Organising Music

FESTIVALS WITH LOCAL FLAIR

- Jeff Tan

Music festivals is not new to Asia, but the competition and business environment have changed for this subsector of the music industry.

SME met up with Iqbal Ameer, founder of Livespace, a music event organiser to learn more on organising and marketing music festivals.

He expects to see less music festival brands in the future because of the competition and “price war” among event organisers. “It takes five years for a music festival to break even, and this was before the EDM (electronic dance music) boom, he added.

Despite the challenging environment in the market, Livescape managed to break even into their second year of operations.

Iqbal explained that the reason behind their success is largely due to their marketing strategy which is very different from international music festival brands.

“Unlike the international players, we believe that in each country consumers look for different things when it comes to taking part in a music festival.

That is exactly why Livescape plans its marketing campaigns according to the targeted consumer base. “It is on a country-by-country basis. This is why we have the local flair in every country where our music festival package is available,” he said.

“What some of the bigger brands have overlooked is the fact that in the ASEAN region, every country has its own unique culture and spending power of consumers in each country is different too.”

One product that Livescape really takes pride in is “It’s The Ship”, which was introduced into the market in 2014.

Throughout the five years of operating It’s The Ship, Livescape has worked with major cruise line operators such as the Royal Caribbean Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line.