Do Your Part! How Your Venues & Shows Can Solve Voting (Guest Post)

GUEST POST by Emily White, CEO of #iVoted Concerts & Kurt Langer, Board Member of Music Sustainability Alliance & EarthPercent

Originally published Sept. 4.

Elections are often decided by the size of a single concert venue.

As many promoters and venues have dozens of shows a month, the impact you can make as a leader in your community on non-partisan causes that affect us all is tangible. For example, the 2016 presidential election was decided in Michigan by 10,704 votes — the size of a hockey arena. Al Franken was initially elected to the U.S. Senate by 312 votes — the size of a club. These voting margins were determined in a country where young people in particular are upwards of 20% more likely to attend a concert (53% of teens and 63% millennials, Nielsen Music 360 reports) than vote (35.6% for 18-29 and 48.8% for 30-44 in 2018, US Census).

Although elections can be overwhelming or feel insurmountable if you live in a majority “red” or “blue” state, the reality is that voting affects everything from potholes to music to the leader of the free world and more. No matter how you feel about candidates and the presidential election, did you benefit from the $16 billion dollars NIVA secured from the government so independent venues could stay in business during the pandemic? Do you care about A.I. and what is happening with artists’ likeness, rights and how holograms might affect “live” performances? Voting is both a sacred right and affects all of these outcomes for our industry and beyond.

Which is why, when the Music Sustainability Alliance convened in March with music’s leading nonprofits in the voting and activism spaces, the Music Votes (music-votes.org) coalition was born to provide steps for venues, promoters, music companies, artists and more to solve voting for all that music touches in a seamless manner that can integrate non-partisan causes of choice. Designed by longtime music industry execs who know how much you have on your plate and can empathize with what it’s like on the other end of the inbox, here are three steps you can take to increase voting in your community and for your audiences:

1. Voter Registration: Music Votes is proud to be led by industry icons HeadCount and Rock the Vote who have registered over a million music fans and more nationwide. Get in touch with either and tap into their nationwide network of volunteers to provide voter registration at your shows, events, and via your existing marketing channels.
   
2. Voter I.D.: Per the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, over half of Americans are at risk of being disenfranchised due to voter identification laws across the country. Music Votes’ member VoteRiders provides resources for your audiences to confirm they have the correct I.D. for your community to ensure they are ready to vote this Fall. This can be as simple as hanging a VoteRiders poster next to the people checking IDs at your venues. Want to make these steps even easier? Let HeadCount know you’d like to provide materials from VoteRiders with your voter registration campaign.
   
3. Turnout!: What do we need to do to take the final step and actually vote? At #iVoted we’ve worked with hundreds of concerts and venues since our launch in 2017 to let folks in on election nights and during early voting periods who show a selfie from outside their polling place or at home with a blank and unmarked ballot. If you’d like to work with us on an election night show to drive turnout and traffic into your rooms on a historically slow Tuesday night in 2024, or in the future, let us know. In partnership with Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute, we also provide data on the top trending local and national artists in any location that will increase turnout and civic impact the most and can calculate where any artist will increase civic impact the most. DJs at the Polls is another great way to increase turnout for any musician who wants to get paid to DJ from their phone at hundreds of polling locations nationwide. Environmental Voter Project can also be incorporated at any time for your audiences who are looking to volunteer in support of climate legislation locally and nationally.
   
   These steps are optional, yet deeply impactful and we’re grateful for the venues, promoters, talent orgs and representatives that are participating in the steps that make sense for their level of bandwidth to increase citizen participation. At the same time, what happens when our society makes it past the 2024 election? I’ll hand it over to Kurt Langer to share how venues and concert promoters can easily integrate key non-partisan causes of their choice into your existing day-to-day work. He’ll also preview a calendar we’ll be providing in 2025 for the entire industry to take mass action each month on a different, and optional, non-partisan cause for maximum impact.
   
   Music Votes was established to make it easier for all sectors of the music industry to find the voting resources that fit their needs. But Music Votes is so much more than that. It’s also a hub for plugging into specific issue areas that are of greatest interest to concert promoters, venues, and audiences. Much like the voting resources Music Votes provides, the issue-specific resources are turnkey. These are vetted 501c3 (a.k.a. non-partisan) non-profit organizations who know how to operate within a music context. They know how to table at shows, speak directly to concertgoers, market partnerships on social media, and how to execute an impactful activation without adding work to your plate.
   
   Having worked in many roles in the music industry (tour manager, manager, label EVP), and also as an impact consultant to some of the biggest artists on the planet, I know how time consuming it can be to identify and vet partners who can quickly mobilize around an issue important to an artist or to audiences in specific regions of the country. Music Votes does this for you.
   
   Not just that, but Music Votes is a coalition of organizations that values collaboration and partnerships. They know how to work together on aligning strategy, resources and streamlining ways for the music industry to tap in. It’s quite possibly the first coalition of its kind to offer its services in this way.
   
   For instance, once the November election is done and dusted, Music Votes will shift its focus to providing issue-specific messaging and impactful resources based on the calendar month. For many, it’s a perennial scramble to come up with just the message for Black History month, Earth Day, Pride month, AAPI Heritage month and National Disability Employment Awareness month, to name a few. Music Votes will have that covered for you, along with connections to organizations who can deepen your impact in those areas.
   
   Lastly, for artist teams reading this, while politicians hone messaging based on what will have the broadest appeal to the undecided voters in the center, artists are more impactful when they speak directly to their base about the issues they care about most.
   
   That’s because people process both music and issues emotionally through their heart. Additionally, fanbases have their own culture and within that there is an openness to connect with one another based on trust forged by a shared appreciation of the music and community. As behavioral scientists will tell you, the emotional connection fans make to an artist is the same emotional connection they make to the causes they care about. So when artists are willing to speak about issues that matter to them, and to endorse causes and organizations, they are connecting with their fans person-to-person, rather than entertainer-to-consumer. The effect of this is that fans feel closer to the artist, and also closer to the cause.
   In this spirit, we invite all sectors of the music industry to connect with Music Votes and pick out the customizable civic engagement program that’s right for you.
   
   Music Votes (music-votes.org) is a new coalition from the industry’s preeminent non‑profits in the voting & activism spaces that provides a 3-step solution to solve voting while seamlessly integrating crucial non‑partisan causes.