Lineup announcements: what to reveal, and when

Announce the date and place first, then one strong name, then the rest in two or three waves. Attach a ticket release to every reveal so the attention has somewhere to go. Never announce anybody whose contract is not signed, because a retracted name costs more than a modest lineup ever would.

Announcements are inventory, not news

A multi-month build gives you a rare advantage: several separate occasions on which people will look at your event. Most first-time organizers spend all of them at once.

The full-lineup reveal feels like the right way to do it. It produces one large spike of attention, and then five months of silence during which you have nothing new to say and no reason for anybody to look again.

Treat each piece of information as something you can spend once. Then spend it deliberately, spaced out, with something to buy attached each time.

The sequence

The pairing in the third column is the part organizers skip. An act reveal with nothing to buy generates interest that lasts about a day and then dissipates entirely.

Date and place before anything else

Organizers want to lead with a name because it is the exciting part. It is also the least useful thing to a reader who does not yet know whether they could physically attend.

Somebody scanning your announcement is deciding whether this is possible before deciding whether it is appealing. A date and a location answer that. A name without them is something they cannot act on and will not remember.

If the venue is not confirmed, name the area rather than saying it is to be announced. Naming an area is a real commitment somebody can judge. To be announced is not, and it reads as uncertainty about whether the event exists.

Never announce an unsigned act

This is the rule that matters most and the one broken most often, usually under pressure to have something to say.

A verbal agreement is not a booking. Acts pull out, agents get better offers, schedules change, and an announcement made on a conversation is a liability rather than an asset.

The cost of retracting is disproportionate. People who bought tickets partly for that name now have a grievance, everyone else quietly downgrades their confidence in every future announcement you make, and in a first year the thing you are actually building is a reputation for the event happening as described.

Wait for the contract. A quieter announcement schedule is better than a retraction, and nobody has ever criticised a festival for announcing its lineup carefully.

Spacing and timing

• Three to five weeks between reveals. Closer together and they blur into one, further apart and you lose the thread entirely.
• Announce mid-week, mid-morning. Weekend announcements reach fewer people and get less attention from anyone who might write about it.
• Give any press or local media a few days ahead of the public post, so coverage lands on the day rather than a week later.
• Keep something for the final fortnight. Most tickets sell late and arriving at that window with nothing new to say wastes it.

Write the whole schedule out at the start, with dates, and hold to it. Improvised announcement timing is how organizers end up with three reveals in a fortnight and then nothing for two months.

What to do when a name drops out

It will happen, and usually at the least convenient point in the build. Handle it the same way as any bad news: quickly, plainly, and with the practical consequence stated in the first sentence.

Say who has withdrawn, whether you are replacing them, and what ticket holders can do. If people bought specifically for that act, offering a refund window is expensive and correct, and it costs you far less than the alternative.

Announce the replacement separately rather than burying the withdrawal inside a positive announcement. Readers notice, and the attempt to soften it reads worse than the news itself.

Writing the announcement itself

The reveal is a moment. The text around it decides whether the moment converts, and most announcements are written as if the reader already cares.

Lead with the new information rather than with a preamble. Somebody scanning gives you about eight seconds, and a sentence of excitement before the actual news spends most of them.

1. The new thing, first line. The name, the date, whatever changed.
2. Where and when, immediately after. Every announcement repeats these, because most readers are seeing this one for the first time.
3. What is available now, and what it costs. If tier two just opened, say so and say how many there are.
4. One link, not four. Multiple destinations split attention and reduce the number of people who reach any of them.

Use a real photograph of the site or a previous edition where you can. A picture of the actual place answers a question the reader has and a designed graphic usually does not.

What announcements cannot do

Make the acts do the work

At small and mid scale, your lineup is also your distribution. Each act has an audience, and an announcement they share reaches people your own channels never will.

Make it easy for them. Send an image, a suggested line of text and the link, on the morning of the announcement rather than expecting them to construct something. Most acts will post if the work is already done and will not if it is not.

Where a per-event commission is available, offering acts a share on tickets sold through their own link converts a request for a favour into a straightforward arrangement, and it is funded from the event's proceeds rather than added to what buyers pay.