New Woodstock.com Social Network Launches

Woodstock.com, Sony Music and Woodstock Ventures' joint effort to make "the Web's most comprehensive live music community site," launched today, June 1st. The site is very similar thematically to concert-listing pages like Pollstar and Live Daily, except Woodstock.com allows users to add content like photos and show reviews on artist pages. Users can also make profiles, get recommendations and add friends like other social networks. Unsigned artists are also encouraged to sign up with Woodstock.com to promote their music and befriend users.

Right now, other than the Woodstock name, the only other evidence of the legendary festival on the site comes in brief write-ups on the 1969, 1994 and 1999 fests, a sparse "Wikistock" page and a forum where Woodstockers can reminisce about Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner" in '69 or looting the merch tent and starting bonfires in '99. The site also allows visitors to buy Woodstock-branded merchandise from their site's store, which is run through Amazon.com, and promises people who sign up for Woodstock.com will get access to never-before-seen photos from the original festival.

"Woodstock began as a dream and became a reality that exceeded our wildest expectations," organizer Michael Lang said when the Website was initially announced. "That dream lives on and our hope is that Woodstock.com will harness the power of 21st century technology to the communal idealism and values that continue to grow out of Woodstock."

The launch of Woodstock.com is the first of many celebrations due this summer as the original festival hits its 40th anniversary. Original Woodstock performers like Richie Havens, Country Joe and Levon Helm are already scheduled to perform at the original site in August, and the Ang Lee-directed comedy Taking Woodstock is due to hit theaters August 14th.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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