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Rationale

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Time and Project Management:

Securing the bands and venue was our first priority within the event planning. We collated a list of all the venues that would be fitting for the alternative demographic of our event. We made a WhatsApp group chat so we could plan out the whole event. We compiled a mailing list of all these venues so we could get in contact with them. We did the same for potential local bands that we’d thought would be appropriate for this event. This process took longer than anticipated as we had to deal with long response times from venues and bands while some didn’t even respond at all. Although we thought it was ambitious, we decided to email one of Toms contacts at Key Club to see how much the venue hire would be and decide whether we would make our money back or not. After working out how many tickets we’d need to sell and how much we would need to cost to break even, we thought Key Club would be a viable option for a good turnout, especially since they have wide availability around march times. As of now, Tom remains in contact with the venue managers via WhatsApp and email so we can further organise this event. 

Event scheduling: 

A rough event schedule document has been produced and is included in the appendices. This includes load-in times, soundchecks, doors opening, set times and curfew. Creating this document ensured clear communication between bands, venue staff and the group. Time management is critical on the event day. A structured running order reduces the risk of delays. We have around 3 hours of leigh weigh from load in to when doors open. This gives us more than enough time to sort soundchecks and any other logistical concerns. As the event finishes at 22:30, we will have about 20 minutes to tear down the stage so key club can host their club night afterwards at 23:00. We have also considered the potential contingency of bands pulling out last minute. We have a backup band to fill in the slot in case we run into band scheduling issues prior to the event. This isn’t entirely necessary; however, it provides a fall-back option in the worst-case scenario that one of the bands can no longer perform. Since this is an essential part of the event, we thought it’d be best to be prepared for this since we already have had issues with punctuality within bands. 

Production:

Technical Production:

After getting the venue specs of Key Club, we know that they have a standard PA system with everything the bands would need from DI boxes, monitors and microphones along with a standard FOH setup. The in-house backline consists of a five-piece drum kit, two marshal cabinets and one Hartke bass cabinet. However, this is only available to use at an extra cost which we have accounted for in our budget sheet. In case Key Clubs in-house engineer isn’t available, we do know someone who may be available to help on the night with the sound engineering, however, this may come at an extra cost and we still haven’t  heard back from the venue on whether or not we’d need to outsource a sound engineer ourselves. Ben is also able to help with lighting if necessary. 

After reading through the band’s tech specs, we can see that all bands will be bringing their own breakables for drums and their own instruments. The headliner will be bringing their own amplifiers which will be handy because Janata will not be bringing their own amplifiers. This means that we may not necessarily have to use the full in-house backline as they may be able to borrow from New Damage. How Do You Plead will be entirely DI so this eliminates any need for amplifiers though we may need an extra DI box because they’ve listed only having two. They have amplifiers available but will likely be all DI as that’s their usual setup. All together we seem to have everything we need between the bands and the venue in terms of gear, however, if we run into any issues before the event or if any band no longer has certain gear available, we can always rent out any extra gear from the conservatoire at no extra cost. 

Logistical Production:

Although we haven’t confirmed the exact date with the venue, we decided to do the event in March. This gives us more time to focus heavily on promotion, content creation, posters and flyers. To even out the workload, we split the group into individual tasks. Luke was set on the role of designing the initial poster for the press release while we worked on reaching out to bands and gathering their photos and tech specs. Ben covered the scheduling for the day and organised the times for load in and the soundchecks while also sorting out each artists set times. I handled most of the risk assessment by filling out the document and getting it signed off. Since Tom had the connections to the venue, he was in charge of contacting them and sorting out the date of the event. He was essentially the middleman between us and the venue. Any messages we got from them was carried through him so we could all plan out an appropriate response in good time. The main things we need to consider moving forward is how we are going about marketing the event. We will likely split this section into roles such as who oversees the production of social media content or who oversees the production and distribution of flyers across university campuses. 

Hospitality/Health and Safety:

Artist hospitality is an important part of live event management. This includes providing drinks, water, and designated backstage areas. Hospitality arrangements are largely covered by the venue, however, as a group it’s important we assign someone a job as artist liaison for the day of the gig. 

The venue operates under existing licensing and safety regulations; however, it is our job as promoters/event organisers to ensure a safe environment for the event. Key hazards identified include crowd movement, slips and trips, alcohol consumption and emergency evacuation. All this was considered in our risk assessment and were rated by probability and severity. This is included in the appendices. 

Contingency Plan:

Technical failure is something to prepare for since gear can be temperamental. After gathering the bands and venues tech specs, we know exactly what gear we have available. This means if a band needs emergency gear (such as drum breakables, guitar cables etc.) then we will have spares at the ready in time for the next bands performance. Soundchecks will allow sufficient time to identify and resolve technical issues prior to doors opening. Every artist will get a soundcheck of half an hour which is more than enough time to ensure everything works smoothly. 

Low ticket sales are a particularly concerning risk as we all have financial contributions to the venue hire as well as any potential expenditures. This means to break even we need to ensure that our ticket price is set in conjunction to the minimum amount of people we estimate to bring. As shown in our budget, we estimate to sell around 150 tickets total, meaning if we set the base price as £6, we will make around £900 which gives us more than enough leigh way to break even, even if we don’t reach the estimated capacity. 

Health and safety incidents are important to consider as they pose a great risk to people involved. However, appropriate preparation and foresight, we can help mitigate any issues before they occur. This is done through our extensive risk assessment we did for the venue. Any potential risks, including health and safety incidents, have been logged down. The venue has trained staff and first aiders on site so that they can handle any issues in the event of any health and safety incidents. 

External disruptions and transport delays have been accounted for in our flexible schedule. Since load in is at 16:30 and doors are at 19:30 this means we have three hours spare if we have any delays on the day. This ensures the event can adapt to unexpected challenges while maintaining professional standards. We also considered this before getting any bands on the line-up. We figured that if we get local bands this will cut any logistical issues with travel and lateness while also helping expand our network within the local music scene. 

Artist cancellations and delayed response time is an important contingency to plan for as it could throw the event off majorly. As we were planning the line-up we did run into this issue. Initially we had a different line-up with a few other headliners in kind. This line-up wasn’t confirmed as we never got a reply on time from one of the bands management teams. This posed an issue for our progress in the assignment and set us back a bit in the process. We thankfully had New Damage step in to headline and even though they saved us last minute, this meant our estimated ticket sales went down which means we need to focus heavily on promotion. Regardless, this was a contingency we were prepared for. 

Finance:

We have separated our budget to cover three sectors, the venue hire, sound tech and promotion. Our largest expenditure is the venue hire at £235. This covers the venue hire, lighting, PA, and security for the night. This doesn’t account for the in-house backline, which means we will have to pay a little extra for that depending on if we use it and how much of it, we will need. The sound technician will cost extra at £16 per hour if we use the venues sound tech, however, the sound tech we outsource would cost £25 so it’s likely we would hire them if Key Club allowed it. 

Since we want to do a lot of promotion, this may cost more money as well. For example, running ads on social media for the event would cost around £0.30-0.80 per click. Running ads for a week prior to the event would cost around £24 over 6 days and would have an estimated reach of around 6,400 – 17,000. Running meta-ads would be a good way of promotion as the algorithm shows these ads specifically to people in your area based on your following. That means it’d potentially cover a wide range of people and sufficiently promote our event shortly before the date. This is just hypothetical and hasn’t been added to our budget list yet because the prices vary from how long the ad stays up, however, it remains a viable option for future promotion nearer to the gig date.  

We would need flyers and physical tickets to be printed out for when we promote the event in person across university campuses. This is estimated to cost around £50, however, if we used the printers at the conservatoire, it’d cut the cost. These are essential as they will help bring more random people to the event. We discussed the idea of handing out free cookies/shot tokens to people who buy a ticket, yet this will come at an unknown cost. Providing cookies would be negligible as we can make them ourselves for not much cost, however, the free shot tokens is a grey area as we don’t know how much this will cost. This is something that requires planning in future as we would need to contact Key Club about it. We would need to find out how much it’d cost to get free shot tokens; how many we would get and how much it’d set us back in the grand scheme of our budget. Doing this would be entirely dependent on how much we are estimated to make back from this event. As our expected cost is £500 and our estimated income will be £750, our profit would be estimated at around £250 which means we may have some extra income to spend on the free shot tokens. Once we have an exact price of the tokens, we can calculate whether it’ll be financially viable in the next month. Our biggest financial risk is low ticket sales as our ticket sales essentially determine whether we are at a profit or a loss since the money is coming out of our own pockets. Since we have planned out our ticket pricing in accordance with our estimated ticket sales, we should make profit in theory, however, this isn’t something we can guarantee. 

Marketing and Publicity:

Social media promotion:

Since we calculated that our line-up would likely bring around 150 people across all bands, we decided that we would need to go heavily in depth with our promotion as to bring more people who aren’t associated with the bands to the event. This would largely be done on social media as we can help spread the word of the everyone we know. The algorithm would see that the people we know are engaging with our content and will suggest it to other people around the area. Promoting heavily on social media means we need content ideas, ideally short form vertical videos with a 3 second hook to draw the viewers in. Naturally, my first thought was to compile good quality gig footage from all three bands and use them for a montage reel with some kind of caption to draw attention. This video can include the main gig poster for the event, ideally near the start so it can get the message across quicker. This reel will likely be the first one posted to our social media page on Instagram and TikTok as part of our initial press release. An idea I had to engage people on social media was to have the headliner do a vote on their Instagram. They would have their audience vote from three cover songs and the winning song gets announced on the night and played. This is a small addition; however, it creates engagement from the audience and gives an incentive to come see them cover the song live. 

Promotion through universities:

The band members on the line-up are students from LCoM, Beckett and university of Leeds. This means we have people from all three unis to help promote this event in person along all three university campuses. This means we can print out posters from the press release and have them placed around by members of the band. Ben had the idea of setting up a stall in the student unions/cafeteria and sell the tickets for the event along with a free cookie or a free shot token for on the night. Another selling point is if we also promote the fact that any gig attendees would get free entry to the club night after the show. This could all be done at our stall at the student unions and will help give an incentive for random people to come to our event. 

Cross promotion through bands:

A large amount of our promotion would be carried on and further promoted by the other bands on the lineup. This means that any promotion we do, social media or in person, would then in turn be reposted and promoted from the bands on the lineup. For example, our posters would reach all three university campuses because of the people in the band rather than us. In essence, this means our promotion would get strong coverage from everyone we know and the people we reach out to as well as everyone that the people in the bands know. This essentially works as promotion through word of mouth. 

Conclusion:

Overall, this project has demonstrated the comprehensive planning and preparation involved in delivering a live music event at a professional level. The project will reflect real-world industry practice within UK grassroots music as it involves work within an established venue. Our planning process incorporated project management, financial budgeting, promotion and marketing strategy and risk assessment. We have backed up our work with inclusion of documentation within the appendices to evidence our preparation for this event and our readiness for potential contingency. Overall, we are happy with how the project is going as it enhances our understanding of live music management and provides relevant experience for future work within live events. One of our biggest challenges was timing. This project so far has shown me the importance of reply timing for emails. This because we struggled with bands and venues who either didn’t reply or took longer to reply than expected which ultimately hindered our progress.

Technical Specifications

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Press Kit

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Press release