Requirements, music licensing, annoyed neighbors – when it’s about planning an event legal requirements are a thing you should pay much attention to. If you aren’t an expert in this field you can lose the track of all the paperwork easily and might get into troubles.
Therefore we collected 5 Have-To’s you should clarify in the run-up to the event.
Announce your event!
In many places public events have to be permitted by an authority and demand certain requirements.
Which requirements you have to meet depends on the settlements of your country and the type of event you want to organize. Therefore you should contact a responsible authority to avoid eventual legal disputes.
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Outdoor events and noise annoyance
Big problems of outdoor events are troubles with neighborhood. When it’s about loud music the interests of guests and residents are usually not the same. To prevent complaints because of noise annoyance you should ask an authority for permit and inform the local residents about the event and possible noise.
“We cater for your physical well-being!” – Not that easy!
For selling food or drinks at your event you require a permit, too. With this approval you commit yourself to operate in accordance with state laws regarding hygiene and cleanness in dealing with food.
If you want to sell alcohol you have to be licensed.
You can contact your local liquor control board to get such a license, but the license itself isn’t enough. In addition you have to be insured for selling alcohol.
As operator you’re moreover responsible for waste disposal and availability of sanitation facilities.
Play it safe!
In the best case your event will be well-visited. But when people party wild a lot of accidents can happen – and you might pay millions for compensation!
You can protect yourself by covering insurance. UltraMixer recommends a festival insurance which includes damages to a person or equipment as well as costs of cancellation and abandonment. So if one of your guests gets hurt, for example by falling over a cable and destroys the lighting system withal you can prevent high costs.
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Don’t forget music licensing!
Also keep in mind that you might need a music license. The legal regulations differ from country to country, but normally you have to announce the use of music at public events to a Performing Rights Organization like ASCAP, BMI or SESAC in the USA or PRS and PPL in the UK. They will charge a certain fee. If you fail to inform them it will be expensive! You’ll find further information on respective homepages and in our blog post about this topic.
Furthermore you can get additional support by UltraMixer’s playlist-function. Your played songs can be exported as cvs-files and transmitted to the Performing Rights Organization easily.
The way out of paper-warfare
Of course you can avoid all those annoying approvals and requirements by renting private venues for your festival. In that case you just have to contract with the owner.
Very often he will arrange the serving of food and drinks, too. If not you can still hire service companies for this job and make your life easier that way
You’re just hired for entertaining the audience and not responsible for paperwork?
Find some useful tips in our last blog post!
