The latest addition to the LiveOAK Network focuses on the green (and not-so-green) aspects of the music industry.

Experiencing live music has become what I do with much of my free time. Not that I play music, I don't play a lick. I guess I'm what you would call a long time patron of the musical arts. From my first Grateful Dead show in the summer after my senior year in high school, through those college and post-college years spent traveling the country to see Phish, and on into my 30-somethings and my growing appreciation of the festival experience, music, and the culture around it, has played a formative role in my life.

But as I got a bit older and wiser, I began to realize the environmental impact of what I and millions of people around the world like me are doing was quite substantial. Within a couple years of that realization, I was given the opportunity to cover the sustainability-focused ROTHBURY Music Festival for Green Options Media in 2008. Since then, I've covered all things green at the mammoth Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival for the last two years and Phish's Festival 8 in Indio, California in 2009.

With a growing prevalence of greening and sustainability efforts at music festivals around the world, the next logical step for us at LiveOAK Media seemed to create a single web destination for all of our green music coverage. And what sprang up from those discussions is the latest addition to our network:  GreenUPmusic.com.

Now I know what you're thinking. The internet needs another green blog like it needs more photos of cats with funny misspelled captions. But GreenUPmusic isn't really a green blog. Sure, the word 'green' is in the title, but everything we publish here will be in the context of music.

With content produced by a team of powerhouse green bloggers/music junkies including Ariel Schwartz of Fast Company and Inhabitat; Jennifer Lance of EcoChildsPlay; and our very own Becky Striepe, also of Glue and Glitter. GreenUPmusic promises to provide entertaining, useful content and critical insight of the green (and not-so-green) music industry practices and festivals around the world. From open mic night at the local pub to massive music festivals like Bonnaroo and Glastonbury, we'll leave no stone unturned in what is extremely fertile ground for exploration.

If this sounds intriguing--and you know it does--please stay in touch with GreenUPmusic on twitter and on Facebook. If you think there is a festival, band, promoter, organization or issue we should be covering (or want to cover it yourself) drop us a line and tell us more about it and we'll see what we can do.

Now go out and see some live music and help keep the scene green!

-Tim Hurst - Executive Editor, LiveOAK Media
Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, Manchester, TN
Summer 2010