The lineup for this year’s FallFest has been locked in and the genre is hip-hop, junior Jack Hockman, a concert committee member for UVM Program Board, said.
Students will be working around the clock from Oct. 13 until after the concert has ended Oct. 14, he said.
“I’ll be on call for 27 hours,” Hockman said. “We have six hours to drop the stage, and everything is done by students and Dark Star.”
The artists for FallFest are selected by the concert committee of UPB, who reach out to different artists each year based on who’s trending, he said.
“We literally locked in the opener yesterday [Sept. 16],” Hockman said.
Dark Star is a Vermont-based audio-and-visual lighting company that provides technical support for concerts and shows.
Concerts can often cost up to $60,000, and artists, such as Future, charge well over $100 thousand to do a show, he said.
“Jay Z doesn’t step on stage for less than $1 million,” Hockman said. “My budget is $25,000 [for a talent]… it’s hard to work with this budget; the pricing of artists is ridiculous.”
SGA gives UPB $50,000 for SpringFest and the rest comes from UPB’s own budget, he said.
“We don’t break even from the revenue selling tickets,” Hockman said.
FallFest tickets for UVM students sell for $10, while students from other colleges have to pay $20, according to UPB’s website.
The artists chosen to play are based on who is trending and who accepts UPB’s offers, Hockman said.
“I would like students to understand that the artists selected for UPB concerts are handpicked by students for students,” Katie Stango, assistant director for Campus Programs, said in an email.
No advisers are involved when it comes to selecting artists to play, Stango said.
“The members of our concert committee strive to select artists that UVM students will enjoy, which is not necessarily in line with their personal taste,” she said. “They’re selected as a group to put the interests of UVM students first.”
