Interview with Brian Johannesen (Talent Buyer)
Purpose: How Music Festivals Get Put Together
What do you do for a living?
I am a talent buyer with a company called Madison Entertainment. We book a large, 3-day music festival in Del Mar, California called KAABOO, as well as two music cruises, and over 20 live music venues. For KAABOO, we had a talent budget of over $8 million. This is the first year of the festival, and headliners will be No Doubt, Zac Brown Band, and The Killers.
Can you tell me about the process of picking and choosing bands?
You always want to think about your demographic, and how many people fit that demographic in your area. Who do we want coming to the festival and how many of them live here? Then you look at bands that those people will like. Most festivals center around a specific genre, like Country or Indie Rock or Metal. Once you know who you want to to come and how many there are in your area, you start looking at bands that those people will like, and how many of those people will come to see them. We look at the venues they have played in the area, the size of those venues, and how many people came to the show at what price? You start to gauge who you can rely on to bring people and who you can't.
For example, our mission with KAABOO was to create a comfortable festival environment that would appeal to everyone from soccer moms to teenagers. We wanted an experience where parents could bring their kids and they could expose each other to their favorite music. So we have bands that target a younger demographic, like Foster the People, or Young the Giant, as well as bands that target older music listeners like Counting Crows, or Bonnie Raitt, or Sheryl Crow. We think all the bands we have on the festival "fit" with each other, meaning if you like Sheryl Crow, you may also like Young the Giant. They don't sound similar, but they are close enough that people would want to see both.
How does a music festival get put together?
It starts with the money. Someone has to be willing to spend a LOT of money and hope that they can make it back. When I worked for Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City, that was started by my friends Tanner and Andre with just what they had in their bank accounts. They found some bands they could pay, got the venue, and had two nights at the same venue. They slowly grew that and this year, their 10th anniversary, they had over 100 bands and over 70 authors perform over 7 days in dozens of venues. That is one approach, and it moves very slow. The other is having a major investor, like KAABOO, who is willing to pay millions of dollars to have big names in a big city. Those festivals hit the ground running but still typically don't make a profit for at least 5 years. Coachella, for instance, had to take a year off after losing a bunch of money their first year in 1999. It is now one of the biggest festivals in the world.
About how long does it take to put together a music festival?
A long time. For the first year a major festival gets put on, probably around a year and a half to two years. It's difficult to find a venue, get the money together, and put a team together who can pull it off. There are a lot of legal issues as well, like getting a liquor license and permits if your festival is outside. Those things take time.
We started booking KAABOO last June, and we just finished, and the festival isn't until late September! AND, we are already booking next year's festival now, which won't be until September 2016. They take a very long time.
In your opinion, why have music festivals become so popular?
I think it is a few things. First, the value is great. You could pay $75 dollars for a cheap seat at any of KAABOO's three headliner's regular concerts, or you could pay $250 and see all three, along with 80 of your other favorite bands. The customer saves a lot of money and gets to see tons of bands that they like.
Second, festival's work really hard to create a fun environment. There is usually good food, fun activities, fun locations, and visually very stimulating. Just google pictures of Bonnaroo or Coachella or Firefly and they all look like a lot of fun. Plus, it's an excuse to be outside all day!
Third, it's a great thing to do with friends. Not everyone has the exact same taste in music, but usually you can find a few people who want to see a number of bands on a festival and all go together. It's a community building experience, or at least it should be, and it's like going on vacation.
Fourth, a lot of people go to festivals to discover new music that is similar to the bands they already like. So if you like The Killers, you may come to KAABOO to check out the other bands as well and possibly fall in love with Foster the People or Young the Giant. Then you can go home and tell your friends, "I saw this AMAZING band at KAABOO...." Or at least we hope you will :)
Anything else you want to add
Festivals are tricky business. They take a great team to pull off and it's really tough these days because there are SO MANY festivals you're competing with, and only so many bands. If you look at festivals across the country, you will see that a lot of the same bands play most of the festivals. For example, my new favorite musician in the world Sturgill Simpson is playing basically every festival. Coachella, Stagecoach, Bonnaroo, Governor's Ball, Newport Folk Festival, Austin City Limits, Sasquatch, you name it. So the difficulty in a festival is differentiating yours from all the other ones. Part of what we did for KAABOO was that the San Diego area didn't have a major festival, so we saw an opening there. We also feel like our festival is more high class than most. We won't have port-o-potties, and we'll have highly regarded chefs making the food, and we'll have an especially eclectic lineup, so hopefully we will stand out among the festivals generally aimed at kids your age, who don't care about port-o-potties or things like, i don't know, shade.
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