Trademark Leads to Change in New Year’s Eve Guitar Drop

There’s a new centerpiece to the New Year’s Eve festivities in downtown Nashville. The third-annual street party had to find something else to mimic the ball on Times Square.

To signal the start of this year, a glowing Gibson guitar dropped on Lower Broadway. However, 2012 will ring in with a 15-foot music note making the slow-motion descent. That’s because the Hard Rock Café – which started the New Years event – is no longer a sponsor.

“And they own the “Guitar Drop.”

Deana Ivey with the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau says Hard Rock has a trademark. The chain of musically-themed restaurants is still hosting guitar drops in Memphis, Niagara Falls and for the first time St. Louis. A spokesman says the Nashville sponsorship didn’t work out – in part – because of “cost concerns.”

Ivey, with the CVB, says a music note is more original anyway.

“We don’t want to do what other cities are doing. So that was another good reason for us to say we’re doing our own thing. We’re Music City. We’re going to represent ourselves well, and we’re making a change.”

The CVB also now has its own trademark on the name “Music Drop.”

The Nashville New Year’s bash, which has drawn crowds of 30,000, is expecting a bigger turnout with its best-known headliner to date. Lynyrd Skynyrd will play a 15-minute version of “Free Bird” while the music note drops Saturday night.