Roger Sillerman's SFX Entertainment has been in limbo since failing to meet their private deadline this summer. To help get things going in the right direction, the company named Life in Color's CEO and Founder Sebastian Solano the new CEO of ID&T North America this week.
One of Forbes' “Top 30 Under 30” in music, Solano has a decade of experience running events and his position at Life in Color (as CEO) will not change. The LIC brand has been a bright spot in SFX's rocky culture. Solano will oversee all North American events for SFX now. In an exclusive interview with Billboard, Solano spoke about the new position and how he plans to tackle the issues at hand.
“My main priorities right now is to uplift the culture and the vibe,” Solano told Billboard. “My first priority is to really remind everybody that we've got a business because we want to throw the best parties in the world and that's what we do.”
He added, “everything else, the strategy, the changes, the updates, they're going to come.”
He also addressed the issues at TomorrowWorld, which left many attendees stranded in poor weather conditions.
“A lot of things happened, for example, with TomorrowWorld that were out of our control,” Solano said. “So we need to make sure that we find the proper way of letting the fans know that we care, and that we were devastated more than they were.”
He added, “it turned into a tragedy. So there's some serious challenges of figuring out how are we going to roll this out next year. What are the improvements that need to happen? Obviously, we can't just write a check for $10 million and rebuild new roads on our own. There's a lot of stuff that goes into that.”
We'll have to wait and see how Solano handles the concerns at hand for SFX and whether they can establish a new image. While Life In Color was able to build on its platform and looks to have an even better 2016, there's plenty of work ahead.
Solano insists that SFX's early events inspired him to start what he's doing now. It's a perfect match.
“ID&T's Sensation was what actually inspired me and my partners to create Life in Color,” Solano confessed. “Back when I was starting to throw parties – I mean little 500-person events at nightclubs in Tallahasee where we were going to college – I discovered Sensation on YouTube and I was like, “Oh my God. What is this?”… Immediately, I started to go deep into research on Sensation, ID&T and founder Duncan Stutterheim. It just really interested me.”
Read the full story from Billboard here.
Source: Billboard
