Learning from the MidPoint Music Festival

This is a very good article about the nuts and bolts of a music festival. The 9/17/06, Enquirer - MidPoint maestros committed

The MidPoint Music Festival in Cincinnati is five years old. It started "in 2002 with 150 bands playing in 13 venues to 10,000 people, and has grown to this year's total of 17 venues with 21 stages, hosting 280-plus bands playing to an expected 60,000."

It was started by Sean Rhiney and Bill Donabedian, who still run it on a volunteer basis, along with a staff of 13 other year-round volunteers (hundreds volunteer during the festival itself). Both have day jobs. Most of the year, festival planning only takes a few hours a week. For several months leading up to the festival, it becomes a full-time job in addition to their regular work.

Among the points in the article:

1. The festival has been able to run in one area, rather than all over the city, giving them a significant advantage over other music festivals around the country. However, venues disappear, forcing them to find alternatives. "'We've lost a venue or venues every year, so in some respects it's nothing new,' says Donabedian, as Rhiney chimes in to finish his thought ...

"'We've always had contingency plans. We've always had backup venues,' he says.

"'You're dealing with the bar business, which is not the most stable. You just kinda gotta roll with it.'"

2. The festival does not have a title sponsor because there haven't been offers big enough. It runs on a $100,000 budget with just $25,000 coming from sponsors. The rest comes from ticket sales.

3. The festival stays true to its area. "Brent Grulke, [SXSW's] creative director for music, says he's aware of MidPoint and praises its founders for sticking around past the critical five-year mark.

"'There are just mountains of festivals, and a lot of people try it because it looks easy, but anybody who actually does it finds out that it's quite difficult.

"'Particularly carving a niche. Every successful event is particular to a specific place and time, and necessitates that people recognize those qualities and promote them."

"'If people didn't want to come to Cincinnati or Austin, it would be almost impossible to do a festival because you have to depend on a viable local music scene with venues. There's no way to have a successful event that doesn't start with that. It clearly works in Cincinnati because there is a huge number of music fans who will go see talent and are educated, but I can't imagine to whose advantage it would be for SXSW to take over MidPoint.

"'When we do events, we want to run them. And that's the way it should be. They know Cincinnati and we don't.'"

4. They have found ways to keep costs down. "... the organizers increasingly delegate more duties to a back-end system that runs most of its operations, with Web-based applications that automatically deal with everything from musicians' submissions to judging, invitations, scheduling, and this year, creating bio pages for the event's panelists.

"By using existing venues, the pair has been able to circumvent the costs of paying police and EMTs to be on hand during their event, a bite that dealt a financial blow to this year's debut of the Desdemona Festival on the riverfront."