Published
Wed, Dec 7, 2016, 16:30
- The entertainment giant's new CEO is also keen to distance the company from the EDM tag.
SFX Entertainment has emerged from bankruptcy with a new name, LiveStyle, and a new CEO.
The company, which owns electronic music festivals like Electric Zoo and Tomorrowland, as well as the digital music retailer Beatport, declared bankruptcy in February. In the months that followed, they had to sell a couple of their properties and lay off a number of employees in order to get their finances in check. They even eliminated all non-essential services at Beatport, including the site's editorial and video production departments.
Now, they've emerged out of bankruptcy with a new name, LiveStyle, and a new CEO, Randy Phillips, who formerly led another concert promotion giant called AEG Live (SFX's previous CEO, Robert Sillerman, stepped down in April). "Every time I said the name 'SFX' to someone, I got this negative reaction—people would make the sign of the cross," Phillips told Billboard. He also plans to shift the company's focus, broadening the scope of events beyond just electronic music. (Billboard reports that Phillips shuns the term EDM.) They will continue to operate Beatport, which Phillips says is profitable now that they've trimmed away some of its services.