Last year’s Spring Weekend — a one-day concert featuring five acts — left many students dissatisfied. This spring, Brown Concert Agency hopes to change that.
On Sept. 9, BCA launched a campus-wide survey to gather student input on preferred festival format, number of artists and genre of performances. In the survey, BCA acknowledged the negative feedback on “the concert’s format (and) lack of popular and accessible music” they received last spring.
BCA will announce the concert’s length by mid-October, a BCA co-head told The Herald. The artist lineup will be announced in the spring, as it traditionally has been.
What does the budget look like for Spring Weekend 2025?
This year, the concert’s estimated total budget is $680,000, a roughly 68% increase from last year’s budget that puts a two-day festival back on the table, according to the agency.
Two years ago, BCA had an overall concert budget of $550,000, The Herald previously reported. Approximately 60% of this budget, or $350,000, was allocated to paying for artists.
But last year, the overall budget was reduced to $405,000, with only around $150,000 for the final artist budget.
This year, BCA will have an estimated artist budget of $325,000 for a two-day concert with four to six artists, or $400,000 for a one-day concert with three or four artists. The difference reflects staffing costs that nearly double for each day, according to the survey.
An estimated 40 to 50% of this year’s budget will go to mandatory costs such as security, tents and staging.
“We’re affected by inflation just like every other operation at Brown,” Vincent Moroz ’25, another BCA co-head told The Herald. In recent years, BCA has seen “about a 5% to 10% increase in production costs, artists costs and agent percentage.”
At this price point, what types of artists can BCA secure?
In the form, BCA told students that a two-day concert with four to six artists would look similar to the lineups in 2022 and 2023. If this option is selected, concertgoers can expect to see headliners with popularity levels comparable to artists like Smino and Ari Lennox or JID and Remi Wolf, who performed in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
A single-day concert would have an artist budget that is roughly $75,000 higher than a two-day affair. The concert would include three to four artists, and would likely feature a more popular headliner, akin to Omar Apollo or Baby Keem.
Students who spoke to The Herald shared conflicting opinions on the decision. “I feel like a lot of the student body would prefer a ‘big name’ headlining artist, which may be reactionary to last year’s concert,” Alex Green ’25 said in a message to The Herald. “I personally prefer a two-day festival because it would appease more people with genre diversity and give us more time to spend with our friends.”
He also noted that having a “bigger” artist “doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be a better performer.”
But other students said they valued the genre diversity that a two-day festival would feature. “There are more opportunities for (BCA) to get someone I like,” Sophi Aronson ’25 said, adding that they hope this Spring Weekend will feature more women rappers — talent that they say has made past concert lineups strong.
Other students see greater value in the bigger budget of a one-day concert. “I think two days is great, but I would prefer the budget to go towards fewer bigger artists rather than more artists,” Ben Otoadese ’25 said, adding that he imagines having one popular headliner with a few small openers.
Many first-year students, who have yet to experience a Spring Weekend concert, also filled out the survey. “I really do like the idea of featuring more up-and-coming artists, but I agree that having more niche artists can be disheartening to people who are looking forward to a bigger concert,” Caroline Cordts ’28 said. Cordts enjoys the music of Conan Gray and Big Thief, two acts that she thinks would balance artistry with popular appeal.
The results of the survey will not necessarily determine the final decision, BCA said, but the aggregate data will help inform the agency’s decision-making process.
In addition to students’ opinions on the ideal concert format, each artist and genre submission will be entered into a spreadsheet and tallied. “We can see how many times an artist has been requested,” said Tanya Qu ’25, one of the agency’s co-heads and a four-year member of the student organization. “The sheet is something that we do look at when contacting artists.”
In addition to the survey, a year-round suggestion form is available on the BCA website.
“We’re reminded about how hard it is to appease 8,000 undergrad students,” Zike said. “Everyone wants different things, and that's why we’re trying so hard to get students’ information.”
The survey is set to close Monday.
Benicio Beatty is a staff writer and a copy editor. He is studying Public Health on the pre-med track. In his free time, Benicio enjoys playing with his dog Tivoli and constructing time capsules.
