Campus Concerts on the Cheap
posted 5/13

Story by Andy Argyrakis, Photo courtesy of The Union

Part 2 of a 2 part series exploring the cost of ticket prices on campus and ways to get in on the action for a nominal fee or even free.

No cover concerts are certainly a no-brainer, while pretty much anything under $10 is considered more than fair for a full evening’s worth of entertainment. Believe it or not, students actually have a say in how those fees are set, whether that be joining a campus activities board, student council or working at a venue directly. And perhaps even more important than the price, they’ll also have input on what artists pay a visit to their hallowed halls.

“The primary way to keep ticket prices down is to utilize campus departmental budgets or student organization funds that are specifically designated to sponsor campus events,” explains Jeremy Gudauskas, who books the bands alongside a team of students who serve as promoters and production staff for The Union in Naperville, Illinois (just outside Chicago). “While you might make some money back on ticket sales, the pressure is off to break even and you can keep ticket prices low or even free for students.  It also helps to develop a good following of concert-goers from outside your campus, who you can charge a higher price for tickets than you might want to charge your own students. Other ways to keep event costs down, and therefore ticket prices, include using student volunteers for staff, security, and setup/teardown.”

Aside from those positions often being traded for free admission, working a concert can also lead to a lifetime of behind the scenes memories. Imagine being able to tell your kids you had a chance to load in gear for the Black Eyed Peas or run security for Lady Gaga long before they ever got famous, while also earning some extra cool points for turning your friends onto their tunes prior to finding out via iTunes, YouTube or conventional radio.

“[College students are] a special niche of people who are clearly making an effort to invest in their future, thus they tend to appreciate up and coming bands and musicians who appear to be going somewhere with their art and they truly appreciate connecting with bands early on,” notes twenty-plus year music business veteran Van Hohe, co-operator of Nashville’s Van Alan Productions & Management (whose client list includes Manic Drive and SoundJam Festival). “This is a key, sympathetic audience who will follow a band well into their adult life as opposed to the fickle teen audience or even worse, tween audience that blows bands up and drops them just as quickly as their voices do the same.”

Adds Lucas Keller, manager at Beverly Hills’ The Collective (which houses Linkin Park, Avenged Sevenfold, Alanis Morissette and Enrique Iglesias):  “Acts like O.A.R., One Republic, The Fray are perfect college acts that have had a lot of success in that arena. O.A.R., for instance, actually broke on the college circuit. There’s nothing like playing directly on a campus to spread word of the band and their music. When you play in a small club, you never know what the demographic will be. With colleges, it’s pretty safe to say that you’re going to have kids 20–25. This is also a demographic that buys music actively, so it’s a good place to be.”

Of course, a conversation about campus concerts couldn’t be complete without the role of social networking in the equation, which is a way to blanket an entire campus with word of a show within seconds. Sometimes those blasts come with useful rewards, offering students the chance to enter a contest for freebies or granting anyone who goes the extra mile re-Tweeting or posting on Facebook and MySpace to earn complimentary admission.

“It used to be the key to concert promotions was postering your campus and taking out a few ads in your local weekly paper, but now social networking has taken over and print is going the way of the buffalo,” suggests Jonathan Dunn, director of artist & repertoire at Seattle’s Tooth & Nail Records (Underoath, MXPX, Emery, Anberlin). “Doing something a simple as doing a ticket give-away contest where people re-post about the show and picking a few at random who will get in for free can expose you to thousands more than you might through taking an ad in a weekly [magazine].”

Regardless of what gets people in the door, the actual experience of attending a live concert is something that can never take the place or a physical CD, downloaded MP3 or overly compressed video clip. And as long as the price is right, chances are the end result will yield students a much deserved break from the books, and if the artist does their job, something to talk about for the remainder of their musically inclined life (while possibly solving some of the music industry’s economical problems in the process).

“Through all the years of media format changes and technological advances, the live music experience remains the first and last bastion of the commercial music industry,” sums up Tony Bonyata of the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin based Pavement PR