Managing Artist Fee Budgets in the Music Festival Curation Process.

The line-up announced for any music festival is the key to successfully generating tickets sales. Festival-goers can be fickle when selecting which festival they want to attend and organisers need to curate the best line-up that will appeal to their target audience. How do organisers manage the curation process to get the best line-up without exceeding budgets.

No music festival entity has an unlimited budget for the curation of performance artists and most involved in this process work to limited budgets. This makes it challenging to secure the desired artists when fees seem to keep rising. Organisers will usually employ strict financial management controls on the curation team to avoid overspending. To improve this process, the curation team needs to consider artists in a strategic selection process combined with disciplined negotiation with each artist’s management team. What are the key processes that help curators manage their fee budgets.

Accurate Budget Forecasting.
The artist curation budget can make up a significant proportion of a festival’s overall operating expenses often accounting for between 30% and 50% of gross revenue. In the planning phase organisers will attempt to produce accurate revenue forecasts that include ticket sales, sponsors, vendors and merchandise for example. This is revenue that will be received over a lengthy period and to maintain good cash flow the amount of outgoing fee payments will consist of booking deposits with final payments made during or shortly after the live event dates. The allocated total curation budget is usually split into varying tiers depending on fee rates where the highest fee is attributed to headline acts. It is not unusual for a typical fee allocation split to be made with 40% of the total budget being reserved for headliners. 25% will go to big name support acts, 20% to mid-tier lesser-known artists and 10% to new and local artists for example. It is common for a contingency curation budget to be created which can account for 5% of the total budget.

Trending Fees.
A number of factors are influencing artist fees currently driven by increases in production costs and limited availability of the most popular artists. This has been pushing up the fees being demanded by the most attractive headline acts outpacing general inflation. Conversely artists in the mid-tier categories have seen flat stagnating fee rates that are not keeping pace with inflation making it challenging for them to make a profit from performing at a festival. The exception may be the emergence in popularity of nostalgic acts (90s and 2000s artists) where fees have been increasing. These market dynamics add pressure to the curation process where more budget may be allocated to secure headliners. Even if verbal agreements are made early in the curation process the artist may still increase the fee when it comes to confirming a booking. Curators in the process of shortlisting artists should monitor fee rates in real time so that budget allocation predictions will be reflected accurately.

Shortlisting Desirable Acts.
The genre of a music festival can determine how line-ups are curated but for most mixed genre events a balanced selection is desired. A single headliner for each genre represented may satisfy most festival-goers rather than booking multiple big-name artists for a particular genre. The most experienced and knowledgeable Artistic Directors often have the ability to select artists early in the curation process who are on the rise just before they peak where fees will be lower, but demand and popularity is greater during the live event dates. The competitive environment can also impact on artist availability where music festivals occurring on the same dates are chasing the same headline acts, sometimes leading to a fee bidding war. Careful analysis of competing events can keep such occurrences to a minimum. By considering artists already scheduled with tours, coordinating with that artist’s management team can help with the creation of more convenient routing where tour dates coincide with festival dates. This increased convenience for the artist can keep fees down because of reduced travel disruptions for example.

Negotiations.
Shortlisted artists will demand a published fee rate, but these are all negotiable and for headliners it is preferential to confirm a booking and fee as early as possible as the fee will only increase closer to the event dates. The festival’s management of cash flow is essential during the planning phase so making any fee payments in full will be challenging. Common practice is to agree payment terms with the artist which will consist of a booking deposit with follow up instalments usually closer to the event dates when ticket sales revenue is being generated. The curation team can increase control over their budget expenditure by negotiating favourable deposit and payment terms to align with cash flow forecasts. A reduced deposit payment is often an effective tool for expenditure control, if it can be negotiated in an environment where agents are demanding higher up-front deposits. Early confirmation and booking of headline artists is becoming more common, sometimes years in advance potentially tying up capital earlier in the curation process.

For festival organisers planning their next event using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics including a dedicated artist management module. 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, site planning, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Image by sabena206 via Pixabay

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