“I think the best festivals for me are the ones that grow organically . It’s about all these little nooks and crannies and areas of enhanced experience, and promoters that do well are the ones who take note and give that attention to detail and make sure the festival isn’t just about putting two stages in a field and putting music on,” he says.
I’m speaking to Ayoubi before he joins the Festivals of the World panel – one of the most popular offerings of this year’s Australaisian World Music Expos carefully produced conference schedule. The panel assembles representatives of some world renowned festivals including Bluesfest, Roskilde Festival (Denmark), Fuji Rock festival (Japan) and Glastonbury, providing attendees with a unique opportunity to learn first-hand about the festival industry from major international players.
“It’s my first time on this particular panel and I’m pretty excited to be there amongst all the other representatives of the other festivals. With the level of experience that’s going to be on the panel, I’m sure it’s going to be a really interesting one,” says Ayoubi.
As well as running the annual Future Music Festival, Ayoubi and his colleagues organise and promote Summerdayze on New Years Day, plus various event parties around the millennium, the Grand Prix, and spring racing events, giving him a wealth of knowledge on the industry, including the abundant number of challenges involved.
“A big [challenge] is demand on the artist and the limited talent pool that is out there. There’s a huge lot of competition to get the artist to play on your show and that’s determined by a couple of things – reputation of the event and also if they’re getting paid a lot. The costs have gone up so it’s generally trying make the event bigger to cover those costs and it’s sort of a natural progression to make them the biggest thing you can do.”
His company has employed a winning festival formula of huge international headliners supported by an assortment of local acts, and Ayoubi recognises the importance of nurturing roots music from the Australasian region and developing our domestic bands and brands.
“There is some great talent that needs to be fostered in Australia. One of the best things about Australian festivals is that in order to get the internationals here, we need to put on a touring circus and do five centres. That gives the local artists we have on our lineup such great exposure to those artists.”
