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Seaton Park Festival? Any info


rowan

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It's a shame. However I thought something was up with the next to no marketing, website never being updated and the phantom Saturday headliner never coming to fruition. Didn't put much confidence in me, I thought a cancellation was possible due to these issues a few weeks back. It wasn't my sort of thing, however if the mystery headliner was announced that might have changed! Its a massive missed opportunity for the city, that's for sure!

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the reason ive heard some people saying that no camping would put people off is rubbish, its a central location, not like in the middle of nowhere like some festivals. Hyde Park festivals etc dont have camping.

I thought it was a good line-up, hadnt bought a ticket but was going to and knew others that would too - seems thats how everyone else thought too

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There's an article on the STV website here:

Aberdeen music festival cancelled due to 'poor' ticket sales | Aberdeen City News | STV Local

It seems that once again Aberdeen has been offered something truly great - something innovative and fun and a massive coup for the city - but the dour North East attitude got in the way. Again. It happens far too often up here: change seems to be met with a Granite-set determination to keep things they way they were.

I really feel for the organisers - you've done a spectacular job, and you should be commended for all the hard work (and money) you've put into this.

P.S. According to the STV site it was Faithless who were supposed to be the mystery guests.

The population up here is nowhere near the size and spread of the central belt and nor does it have the transport infrastructure to get people easily around the northeast, the catchment area. Silly statement. Nothing apathetic about people watching their money, going other festivals and generally being a lot more shrewd these days. Yes we have our share of nae sayers up here but that has nothing to do with this. Many contributing factors unfortunately. Disappointing news for all involved and looking forward to it.

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The population up here is nowhere near the size and spread of the central belt and nor does it have the transport infrastructure to get people easily around the northeast, the catchment area. Silly statement. Nothing apathetic about people watching their money, going other festivals and generally being a lot more shrewd these days. Yes we have our share of nae sayers up here but that has nothing to do with this. Many contributing factors unfortunately. Disappointing news for all involved and looking forward to it.

Rock Ness is even more difficult to get to, yet it does fine.

I will give my opinion why it has failed.

1) Advertisment. Unless you drink on Belmont street or listen to Northsound radio the Chances of even hearing about it seemed slim. Many people in Aberdeen were oblivious to it, never mind outside Aberdeen.

2) lack of communication. The website took a long time to get up and running and was often 6-8 weeks being late in getting updated. Does not inspire confidence.

3) Aberdeen. In my time in Aberdeen any concert I've been to it's never sold out. Plenty of tickets left. The city is too small and not enough people interested or willing/able to travel here.

4) Camping. People view camping as part of a festival. Some people don't even leave the campsite at major festivals. Otherwise if you want to have a few drinks you either have to stay in the student accommodation which does not sound appealing, or find another 160 minimum for 2 nights in a hotel over and above tickets, travel, drink food etc. It's soon a 600 weekend for a couple.

5) Too much, but not actually enough. The festival had no real identity. There was a little everything for everybody without aiming at a particular group. This leads to next point...

6) 90 for the weekend was fine by me. However looking down south many of the same bands I was interested in feature at other festivals costing far less.

7) The headline act. When you are selling something you have to use your strongest selling point. If people knew what was on the table they would have a decision to buy the tickets or not. Everybody seemed to be waiting for that little bit more. It should have been there from the start.

8) The organiser. This is not my view by the way. The amount of people who did not have trust once they found out it was the people behind Drummonds, confidence was not there. Sadly a lot of people will not go near Drummonds because of their opinion it's a dark, dingy hole and questions such as how can they afford it was asked countless times.

May I stress before personal attack that is not my personal view point.

I was looking forward to it and sad it's not going to happen.

Pretty sick now to read all these people jumping out the woods to say they were going to buy a ticket. It did not take a genius to realise this festival was a big risk and if people did not buy tickets it was doomed.

Nobody bought tickets and now people are unhappy it's been cancelled with 4 weeks to go as there is not enough ticket sales to cover costs.

I can't believe that it only required 10,000 tickets to be viable and with 4 weeks to go it was decided that was not possible.

The rewind festival is in Perth the same weekend and it's still going to happen and it's just oldies that are way past it.

People lacked trust in this one and now it's gone tits up, I don't see any chance of it ever happening again.

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May I stress before personal attack that is not my personal view point.

.

Who are you a spokesman for?!

Some fair points there probably but I don't agree that anyone would be thinking "I'm not buying a ticket for this if it's organised by the people that run Drummonds"

That's not my point of view though.

Personally I wasn't too interested in any of the bands that were booked and was thinking I'd probably buy a ticket nearer the time to check it out anyway. I would have thought, as someone's probably mentioned, that some sort of press release along the lines of "this festival will be cancelled if we don't sell x tickets by x" would have been a good idea.

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Everybody should go to aberdeen-mad.co.uk & read the thread on the off topic in regards to the forum. Pay particular attention to Jamesy's post & see what they were up against, what they did wrong & what could be done.

Northern Light's Festival Cancelled?? - Aberdeen FC forum from footymad.net

At the end of the day, they tried. Not much of the critics and experts here could say they've even done that.

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Who are you a spokesman for?!

Some fair points there probably but I don't agree that anyone would be thinking "I'm not buying a ticket for this if it's organised by the people that run Drummonds"

That's not my point of view though.

Personally I wasn't too interested in any of the bands that were booked and was thinking I'd probably buy a ticket nearer the time to check it out anyway. I would have thought, as someone's probably mentioned, that some sort of press release along the lines of "this festival will be cancelled if we don't sell x tickets by x" would have been a good idea.

Drummonds seems to pull a select crowd, me being one.

Many people have a dim view of Drummonds and look at the appearance and assume the worst.

I don't have a problem with it and indeed I bought a ticket.

However people I work with, socialise with and speak to, many seem to have hang ups when they knew Drummonds was behind this.

It's an observation that was clear to me.

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Everybody should go to aberdeen-mad.co.uk & read the thread on the off topic in regards to the forum. Pay particular attention to Jamesy's post & see what they were up against, what they did wrong & what could be done.

Northern Light's Festival Cancelled?? - Aberdeen FC forum from footymad.net

For the lazy:

Alright Lads,

Can't really confirm any exact numbers in case it gets out me speaking about it all but I'm said booker. Ian Brown was more than double the 'get him easy for 80-90K' figure. Deal was confirmed to announce pre-initial announcement but last minute payment terms were changed therefore throwing us way over budget so we had no choice to move on and we'd already waited to seal that deal so we had no choice but to crack on and announce. In hindsight, we should went with Maximo as headliner and left a mystery guest 3rd or 4th down the bill as ticket sales tell us that even without the Saturday mystery guests - Saturday was received better - probably to do with the nature of ticket buyer for chart acts like Paloma and Tinchy Stryder. In terms of replacing him, had a couple options but got ****ed over a bit on fees/exclusivity's and other trivial bits and bobs - weren't waiting on ticket sales for that - had always put aside the budget for the deposit on it and moved on from IB when the goalposts were moved. Cash flow problems arose on round 2 of deposits when we had to settle fees upfront as we were in year 1 and we simply never got the support we needed, we always knew these payments were coming, and we always knew there would be a late surge but when we analysed trends on ticket sales throughout the years it was impossible to predict it would play out exactly in this manner. We also have people that looked like they were going to invest and didn't which obviously didn't help, and did everything we could to change that and find ways and means of carrying on.

There are things we did wrong, some on my side to do with bookings on headliners, some in the organisation and marketing but we ain't DF, SJM, Livenation nor do we have Michael Eavis 40 years experience or however long. I knocked on every door of every agent for every band we thought viable and the line-up we announced was what we thought was the best across multiple genres to have mass appeal - especially giving that we were up against T and Rock Ness on exclusives. In terms of pricing, if you look at comparable line-ups (unspecific to an individuals own taste, but based on artists reputation, historic ticket sales and record sales) then you'll see pretty quickly that we're priced near Belladrum and Wizard yet with a much higher calibre of act in terms of mass appeal, all across the board.

It's pretty difficult to promote in Aberdeen and shire if truth be told, much more so than when I used to book Moshulu and did Hard-Fi, Babyshambles and all of that lot about 4 years ago. And although supportive, when looking to get real advertising space on the streets, roads and above Union Street we didn't get any help, and were warned profusely about fly posting. To get banners across Union Street for a week we got quoted 27'500 + VAT - kinda thought we'd get some favours from the council seeing as we'd spent well into 6 figures, were independant and trying to bring something like this to our city which I think it's far to say is in pretty dire straights (just walk down Union Street...) especially with the council needing some good press. We partnered with Northsound, EE and STV to help all media outlets and press released the hell out of it everywhere else until we run out of budget - we also ran all manner of digital campaigns, corporate deals, local business sponsership schemes and everything we could think of on restricted budget, short on time with a small team. Hands up - we should've done loads better on a lot of things but hindsight is brilliant.

We have the license for Seaton Park for 5 years with the ability to grow to 85'000 (T in the Park size) and could also look at camping but for year 1, in the city centre, on our budget, it was simply impossible - in terms of cost, insurance, policing and health and safety, hence doing the hillhead halls 20 deal. Lots of plans about extra stages, media sponsers, brand partnerships but again we had to prove ourself in year 1 to get the trust and reputation to take these things into reality. It's just a shame we are where we are, could've really built something unbelieveable here. Our break even wasn't even that much of an unachievable target - we'd have been more than covered on 9000 then if you write off initial investment and look to carry forward into year 2 then that drops a helluva lot lower and something the directors were resigned to and thus prepared for.

Folk in Aberdeen seem to want this now it's done - if you were gonna buy tickets, then sign the petition - stick it in an email to all your mates who were gonna do the same and get them to forward it on. It has 1200 names - in reality we'd need about 3000 names, and then get grace from the agents to go back onsale for a week and look to achieve around 4500 sales in that week to get it back up and running - it's a long shot but if people really want it to happen then we're trying to give them a chance. Anything's possible in this media age I guess.

SAVE NORTHERN LIGHTS FESTIVAL

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I think there are two cruxes of the matter:

a) headliners not being organised early enough to allow earlier promotion

b) not enough people really believed (perhaps partially due to the above) that it would happen. I think it was maybe too ambitious as a first year. Maybe starting small and building up would have been a better idea. T-in-The Parks first year had 18,000 I think and now? 80,000? From small acorns etc but all very well in hindsight.

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I think there are two cruxes of the matter:

a) headliners not being organised early enough to allow earlier promotion

b) not enough people really believed (perhaps partially due to the above) that it would happen. I think it was maybe too ambitious as a first year. Maybe starting small and building up would have been a better idea. T-in-The Parks first year had 18,000 I think and now? 80,000? From small acorns etc but all very well in hindsight.

Then again, when I went to TITP for the first year, they had Bjork, Cypress Hill, Rage Against The Machine, Levellers, Pulp, Manic Street Preachers, Blur, House of Pain and an up and coming band called Oasis (whatever happened to them???).

But, joking aside, you're right - they maybe aimed a bit high in the first year. A one day festival may have been the way forward.

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Rock Ness is even more difficult to get to, yet it does fine.

Rockness has camping though and was created by Fatboy Slim, so it doesn't really make sense to have it as an example (ie. it's in an area where not much goes on anyway, there's somewhere to sleep included in the ticket price and it's had quite a lot of money poured into from the start).

Having looked at more of the responses to this, transport could've been a massive issue. Unless the festival organisers were willing to pay stagecoach/whoever more money to run buses more frequently and for cheaper back and forth to the 'burbs it is maybe asking a bit much for folk to fork out on return buses to and from the site every day, unless they want to stay in an expensive hotel, or (and I don't know how much hillhead were charging) an expensive B&B as, as far as I know, there's nowhere in Aberdeen under 15/night?

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Rockness has camping though and was created by Fatboy Slim, so it doesn't really make sense to have it as an example (ie. it's in an area where not much goes on anyway, there's somewhere to sleep included in the ticket price and it's had quite a lot of money poured into from the start).

Having looked at more of the responses to this, transport could've been a massive issue. Unless the festival organisers were willing to pay stagecoach/whoever more money to run buses more frequently and for cheaper back and forth to the 'burbs it is maybe asking a bit much for folk to fork out on return buses to and from the site every day, unless they want to stay in an expensive hotel, or (and I don't know how much hillhead were charging) an expensive B&B as, as far as I know, there's nowhere in Aberdeen under 15/night?

The argument through this thread was camping was not needed. I responded to a guy who refered to transport infrastructure only.

For a weekend festival camping is essential in my opinion.

Northern lights had a capacity of 25,000. Population of Aberdeen using a google search is at peak with students, 220,000.

Take out the students who have gone home, Take out the under 14s who legally can't go and you are aiming to a small crowd.

You then need 1in5(at a guess) on Aberdeen to come.

The festival was dependant on travel links(Glasgow to Aberdeen is over 70quid on short notice) cheap accommodation or camping to happen.

Nobody want a 3 hour trip to search around bed and breakfasts for space. Even then you are 25 per person per night.

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the reason ive heard some people saying that no camping would put people off is rubbish, its a central location, not like in the middle of nowhere like some festivals. Hyde Park festivals etc dont have camping.

The lack of camping did put people off.

You may not agree with that but it is certainly a factor when people are buying tickets for a festival.

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Camp in your fucking back garden, probably a similar walk from fest to site.

Unless this was a festival for only those people living in or around Aberdeen city centre then camping is certainly an issue. London has a population of a fair few million whilst Aberdeen is closer to 250k.

People like you may not want to accept what has happened here but the reality is that camping is certainly an issue.

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