How to Produce a Worldwide Festival like the St Lucia Jazz Festival Using Web3 Music

The St Lucia Jazz Festival is a premier music festival in the Caribbean. In 1992, the St Lucia Tourist Board decided to create an international music festival to bring tourist to the island during the off season. The idea was to produce a festival with international performers that would perform around the island in May to attract new visitors.

From 1993 until 2002, I worked with PKB Arts & Entertainment producing the St Lucia Jazz Festival among other festivals.

 To achieve the goal the St Lucia Tourist board decided to produce a music festival with international headliners, and they contracted PKB Arts and Entertainment to book the talent & produce the festival.

PKB booked some of the biggest artists in the world including Carlos Santana, Luther Vandross, Patti LaBelle, and many others which cemented the status of the festival as one of the premier jazz festivals in the Caribbean and beyond.

We booked some of the biggest artists, but our staff was small, basically Paxton Baker, the late Derek Lewis, me, and Wanda Edmonds. We contracted with other vendors, including Rent-A-Amp based in Trinidad who provided sound equipment and Rocket Rentals who provided backline equipment. The St Lucia tourist board provided local production crew and other staff and PKB contracted with other professionals for stage management, lights, sound, and other necessary staff.

What were the challenges?

While the festival was extraordinarily successful, success and changes in the music business changed the festival. As the festival became better known, we booked a bigger, more expensive artist which increased all costs including artist fees, travel requirements, backline requirements and staff costs.

For example, when we booked Luther Vandross, we flew him, his crew, performers, and equipment from Jamaica to St Lucia on an Air Jamaica jet and then back to New York. Luther’s entire show was on the jet including his technical team, performers, sound equipment, costumes, and other requirements, Luther was the headliner so there were other artists on the bill which increased costs.

Another challenge was venue management. The festival was an island wide event centered mostly in Castries and North in multiple venues. Coordinating multiple venues across the island required a ton of staff. In 1993, the first year I worked at the festival, we didn’t have island wide communication radios, so I stayed in the production office and relayed communications between locations earning the nickname “Mom” from the staff. Our last show was at 11pm so often Derek came to pick me up from the production office at 1 or 2 am and we had another show that started at 1pm the next day at Pigeon Island.

Another challenge was travelling costs, during the festival we had two airline sponsors American Airlines and Air Jamaica which significantly helped with travel costs but 9/11 and changes in the airline business cause us to lose our airline sponsors.

After about 10 years, the festival had reached its goal, St Lucia was a well-known destination, and the St Lucia government decided to produce a smaller but still premier festival.

How to Use Web3 Technology to Produce the Festival.

The festival achieved the goal of increasing tourism but had the same challenges as other festivals around the world. The biggest challenge was as the festival grew it became more expensive to produce.

Today the festival could be produced with web3 music technologies which would make the island even more visible and the festival more profitable and manageable.

Live Streaming the Festival

While we did produce some TV shows from the festival, If the festival were being produced today, live streaming would allow St Lucia to produce a truly worldwide festival with fans able to attend both in person and from the comfort of their home via live stream.

NFT Tickets

Another challenge was paper tickets. Like all events, the St Lucia Jazz Festival used paper tickets. Paper tickets present many challenges, for example paper tickets are easy to duplicate, leading to issues with fraud and counterfeit tickets. Then there’s the challenge of managing the physical distribution of tickets including printing, shipping, and handling logistics, which is costly and time-consuming.

NFT tickets offer many advantages over traditional paper tickets. NFT tickets leverage the power of blockchain technology to enhance the event experience for organizers and attendees alike. Here are the key advantages:

• Enhanced Security and Authenticity:
• NFT tickets utilize blockchain technology, ensuring each ticket is unique and traceable. This reduces the risk of counterfeit tickets, as every NFT ticket can be verified on the blockchain, providing proof of authenticity and ownership. This enhances trust between event organizers and attendees, ensuring a secure ticketing process.
• Improved Fan Engagement and Experience:
• NFT tickets can offer additional benefits beyond entry to an event. They can include exclusive digital content, such as behind-the-scenes videos, virtual meet-and-greets, or unique digital art. This enhances the overall fan experience and provides a deeper connection between artists and their audience. Furthermore, NFT tickets can serve as collectibles, allowing fans to cherish and trade their event memories.
• Efficient and Transparent Resale Market:
• The resale of traditional tickets often involves issues like scalping and inflated prices. With NFT tickets, the resale process is transparent and regulated through smart contracts. Event organizers can set rules for resale, such as price caps or royalties on secondary sales, ensuring fair pricing and enabling artists and organizers to earn a share of the resale value. This creates a more equitable market for both buyers and sellers.

These advantages make NFT tickets an innovative and attractive option for modern event ticketing, providing security, enhanced fan experiences, and a fairer resale market.

Limited Edition Festival NFT’s

While we had VIP seating, we did not really have a unique VIP product we could give to VIP fans. Web3 Music technologies allow creation of limited edition NFT’s. These limited edition NFT’s could contain exclusive content, like video, audio, rehearsal sessions, interviews and more. The limited edition NFT becomes an asset that the fan can keep or sell on an NFT marketplace.

Concert NFT’s and Smart Contracts

Lastly when we started recording tv shows there was always a challenge getting songs cleared which meant most of the shows were never recorded.

Web3 Music technologies would allow musicians to easily negotiate song clearances, allow taping of the show and minting as NFT’s. These NFT’s would include the video, audio, pictures and other content and a smart contract that would ensure automatic payment whenever an NFT was sold.

These are just some of the strategies web3 music provides any festival could use to ensure greater visibility, profits and exposure as well as creating assets that fans would own long after the festival ended.

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