Maximising the Impact of Music Festival Line-up Announcements

Music festival organisers put great emphasis on announcing their performance artist line-ups each year as this is a key driver for ticket sales. What additional steps can organisers take to maximise the impact of these announcements and generate even greater interest, engagement and ticket sales revenue.

Any music festival's line-up announcements are widely anticipated by festival-goers who will often wait to see which artists are headlining before committing to a ticket purchase. This makes any announcement especially important for festival organisations and the most popular time to do this is December and January each year. Some organisers announce their entire line-up in one go whist others prefer to drip feed news over a longer period, the effectiveness of each strategy will vary between festivals with different results. Sometimes timing is dictated by when deals can be completed with artists that may require additional announcements.

The Press Release.
A formal professionally written press release is the usual way of communicating line-up announcements and this may be done by an in-house marketing team or by an external PR agency. The content of any release should include some profile information about each artist and include the festival dates, venue location and details about ticket availability. The press release should be circulated to relevant media outlets and journalists and at the same time be posted in the event’s website and social media channels. There is no guarantee that any journalist or media outlet will republish the press release.

Performance Artists. 
Additional coverage can be obtained by asking the artists booked to share the news and press release too. Performance artists may have their own sizable following on social media channels and republishing the line-up announcement can increase exposure. Festival organisers may insert a condition in the booking contract that insists the artist re-posts announcements about line-ups, but this will need to be negotiated with the artist’s management team to secure this additional coverage.

Sponsors and Vendors. 
Organisations that are paying to be part of the festival have a vested interest in publicising their participation in a music festival. Sponsors have their own customer base which may be substantial and getting them to re-post line-up announcements can help to reach new audiences. Vendors are also keen to increase the number of ticket buyers because they will benefit from increased sales on-site and they want to publicise their involvement too albeit to a smaller audience.

Direct to Festival-Goers. 
For any festival that has been operating for a number of years one of the most cost-effective methods of generating ticket sales is to contact previous ticket buyers. Like most festival-goers they often delay ticket purchase decisions until a line-up is announced. A simple email that contains the line-up press release and festival poster can generate instant sales. This can be even more effective if the communication is accompanied by an exclusive early bird ticket offer.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering. 

Photo by Vinícius Caricatte via Pexels

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