House Concert Photos from LRFest 2023. Photos by Fran Snyder.

Will you apply as a performer? 
Will you host a show in Florida or the southeast?
Will you join your music tribe for a music vacation?

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Press Release: Listening Room Festival 2023

For Immediate Release

Florida “House Concert” Festival Connects Fans from All Over the World

The 12^th Annual Listening Room Festival invites house concert presenters, artists and fans to join in this year’s festivities. Music-lovers from around the globe are traveling to St. Petersburg, FL to enjoy the house concerts, showcase, and planned group activities from March 9-13, 2023.

Five international contest winners will play the Festival Showcase (March 10) at the Palladium Theater in St. Petersburg, as well as house concerts in the surrounding region. This year’s artists are Peter Mulvey, Ariella, Jeffery Straker, A Tale of Two, and The Rough & Tumble . Reserved seats to the festival showcase are available ($45, $100 for VIP) at the festival website http://www.ListeningRoomFestival.com

The main showcase at the Palladium Theater features all five acts. Four of them play the main stage, and The Rough & Tumble will play the VIP after party downstairs at the Side Door. The music is acoustic-driven genres varying from folk, to blues, country and soul.

House concerts, the core of the festival, stem from a tradition that is hundreds of years old, but has seen a resurgence in the past few decades. Music fans volunteer to host living room concerts, and invite friends to attend an up-close-and-personal show by a professional touring artist. Attendees are asked to make a suggested donation of $20-25 per person directly to the performers.

17 House Concerts are scheduled for Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday of the festival. You can get the schedule and invites to these concerts by joining as a Listening Room Network FAN through the free link at http://www.ListeningRoomFestival.com

About the Listening Room Network:

Listening Room Network (LRN) creates and nurtures opportunities that pay artists to perform in a listening environment while bringing communities together with a renewed passion for live music. LRN and its signature websites (ConcertsInYourHome.com, OfficeConcerts.com) are leading innovators in the live music industry.

Contact/Press Photos:

Fran Snyder 727-280-6208, fran@ListeningRoomNetwork.com

Website: www.ListeningRoomFestival.com

Free house concert guide: Download (Link to PDF)

HighRes Press photos: Festival Artists.

How to promote your LRFest show AND the festival showcase!

Here is how I promote my house concert and the festival showcase in the same email. Feel free to copy this and substitute your webflyer link in the first section!

Dear Friends,

Coming up soon is the most fun week of the year, where we celebrate house concerts all over the Tampa Bay area with the Listening Room Festival! I’m inviting you to join me at two events:

1. Our house concert, featuring A Tale of Two, on Monday March 13th.
   Here’s the webflyer – please click the RSVP button to join us!
   https://my.listeningroomnetwork.com/event-fsnyder20230313

2. The Festival Showcase, Friday March 10th! This features all the festival artists, at the beautiful Palladium Theater. Use the code “smile” to save money on VIP or Reserved Seats. http://www.ListeningRoomFestival.com

Your fan,

Fran Snyder

Why Listening Room Network is Absent from Social Media

While sharing my thoughts, experiences, wishes, and dreams on social media has led to many blessings, I am now becoming more private online, and that includes ListeningRoomNetwork, our festival and related business activities.

There was a time when we didn’t know each other’s every fleeting thought. And it was OK. Maybe it was better?

There’s something about human nature that seeks to find patterns, something in common. And there’s something about us that is riveted by conflict. Posts on social media, especially Facebook, seeking to share and explore issues too often descend into disrespectful conflict.

There’s also something about us that craves products that seem FREE. The hidden cost is the corporate abduction of our data, repackaged and sold to advertisers, spammers, and even thieves.

The final straw for me was learning that 3 of our Facebook pages (ConcertsInYourHome, ListeningRoomNetwork, and ListeningRoomFestival) had been taken from me. I had invested many thousands of dollars creating and promoting these pages. Some hacker in eastern Europe managed to remove me as admin, severing my access to my followers. How do I know this? Facebook told me.

And even though Facebook has a record of every keystroke I made to create and maintain these pages for years, they would not return these pages to me unless I gave them a copy of my driver’s license. It would be rudimentary for them to establish my identity with the gobs of information they already have. They just want more. I refused.

Of course, after 10-15 years of feeding them my data, I still have tons of useful connections and friendships with my Facebook profile, and it’s difficult to look away. There are interesting and kind people that I can only connect with via Facebook. But if I post something that has anything to do with my business, Facebook finds a way to hide that from you, unless I pay them.

Give us more money. Give us more data.

Trust us. Trust Alexa. Trust Google. Trust that Ring Camera. Trust. Trust. Trust.
Never mind the constant parade of hacks and leaks of our personal information by corporations and government entities.

Give us your info and we’ll make your life easier and more fun. It’s mostly true!
The trend is so powerful. How can you resist? Everyone is doing it.
Do you really want to go backwards?

I have no desire to live in the woods and to cut myself off from modern life. I enjoy the city and I like Google maps. I occasionally like to make a ripple in the water and see who is swimming online.

So – I can’t promise you won’t see me on social media, but I will be as absent as possible.

But the NETWORK? Doesn’t it need exposure and promotion via social media?

Not really. Our members are free to use social media as they wish, and they often share our content. Over the years I’ve found that our best artists and hosts come from word of mouth, not advertising.

For example, one of our artists tells a talented friend, “You have to join this site – it’s where I get most of my best gigs!”

Or an attendee asks a house concert host, “How do you do this?” and the response is “I joined ListeningRoomNetwork.com – they make it so easy.”

So, I’m not paying for clicks on ads and pages. I’m going as directly as possible to the people who appreciate what we do, and working to inspire them so they’ll share what we do.

If you want more, you can subscribe to our Podcast or join our network as a fan.

What do you think? I welcome your feedback here. https://my.listeningroomnetwork.com/contact

Fran Snyder

Founder, Listening Room Network & Festival

#LRFest – Listening Room Festival 2021 Recap!

Showcase at the Mahaffey Theater, April 2022. Photos by Donna Green

 

Due to Covid, we were forced to explore outdoor spaces for our Listening Room Festival Showcase. Thankfully, we were able to rent the beautiful courtyard between the Mahaffey Theater and the Dali Museum.

This was a technical and financial challenge, as it was the first time we had to rent a stage, sound, and light in addition to the performance space. Our production choices worked out well, and Donna Green was able to capture some of our best pictures ever with this new setting.

We were also forced to scale down in terms of artists, selecting only TWO traveling acts instead of our usual 4 or 5. Joy Ike and Chris Trapper enjoyed enthusiastic audiences at house concerts as well as the showcase, and we were privileged to showcase local act Kristopher James as the opener for the showcase.

When we started LRFest in 2012, it felt like a moonshot. I wanted to create a gathering to celebrate house concerts, and to create a music showcase opportunity in the middle of a profitable tour. Most importantly, they build a base of friends, fans and potential gigs in Florida that will pay dividends for years to come.

As is the case with house concerts, the sweet, listening vibe and profitability are the obvious rewards that mask the more important developments of community and connection. On this front, each year, we see more hosts and fans travel to Tampa Bay area to attend shows and make new friendships. We see them cooperate for routing, lodging, and even for volunteer help at each other’s events. The festival community is creating a rich, cultural tapestry of music support in our region.

See you next year?

Will you apply as a performer? 
Will you host a show in Florida or the southeast?
Will you join your music tribe for a music vacation?

#LRFest – Listening Room Festival 2022 Recap!

Showcase at the Palladium Theater, March 25th 2022. Photos by Donna Green

As we approached our Tenth annual LRFest, we were still in uncertain times, with a significant portion of our community still concerned about Covid, vaccines, and Russian invasions to boot. Despite the jitters, we had a wonderful festival, and managed to please a fantastic group of performers – Danny Schmidt, Sam Robbins, Mare Wakefield & Nomad, and The Whispering Tree.

When we started LRFest in 2012, it felt like a moonshot. I wanted to create a gathering to celebrate house concerts, and to create a music showcase opportunity in the middle of a profitable tour. Most importantly, they build a base of friends, fans and potential gigs in Florida that will pay dividends for years to come.

As is the case with house concerts, the sweet, listening vibe and profitability are the obvious rewards that mask the more important developments of community and connection. On this front, each year, we see more hosts and fans travel to Tampa Bay area to attend shows and make new friendships. We see them cooperate for routing, lodging, and even for volunteer help at each other’s events. The festival community is creating a rich, cultural tapestry of music support in our region.

For me, the biggest thrill is the growing number of hosts and fans who travel to St. Petersburg for this event. They come from different cities, different states, and even different countries – to take in a music vacation filled with house concerts and time with their tribe. Thanks to Dani Goodband, Jim and DeBrenda Michienzi, and Alice Schaefer for making the trip this year!

We hope you’ll join us for this one-of-a-kind festival.

House Concert Photos from LRFest 2022. 

See you next year?

Will you apply as a performer? 
Will you host a show in Florida or the southeast?
Will you join your music tribe for a music vacation?

Listening Room Festival postponed to November 11-15, 2020

After much research and reflection, I’ve decided to postpone LRFest 2020 until November. (Showcase will be November 13th.)

Reasons:
1. Our audience demographic is the most at risk population for Covid-19.
2. Though there are few reported cases in FL, the severe shortage of tests means we really don’t know where it is at this point.
3. We don’t want to endanger anyone. Music is meant to heal us.
4. We can create an even better festival for November. We hope our snowbird fans will elect to start their Florida season a little early with us.

Tickets:
We’d be grateful and relieved if you’d keep them for the November event, even if you’re not sure yet. The next few months will be incredibly difficult for us and members of our network. If you would like to donate to help us, it would be immensely helpful and appreciated.

If you need a refund:

• If you purchased ($45/35/25 reserved tickets) via the Palladium, call or visit the Palladium box office TU-FR 12-3pm. Regular box office hours resume TU, March 17.
• If you purchased VIP tickets from Fran or the LRFest, and need a refund, please use this form.

I’ll be reaching out to all our hosts, fans, and artists as we re-architect our schedule for a great November festival. In the meantime we’ll start actively promoting online events (livestreams) as this new activity will be critical to keeping music in our lives and to support the artists we all love.

Let’s buckle down, be safe, and get through this critical and difficult period. Life will get back to normal. We are social creatures and there is no way we will let go of live music.

See you in November if not sooner. Thanks for being part of our world.

Love,

Fran Snyder, founder

ListeningRoomNetwork.com and Listening Room Festival

How and why I turned my home into a live music venue.

First, I’m not the only one. “House concerts,” as they are commonly called, are popping up all over the world. To organize these shows, music fans invite small acts (often singer-songwriters with just an acoustic guitar) to perform in their living rooms, for appreciative friends and neighbors who all contribute a meaningful donation (usually $20) to the artist.

Why would you do this?

It turns out, people are often disappointed with the experience of going to commercial music venues. The list of reasons is extensive, but you can start with high ticket prices, service fees, urban traffic/parking, and the fact that (at least for major acts) you wind up far from the stage, looking through a sea of cellphones (if not your own) only to gaze at the jumbotron projection of the tiny artist on the stage.

But even for small, independent concerts, the shows often start late, and are put on by venues that care more about alcohol sales than the music. So even if you can see the stage, you’re likely to have some obnoxious people near you, chatting (or yelling) and making it very hard for you to connect with the music.

By contrast, house concerts bring people closer to the musicians. These intimate venues allow audiences to enjoy music without distractions, for reasonable money and at a reasonable time of day. You shouldn’t have to suffer the next day to enjoy yourself!

True, there are plenty of people who feel satisfied with background music, crazy-late nights, or the festival atmosphere where your attention is pulled in a multitude of directions at once. However, for music fans who want a deeper and more personal connection to the show, satisfaction only comes from house concerts and the rare listening room venue.

— Fran Snyder
Fran Snyder is the founder of Listening Room Network and ConcertsInYourHome.org

Quotes:

1. “We genuinely love music and believe in live music with all our hearts. Opening our homes to musicians of all sorts is a privilege.” — Dani G., Host
2. “Our experience from the website so far has been really fantastic. We have been finding a lot of great performance opportunities and have made much more money than we expected. Also, it has made our touring across the US and Europe much more interesting as we’re able to more easily connect the dots between shows and go to some places we otherwise probably never would. I love how it’s really a community. We’ve been making friends along the way.” — Sarah and Kenny, Artists
3. “Thank you for all of the support. Between personal coaching from CIYH, the artist, and the website tools, things couldn’t have went better. We had a full house, people were very respectful and attentive, show was awesome, the artist made some money, and everyone had a great time. Most importantly, my girlfriend is now convinced this is something she loves and a lot of her apprehension about hosting has been put to rest. We’re so excited for the next show.” — Matt Hough, Host
4. “Can’t believe we are now booked with monthly gigs through November – and such amazing musicians! Becoming involved with this has been a phenomenal experience — so inspirational to be a part of these artists experiences, their lives really inspire me and it feels so 100% positive … really, really amazing.” Elena D., Host

Stats:

• Dozens of websites support this activity, including SofaConcerts.com in Germany, HomeRoutes.com in Canada, and HouseConcertsAustralia.com, and ListeningRoomNetwork.com (Global).
• It’s estimated that more than 40,000 house concerts happen every year globally.*
• House concerts vary in size from 10 to 80 attendees indoors, and 100+ in backyards.

*compiled stats from various sites and artist reports at Listening Room Network.

 

Press Release: Listening Room Festival 2020

For Immediate Release

Florida “House Concert” Festival Connects Fans from All Over the World

The 9^th Annual Listening Room Festival invites house concert presenters, artists and fans to join in this year’s festivities. Music-lovers from around the globe are traveling to St. Petersburg, FL to enjoy the house concerts, showcase, and planned group activities from March 25-29, 2020.

Five international contest winners will play the Festival Showcase (March 27) at the Palladium Theater in St. Petersburg, as well as house concerts in the surrounding region. This year’s artists are Joy Ike, Amy Bishop, Kevin Daniel, Twin Kennedy, and The Young Novelists. Reserved seats to the festival showcase are available ($25adv./$35 day of show) at the festival website http://www.ListeningRoomFestival.com

House concerts, the core of the festival, stem from a tradition that is hundreds of years old, but has seen a resurgence in the past few decades. Music fans volunteer to host living room concerts, and invite friends to attend an up-close-and-personal show by a professional touring artist. Attendees are asked to make a suggested donation of $15-20 per person directly to the performers.

The main showcase at the Palladium Theater features all five acts. In addition, this year’s festival includes group activities and workshops to educate and inspire fans to join the growing house concert movement.

2020 Festival Schedule

Schedule is subject to change.
Please register for the festival to receive updates and invitations to the private events.

• March 25-29 — house concerts around the bay area.
• Friday, March 27 — LRFest Showcase at Palladium Theater St. Pete
• Saturday March 28 — House Concert Workshop, Meet & Greet at Staybridge Suites St. Petersburg. RSVP here. $5 in advance $10 at the door.

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The festival is presented by the Listening Room Network. More information and tickets are available through ListeningRoomFestival.com.

About the Listening Room Network:

Listening Room Network (LRN) creates and nurtures opportunities that pay artists to perform in a listening environment while bringing communities together with a renewed passion for live music. LRN and its signature websites (ConcertsInYourHome.com, OfficeConcerts.com) are leading innovators in the live music industry.

Contact/Press Photos:

Fran Snyder 727-280-6208, fran@ListeningRoomNetwork.com

Website: www.ListeningRoomFestival.com

Free house concert guide: Download (Link to PDF)

HighRes Press photos: Festival Artists.

Listening Room Festival 2020 Lineup Announced!

Last night, 60 music fans from the Tampa Bay area gathered at the Hideaway Cafe (St. Petersburg FL) to get the first glimpse of the #LRFest lineup for 2020. We booked 20 house concerts in one night for our festival next March.

Our 9th Annual Listening Room Festival takes place March 25-29, 2020.

We’re excited that more music fans make a music vacation out of our festival each year. Hosts from Canada, France, and all around the U.S. come to St. Petersburg FL to meet their tribe and experience an amazing week (or long weekend) of intimate and remarkable performances.

We’ll update the Listening Room Festival site with more info soon.

Here is the lineup for 2019!

Joy Ike

Kevin Daniel

The Young Novelists

Amy Bishop

Twin Kennedy

Please register at http://www.ListeningRoomFestival.com for more information, including hotel deals and more about the expanding festival schedule!