Making it as a musician: 'Vital to make connections' if you want to play a festival

As the festival season comes to an end, budding musicians may be wondering "how can I get on stage?".

Well the answers would be, do your homework, make connections and be involved in the "community".

That's the advice industry professionals such as bookers, agents and festival bosses have been handing out at a music conference in Belfast on Thursday.

Ross Parkhill, from the Stendhal Festival, said those things are "vital".

The Stendhal Festival is one of Northern Ireland's largest annual independent music and arts festivals and Parkhill said "presentation" is everything when it comes to pitching yourself to a festival.

"How you present yourself, we do an application process every year and the narrative you build around, in your bio or via email, how you present yourself and being real," he told BBC News NI at the Output Belfast conference.

He said "asking questions, being personable and building a connection is the vital stuff".

And connections is something that is echoed by other festival organisers, such as Megan Evans from The Deer Shed Festival in Yorkshire.

She said it is "important" to "understand the festival" when pitching to them.

"We get a lot of submissions every year so it is really important that you think about how you are pitching to us."

In the age of social media, it may seem easy to create connections, however Evans said a "balance" is needed.

"I definitely think it has changed the landscape. I talk to a lot of independent artists about the balance of live experience and also gaining that following on social media and how you manage that and not being a slave to it."

So what is the experience like for artists trying to break into the scene?

Ewan McElhinney and Alex Talbot are bandmates.

McElhinney said he was at the conference to "learn more" about the industry and "promote" the band.

He said that while his band had pitched to festivals before, the panel discussion on pitching yourself was "very interesting, very helpful".

"It is something we are interested in doing in the future, so it was very informative."

Talbot added that it was good to hear from different backgrounds on how to pitch for festivals.

"It was a cohesive understand of that process that it is people behind the screen each time, which sometimes you forget when you are sending like a million emails."

For booking agent Angie Rance she said it important to have experience when you pitch yourself to a festival.

"It is a big part of any artists career... it is a big part of building an artist."

She said "grafting and pitching" is a big part of the work she does.