Norman Music Festival 4 will rock Norman with a multitude of acts Thursday through Saturday.
The festival will feature local and national acts playing at 19 locations and serves as one of the last opportunities for students to unwind before dead week and finals arrive.
While we plan to attend and enjoy the event, we have a couple suggestions for festival organizers to enhance the concert experience for fans, the bands and venue owners.
Although a free festival is appealing — especially for college students — we think an entrance fee would improve the event.
Many students will cringe at the thought of paying for something they once received for free; however, we think this would increase the level of talent performing at the festival.
The editorial board suggests the festival sells $25 weekend passes. Students generally operate on tight budgets, but $25 is a small price to pay for three days of entertainment.
For people who don’t want to pay $25 or attend each day, the festival should offer $10 day passes. Judging by the amount of acts festival organizers have crammed into one day, we believe this is affordable and reasonable.
We believe selling tickets would increase the quality of performers at the festival. Revenues from ticket sales would allow organizers to book more recognizable and expensive acts. Certainly the festival wouldn’t host Phish or Foo Fighters any time soon, but it wouldn’t be unrealistic to see Grizzly Bear, Garfunkel and Oates or Animal Collective in future Norman Music Festival lineups.
We want to maintain the local emphasis of the festival, but at the same time, we think it is time to take the next step toward becoming a destination for bigger acts.
The festival has grown as large as it can on Main Street, and festival organizers should now focus on quality rather than quantity.
By adding ticket sales to the festival, organizers would need to come up with a system to distinguish weekend passes from individual day passes. We propose officials use color-coordinated wrist bands to classify each attendee.
• Green for a Thursday one-day pass
• Blue for a Friday one-day pass
• Yellow for a Saturday one-day pass
• Crimson for a weekend pass
Since the City of Norman will close Main Street on Saturday, some establishments have decided to shut their doors during the festival. We understand the impact this event can have on some stores’ business, but we believe the owners and the festival organizers must find a way to satisfy both parties’ interests.
We want to see Norman Music Festival remain in downtown Norman, so we encourage event officials to provide Main Street businesses with a booth and supplies to give the owners an opportunity to promote their businesses.
Business owners should take advantage of the foot traffic in front of their store, even if they can’t realistically conduct sales. These stores should use this opportunity to advertise upcoming sales or product releases.
Establishing these ties between the festival and the local businesses will create an environment where Norman Music Festival can continue to thrive.
We hope the festival can stay rooted in downtown Norman and continue to generate tourism revenue for the city. We also understand the switch from a free festival to a paid one may be a hard pill to swallow for festival attendees; however, the increase in quality acts would more than make up for the additional costs to fans.
In order for Norman Music Festival to flourish, festival organizers must ensure quality acts grace Main Street each April.
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colinwkirk 1 year, 1 month ago
I disagree. NMF is hardly Woodstock; we're not attracting people from hundreds of miles around to come to the festival, and charging would stifle attendance. If we were already getting big name acts, then maybe it could be justified, but as it stands currently, charging $10 or $25 for people to come hear a bunch of groups they've never heard of (and the occasional one we locals all know like Hosty, who you can see for $5 twice a week at the Deli) would kill the festival. NMF does quite well off of whatever it charges all the vendors, anyway. Besides all that, the tone of this article is inherently insulting to the musicians who currently play the festival; your inference is that the currently level of performers are of a low quality simply because they tend to be local, or of a more limited fanbase than some acts. They are not. The level of attendance NMF gets is largely BECAUSE it's free. Adding a charge would kill it.
FedUp 1 year ago
So you thing that people who want to shop in the downtown buisnesses should have to pay also? if not, then how would you work around that?
JKC 1 year, 1 month ago
Agreed, Colin. NMF would be lucky to draw half the crowd (which is already unimpressive to say the least) it currently does. This is a really bad idea.
oudunks 1 year, 1 month ago
I am going to agree with The Daily here. I'm just not entirely attracted over a huge lineup made up of anybody and everybody who applied this year. I much more enjoyed DFest, where I was able to see a few select local bands as well as bigger acts. And I'm cough up the cash for it as well.
kdbp1213 1 year ago
why does everything have to be criticized. it's simple, folks. just go or don't go to the NMF already !!!!!!!
we go because it's free.
or, we go because it costs and we can afford to pay the costs because we're spending mom and dad's money or we've saved up enough money from our 2 or 3 parttime jobs.........