Music Midtown was a large music festival held in Atlanta, Georgia from 1994 to 2005. At its peak, the event drew in excess of 300,000 attendees for its three-day run. Six main stages, each typically sponsored by a local radio station, were used to present dozens of bands playing a wide variety of musical genres.
In response to falling attendance and citing rising expenses, promoters placed the festival on hiatus in 2006. The festival was conceived by Atlanta-based music promoters Alex Cooley and Peter Conlon who sought to create an event similar to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and which would present the wide variety of music they both had come to enjoy during their careers in the music industry. In 1994, the festival launched on a parcel of undeveloped land at Peachtree St.
and Tenth St. in the heart of Midtown's business district. After a few years at this site, the festival was forced to move to make way for the construction of the new Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
The new festival site chosen was in downtown just north of Centennial Olympic Park and consisted mainly of closed-off streets and surface parking lots which made for a hot and somewhat unpleasant daytime concert-going experience. This site is now home to the new Georgia Aquarium and the new World of Coca-Cola museum. This led to a brief stay of two years after which the festival moved to the current 42 acre (170,000 m²) location adjacent to the Atlanta Civic Center and SciTrek.
After finding this new home, the festival grew dramatically and attracted around 300,000 attendees in its peak years. Although independent promoters when the festival was created, Cooley and Conlon sold their company, Concert/Southern Promotions, to Clear Channel Communications' subsidiary SFX Entertainment in 1998. In November 2004, Alex Cooley was released by Clear Channel Entertainment in part due to his unsuccessful assimilation into the corporate culture.
His age and health problems (diabetes) prevented him from working full-time which also played a role.