Venues

We will now cover how to find a venue and what to look for while venue hunting. It might be a good idea to have a venue in mind before you even start planning your event. You should, however, have a venue locked down before you proceed with any other step. A change in the date or venue can have ripple effects, such as the artists being booked on other events or partygoers having other plans on the new date. The reason we choose the venue first is because it’s easier to get artists for another date than move the party location, due to lack of possible venues and abundance of artists.

The venue is one of the most important aspects of your party. Everything about the venue from the number of rooms to the reputation of the previous events thrown there can affect people’s decision to go to your event.

Finding Venues

You can find a venue by using the same location as a previous event, searching online, or asking around.

Previous Event Locations

One quick way of finding venues is to look for locations where EDM events have been done before. I’ve seen them thrown in some pretty unique places like firehalls, hotels, and upscale sushi bars. Those aren’t locations that I would typically choose, but if you can’t find anywhere else, then those locations are worth a try.

You can even search for places that host music events that aren’t necessarily EDM. Most venues that host underground music shows like metal or punk will be open to other alternative music styles, but you can develop your own strategy for targeting venues.

Some venues that other promotion groups have used in the past may currently have issues to look out for. For instance, maybe companies have stopped using a venue because neighbors have started complaining or cops have started cracking down on that venue. It might be a good idea to ask around and see what potential customer’s opinions are about a that venue before you choose that location.

Online Searches

Online searches are another way of finding venues. There are a couple sites that you can use to search for venues, but most of them are expensive halls used for wedding receptions and similar events. This method hasn’t yielded me many successful deals, but it’s a good place to start looking.

Through Friends

Often times just asking around to friends and other promoters can yield some results. Your friend’s uncle might own a struggling bar from the 80’s that doesn’t currently host events, but could benefit from the extra traffic. You could team up with him to host events at his venue. Or you might have a friend who owns a farm without any neighbors who would complain about a festival being held next door.

Permits

Venue permits vary greatly by locations, so I’m just going to cover the common ones that I can find. Always check the website of the municipality in which your venue exists to look for any applicable permits and ordinances.

Mass Gathering Permit

If you’re doing an outdoor festival, you should look into get a mass gathering permit. You can check the local municipality ordinances to see what they require. If your location is super remote, the township may not have one available.

If you can’t find one on the municipality website, you can call their office and try to be discrete by not mentioning any specific details in case there might be any issues.

Negotiating Price

I’m going to cover a basic negotiation strategy. If you want to dig deeper and get a better handle on any negotiation situation, then here’s some suggested reading material:

3-D Negotiation by David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius

When negotiating a price with a venue, you may need to get creative. I like to keep a pretty open communication route by explaining how many people we are expecting, what kind of music there will be, how much revenue they can expect to make on the bar, and the 18+/21+ ratio (so they know how much water and alcohol they will be expecting to sell). To lower the price, I let them know their price is high due to the fact that we’ll be spending $X on sound and lighting because they don’t have any, so it’ll be extra expenses for me (or whatever the situation is).

Sometimes a deal just doesn’t work out. Don’t get emotionally invested and always be prepared to walk away from a deal, but don’t be a dick or burn any bridges. You might need to use that venue for a future event. Also, some venue owners own several venues in the same city and might be willing to make a better deal on a different venue.

Most of the time, a venue will want a 50% deposit up front and the rest paid the day of the event. Some might even want the whole venue fee up front.

Try not to let the venue take anything from the door if possible. Sometimes a venue will want to add a couple dollars to the door price, so they would get a cut of door sales. I would highly discourage this since it doesn’t work in your favor.

What we try to do is work out a much lower price (sometimes free) and a reasonable bar guarantee that we think we can hit. A bar guarantee is when you make sure the bar needs to hit a certain revenue minimum. Say we set a bar guarantee of $2,500 and we only bring in $2,300 at the bar. We would then owe the venue $200 out of the door revenue. We’ve had bar minimums range from $1,000 to $15,000 and mostly depends on the local market. Bar guarantees are a calculated risk and you need to decide if they are right for you.

Don’t negotiate a bar minimum unless you’re confident that you can bring enough people in the door. Here’s a quick formula to determine if you can hit the bar minimum or not:

Expected Bar Revenue = (Expected Number of Guests) * (Average Drink Price) * (2 Drinks)

So, if you’re expecting 100 people and average drink prices are around $5, you can expect $1,000 minimum at the bar. Don’t agree to a $3,000 bar minimum in this situation. It’s just going to cost you a lot of money.

If you are on good terms with the venue, you can work out a deal where you get a certain percentage of the bar over the bar minimum. Again, with the example of a bar guarantee of $2,500 and a revenue split of 10% over that. We bring in $3,000 at the bar. We would then get $50 from the venue [($3,000-$2,500)*10% = $50]. While that’s not much, it can add up if you bring in a lot more, and is a good incentive from the bar for you to bring in a ton of business.

What to Look For

These are the things you’re going to want to look for when checking out potential venues. It might be a good idea to write them down on a piece of paper so you remember to ask the venue owner/manager if you can’t visually see it. I keep a template made of all these items and fill it out when I check out a new venue to keep it on record if the venue doesn’t have a spec sheet of everything that’s included (which they normally don’t do if they’re a smaller venue).

Sound

We’ll cover more of the lighting and sound in a later chapter, but there’s a couple things to look for when scouting venues. Quality sound is one of the big things we look for in a venue. I would recommend testing out their equipment to hear it for yourself if you haven’t been to a show at the venue before. If a bar has sound equipment, but it’s old and busted, you’re going to have bring in all your own sound anyway.

Lighting

Places that specialize in rock or metal shows will have lighting, but it’s mostly par cans and a strobe, which doesn’t scream “party”. Unless you’re hosting at a club that does a lot of EDM parties, you’re probably going to have to bring your own lighting.

We mostly go through friends to get lighting. Most professional grade lighting companies are going to cost too much for the amount of lighting that you need.

Permits

When inquiring for venues, you may want to ask what permits they have. The necessary permits will vary by state/city, but most of them will only be permitted to serve alcohol and have live music until a certain time.

The max capacity is also determined by occupancy permits, but most venues will be uncomfortably crowded before you reach that limit.

Bar

EDM events almost always need a bar. If you’re going to do a warehouse party and want to remain legal (depending on your state), I’ve seen promoters get one-day permits to sell alcohol if they’re available in that state. I’ve been to plenty of warehouse parties that had a bar in the corner and sold drinks without a permit, but I obviously can’t advise you to do this.

We try to choose venues with reasonable drink prices for the sake of our patrons, but depending on the area (like New York City), low drink price might be nearly impossible to find.

Age Restrictions

Age restrictions for your event can be selected at your own discretion. We always aim to make the age limit 18+ and 21+ to drink, but some events will go for 21+ entry or even all ages. It mostly just depends on personal preference and the average maturity you’re looking for in the crowd. 21+ crowds normally have less issues and drama, but it can be harder to get enough 21+ attendees for some parties.

Parking

Parking is one of the less important issues, but it’s still something to consider when choosing a venue. If parking is difficult in an area, it may deter people from driving to get there. In most cases, if people want to go out to a party, they’ll find a parking garage or lot and just absorb the cost to park there.

We have run into situations in Philadelphia and Baltimore where parking lots just don’t exist within many blocks of the venue, and on-street parking is difficult in the area. This may deter locals from coming if there is another, easier to park event in the area. For people coming from out of town, parking isn’t a big deal since they were already willing to drive that far.

Fees

The most common fee imposed is a venue rental fee. This can typically range from $0 to $15,000 depending on the size, location, and what’s included.

Competent Sound Guy

If you’re going to use a bar that does other types of shows where the venue runs the sound, they’re probably going to want to use their own in-house sound guy. That’s fine, but make sure you explain to them that they don’t need all the fancy compressors that they would normally need, and they should only need a brickwall limiter.

With rock shows, they run all the gear into the mixer, then the signal gets compressed so the band doesn’t blow out the sound system. The problem is some of the sound guys compress electronic music and the compressor can cause some weird things to happen to the sound, like random loud spikes or too much distortion.

Another thing that rock shows do is that they start the openers with low volume and work their way up through the bands so the headliner is at max volume. You’re going to want the same volume for the openers as you do for the headliners.

You can resolve both of these problems by having a discussion with the sound guy before you do a soundcheck.

High Crime Areas

I’ll admit that it’s easier to find venues in high crime areas because the venue owners are usually more desperate for business and are exposed to different kinds of patrons.

For the safety of your guests, I would suggest staying away from the really bad areas. I was going to do an event in the worst area of my hometown, but the venue owner ended up getting shot in his own venue a month before my party. After I had to cancel that one, I’ve tried to avoid high crime areas as much as possible.

Number of Rooms / Layout

You should note the number of rooms and the layout of the venue. Ask yourself all the following questions to figure out if there are any issues that you might have to deal with later.

How is the flow of the space?

Are there any small hallways that will be inconvenient to walk through when it’s crowded?

Where are the bathrooms located?

How many stalls are there in the bathrooms? You may need to bring in portable toilets if there aren’t enough.

How any bar areas are there where drinks can be sold? If there’s one small area with just one bartender, it might be too busy and people will get upset with a long line.

Security

Ask the venue owner who’s responsible for providing security. Many times, they will want to use their own security for insurance purposes. This may come with an additional fee depending on how many they need to bring in.

Available Dates

Ask the venue owner for a list of available dates. If it doesn’t line up with your schedule, you can consider using them for another party. We keep a list of all of our venue contacts and constantly reach out to them for lists of upcoming open dates.