6 Steps to Making Your Festival Artist Friendly
Although dj’s love the part where they get paid, there are many other things that artists love or hate about playing festivals.
While management and agents focus on the paycheque and exposure to new audiences, there are a number of other factors that affect the sentiment towards your festival for the dj’s and crew that fly and drive long hours to get there.
Happy dj’s say great things about your festival and unhappy dj’s do the opposite. Since they hang out and share their experiences with others, you want the stories they share about your festival to be positive.
Here are some things festivals should consider before and during their event to ensure your artists have a smooth experience that will reflect positively on your event:
1) Provide a detailed itinerary
Make sure you send ALL OF THE INFORMATION that your artists and their team need before they get to the festival site. Include Maps, their schedule, a map of the festival site with indicators showing them where they are staying, eating, parking, contact details, the venue or stage entrance and any other details you have for them. Having this information in advance will help them prepare for your festival.
2) Deliver what you promised
Running around nagging production staff for your drinks, fruit tray and anything else that was verbally promised and included on the contract while you and your band should be back stage getting ready to perform can sour the experience. This is easy stuff to accommodate with a bit of planning. As an artist you want to focus on making your show the best possible experience for festival goers.
It also helps to have a finalized copy of the signed contract and rider on hand. This is important because sometimes agents and managers can forget to share the updated documentation with the artist. Having this document on hand can eliminate any confusion or disagreements on what was officially agreed upon.
3) Water, water, everywhere!
Whether or not this is something that was included on the rider, it’s water. Dj’s need it to survive. It is a small cost to make sure that there is a source of water for performers. There is nothing worse than being on stage kicking out a 60 minute high energy set while being completely parched. Keep your artists hydrated and they’ll be in a better position to give your audience the performance you’re paying them for.
4) Be nice
This one should be pretty easy, however, summer heat, lack of sleep, long days and stressful agendas can sometimes bring the out the worst in people. All things considered, being cranky can make the experience fairly uncomfortable for your performers. I can not count how many times I have been snapped at by festival staff for asking for some water, or asking a monitor guy to turn something up. This is something worth making your staff and volunteers aware of. My advice is to make it policy to treat artists with respect and clarify that being disrespectful to artists is not tolerated.
5) Ensure artists have their personal space respected
Every artist, no matter their level of recognition, needs time to prepare before a performance if they’re going to put on the best show possible. After their set, they also may need time to decompress.
6) Personally thank the artists that play your festival
It is a great thing when the festival director or senior staff make a point to meet the talent and thank them for their performance. IF you had the time to check out a tune, let them know. If not maybe someone else on your staff mentioned something to you about them or you saw a tweet from one of your patrons. Let them know. If you are too busy to make the rounds and thank your performers than you may want to consider more delegation and organization. In the extreme case you don’t get a chance to do this because your event is just that big or something unforeseen comes up, then set time aside after things calm down to write the artist a personal email thanking them for their performance and apologizing for not being able to meet them in person.
Finally, remember that artists play music for reasons other than just making money. Give them a great experience. Let them feel appreciated. The word will get around the artist community and everyone will want to play at and recommend your festival.