WE DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR AGE

The past few days, we’ve sold an astounding number of tickets to people who have never been to Left of the Dial before, which is absolutely heartwarming, and we can’t wait to see you all in October.  

With our family growing, it might also be a good time to explain all newcomers (and remind you) what makes Left of the Dial such a special festival: 

Each and every one present at our festival sticks to a few simple rules.

• If you’re a performing artist, you play your best show(s) ever;
• If you’re a crew member, you do everything in your power to make things run smoothly;
• And if you’re a ticketholder, you’ve got 2 jobs: firstly,  you cheer on artists any possible way you can, and secondly, you are kind to your fellow festivalgoer.

Now, that last thing is really not that special, and we can’t think of any other festival that doesn’t expect their ticketholders to treat each other with nothing but respect. Therefore, it goes without saying that we don’t tolerate any isms. Except for the good ones, such as optimism or investigative journalism, of course. 

Now, that last thing is really not that special, and we can’t think of any other festival that doesn’t expect their ticketholders to treat each other with nothing but respect. Therefore, it goes without saying that we don’t tolerate any isms. (Except for the good ones of course, such as optimism or investigative journalism, for example.) 

Closer to the festival we will remind you that we will immediately kick you out if you demonstrate any form of racism, sexism, homophobia-ism, but for now we’d like to highlight another important no-no: 

Ageism

We're proud to serve a wide range of music lovers from all ages, and it doesn’t matter if your 16 or 75, you should feel welcome at Left of the Dial. That’s why we don’t accept anyone mocking millennials for wearing the wrong jeans or calling Gen Zers cry-babies. And we also expect you to know better than to say something lame like ‘OK Boomer’. 

This whole generations battle thing is just plain stupid and has gone on long enough. Be kind. 

Big love,
The unifiers of Left of the Dial  

PS: We didn’t have an example of a Gen X cliché ready, but clearly you can’t make fun of them either!

LES SAVY FAV

 Here we go again with a way too lengthy post, explaining the reasoning behind this experiment we’ve got planned for Left of the Dial 2025. Feel free to skip it, but if you’re as big a Les Savy Fav fan as we are, we strongly recommend you keep reading…

When we first started Left of the Dial, we thought it would be cool not only to showcase the best new artists, but also to invite some more established bands – bands we’ve loved for a long time.

We figured it would give the younger ticketholders a chance to see where some of the Left of the Dial bands got their inspiration, and for the bands it would be cool to share a lineup with their role models. Although we really tried every year, for a number of reasons, we never managed to bring that concept into practice.

Until now. 

A few days ago, we were informed that Les Savy Fav are looking for a show in Rotterdam on October the 25th, which is of course, the Left of the Dial Saturday.

We’ve been huge fans of Les Savy Fav for years, and the gig they played at our own venue Rotown back in 2007 is one of the most memorable shows we ever hosted. Their live performances are pretty spectacular and we feel that loads of current artists are in some way indebted to this New York-based art rock band.

Cleary, we’d love to welcome them at Left of the Dial.

But that brings us to a whole new set of complications…

Firstly, we feel very strongly about our no-headliners policy. All artists have always been equally important to us, and we wouldn’t change that for anyone.

Secondly, we’ve no idea what would happen if we mix these veterans in with the rest of the lineup. Maybe you all prefer discovering new bands and wouldn’t go to their show. Or even worse, maybe everyone wants to go, and we end up with long queues and angry people when the venue reaches capacity.

We obviously wouldn’t want that, so here’s what we came up with:

• Les Savy Fav will play a late night show on Saturday night at one of the Left of the Dial venues
• Left of the Dial ticketholders can attend the show with an additional ticket that will cost €8

If you don’t want to attend the show, you’ll still have just as amazing a Left of the Dial experience as usual.

But, if seeing Les Savy Fav at Left of the Dial sounds like the best thing ever, here’s what you should know:

• Left of the Dial ticketholders will receive an email on Monday with a special code to order their ticket
• In October you’ll need to show your valid Left of the Dial wristband AND the additional ticket to get access to the concert.  

To give more people time to decide if they want to buy tickets, the second batch of tickets will go on sale six weeks from now.

Finally, if we’ve completely misjudged things and the additional tickets don’t sell out, we’ll make them available to the general public at regular price.

Again, it’s an experiment, so whatever the outcome may be, thank you for bearing with us!

Big love,

The Legendary Tippers of Left of the Dial

A NEW GENERATION OF MUSIC PROFESSIONALS

If you’re only interested in discovering the best new bands (and we wouldn’t blame you), please don't feel obligated to read this post. However, if you’re interested in working in the music industry, this might be just the thing for you! 

A NEW GENERATION OF MUSIC PROFESSIONALS
As you might know, other than just a cool festival, Left of the Dial has always aimed to be a steppingstone for emerging artists. But, a while back we started thinking that we should also be a stepping stone for people who want to work behind the scenes. If we can somehow help develop a new generation of honest and hardworking music professionals, it would benefit all future artists. 

So, this year our music conference is specifically for people who are trying to make their way in the music industry. Probably not you, but we figured it wouldn’t hurt to let you know what we’re up to!

ASK ME ANYTHING SESSIONS
The Left of the Dial music conference will consist of a series of conversations between one music professional and two or three conference attendees. In 20 minutes, the aspiring pros get to ask the seasoned pro anything they want to know about their job—whether it requires a specific set of skills, what their day-to-day responsibilities are, and probably most importantly, how they managed to get that job. 

The AMAs will be held on Thursday, before the official start of Left of the Dial, with 50 music professionals present to answer the burning questions of about 150 students.

And hopefully, one day, those 150 students will organise a festival like Left of the Dial and all we have to do is buy some tickets and enjoy the event care-free, without having to lift a finger and just run from venue to venue only to see our favourite bands!

MERCHANDISE IN MORE DETAIL

 A couple of weeks ago, The Charlatans' frontman Tim Burgess announced a new event in Manchester called Merch Market, where bands can sell their merchandise for free and keep 100% of the income.

To most people that would seem pretty logical. Why wouldn’t a band keep the full 100%? It’s their merch after all. But often, venues or festivals charge bands to sell their merch, sometimes even up to 20% of the revenue.

We don’t. All artists can sell their merch for free at the Left of the Dial Merch Store. We even provide a special print-to-order service for artists who can’t bring their own merch for whatever reason, or don’t have the money to invest in T-shirts and sweaters. All they have to do is send us their design, and we’ll take care of the rest.

This is quite an investment. A hundred plus bands bring their merch to the festival, so we need a lot of staff members to take in all those items. We have to rent a suitable space and we have to stock T-shirts in every size and colour for our print-to-order service. Over 4,000 purchases are made during the festival, which not only require even more staff, but it also means a lot of banking costs. And last but not least, we have to make sure the bands get paid for every sold item which is an administrative hassle.

But we don’t care.

It’s been pretty clear for ages that selling merchandise is crucial for touring bands to make ends meet. So, we decided never to take a percentage of their sales, but to come up with another – rather simple - way to cover our expenses: we also sell our own merch. Luckily, some of you seem to like the Left of the Dial stuff, and we usually sell just enough to more ore less break even!

We never want to compete with the bands, so if you can only buy one item, you should always pick something of theirs. But, if you have a little more to spend, please know that buying Left of the Dial merch is also a way of supporting artists.

And in the unlikely event of us making a massive profit on our own merch, we promise we’ll invest it in something cool. Like an animal shelter, or a fancy motion picture featuring every band that ever played Left of the Dial… or something else, we’ll cross that bridge if the money starts pouring in… 

Big love,

The 0% takers of Left of the Dial