UnderSound presented a night of Reverb Classics at the Bucks Student Union on the 24thMay 2019. The night ran from doors at 9pm to the act, T2, on a 11-12pm with DJ Rome doing sets either side of T2ās set.
On the night, 39 people were counted in attendance. This could be due to many factors discussed later. There was a bar take of around Ā£250, and the staff described the atmosphere as āstrangeā. This could be due to the small attendance and the specific kind of music that was being played (bassline) with T2 not giving any audience engagement. Resulting in the crowed having to create their own atmosphere.
As the whole budget was spent on the artist alone, my team and I had no extra money to spend on decorations. We could have benefited from decorations on the night to emphasise the theme of the night being āReverb Classicsā. We could have purchased selling points of the night such as a photo booth.
The lighting on the night was the lighting that the studentās union provided. Additionally, we bought along some laser beam lighting that was set up on the stage. In the future, I would think about speaking to the venue and arrange lighting that fitted the genre of music. For example, as it was bassline, potentially more strobe lighting.
The marketing for the event was delayed due to awaiting confirmation form the agent on photos that could be used to advertised as this had to be approved by the agent and the artist himself. This meant that the artist was only released one week prior to the event. This was done only on Facebook, along with some other Instagram posts. As we used a Facebook event to market the night, we could have done the same on other social media platforms. Ā This could have had an effect on the turn out on the night as there was not much prior exposure to who the artist was. Prior exposure could have also meant that a wider audience could have been reached. Potentially from the record label as well as us.
As we had no budget left, it meant we could not afford physical marketing. We could have hit a wider audience from printing posters and leaflets and sticking them up in the local area as well as places such as the train and bus station. Also, we may have benefited from a radio or newspaper advert, although this was not necessarily the audience, we were marketing.
T2 arrived on his own with no other company. He did a one hour set and played his popular song āHeartbrokenā as well as other bass line hits.
On the night we found out that it was the artists birthday. We could have used this to our advantage when marketing as we could have branded it as a birthday party for the artist and could have incorporated decor and asked the artist to bring friends for a guest list and VIP area.
After getting T2 into the building and comfortable. It was apparent that the agent I had been conversing with was not his agent and was a secondary agent as he was not aware of the booking being made until last minute. This explains some previous problems I was having with the agent being so demanding yet extremely slow with replies. T2 explained that he felt we overpaid for his appearance and he will be taking matters further.
This was disappointing for us; however, it was a lesson to learn in the future not to tell agents our budget as they will use that regardless and potentially manipulate it.
When looking for an act, we were rushed and keen to find someone who we thought were going to sell and be a familiar name. What we learnt from this process was we need to place our own interests aside and think logically on a bigger scale. We chose an artist with one hit single, which we used to market from, when in hindsight, we should have considered someone with more than one hit, who is more relevant today and not ten years ago.
We also should have considered someone who has sold out venues like ours, perhaps other students unions in the country similar to our capacity.
If doing an event such as this again I would reconsider the timings of the act. The act went on stage at 11:15pm and finished around 12pm. What I noticed on the night was that people began to arrive around 11:45pm. In the future I would put the artists on later, as people arrived later.
The price we paid for the act was Ā£2000. As mentioned, we were advised on the night by the artist that we had overpaid for his appearance. This was a learning experience for us as a team as we have now began to understand how to negotiate and what are appropriate prices for this type of appearance.
As we imagined, there was great engagement on the night with the classic hit āheartbrokenā and the audience all got involved with the song. This was a positive as it was rewarding to see the whole cowed enjoying our work. As the song played and a few more people came to the venue, they seemed to be delighted that the features song was being played.
Finally, we all successfully worked as a team to produce our night. We had great communication and team sprit to produce the best possible event we could have. We all learnt a lot about ourselves and our roles throughout the process.
Although we have had some troubles through the year with events and getting a final idea put together and moving, as a team we are thankful to our lecturer Neil for being a great mentor and pushing us in the right direction.
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