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

SHARING REALLY IS CARING

(or how to help your fellow music fan)

It’s an embarrassing fact for such a prosperous country as the Netherlands, but 3.1% of the Dutch population is living in poverty. In Rotterdam alone, over 40,000 people are eligible for assistance from our local food bank.

Now, in Rotterdam there’s an amazing new project named Ticketbank. It’s an online platform which offers free tickets for concerts and events to people using the services of the food bank.

It’s a wonderful way to prevent those people from getting socially isolated, and Left of the Dial wholeheartedly supports this project.

We fully understand that some of you are also struggling to make ends meet and that a Left of the Dial ticket is already quite an expense. If so, this post is clearly not for you.

But, if you have a little more to spend, there’s a way you can help us support Ticketbank:

Go to our website and buy one or more donation tickets for €5 each.

For every 10 support tickets sold, we’ll put in the extra €25 and donate a Left of the Dial ticket to Ticketbank.

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Or if you’ve already got a Left of the Dial ticket, but you can’t stay all 3 days, do it the good old-fashioned way:

For years, we’ve been offering Sharing is Caring, a service to pass on your wristband to someone else of you can’t stay for all 3 festival days.

Initially, this service was meant for friends unable to attend on the same day; we just wanted to avoid the whole wriggling-off-wristbands-thingy and make it easy to share a ticket. 

But some people don’t have a friend to share their wristband with, so we’ll donate those wristbands to Ticketbank.

We know we can’t save the world, but we can try to make our festival a little more accessible.

In case this post isn’t quite clear, check our website for:

• All info on Sharing is Caring -> click here
• The donation tickets ->leftofthedial.nl/tickets
• The apparently still much needed explanation on why we only sell 3-day passes 

Thank you for reading this post, thank you for sharing and caring, and most of all, thank you for being the awesome people you are!

Big love,

The sharers Left of the Dial

PS: for more information on Ticketbank (in Dutch): click here 

OUR STRUGGLES WITH THE MODERN WORLD – PART 2

Some festivals sell all their tickets the minute they go on sale.

We don’t.

We usually sell a huge chunk of the tickets right after the previous festival edition and then it slows down. After the first few lineup announcements, things pick back up again and we start selling an average of about 250 tickets a month. 

By the time we’re down to the last 400 or 500 tickets we always start to get anxious. We worry that we’ve reached every possible person who could be interested in our festival with our regular posts and newsletters. And we do need to sell those last tickets to meet the budget.

What we normally do around that time, is run some last-minute ads on social media. Mostly on Instagram and Facebook. 

But that just doesn’t feel right anymore. We hate being so dependent on ads, and more importantly, we hate the idea of giving money to a huge multinational whose values do not align with ours.

Pretty hypocritical, we know, because we’re using their platforms on a daily basis, but still… it feels like there’s a line that needs to be drawn,  

So, we’ve decided to not spend any money on Meta campaigns this year.

Which probably doesn’t sound like much of a challenge, but any festival marketeer with tickets to sell will agree, detoxing from an ad-dependency is a tough battle. 

Foremostly, it means we have to find other ways to sell the last Left of the Dial tickets. And we’d like to warn you: some of those ways could very well be annoying.

If you’re easily irritated by more frequent newsletters and endless posts promoting Left of the Dial, we kindly suggest you unfollow us right now. Just check back in closer to the festival and information-wise you’ll be fine. 

However, for those of you who want to support our ad-dependency detox, please share this with all your friends. Or better, make them buy tickets right now. 

Big love,

The codependers of Left of the Dial

LAST NIGHT THE DJ SAVED MY LIFE

The after parties have always been a bit complicated at Left of the Dial. There were years we had too many, and last year we clearly didn’t have enough after parties. Especially on Saturday night, the dance floors were uncomfortably packed.

That’s easy to fix of course, and this year there will be more after parties on different locations.

Now, every year we also get a few complaints about the music. Not many, but some people felt the music was ‘too poppy’, others criticized our DJs for playing only obscure songs. Having often DJ-ed ourselves, we know it’s impossible to please everybody, so there’s no simple solution.

Unless…

We give everybody the chance to DJ.

It’s still a work in progress, so bear with us, but this is the general idea:

In one of the late night venues we’ll have a DIY DJ Party where Left of the Dial ticketholders can play their favourite danceable tunes. Everybody who signs up gets a specific time slot to spin the wheels of steel, or whatever the expression is.

We have no idea how many people actually would want to DJ, so we can’t tell you yet how long those slots are going to be, nor do we know on which night or nights it’s going to be. That all really depends on you.

You don’t need much experience, there’ll be a skilled DJ present to help you out if needed. The only two requirements are:

You need to have a Left of the Dial ticket – we don’t want any wannabe professional DJs who are just looking for an extra gig, but who have absolutely no love for our community;

It’s supposed to be a party, so you need to play danceable music. This is not the time, nor the place to demonstrate your undying love for minimalistic ambient records…   

Right now, we’re pretty busy working on the next lineup announcement, so we’ll get back to this later, probably with a colourful post, explaining everything (hopefully) in more detail.

If you can’t wait that long, you can also email us right now using ‘DIY DJ’ as a subject. Please include your Left of the Dial 2025 ticket number, so we know that you’re part of the family, and let us know what kind of music you’d want to play, which night you’d prefer, and how long you think your set should be.

Maybe, it will turn out that you collectively think this is the lamest idea ever, and you all rather just dance to other people’s music. That’s perfectly fine too, then we’ll never mention this again and just stick to the regular after parties!

Big love,

The floor fillers of Left of the Dial