Events

How much money is needed to organise a music festival?

Featured photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

You’ve come to the correct spot if you’re an event planner with a huge idea, like a wonderful, large concept, but you don’t know where to start! huge ideas need huge plans, which necessitate a strategy, inventiveness, clarity, and consistency. If you’re searching for resources to help you launch your own music festival, we’re here to assist.

We’ve been in your shoes before, and it worked out rather well. (after some budgeting adjustments). That’s why we’re here to walk you through the steps of launching your own music festival, including a full look at all facets of organizing one! We are convinced that your music festival vision can become a reality.

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Throwing your own music festival or event requires a lot of preparation and may involve certain elements you never imagined were essential. You may not have considered porta-potties, medical services, a contingency fund, or even the expense of parking permits.

PromoTix has you covered with a dependable PDF budgeting tool that can turn your amazing music event concept into a successful reality! With years of expertise under our belts, you can bring your festival fantasies to reality by reading these helpful advice and downloading our FREE tool.

 

Check out this video to discover how you can use this to rapidly enhance your profitability while establishing a music event.

How to acquire funds to start your music festival

If you need money to launch your event, try raising awareness and spreading the word about it. If you already have a site or a name in mind, come up with a catchy name for your event. Sharing what you’re doing with others via dialogue can quickly garner notice if you produce anything interesting.

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When there is buzz about your event, you know that the idea can become a reality. If individuals want to help, gathering funds for the event is a significant undertaking. A festival will cost a lot of money, but you don’t have to empty your bank account.

Applying for grants in your city or state, establishing a marketing strategy to acquire a company sponsorship, or even finding venture capitalists interested in sponsoring your festival are all options for getting funds for your festival.

There are individuals out there that want to assist you put on an event like this, and you need to find them. If you can connect with individuals in the music and event management sectors, word of mouth will spread, and you will discover that many people want you to succeed in bringing your event to life.

Investigating grants that your event is eligible for in your city or state is a great place to start. There are music organizations that sponsor large events or one-of-a-kind situations, such as this music festival.

Music groups want to put on events, and if your proposal appeals to them, they may be interested in funding your festival. Speaking with the proper people and locating a grant that you are eligible for will save you time.

Finding sponsors to represent your music festival might be difficult, but it is vital if you want to raise revenue for your event. Sponsorships require effort since you must create sponsorship offers, identify possible sponsors, and pitch your offer to them.

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A festival sponsor should provide a meaningful message to individuals attending the event. Sponsors will want brand exposure and advantages from marketing your festival’s attention.

Increasing your festival’s social media followings and engagement is another strategy to attract prospective sponsors through ‘digital word of mouth.’ People will be all over your posts seeking for additional information if you have a well-known music festival account on a few platforms with a significant following.

Music festival budget breakdown

A useful tip for putting on a lucrative music festival (or at least not losing money in the first trial year) is to carefully manage your costs since there will be many. A music festival may cost thousands (if it is normally smaller), if not millions of dollars to plan and hold.

In 2015, for example, the cost of putting on Burning Man was around $35.8 million. Securing this amount of money for the event was difficult, but can you image how much it would take to put on a comparable spectacle in 2021?

Coachella headliners earned over $3-4 million for their shows in 2017. Three years later, the expense of putting on a massive festival has risen year after year, particularly depending on the lineup you’re striving for.

Any successful festival is built on a concept and a setting that complements it. Wherever you choose to have your festival, it is probable that the local community will benefit as well.

Before setting the real budget, it is critical to know how much you want to spend into the quality of the artists and the hospitality.

Thinking over every single expenditure of your event before spending money will be the determining element in your festival’s success and profitability.

Planning your music festival might be as easy as you believe until you reach a snag and forget a $30,000+ fee or a permission that will cause your event to be canceled.

When organizing a music event, you are effectively building a brand. Your festival must have a vision for the style of music it will feature. Consider and ask yourself the following questions:

  • What kind of artists do you want to bring in?
  • What kind of environment do you want to create?
  • What kind of individuals do you want to attend the festival?
  • What will make your festival unique to fans?

All of these questions will assist you in visualizing the sort of music festival you want to create and how much money you will need to set aside for your event budget. The ‘vibe’ of your music event will not decide its fate; you must also consider economics.

Making plans and strategies for each part of your music festival will make it more distinctive, functional, and simpler to execute.

Offer something unique to set your event distinct from the others. If you provide something unique, such as an experience marketing set or a surprise headliner/supporting act, an audience will return to your concert year after year.

What goes into each budget area?

It will take a long time to work out your music festival budget. Knowing what you want to add and exclude from your fan’s experience will help you determine which components are more or less significant when developing a budget.

Among the specialized festival budgeting sectors are:

  • Site expenses
    • Stages, restrooms, camping, backstage, open space, entry, and accessibility are all available.
  • Production expenses
    • Backstage Food and Drink, Hosts, Sound Systems, and Backdrops
  • Ticketing expenses
    • Commissions, Staff, Printing, Ticket Takers
  • Staff expenses
    • Administration, parking and food service personnel, power and lighting, and insurance
  • PR/ Marketing expenses
    • Website, Social Media, Marketing Campaigns, Promotions, Festival Art, and Branding are all examples of services provided by the company.
  • Pre-production expenses
    • Legal accountant, postage, phone/computer equipment, office expenses, liability insurance, permits, and licenses
  • Other expenses
    • Food and beverage stands, merchandise tents, land registration, shuttle bus rental, restrooms, fence and perimeter lighting, operations vehicles, trash collection, and so on.

These are just a few of the specific costs to consider while organizing a music festival. Some items may not be necessary on-site depending on the number you anticipate, since they are for bigger audiences.

You will need to assemble a group of people to assist you in the process of organizing your festival since, as you can see, there is a lot to do.

 

To establish the brand, acquire popularity, and plan out all of these elements, you will need to start preparing roughly two years in advance for a successful festival. Finding a venue that suits the intensity of your festival will also be a deciding element in the success of your music festival.

Hiring skilled event workers that are enthusiastic about music is critical in the event industry. From there, you’ll need a large number of people to assist administer the venue and prepare for the festival’s launch.

Festival labor is a lot of fun, so if they get to attend the acts, they could join your volunteer team for free! That’s a win-win situation for any budget.

Budget expense breakdown

The bulk of your total money will be spent on promoting and securing performers for your event. Investing more in your event’s marketing and promotional materials will assure a higher turnout–both physical marketing materials and digital marketing assets.

Another significant portion of your spending will be spent on assembling a popular lineup of musicians. It is up to you if you want to incorporate a mix of various music or genres, but employing skilled performers is expensive, particularly if you hire up-and-coming artists. This might also increase the profitability of your festival since people will want to attend an event where their favorite performer is performing.

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As for the more minor things that aren’t as fun to work out, such as marketing or locating artists, our event budget template breaks out every other expense for you, literally. everything , so you don’t overlook a vital element that may have slipped your memory. We break out the cost of each item per ticket charge in each of these categories, as well as how much money is allocated for each.

This enables you to see how much each item costs, how much money is set aside particularly for it, and how it fits into your total music festival budget. You’re effectively beginning a company when you create this music festival, and we want this business to be profitable for years to come.

When your music event is live, one method to save money is to use our PromoTix platform for your ticketing requirements. By eliminating all event booking expenses, our ticketing technology is meant to boost your profitability and save you money.

Speaking from our experience

If you honestly want to know why this method works for large-scale event planning, we can share our expertise. You can rely on PromoTix since we’ve been in your shoes! Yes, Will Royall, the originator and CEO of PromoTix, established his own tremendously successful music event, Backwoods Music event at Mulberry Mountain, in 2015. (You can read the complete story here).

Will eventually created PromoTix and was able to generate leads and ambassadors for the festival, resulting in over $390,000 in sales.

He developed his own program and saved more than $42,000 in tickets expenses alone. That money was saved by attempting something new, and it might now be spent elsewhere in the budget.

So, if the ball is moving and you’re preparing and brainstorming methods to bring your vision to reality, you should consider the profitability of your music festival. Not merely making it, but also ensuring its success. keep  selling tickets for years to come.

There are several methods to boost your profitability, and we are here to present you with the tools that we have discovered to be effective in our experience. See how the Backwoods Music Festival raised its business margins and attendance levels while retaining the attendee experience in this video.

Music industry work is challenging but effective

As you can see, establishing, organizing, and arranging a music festival is difficult–you’ll be fortunate to break even or earn a profit your first year. It’s a challenging business, particularly with the number of festivals increasing in recent years.

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Hopefully, with these helpful planning tools, your music festival planning experience will go more smoothly than you expected. A festival is a business, but it is a fantastic one that provides thousands of people delight and joy. Live music is unlike anything else, and if you can provide delight to your audience, your festival has succeeded.

The only way for your event to succeed is to build a business around it, and this can only be done with money. Purchasing equipment, paying fees, and paying employees are just a few of the expenses that your festival must cover each year in order to increase ticket sales and profit.

Please let us know if you utilize our financial planning sheet to make your fantasy music festival a reality! We’d want to hear how it went for you. After all, we’re all here to enjoy a well-organized music festival for a couple of days, right? That was incredible, and we can’t wait to do it again soon.

Check out more of our Music Festival Planning Tools or browse through our blog posts for more innovative ideas on how to design your music festival. We are here to help you make your live music event a success, and we hope that PromoTix has given you a fantastic place to start!

 

 

Gina is a driven and innovative communications professional with expertise in event management and planning, public relations, and digital media.

Related Questions

  • How much does it cost to make a music festival?

    In addition, the expenditures for awarding scholarships to local artists, safety expenses, ticket service, and accommodation — including power bills — vary from $1.3 million to $1.7 million. Performance supplies, taxes, travel, maintenance, and depreciation are all “lesser” charges that range from $200,000 to $600,000 apiece.

  • Is music festival profitable?

    It’s far more than you think. Most people assume that music festivals make a lot of money only via ticket sales. While ticket sales are important, they are not the primary source of revenue for these events. Sponsorships, retail sales, and food and drink sales help festivals generate money.

  • How much does it cost to produce Coachella?

    That’s because the sold-out event, which allegedly cost about $100 million to produce, only featured two artists every day.

  • How to finance a music festival?

    Applying for grants in your city or state, establishing a marketing strategy to acquire a company sponsorship, or even finding venture capitalists interested in sponsoring your festival are all options for getting funds for your festival.

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