With the rise in the number of foreign bands and musicians coming to India, we have seen a boom in event management organisations. It started with a couple of proper organisers based predominantly in Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai; even till 2010 they ruled this territory. But come Metallica in 2011 and there was a sudden explosion in the number of Rock concerts in the country. The promising factor in this, though, is the fact that the trend has spread all over the country and is not restricted to the cities of Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai anymore. We had IIT Madras bringing in heavyweights like Anathema and Opeth; IIT Kharagpur brought in Monuments; Kolkata saw Parkway Drive and Poets of the Fall; Darjeeling is pitched to witness Cattle Decapitation in action in a couple of months’ time; and now the latest news says Nale from Sweden are going to perform in DA-IICT, Gandhinagar, which also happens to be the first time an International band is performing in Gujrat!

So, yes, there is a very promising career in event organising, more precisely, in hosting gigs. And not only Rock concerts, we have seen artists like Norah Jones, Gotye, Lady Gaga, Snoop Lion and Enrique Iglesias, pay India a visit and mesmerise their fans. So whatever genre you choose, you won’t be disappointed.

At the end of the day, we are all humans and we will surely make mistakes. And if luck does not favour you much, the mistakes will be perfectly timed up to screw up your most important project. We have seen a number of fumbles in the past couple of years, some even leading to the cancellation of the event. No matter how much they try to suppress it, at the end of the day, fans are left shattered.

The boom has resulted in a healthy competition among organisers and the fans are left confused about which concert to attend. And with cancellation of events like Indian Music Conference(IMC) and Fly Music Festival (Press release of Fly being cancelled), some have lost faith in them too. IMC has more failures than successes, to be frank, with Cynic and Behemoth cancelled a few days prior to the respective event date and only Cradle of Filth in their list of successful gigs; luck hasn’t favoured them much. Fly Music Festival on the other hand had a really promising line-up. The multi-genre event with 14 international artists pitched to perform was no child’s play, especially when legends like Anthrax, Manzarek-Kreiger and The Wailers were involved. But due to lack of proper promotion and ticket sales, the two day fest which was scheduled to be held in Noida and Bangalore had to be cancelled.

Now let’s discuss the effect these concerts or gigs have on fans. Firstly, research says that majority of the gig attendees are aged between 18-25 years, i.e. high school and college students. And may I add that,the majority of the Indian population being middle-class citizens, there is a certain budget they adhere to each month. Needless to say, most of the attendees don’t earn and have to bargain with their parents to buy a pass. So ticket pricing becomes a major factor when it comes to attending gigs for people of this age group. With the sudden rise in gigs and multiple bands coming in throughout the year, the dilemma becomes which show to attend and which one to ditch; mostly because there is no way they can arrange about 6-7k and attend four gigs in a span of 2 months.

Secondly, the timing of the gigs is an important factor. If your major crowd is consisting of students, you are supposed to organise the event when there is least chance of it clashing with the academic calendar. In my opinion, one of the main reasons why there weren’t enough ticket sales for Fly Music Festival is the very fact that it was being organised at the wrong time. Students have their exams during February and March. Moreover, board exams are always during this time. So that cuts out a big chunk of the crowd.

Sometimes, transport to and from the venue becomes a headache. I personally have spent around 1k at times on transport, and I stay in the heart of Bangalore city. So providing transport from some accessible areas in the city to the venue would surely be a big help.

So basically my points are simple –

• Make the tickets a little affordable, while keeping your percentage of profits and the cost of arranging the gig in mind obviously. I am not asking you to go into bankruptcy. No one would want that.
• Maintain a window for organising gigs; sometime around September or October is the best time to organise gigs. November wouldn’t be muchof a problem either, but December would be risky as board aspirants normally have their pre-board exams then.
• Providing transport to and from the venue from a pick-up point accessible to the general public wouldn’t harm much either. Rather it would build more trust between you and the fans.

The main objective of this article is not to lash out at everyone and bad mouth theorganisers and event management companies. We, as fans, would love to see more artists come down to India and we would certainly want to see our idols perform in front of us. So please be a little careful while organising gigs from now on, because it breaks our heart whenever our favourite artists are supposed to perform and we can’t go because of our exams or financial issues or the worst reason – the gig is cancelled.