Who Says the Music Industry Is Kaput?

It was the fall of 2001, and Jonathan Mayers was stuck. He had built Superfly Presents—the New Orleans-based concert promotion company he ran with three friends—into a local success, staging some 120 shows a year and earning around $1 million. However, Mayers and his partners—Rick Farman, Richard Goodstone, and Kerry Black—were tired of the nightly grind, the razor-thin profit margins, and the battle with industry colossus Clear Channel Communications. They realized there was only so much money to be made staging rock and jazz shows for a few hundred people a night. "We saw there was a ceiling to what we were doing," Mayers says. "We had to take a risk."

That decision led to the founding of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, a 100-band jamboree that has been the top-grossing music festival in North America for eight years running. This year, from June 10-13, 75,000 fans will make the pilgrimage to a 700-acre farm an hour southeast of Nashville for what observers ranging from to the concert chronicler Pollstar have called the best music festival in the country.