Congratulations to our member venues that were named as finalists for the 2014 Billboard Touring Awards. Focusing on just the venue categories, here are the contenders, courtesy of Billboard magazine.

TOP ARENA
Allphones Arena, Sydney, Australia
Madison Square Garden, New York, NY
O2 Arena, London, England

TOP VENUE – UNDER 10,000 SEATS
Auditorio Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico
The Axis at Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas, NV
Radio City Music Hall, New York, NY

TOP VENUE – UNDER 5,000 SEATS
The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV
Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham, NC
Fox Theatre, Atlanta, GA

TOP CLUB
9:30 Club, Washington, D.C.
House of Blues, Boston, MA
House of Blues, Orlando, FL

TOP AMPHITHEATER
Molson Canadian Amphitheatre, Toronto, Canada
Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, Wantagh, NY
Xfinity Center, Mansfield, MA

Visit Billboard to get the full list of finalists. Winners will be announced November 20 during the 11th annual Billboard Touring Conference in New York City.

(Image: Allphones Arena Facebook page)

Your intelligence will only get you so far. If you really want to be considered for a leadership position, start looking healthy.

In a recent study, “A face for all seasons: Searching for context-specific leadership traits and discovering a general preference for perceived health,” researchers discovered that people looking at faces prefer a healthy complexion for most leadership positions.

“Overall, health was a significantly stronger predictor of leader selection than intelligence, except for in the cooperation context, where intelligence and health were predictors of similar strength,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Our results indicate a stronger general preference for health vs. intelligence when selecting leaders across context.”

Study participants included 148 women and men who were told to imagine they were selecting a new CEO for a company. They had to pick between two photos of male faces, and they were given a job description that specified the candidate’s main challenge (drive aggressive competition, renegotiate a key partnership, lead the company into a new market, or oversee the stable exploitation of non-renewable energy). And to add another element into the mix—both photos were of the same person. However, the face was digitally transformed to look more or less intelligent, and his complexion was altered to look more or less healthy.

“In leader selection, cues of intelligence, as expected, were preferred more often in cooperation vs. competition whereas perceived health was significantly favored across all four coordination problems,” the researchers wrote. “Overall, our findings suggest that although intelligence may be important for leadership in certain circumstances, health appears to dominate decision making in all contexts of leadership.”

Brian Spisak, an assistant professor at the Department of Management and Organization of VU University Amsterdam and lead author of the study, suggests that it’s beneficial for would-be leaders to pay attention to their health.

“Here we show that it always pays for aspiring leaders to look healthy, which explains why politicians and executives often put great effort, time, and money in their appearance,” Spisak said. “If you want to be chosen for a leadership position, looking intelligent is an optional extra under context-specific situations, whereas the appearance of health appears to be important in a more context-general way across a variety of situations.”

(photo credit: JayPitsby via photopin cc)

Whether it’s a tenor, alto, or bass, a saxophone adds sultriness to any song. For this, you can thank Adolphe Sax, who was born 200 years ago today. The instrument named after him was created in 1841, and it’s been tearing through songs ever since.

In honor of his birth, we took a staff poll here at IAVM headquarters of songs with the best sax solos. These are our picks. Please let us know your choices in the comments below, and we’ll add them to the post.

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People often think unlimited options help increase creativity. However, one of life’s great paradoxes is that it is restraint that leads to an increase in creativity and production. For an example, let’s turn to political correctness in the workplace.

“Our work challenges the widespread assumption that true creativity requires a kind of anarchy in which people are permitted to speak their minds, whatever the consequence,” said Jack Goncalo, associate professor of Organizational Behavior at the Cornell ILR School and lead author of the study “Creativity from Constraint? How Political Correctness Influences Creativity in Mixed-Sex Work Groups.”

Goncalo and colleagues found that instead of limiting creativity, a political correctness policy boosted a group’s creative output. The reason is because the policy set a level playing field for everyone.

“Political correctness facilitates idea expression by reducing the uncertainty that people tend to experience while interacting with the opposite sex,” Goncalo said. “The PC norm, by establishing a clear guideline for how to behave appropriately in mixed-sex groups, made both men and women more comfortable sharing their creative ideas.”

Goncalo, though, suggests a troubling meaning to the study’s findings.

“The fact that men and women still experience a high level of uncertainty while working together and that a norm as restrictive as PC provided a safer environment for free expression means we still have a lot of work to do,” he said.

(photo credit: DennisCallahan via photopin cc)

The first reason is the obvious one—Swift’s tours are massively successful. Here are a few highlights from “The Red Tour” in 2013-2014:

• 86 shows on four continents
• 1.7 million tickets sold (100 percent sold out)
• US$150 million in total revenue
• Swift became the first female solo artists since Madonna (1993) to headline a stadium tour in Australia, including the first sold out show—ever—by a female artist at Allianz Stadium in Sydney on Dec. 4, 2013 (source)

The other reason Swift’s new album might matter to venues is a bit more obscure, but can be pieced together when looking at the mix of ingredients that have helped Swift achieve such resounding success. In a report by Sam Sanders with @NPRmusic, three notable efforts by Swift and her label are explored, and here is a summary of two of them:

1. Swift keeps her brand in the tangible world
Whether it’s the run of talk shows or the private viewing concert she hosted in her house, Swift keeps a real-world connection to her audience, reinforcing the popularity of experiencing her live instead of through headphones. So much so, that we have point No. 2:

2. Swift is pulling her music off of the Internet, but not out of the venue
The NPR article cites a few potential reasons that Swift pulled her entire catalog off of Spotify (including her label possibly being on the market), but part of the decision seems to stay consistent with Swift’s focus on her audience experiencing more than a digital file. Swift packed the physical 1989 CD with photos, additional recordings, and secondary content that clearly differentiate the final product from a stream or download. To truly experience Swift’s content, you’ll need to look offline, and each venue on her upcoming, 57-stop tour will play a pivotal role in fulfilling this distinct business model.

Currently, it does not look like anyone can quickly replicate Swift’s decisions, or her success, but her ability to transcend current norms (like online streaming) might chart a course for a future trend yet to be defined. Venues and tours collaborating on new ways to support a tangible fan-to-artist dynamic (like Swift’s) could be instrumental in ushering in the next chapter of experiences only available to those with a ticket to an upcoming show.

Read or listen to the full NPR article here.

(Image: Eva Rinaldi)