UK: X Music Festival entrusted Symphotech to oversee noise monitoring at this year’s event, which took place at Cardiff’s Bute Park from June 3 – 4. X Music Festival is Wales’ largest music festival and runs for two days across three stages. Launched in 2015, the festival’s first year received a significant amount of noise complaints and the local council requested that a professional noise consultancy ensure the event met license conditions and noise control obligations. The organisers and production company behind X Music, 11th Hour Events, were keen to take their responsibility seriously and brought in Symphotech to ensure…
Author: Festival Insights
This article was written by Gideon Gottfried, News & Features Writer for Pollstar UK. 1977 marked the birth of one of Switzerland’s most iconic festivals: OpenAir St. Gallen. Founded by Freddi ‘Gagi’ Geiger as a small-scale event to provide a platform for Swiss acts, it has become what Managing Director Christof Huber describes as “common property.” We picked a few highlights from the past four decades of the festival. St. Gallen’s first year had 2048 visitors come to see 13 Swiss bands, one of them Krokus, who would go on to become one of Switzerland’s most successful musical exports. The…
IMS Ibiza recently hosted its ninth edition on the titular Spanish island, replete with a mixture of insightful topics, panels and keynotes. It explored, amongst other things, the huge growth in today’s electronic music industry, a topic addressed in its 2016 Business Report. Exclusive to Festival Insights, you can watch the speech below. Download a written version of the 2016 IMS Business Report here. Similarly, Ticketmaster’s ‘State of Play: Dance Music’ report can be found here.
UK: Serious Stages helped to kick off the festival season from May 28 – 29 with BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend at Exeter’s Powderham Castle. BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend is the largest free ticketed music event in Europe and is held in a different UK location each year, with Exeter’s Powderham Castle hosting this year’s festival. Serious Stages supplied stages, decking and event structures to the festival, which featured performances from Coldplay, Mumford & Sons, Bastille, Biffy Clyro and Jess Glynne. The main stage was a Serious Stages 25m Space Roof, with a 15m trim height, and flanked by…
FINLAND: Flow Festival will present a series of urban-themed talks featuring key international figures on August 12, as well as workshops and discussions. Flow Festival and the think tank Demos Helsinki are co-operating for the third time to host the Flow Talks event, bringing together the festival crowd with urban groups, communities and professionals to join discussions on how to develop urban life. The themes of the workshops include balancing work and home life, visions of future homes, how to scale grass roots ideas into million-dollar projects and communal banking concepts for the future. Flow Talks will welcome internationally recognised…
UK: HMV Digital has confirmed its partnership with eight independent UK festivals over the summer season, as part of a promotion of its digital download service. Events working with the online music store include Nile Rodgers’ FOLD festival, Kendal Calling, LeeFest Presents: The Neverland, Electric Fields, bluedot, Caught By The River Thames, Sundown and 1234 Festival. The retailer will help promote each festival’s line-up and USPs through its website, newsletter, on-store banners, social media platforms and competitions. HMV Digital will also provide festivalgoers with unique voucher codes to download a selection of tracks from artists playing at the respective events…
UK: The Romanian festival Electric Castle will provide 100,000 festivalgoers with high tech RFID wristbands for fast and secure entry through the event gates and campsites this year. The RFID wristbands will also be used as ‘digital wallets’ for guests to make speedy purchases for all food, drink and merchandise onsite. This year’s Electric Castle is a fully cashless festival, delivering benefits to guests including significantly reduced queue times, increased convenience and enhanced security. Electric Castle takes place from July 14 – 17 in the grounds of Bánffy Castle. Intellitix are providing a number of enhancements to the festival including…
This article was written by Neil Hooper, the Board Creative Director at Circle Agency. Hooper has over 18 years experience within the experiential marketing industry working across a broad range of world famous brands and delivered award winning campaigns. Sofa Syndrome is watching life from your living room. From sporting events, live performances at festivals & concerts to watching people go on dates and even watching people watch TV. It is now a common part of everyday life, but why not turn-off the TV off and do something more invigorating instead? Staying in and watching people go out does seem…
Joel Smith is the Activities & Development Officer at University of Manchester Students’ Union. In his role he oversees Pangaea Festival, a one night student-only festival in its 11th year. Pangaea Festival is the largest student-run festival in Europe with three events of its kind annually, totalling 18,000 attendees over three events in September, January and June. Our constant objective, as was the original aim of the event when it was set up in 2006, is to put on a really great one-night party that Manchester students can be proud of, and for the best ticket price possible. The event…
Festival Insights returned to Liverpool Sound City this year for its newly rebranded Sound City+ conference, which featured TED-style talks, panel sessions, an independent record label fair, and one-to-one chats with agents, managers and festival promoters – all of which worked in conjunction to provide emerging musicians with the knowledge and networking opportunities necessary to boost their fledgling careers. The conference was an interesting hybrid between industry facing and musician-centric content. Both sides of the coin enjoyed high attendance and engagement, making a strong case for Sound City as the overseas analogue to South By Southwest. “Everything we do will…