How to get booked at festivals

I’ve said elsewhere that there are only two things to strive for in the music industry. Money and Adventures. If you aren’t working for one or both of those things then you should question why you are doing it. One of the best adventures in music is the music festival.

So here’s another lazy blog for me to send to people when they ask how to get booked at festivals.

My first attendance at a music festival was the second T in the Park in 1995. I went for a day with my sister at the age of 15. I only have hazy recollections because I have been to so many since, but from that point on I was hooked. I’ve since played festivals with band mates who weren’t alive in 1995 :)

T in the park was Scotland’s big festival. It ran from 1994 to 2016. Tennants claim to have been supporting up and coming bands since 1994, but I’m clearly older than their marketing department, cos it was the Tenants live festival before then which was a multi-venue festival before multi venue festivals existed. I’ve been dying to tell people that for years :)

Anyway… at some point, I started to get paid to attend festivals. There was a year I did 12 festivals in a summer. Photographer, bass player, drummer, trumpet player, guitarist, videographer and live sound engineer. It’s great fun. From T in the park to The Iona Village hall music festival in the same summer. Every one a different adventure.

I’ve also played SXSW, The Great Escape and Glastonbury. They all cost me more than I earned but they are bucket list events that stay on the CV for ever more and people absolutely love it when I name drop them over drinks.

No matter the size or location, festivals are a great place to get a lot done. You can see loads of bands and loads of people can see your band. It’s a fun hangout with friends old and new in a muddy field and often backstage is a great place for band camaraderie with the great and good upcoming bands of the moment.

So how do I get my band booked for festivals?

All these people are Scottish. Very few of them are sober. Even less of them are wearing suncream.

This is a question I get asked by bands that I work with every year. Usually around June or July.

If only takes a funsize portion of common sense to realise this is the worst time to try and get on the lineup of a summer festival. I also get asked to help people make Christmas singles in the middle of December every year.

This is just my opinion. The easy answer is “attract a manager to do it for you”, but until then, read below.

Why do you want to play festivals?

At some point I will write a big long article about how the music festival model is broken(I did - it’s here). They are hugely problematic for a variety of reasons. They rarely pay you a fair fee. They often rely on volunteers working long shifts unpaid. This has huge implications for health and safety and public liability. They are often “managed” by well intentioned people with land and/or money who have little to no experience.

They are also great fun. A weekend devoted to music - detached from civilisation - is a music lovers dream.

I’m in. Hook me up!

This a photo I took of the Ninth Wave at T in the Park. I don’t remember this drummer. The Ninth Wave went on to do everything you could ever want to do as a band. All as a result of my photography skills(not true)

So you know the fee isn’t going to cover your petrol money and you’re going to lose half your clothes, a guitar pedal and your Uncle Dave’s camping equipment across an ill advised 5 day weekend…. Then here’s how…

The time to think about your festival places are around November/December. This is the time to have the following in place:

Photos
Bio
Video
Social media accounts
Your music

Photos

MC K.C. I think he was trying to extend the fashion of inclusion of labels on your baseball caps to his sun specs.

There’s music columns in newspapers where the requirement to get included is a high res photo. The journalists are so frustrated with trying to get photos from bands that aren’t going to get sent back from their printers and graphic designers that they prioritise this.

“Just take a photo from our Facebook”

This doesn’t work. The photos are too small. You’ll be all pixilated. It’s really unprofessional and advertises that you don’t really care.

Some bands are style over substance and have seen more instagram pics than guitar picks, but the first thing you have to do is put some decent photos in a folder somewhere online. Dropbox ideally.

If the you don’t like those photos then go get better ones. Even if it’s got the old bass player in it who is no longer in the band because they slept with the drummers dad….. put them there so that at the drop of a hat when an opportunity comes along you have something/anything to send so that you don’t give someone the “I’ll try and get something to you by the end of the week” email.

Hi res photos are easy to get. If you don’t know a photographer, go on a Facebook group for musicians and ask for one. Search #musicphotographyglasgow or #musicphotographyleeds or whatever your closest city is on Instagram or Twitter.

You should be able to get a semi-pro to take a few photos for 50 quid. Go somewhere. Stand against a wall. Might be a cliche, but you have photos. They’ll give you a variety of shapes and files sizes. Stick them in a folder. If you don’t like them, spend more money and time and put in more planning, just don’t have an empty folder.

Every time you play a good gig, you should be asking the promoter if there will be a photographer. The chances are a posed photo will be more useful for posters and such, but you should constantly collect as much photo and video as you can. Don’t rely on Facebook and Instagram for your archive!!

But my iPhone takes great photos! Yes. It does. Get the photographer to use your iPhone to take the photo. It will be better.

Rant over.

Task 1. Have photos ✅

Bio

Tell people who you are.

Aim for 200 words and list your greatest hits. I’m not talking about your songs.

we supported this band you’ve heard of
We got an interesting write up in this newspaper/magazine/blog you’ve heard of
We played this festival/gig you’ve heard of
This radio/tv station you’ve heard of plays our music

If you haven’t done one or any of these things then it becomes a task list. Decide what you want your bio to say and make it happen.

Now people say fake it till you make it, but this is bullshit. If you are going to climb the music industry ladder then stop looking for flukes and luck. It’s not very rock and roll but you need to aim for gradual sustainable progression.

If you’ve only been reviewed in the Auchtermuchty Herald then Glastonbury might be out your reach, but small local indie festivals are the lifeblood of music scenes, so wear what you have on your sleeve and put yourself out there. The local festival will be keen to have you involved

The important thing is to aim for gradual improvement. After the Auchtermuchty gala day, aim for a small indie festival and a write up in a national newspaper. Then wash rinse repeat. Then do Glastonbury.

At every stage of that progression have your 200 word bio ready and up to date to show off who you are. Don’t expect people to scroll back two years on your Facebook or Instagram wall to find the time you supported the drummer from the side project of the bass player that used to be in that famous band.

Video

The easiest shortcut to showing people what they are getting when they are paying you to play live is by sending them a video of you playing live.

Make sure this is professional. The phone video that your aunties hairdresser sends you after your gig with the distorted audio just makes it look like you aren’t taking yourself seriously.

In an ideal world you will have multi camera footage of your biggest gig with audio stems from the sound engineer, but that requires a lot of moving parts.

Early in your career it makes much more sense to do a live session in a venue or a rehearsal space. More info here

It can be hard to find a videographer and doing it yourself could have mixed results. It requires video and audio skills, so you might need to cajole two people. Look at other live videos from bands in your local scene. Ask people who did their video. Look at the music industry events that are getting public funding. Ask who does their video.

Tik tok has resulted in instagram, Facebook and YouTube all pushing short/reel content. Video is the focus now rather than photo, so you should be building a network of people who can help you create high quality content.

Aim to do a live session a few times a year. It’s a great tool for creating promotional material for when you release studio tracks. If the audio is good enough it gives you a source of B-sides to add to your constant conveyer belt of content.

Make live video. ✅

The person on the other end of the festival application procedure will really appreciate it.

Social Media

The first thing everyone looks at is your social media. You shouldn’t worry too much about your followers and likes, but you should definitely keep it all up to date.

Go and have a look at your social media from an outsiders perspective every now and again. Is it a “Watch this space - we are busy working away on something” every three months? Is it a bunch of in jokes? don’t bother. Momentum momentum momentum. Aim for that November/December window and make sure it shows off your band as a business and not as a quirky hobby.

The best means of creating content is to create content. Record. Photo. Video. Do them all regularly and post about it. Taking the month off and Recording 24 tracks in January is all fine and well but imagine how much better it would be to record two tracks a months for 12 months in different studios. Spread bet and do everything in manageable chunks.

I say don’t worry about followers and likes. The best type of likes are organic likes. I know it’s easy to fixate on it, but the chances are that your social media metrics are representative of where you are on the ladder, so don’t be embarrassed about it. There is no end to guides on how to increase your followers, but it has to be one strand of a wider marketing strategy. If all you are doing is spamming the internet for likes you’ll travel pretty far from your initial aim, so you might as well be selling protein shakes.

Rant over…… task three, regularly post relevant content to social media

Select a festival

There are hundreds of festivals, from local council gala days to 5 day events with 10 stages. Every flavour, every genre. That means there’s almost certainly a festival that’s perfect for you. You just have to find it.

It might be geographical. Maybe your town has an event funded by your local council. They are usually built around some sort of theme. The Auchtermuchty annual water fight. The East Kilbride mango festival. I’m pretty sure these don’t exist but you know what I mean.

The successful festivals in this bit of the Venn diagram are usually put together by an enthusiastic local who is knocking their pan in for little to no thanks. They will probably be really glad that some local bands are showing interest. If it’s not the type of thing for your death speed psych metal trio, then think about putting on a sister event in a local venue and associating yourself with the event. These are the type of events that can get government funding eventually. Especially if you live in an “area requiring improvement”

Now you might think that 3pm on a Sunday on a flatbed truck to some grannies and families with buggies is a little far from the crowds of unwashed 25 yr olds in a field singing your choruses back to you, but a local organic crowd can be really beneficial when you are trying to fill small pubs and clubs, plus the people going to see bands on a flat bed lorry at 3pm on a Sunday usually have more expendable cash and clout than the ones going to see bands at 11pm on a Friday.

Have a look here. Specifically the section about finding bands of the same genre one rung up the ladder from you. Take a look at where they played last year and check if that festival is on again this year.

Once you’ve selected your festival, try to work out if they have an application procedure. Check their website and socials.

After that it can be a bit of mission. Ask around people you know, especially bands that have played it in the past. Try contacting the festival via their social media.

Sometimes the festival application will be an online form that’s more like a job application. Sometimes it will be an email to the organisers.

If it’s an email or a DM to the socials, try not to do copy and paste spam. If it’s a relevant festival that you are qualified for then send a friendly message asking if they are still accepting applications. For the summer festivals, send it in November/December.

I still get spam emails of about 1000 words every couple of months asking if I’ll put bands on at the festival this year. I ran a small genre specific festival once in 2019. It doesn’t endear me to those bands. It’s worse still if it’s coming from someone that claims to be a manager.

Don’t forget the showcases

Don’t forget the showcases and multi venue festivals. A festival doesn’t need mud, tents and a field.

Showcases are generally well funded by arts organisations and attended by industry types. These are places you should be impressing and networking in. I’d like to think I’ve personally furthered a few careers by pointing some industry people towards the right venue and bands at these things.

Multi venue festivals happen in most major cities and are a great way to do loads of networking and follower-building without having to drive to the middle of nowhere and park in a field.

They can be a good excuse to visit another city and have a long weekend checking out bands and venues and other citys’ music scenes

A word of warning

All I remember is that he had ‘ Sex, Drugs & Sausage Rolls’ Tattooed round his bellybutton.

I’ve met a few festival casualties over the years who are still living off the past glories of the summer in November. They went to Reading ten years ago and once volunteered at a hippy festival down south that’s a life changing experience but you’ve never heard of it or the bands that played. Now they attend their local open mic with day glo hot pants, hiking books and a sombrero in November just waiting for May when they can start scadging free passes and spaces in cars for 3 months….. everything in moderation….

In conclusion. A checklist:

Festival application season is the winter not the summer
Get all your ducks in a row before you start. If you have no ducks. Make them.
Do some research and find some suitable festivals. Check where similar bands played last year
Ask around and find the application procedure
Don’t spam people

Come May your festival applications will come back and hopefully you will get some - either you have diligently been practicing once a week - or you have 4-8 weeks to put together a stage act - probably for a fee that doesn’t merit it.

If Auchtermuchty has a gala day….. I apologise

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