A Collection of Resources for Event

Planners to Consider When Coordinating a

Live Music Performance
By Andrew Watts
Preface
Event planning is difficult especially if you do not know what you are doing. There are countless
types of events you can be coordinating with very different specifications that need to be dealt
with prior to the event. Putting together a live musical event, such as a concert, has many
different things and stakeholders you must consider. If this is not done correctly, it can result in
you being held liable for damages or injuries during the performance. This guide is intended to
help stay on track while setting up a live music event to eliminate any chances of injury or poor
coordination by the event planners or the venue.

Disclaimer
Prism.fm (One of the resources) begins the blog post with reminder that Covid has created a
blockage for live shows and how the industry is using it to their advantage. This may be
outdated in the first introductory paragraph but continues the blog with relevant information not
based on Covid

Audience
The intended audience is people beginning to plan events and that would like to learn more
about live music and what it takes to set up these types of shows. The guide will help these
individuals have an idea of the types of problems they may encounter and how people have
tried to get around them. The resources in this guide are all free to use without having any
subscription or membership.

Assumptions
This guide assumes that the reader has limited background information about the components
to putting on a successful live music performance. Although this can be helpful teaching the
basics of each area of the live show, this can also help people currently in the field with lots of
experience reflect on their own work and if they can be doing anything safer or more efficiently.

Tips for the Guide

This guide shows 5 resources to outline the main topics needed to be discussed while planning
for a live music event. Each of these resources outline a specific topic that need to be decided
on based on other factors of the event. These are all tied together with the last resource by
showing how each are incorporated and need to be thought of as working within a system.
Contents
Preface........................................................................................................................................................2
Ticketing......................................................................................................................................................4
Audience
Contents
For the “How It Works” Section
Tips for Use
Choosing a Venue........................................................................................................................................5
Audience
Contents
Format
Tips for Use
Fire Safety....................................................................................................................................................6
Audience
Contents
Tips for Use
Integration of the elements.........................................................................................................................7
Audience
Contents
Format
Tips for use
Contract law................................................................................................................................................8
Audience
Contents
Format
Tips for use
Ticketing
Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster is one of the biggest providers of ticketing for some of the largest events
internationally. This informational page on their website has the purpose of telling the potential
offer. The website shows the question-and-answer styled paragraphs displaying questions that
also describe the business of selling tickets. The site also shows the challenges that the
company has faced and how they are stopping these challenges from getting in the way. These
challenges are common between shows due to Ticketmaster dominating the market when they
became partners with Live Nation.

Audience
This would be useful to anyone looking for more information on how ticketing goes on in the live
entertainment industry. If you are a potential user of the platform, show the most asked
questions by other customers along with the company’s visions with the intention to make it an
easy and transparent process. The site shows ratings from its partners in previous years to
show their reputation while working with major venues.  

Contents
The most useful information can come from the “How it works” section and can be found at the
top of the page. The company has asked each question to display the service they offer to
clients and customers of those shows. However, there is a FAQ section that answers questions
coming from customers using the service to make sure everything has been answered from
both perspectives.

For the “How It Works” Section

 Scroll below the section of Ticketing 101 and you will see the first of the seven questions
provided. You can click on the sides to show the next and previous questions
viewed. Each slide contains a new question showing the main points that the company
wants to show off to both customers and clients.  

Tips for Use

 Click “How It Works” to find the question-and-answer styled descriptions of the ethics of
the business
 Click “New Products” to find the new technology they are using to improve their services
 Click “Fan Rights” to find how Ticketmaster see the challenges they face and how they
are overcoming them
 Click “Our Guarantee” to see what customer service promises to help with
 Click “FAQ” to see the questions asked by fans most regularly
Choosing a Venue
Live Music Exchange
Live Music Exchange is a blog about new research in the ever-changing world of Live
Entertainment.  Emma Webster has put this blog post together to classify the different types of
venues that can be used to facilitate a concert with the research of Andy Reynolds, an
International Concert Tour Manager and Audio Engineer, and Robert Kronenburg. This Guide
was published in 2012 but still references the same ideas that are being used today to classify
venues.

Audience
This material will help anyone looking to plan an event or looking for possible venues to host an
event at.  The blog also shows the difference in classification and the reasons why some
venues are picked over others depending on the sociological and physiological needs of the
entertainment at hand.

Contents
The blog contains many different blog posts from various sources in order to teach people about
the interesting industry of Live Music.  This includes all previous blog posts located in the
archived posts, events surrounding discussing live entertainment, and resources that have been
kept up to date and in chronological order.  This blog contains detailed descriptions of the
venues’ sections, real-world examples, and links to charts to put this classification into a visual
guide.

Format
The blog looks at venues from the sociological perspective while focusing on the use of different
types of entertainment.  It shows the differences in funding, use of the facility, and commercial
standpoint of the venue when compared to the architectural perspective.  The architectural
perspective looks at spaces that are not used for facilitating shows yet but still have the potential
to.  To reach these different categories the author has put together a section on the right column
named “Blog Categories”.

Tips for Use

 Scroll down the page to find the introduction along with the other sections of the guide to
find what you are looking into
 Click one of the blue links underneath blog categories to look at similar blog posts
 Click the resources tab to see where blog posts are getting the information
Fire Safety
Fire Safety
The guide “Event Planning with the Fire and Life Safety Code” is written by the National Fire
Protection Association.  It is a guide on how event planners can plan events without running into
possible fire hazards.  The guide contains basic images to give the reader an idea of what to
look out for.  

Audience
This guide is intended for event planners, venue managers, the fire service, and the customers
by improving awareness of the potential hazards of a fire.  You will see the different safety
codes that need to be followed on the right side of the guide with brief details about each code
underneath.  The guide also will show a checklist you can go through 90 minutes prior to the
event to make sure everything is compliant which would be very useful in a real-world situation
for event planners.

Contents
The guide describes each code and gives a clear checklist in order to put on the event safely.
The pictures are not helpful on the description page by causing strain to the eyes while reading
but are helpful to find the code you are looking for quickly in the safety code section.

Tips for Use

 Scroll to the page titled “A Guide to Fire and Life Safety in Event Planning” to find the
introductory page
 Scroll past the introductory page to find the “Event Planning Checklist”
 Scroll past the “Event Planning Checklist” to find the general Fire and Safety codes and
how to abide by them
Integration of the elements
Integration of the elements
Prism.fm is a blog about Live Music Management software that integrates different types of
software to have everything centrally located and easy to access while putting on a live musical
performance. The article titled What You Need to Know About Event Management for Music
Concerts clearly shows the individual factors that event planners must plan for before having the
live performance.

Audience
This blog has been written for event planners to inform them on the basic knowledge of how to
put on a live musical event. This can be useful to people looking into event planning or people
that are already working in the field that just need a review of this content.

Contents
This blog contains seven steps in order to conducts a live music event along with a reference
that the software Prism.fm provides to keep work centralized and efficient. These seven steps
are
1. Budgeting
2. Buying and booking talent
3. Choosing a venue
4. Marketing and promoting
5. Ticketing
6. Preparing venue
7. Following up

Format
The blog shows an introduction paragraph that introduces Covid stopping shows due to this
being written during the Covid Lockdown. This is not relevant unless in the time of another
lockdown due to a pandemic. After the introduction paragraph, the blog goes into talking about
each of the seven steps to planning a successful live music event. After the seven steps there
is a paragraph about the service that Prism.fm supplies to keep things organized in this type of
industry.

Tips for use

 Click the blue Venue Insights link to navigate to other blogposts about event planning for live
music
 Scroll to Event Management for Music Concerts 101 to begin reading the introduction
 Scroll below The Steps to see the steps needed to plan a live music event in chronological order
Contract law
The Legal Beat

The article titled, “The Legal Beat: The Live Performance Contract,” by Glenn Litwak is about
putting the elements from the resources above into a legally binding contract. This is one of the
most important steps while planning a live music event because this needs to be agreed on by
both sides of the contract. This is useful to event planners because once these details are in a
signed contract, they are very tough to get out of and can lead to lots of money lost to breaking
the contract.

Audience
This article was written for event planners that are coordinating a live music event and need
information on what is detailed in the contracts that allow a show to happen. This is helpful to
event planners because it asks many questions that can be reminders to make sure the contract
contains this information. If this information is not present, the event may not go on due to the
missing information.

Contents
The article contains a brief introduction to that many topics that are covered while creating a
contract for a concert. It also suggests checking on things not known on paper like the
reputation of the talent coming to perform which is excellent advice for event planners that is not
always spoken about. The only other way of getting this information is to have lots of
experience and to see it for yourself.

Format
The legal Beat starts with an introductory paragraph describing the challenges of honesty in the
business and showing the importance of having a contract written out with all the necessary
information. The article also lists 15 questions to remind readers to what should be included in
the contract.

Tips for use

 Scroll down to see underneath the title of the article to see the introduction paragraph
 Scroll underneath the introductory paragraph to see the 15 questions about the contents
of a contract for live music
 Scroll below the 15 steps to see Glenn Litwak’s biography
 Scroll below Glenn Litwak’s biography to see the disclaimer that this is not legal advice
due to specific situations of a live music event