Organising music concerts is a challenge and there are a variety of issues you’ll need to take into consideration to have a successful music concert.

In my 10 years as venue manager for events and being an artiste manager, I will be writing from my experience so far to give you helpful guide and on how to organise an event of this nature.

But, before you do anything, think about why you’re putting the event on and what do you want to get out of it? Maybe you’re looking to help build the reputation of the band or artist, perhaps you’re looking make money from this, build your own reputation or maybe as a fundraiser.

Once you understand why you are organising the concert, consider the following ten steps to sucess:

1. Set A Budget

One of the first things that you’ll want to do when planning any music concert or gig is to set a comprehensive and realistic budget that covers how your event makes money and how the event spends money.

For most music concerts or gigs, income will come from tickets, but you might want to consider other alternatives such as  brand sponsorship or sponsorship from socialites who are in love with your music.

Within your expenditure you will need to consider what are the fixed costs and what are the variable costs. A fixed cost is a one that doesn’t vary as the number of people increases.

For example, a fixed cost could be your basic venue hire fee. This is a fixed cost because normally it won’t change anything different if you have 10 people or 100 people.

Here are some examples of more fixed costs:

• Basic venue hire
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• Band or artist fee
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• Technical cost of putting the show on

In addition to fixed costs you need to also consider the variable costs. These are costs that will alter depending on the number of people that you have in the venue.

So, let’s say that you start off planning for 50 people to attend your event. You may think you only need two members of security at this point. Now imagine ticket sales go really well and you expect 100 people to attend.

Now, this cost has varied and potentially you may need 4 security staff. Here are some examples of other variable expenditure:

Ticket printing

Staff (security/bar staff)

Promotional materials

As regards ticket printing, this is what Shows.NG takes off your neck. If you sell your tickets on Shows.NG, people can buy your tickets and download it on their phone with unique barcode and reference number.

You can always validate attendees’ ticket by scanning them with a phone camera at the point of entry.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

One of the single most important things that you can do to ensure the success of your music concert or gig is to identify who your target audience is through the creation of a target audience profile.

Now you might think: ‘this is easy, it is simply the fans of the bands that are performing’. And yes, you would be right in one respect this is true.

But knowing this doesn’t give the full picture and it certainly will not always help you to market and promote your music concert or gig successfully.

You should try to consider both geographic and demographic elements that make up your target audience.

This will pay dividends and save you money because you will not be advertising in those geographical areas, on websites or on social media platforms that your target audience just isn’t looking at. So how do you start this process?

Geographic elements are those which describe where people live. There are many ways to do this and it depends very much in which country in which you live.

You may decide to restrict advertising to just your local area, and this may be largely dictated by the artist appeal for who is playing. The bigger the artist the wider the advertising radius you may need to consider.

Demographic elements describe those characteristics of your target audience which help you too target them better with your advertising. 

Demographic elements include things like:

gender

age

income

educational level

ethnicity

family life cycle

Using these elements, you can create the ideal profile of a person most likely to come to your event and therefore be highly precise with your marketing.

3. Book Your Artists

There are several ways that you can approach booking artists or bands for your music concert or gig. Having contacts can be key, but reaching out to artists or their representatives will require good communication skills.

If the concert is a local event, it may be as simple as reaching out to artistes through their appropriate social media channel. If the artiste has a slightly higher profile this route may still work but it is likely you will need to speak to their management or booking agent.

Sometimes this information is included in the footer or about us page on the artist’s website or their Instagram BIO, but other times this may not be readily available and may require further investigation using Google or another search engine.

You will want to negotiate a fee with the band. This is highly dependent on the bands current profile and standing. Be prepared to negotiate and to haggle and don’t be surprised if the band fee is higher than you expected.

Bigger artistes can charge lots of money to perform, so you should do some research to understand those artistes available in your price category.

4. Find A Venue

When you set your initial budget, you will have an idea for the number of people you expect to attend your event, and this should be the first thing you look at in any potential venue.

Search the local area for venues with the required capacity and then check that the venues have the capabilities to host live music concerts or gig. Here are some examples of the criteria you need to check with any venue to see if it is suitable to host live music

• What is the venue capacity?
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• Is there a stage or raised platform big enough to accommodate the bands you want to book?
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• Are there changing rooms or dressing rooms with direct access to the stage? Most bands usually require these.
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• Is there sufficient electrical power for a sound system or PA?
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• Does that the venue have its own PA set up for live music? This is typically two banks of speakers either side of the stage in a stereo format.
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• What other technical equipment does the venue have to mix live band?
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• Is there stage lighting?
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• Is there a bar if required?
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• Does the venue have the correct licences for hosting live music?

5. Set A Date

Once you’ve set the budget and found your venue then you will need to set a date. You should allow for at least four to six weeks to market and promote the music concert or gig.

Any less than this and you risk the event being unsuccessful. Ideally you should book the date in many months in advance to allow for enough marketing and promotion.

It is likely that artistes and venues also book months in advance, so you’ll need to be on top of your game in this aspect.

6. Organise Tickets To Go On Sale

You will want to put tickets on sale as soon as possible. Before you do, consider what your ticketing strategy as this may encourage some early sales, which can be particularly useful when cash flow is tight.

One technique to get early ticket sales is to offer an early bird ticket price. This is a lower ticket price which is set either for a limited time or for a limited number of tickets.

You could decide to offer a free number of tickets in exchange for users sharing your event on their own social media. This will help with the reach of your event especially if you are just getting started.

You may want to have different pricing levels for different target audiences such as Under-18s, students or other concessions.

A final suggestion is to use the countdown clock strategy. This is like the early bird strategy, but you will need to set further price tiers and then display or notify attendees of any impeding change in price.

Letting people know they have a limited time to buy a ticket at this price often works quite well in selling more tickets.

7. Promote the Event

One of the key reasons for considering your target audience before considering any type of marketing is that now you know which channels are likely to have the most effect in selling tickets for your music concert or gig.

You should allow for at least four to six weeks for promoting any event. In the case of music concerts or gigs and with long booking lead times you may be spending several months marketing the event.

To start, you should consider the target audience profile or profiles that you have drawn up.

It is perfectly acceptable to have more than one target market for an event.

In fact, this allows you to operate several different efficient marketing strategies to reach each of your target audiences.

For example, one target audience may use Facebook as their social network of choice, while another chooses to use Instagram. You, therefore, need to consider different strategies for each of these two target audiences to have the most effect.

One marketing plan will focus on Facebook while the other will focus on Instagram and each of these social networks have very different content and presentation.

The different marketing channels should be based on the profile of your target audience.

8. Filming & Photography At The Event

You should consider having someone come to film or photograph your music concert or gig especially if you plan to run more events again in the future.

A photographer with a high-quality camera (DSLR etc.) should be used to ensure that the photos look professional. It can be difficult to photograph live music in dark lit venues so check they have experience in these areas.

The photos or video that are produced can then provide you with social media content after the event and for promoting your next show.

The concert photos and video will also help to build your own social media profile as people will be keen to like and share them after the event.

9. Security Of The Event

Security is very important for any event. You can visit the nearest police station in your area and request for Police presence at your event. Ofcourse they will charge a token, it’s important you pay and be rest assured that your event is secured.

You can also employ the service of private securities or bouncers at the entrance of the event and around the event area. The bouncers of private securities will be available to take out anyone who cause trouble and hand such person over to the Police outside.

Conclusion

Organising music concerts is not for the faint-hearted but if you do it with appropriate planning, you’d definitely pull it off.