Best Technology Upgrades For Your Next Music Festival

Whether they’re streamlining logistics or enhancing artists’ performances, technology upgrades can elevate the quality of your next music festival. 

Streamlined checkout processes mean lower service costs, but fewer waiting lines also mean more fun-time for attendees. A killer drone show means more excitement for guests, but memorable experiences also mean more profit from return customers.

The bottom line is that new tech upgrades translate to… well, a better bottom line. 

In this article, we’ll discuss a few of the hottest music-festival upgrades available now.

#1 Contactless Ordering and Payment

No one goes to a music festival to wait in line. But between bathrooms, bars, and vendor stations, it can feel like there’s no time left to actually enjoy the atmosphere.

The solution? Contactless ordering and payment.

If you worry that a QR-code based system is setting up a cold experience for your customers, the opposite is actually true. With less time spent on the usual nuts and bolts of service transactions, servers and attendants are free to address customer concerns and to deliver the concessions.

In turn, festival goers are sure to appreciate being able to get food and drink without having to leave the music.

Look for a system with features like the following:

• Group tabs – Long lines deter customers from repeat trips. But if they can open a group tab and divvy up payment at the end, they’re more likely to keep ordering. As an added bonus, this reduces transaction costs on both ends.
• Server communication – Make sure customers can express concerns in real time so that you can deal with them in real time.
• Location-based menus – If you’re in a particularly expansive locale, customize menu options based on where customers are placing their orders. This allows you to run special promotions in some corners of your venue while removing out-of-stock items in others.

#2 Drone Light Shows

Once your customers are happily stocked with concessions, give them something to look at while they drink and dine.

Pyrotechnics and fireworks are definitely cool, but they’re also messy, dangerous, and loud. Drone light shows offer all the benefits of their dated counterparts but with several advantages: 

• Better crowd experience – Festival goers don’t want to cough on pyrotechnic smoke. Drones produce none of it while also enabling significantly more sophisticated effects. For example, they can be synced to fly and pulse with the music. 
• Sensitivity – Loud explosions can be off-putting for some guests. Drones provide a valuable experience and eliminate any sudden-noise concern.
• Environmental friendliness – No more inadvertent wildfires, wildlife-disrupting blasts, or refuse. Drones are clean, quiet, and reusable.

#3 Hydrogen Powered Generators

Music festivals need power. Greening that power up can add another selling point to your event while also giving you the feel-goods. Many festivals have begun moving to clean hydrogen powered generators. 

Look for models with features like the following:

• Sufficient wattage for your guests or vendors
• Solar panels for battery recharge
• Apps to enable remote control and monitoring
• A variety of ports

#4 Immersive Sound

Long gone are the days of concert goers clamoring over each other to get closer to the music. Advances in audio technology and engineering mean that everyone can experience the performance equally.

Immersive sound, sometimes called “360 degree audio” or “3D sound,” opens up a new frontier of possibilities. 

• Digital effects can be used to enhance the live music in real time.
• Sound effects such as “swirling” music provide a full-body experience.
• Sound can be synched to visual displays. 

With ever-developing innovations, each new immersive soundscape is sure to prompt new competition and innovation in the field.

#5 Holograms

This is the true Wild West of music-festival technology. People are still dreaming up all the possibilities that holographic technology opens up for live shows.

• On American Idol in 2007, Celine Dion did a duet of “If I Can Dream” with a holographic Elvis Presley. 
• At Coachella 2012, a hologram of Tupac Shakur performed alongside Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre.
• At the 2019 Billboard Music Awards, Madonna performed with four holograms of herself. 

The right provider may depend largely on where your festival is held, but holograms offer a wide variety of innovative possibilities that are sure to get attendees’ attention.

Upgrade Your Festival With GoTab

The times are indeed changing, and new technology offers festival promoters many new possibilities for show-enhancement and cost-reduction. Whether you’re considering holographic rock stars of days past or contactless ordering system, new possibilities are rapidly expanding. 

GoTab’s contactless payment and ordering make it possible to streamline customer experience and reduce the costs associated with ordering and payment. Our fully branded menus, secure payment processing, and tab capabilities make us the ideal solution for getting your guests out of line and back to the fun. 

In turn, reducing the costs associated with service and payment frees up more of your budget for other technical innovations.

Turn and face the changes with GoTab.

Sources:

• Billboard. Tupac, Michael Jackson, Gorillaz & More: A History of the Musical Hologram. https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7717042/musical-holograms-history-dead
• Pro Sound News. The Inevitable Future of Live Sound. https://www.prosoundnetwork.com/international/future-live-sound-360-audio