The Importance of Archiving Music Festival Data.

Any sizable music festival generates huge amounts of data every year as part of their operational processes. Whilst it’s tempting to delete historical data from previous events and start the new festival season with a clean slate there are key important reasons why previous event data should be archived for future reference. 

Hopefully the days of paper records are long gone so all event data should now be in an electronic format. This makes it easier to store as it can now be held on the cloud or at the very least on hard storage devices. This should negate the need for any physical paper storage requirements and most archive data can now be stored on secure servers, but why keep historical data at all?

Reasons to Archive Data. 
Having old data on high traffic servers can increase risks from external attack so it is preferable to move the data to a completely separate service or device. Removing historical data away from high traffic servers can also reduce costs significantly. For some data there may be legal reasons why data must be kept particularly financial data relating to limited companies who may be required to keep data for up to 3 years for audit purposes. For music festivals they may want to refer to a previous event’s data for targeting vendors, volunteers and contractors. Festival-goer and volunteer data is usually maintained on a separate CRM system and will be subject to regular back-ups rather than archiving as the data is dynamic and regularly changes. 

Types of Data Archived. 
Typical data that is archived will be information that is not required for the coming year. This can include financial data like records of invoices, sales receipts, expenses and credit notes for example. Details on artist’s advances and contractor and supplier data can be archived as this data probably relates to previous events. Modern day software systems usually allow archived data to be easily accessed and searched quickly so any key data from previous years can be found in a timely manner.

Music Festival Data Archiving and Retrieval. 
For a music festival organisation, it is not unusual to dump all data relating to previous events into an archive and start afresh when planning next year's festival. The thinking behind this is perhaps curating a new line-up and selecting new suppliers. However, the reality is often that headline artists will be re-booked so it is useful to understand previous fees and terms agreed. It may be useful to refer to previous technical specifications for artists in case they state that nothing changed from last year. For vendors and contractors, it can be useful to refer back to previous events and check for any issues or problems related to specific companies. The Festival Pro system has an archiving function that removes the current event data and creates a blank canvas for the new event. The un-archiving features allows users to select artists and any contacts from last year's event and then transfer and populate the new event fields. The system even allows previously run shows to be re-imported back into the current year.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering. 

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels

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