SIZE SHOULDN'T MATTER

(attendees versus attendances) 

More true than ever: you can easily skip this post and not miss any essential festival information. It’s just another one of those weekend long-reads about something probably only we care about.

We’ve always felt that ‘but everybody does it’ is a bad excuse for anything, but apparently sometimes it’s an unavoidable one.

Although tickets aren’t selling extremely fast at the moment, it looks like we’ll have a sold-out festival in October. This means we will have sold 4,000 three-day passes. Sure, that’s nothing compared to the size of the crowd a huge summer festival draws, but to us it’s kind of mind-blowing that so many individuals have already spent their hard-earned money to see mainly pretty much completely unknown bands in October.

However, we already know that by the end of the festival, we’ll send out a press release with a much higher number of attendees. Or rather: attendances.

We don’t know about other countries, but here in the Netherlands it’s become pretty standard not to count festival attendees, but attendances.

For example, Left of the Dial has sold 4,000 tickets to people who’ll attend the festival over three nights. That’s 12,000 attendances already. Each band brings some guests, we have volunteers who work one night and attend as punters the next, and a bunch of journalists come to Rotterdam to report on the festival... That easily brings the total to 15,000. Then we have Bands on a Boat, the music conference, the free daytime events... we could very well end up with over 20,000 attendances over the weekend.

Why on earth do we go to the trouble of counting in this odd way, you might wonder?

In the Netherlands, many festivals receive some form of funding. So do we. Less than Jeff Bezos earns in a minute, but still, Left of the Dial wouldn’t be possible without this financial assistance. Other festivals may also have sponsor deals, and both kinds of support are easier to secure if you manage to draw a sizable crowd. Usually bigger is better and generates more money.

So, as much as we feel that crowd size doesn’t matter, we’re sort of forced to join the whole attendees-versus-attendances hoopla. If only to be compared fairly to other festivals.

In other words: everybody does it, so we do too.
But we felt the least we could do was be honest about it. 

Big love,
The mathematical magicians of Left of the Dial 

PROVE THEM WRONG

 (because that’s the kind of people we are)

We really don’t worry too much about ticket sales. We’ve still got nearly four months to go, which should be plenty of time to sell the remaining 200 tickets. More importantly, though, there are other urgent things to focus on. We still have to finalise the lineup, we have a hotel schedule for hundreds of band members to sort out and we have about a dozen of production meetings next week to ensure all venues get the right equipment.

To us, a well-organised festival is far more important than a sold-out one.

But a couple of days ago, someone with a lot of marketing experience told us that no one buys tickets in summer and that we should just forget about it until September. ‘Start running some ads by the end of August, that’s the only way you’ll get rid of those last tickets,’ they said. When we told them we’d vowed not to spend any money on Meta ads this year, they laughed and said, with great disdain, that it would be impossible. 

We know we should just let it go, but now we really want to prove them wrong.

To be fair, though, proving them wrong won’t be easy. We basically already fired all our guns. Yes, there’s still one more lineup announcement to come, but we’ve already told you about Bands on a Boat/Bus, the Extra Extras, Waterfront, Les Savy Fav, Dine Like a Star, and everything else that makes Left of the Dial the best weekend of the year.

The only thing we can think of right now, is bring back the midweeks. Some of you were really disappointed when we stopped our weekly update on the Left of the Dial ticket sales and perhaps they were right and we should have continued to post them. No idea whether it will make any difference, but it’s worth a try. 

So there you go. Starting Wednesday, we’ll be posting the weekly midweeks again. Of course, we’ll be updating you on other things too, so no need to unfollow us if you’re not interested in the tedious process of selling tickets. 

We’re still the fun people, just avoid our posts on Wednesday.

Big love,
The easily provoked vendors of Left of the Dial  

THE BANDS ON A BUS EXPERIENCE

(Which is actually more of a Bands on a Bus Experiment)

We promised you Bands on a Bus, and now we deliver you Bands on a Bus!

Well, sort of.

It'll be more like a sightseeing tour of Rotterdam while a very modest version of a band plays on board. Still, it’ll be a lot of fun. There’ll be disco lights, a bar, and great views. What more could you ask for on an October afternoon?

But in all honesty, it’s also an experiment. Maybe there’s a good reason why the bus company has never had bands on their vehicles before. Maybe the sound will be horrible, and maybe the bus will get stuck in traffic on the very first trip. We really don’t know.

If it turns out to be a huge success, we’ll definitely be selling bus tickets next year. But considering the experimental nature of this whole endeavour, Bands on a Bus tickets will be free this year. Naturally , exclusively for Left of the Dial ticketholders.

Here’s what you should know:

If you’ve purchased a Left of the Dial ticket, you’ll receive an email on Friday 27 June. Please read this email carefully, as it will contain instructions on how to order your free Bands on a Bus ticket on Saturday 28 June.

Of course, all the other information you’ll need will be included in the email, but to give you a general idea of what’s going to happen:

- Bands on a Bus will be making 3 trips on Friday and 3 on Saturday 

- Each trip will take about 45 minutes depending on traffic

- The bus will depart on 13.00h, 14.00h and 15.00h each day

- Chances are we won’t be announcing the bus lineup until the very last minute 

- You’ll need to show both your bus ticket and your Left of the Dial wristband

There will be 70 free bus tickets available for each trip. It’s a first for us, so we’ve no idea whether you’ll need to act quickly to get one. And again, we really don’t know, maybe no one will be interested, but better be ready on Saturday, just in case!

Big love,
The free strippenkaarten of Left of the Dial

PISS - TRIGGER WARNING

No, we’re not trying to be funny, and we certainly don’t want to sound condescending either – we are well aware that you’re all adults and can think for yourselves. But after listening to Canadian band PISS, we feel the need to offer some well-meaning advice.

Their lyrics deal with extremely emotional subjects, and in particular when we played the song Blocking a Scene You Can’t, half of our staff were in tears. From what we understand, their live performances can be quite intense, to put it mildly. If you’re sensitive to these kind of things, prepare yourself mentally, or bring a friend who understands the possible distressed reaction you might have to the show.

If you’ve been lucky enough to prance through life happily and totally unscathed, you’re still more than welcome to see PISS; they also happen to be a killer band that any hardcore punk fan will love. Please, just show some respect for whatever emotions your fellow festivalgoer might experience and it all be good. 

Big love,
The well-meaners of Left of the Dial

NEWS FROM THE (WATER)FRONT

 If you were a concertgoer in Rotterdam in the early 2000s, chances are you regularly went to Waterfront.

It was a bunker-like venue under the big red bridge, just east of the city centre. Dark and gritty. But if you needed some fresh air, you could simply step outside, and from the quay you’d have one of the best views of Rotterdam by night. We saw so many great concerts there – it was just a really cool place for anyone into so-called alternative music.

But things don’t last forever, not in Rotterdam anyway, and in 2008 Waterfront closed it doors. 

In 2010, another organisation took over, and they really messed things up. They essentially scammed the local government (the owners of the building) and vanished abroad. After that, the concert hall remained empty.

For years, we’ve been trying to get Waterfront back in use – without success. Club Haug – a very cool comedy club – opened next door which sparked some hope, but apparently, there’s a leak in the roof of the actual concert hall that is – for technical reasons we don’t really understand – practically unfixable. Logically, the local government can’t allow new tenants into a leaking building, and so that’s where the story seemed to end.

Or so we thought.

A while ago, we decided to give it another try. We asked if we could use Waterfront only as a temporarily festival venue. There is a shortage of suitable concert halls in Rotterdam, especially during the Left of the Dial weekend and we could really use the extra room. We figured that if we had two weeks to tidy up the place, and brought in a few buckets just in case it rained, we could revive some of Waterfront’s historical glory – even if just for three days.

And much to our surprise our plan got green lighted!

We were over the moon when we got the news – but, as usual, it came with a whole new set of problems. Lots of logistical issues that we won’t bore you with, but our biggest concern was the venue being quite a walk from our other locations.

On the other hand, Waterfront is located at the pickup-point of Bands on a Boat, so our regular ticketholders know where to find it. We reckoned, if we’d add two more venues close by and set up a bus service to the area, it might still work. 

And that’s basically what we’ve been doing the past few weeks; creating a sort of new festival hub to show you more of our beautiful city and to accommodate more bands. 

 It took us long enough, but we found two just as legendary venues in the same area: The Cube (formerly known as Plan C - if you’ve studied in Rotterdam, you’ve gotten drunk there at least once) and the iconic Rotterdam Public Library (where we borrowed hundreds of books over the years). All near the cube houses and the market hall and, more in general, it’s just another amazing part of the city.

To cut a way too long story a little bit shorter: we’re really proud that Waterfront, The Cube/Plan C and Rotterdam Public Library will be part of Left of the Dial 2025, but we also feel it’s only fair to warn you:

The three venues are about a 20-minute walk from the ticket desk, and it’ll take another 25 minutes to get from Waterfront to the Perron/Roodkapje/Salsability/160K area. The bus service will be free for all ticketholders, but given Rotterdam’s traffic, sticking to a fixed schedule will be tricky. If not impossible.

We’ll do our best to make everything run as smooth as possible, but wearing comfortable shoes or bringing your own bike (or getting a rental) is strongly recommended.

Either way, it felt like too cool an opportunity to pass up – and with a bit of love and understanding from your side, we’ll make it work!

Big love,
The temporarily reopeners of Left of the Dial