Music Festival Suite | Music Festival Management

Need to switch your festival from SolarisLive?
We're ready for you.

MusicFestivalSuite is aware of the retirement of the SolarisLive system. SolarisLive was able to provide festivals with a means to manage themselves online for over a decade. We thank the SolarisLive team for their contribution to the Festival movement, and wish them well in their next adventure.

SolarisLive was created by festival volunteers for festival volunteers. MusicFestivalSuite is also a system created by festival volunteers for festival volunteers, and we're here to stay. New ownership took over in 2023, and will be with the Festival world for decades to come. We pride ourselves on our support, and being a fully featured easy-to-use system. We are very familiar with the best way to transition from SolarisLive to MusicFestivalSuite, and we are ready for you to make that switch.

To learn more about MusicFestivalSuite, please read on and explore this website.

Subscribe for the
Next Festival Season

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Making Festival Management Simpler.

MusicFestivalSuite is a comprehensive festival management tool for competitive music festivals across Canada. Subscribing festivals manage their registrations, schedules, volunteers, awards, and communications with festival participants all in one location. Data is stored securely on servers in Canada, protecting every user's information and complying with all privacy and anti-spam laws.

Designed by local festivals for local festivals, we have expanded to offer services across Canada.
Wherever you are in our great country, MusicFestivalSuite is the only solution you need.

Customized Branding

Each subscribing festival has their own subdomain of MusicFestivalSuite which is populated with that festival's logo, name, rules and other festival specifics. MusicFestivalSuite will also help you integrate the software into your existing web presence. Adjudicators sheets, certificates and all forms use the subscribing festival's brand.

Easy to Use

Teachers, Parents and Entrants will find the newly modernized interface straightforward and simple to operate. It integrates with Stripe for payments, uses 2-Factor Authentication, works on any browser window (including mobile), and the cloud makes the data accessible anywhere a device connects to the Internet.

Privacy and Anti-Spam Abiding

Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and Anti-Spam Legislation as well as provincial privacy acts like PIPA in Alberta and others all have impacts on how music festivals operate, as do Anti-Spam standards set by large providers like Google. MusicFestivalSuite is designed by people with expertise on meeting these requirements.

Full Support Available Year Round

With a subscription, festivals receive support at key times in a festival season, such as in preparation for Registration Periods, Scheduling season, and actual Festival Season, to ensure Subscribing Festivals have a smooth festival experience on the cloud, regardless of your experience with a computer.

What's Inside, and What Subscribing Festivals Can Do

Classes

Any festival can use their own syllabus, or a provincial syllabus, and each festival can include their own addenda to a provincial syllabus.
Syllabi are updated annually automatically for the Alberta and Saskatchewan Music Festivals' Associations
Local classes can be added quickly and easily
Rules can be easily added, making it easy to see the relevant rules when a Participant is registering
Registration fees, scheduling, adjudicators, and registration requirements can be set for each individual class
Bulk editing, allowing subscribers to edit multiple classes all at once
Mass Registration Fee Updater allows subscribers to change all their fees quickly and easily
Classes that are not to be offered by the Subscribing Festival can be easily removed or made available

Working with Users (Registrants, Parents, Teachers, Volunteers, Accompanists and Adjudicators)

Every user creates their own profile
Two-Factor Authentication when a user creates their profile.
Users who have made a profile with one festival can automatically link to any festival that uses MusicFestivalSuite
Subscribing Festivals can communicate easily with every user or only groups of users and still meet legal requirements
Users can update their profile at any time
Parents can also create their child's profiles for them
Teachers can create profiles for their larger groups and ensembles such as Bands and Choirs
Photo Release, Identity Consent and Waiver Forms are updated annually to meet legal obligations
Every user has access to their registrations at any time, but can only edit them when the Subscribing Festival allows it
Every user has access to their registrations and results from previous 2 years of festivals
Adjudicators get access to the complete list of registrations they will adjudicate while leaving performers anonymous
New in 2025 - Adjudicators can write directly on Adjudicator Sheet PDFs using our Dropbox Integration, saving paper
Subscribing Festivals can work robustly with their list of users
Accepts unlimited users
Users can "deactivate" their profiles if they no longer use the Subscribing Festival's services

Registrations

Subscribing Festivals set their own registration periods, and can extend them at any time
"To Be Announced" registration periods are also available
"Late" registration periods can include a late registration fee
Festival organizers can control deadlines for Video Submissions, changes to Accompanists, and more
Registration fees are securely accepted online through Stripe, which gives Festival Organizers rich detailed transaction information
Transaction Fees can also be charged by the Subscribing Festival for each payment received through the system
New in 2025 - Discounts can be given to individuals to allow for payments by bursaries or grants
Reporting to provincial music festival associations is made simple through the robust Statistics feature
If a festival is a member of a provincial organization that also uses MusicFestivalSuite, they can export Provincial Recommendations directly to that festival.

Scheduling

Unlimited venues, unlimited scheduling, unlimited sessions and blocking
Length of classes is determined automatically by the software
Subscribing Festivals simply "drop" a class into a chosen timeslot to schedule, and identify when they want sessions to start
Subscribing Festivals can schedule by the minute, by 15 minutes, by the hour, or any other duration they choose
Scheduling changes are easily made through Class Search and Block Rescheduling features
No printing, cutting papers and arranging on floors, or searching for registration forms
Schedule is exportable to tab-delimited formats for easy formatting in Microsoft Word or similar word processors
Participant Cards are attached to each user's profile; teachers, parents and registrants all get a copy
Classes that have lots of registrants can be split into multiple groups for easier scheduling, each with their own Adjudicator if desired
Subscribing Festivals can easily switch from year to year to consult how scheduling was done in previous years
Adjudicators and Accompanists can view their schedule from within their profile

Volunteers

Scheduling of volunteers aligns with festival schedules
Subscribing Festivals identify which roles (door marshal, secretary, supervisor, store manager) they wish to schedule
Subscribing Festivals simply "drop" volunteers into chosen timeslots and selected roles to schedule volunteers, or for volunteers who are not technologically savvy, a "type-in" option is available.
Volunteers can access their schedule through their user profile
Schedules can be emailed to volunteers, or print and hand-delivered to volunteers

For the Festival Itself

Adjudicator sheets are printed from within the software
New in 2025 - Adjudicator Sheets need not be printed; Adjudicators can write directly into PDFs using our Dropbox integration
Subscribing Festivals can identify their own method of marks (percents, letter grades, or even simply poor/good/excellent)
Marks are recorded for each performance directly in the software
Marks sheets are also exportable, so that festival volunteers unfamiliar with technology can still record marks
Certificates for participation are printed from within the software with custom-designed templates
New in 2025 - Certificates need not be printed; Organizers can instead attach Certificates to registrations for participants to later download or view if they wish
Sponsors advertisements can be placed in Participants' Profiles, providing extra incentive for donors to contribute to Subscribing Festivals
Improved in 2025 - Treasurer's Reports are clean and easy to follow, saving valuable time for Festival Volunteers
Statistics are fully detailed, and show participation rates by class, geographical location, age, FNMI status, New Canadian status, and more

Awards System

Awards can be created with a wide array of potential criteria including age, Discipline, number of pieces performed, and more
Awards can be "attached" to classes to determine eligibility
Reports of which registrations are eligible for various awards are two clicks away
Selecting Award Recipients is a single-click
Award Recipients see what awards they received from within their own profile
New in 2025 - Award Certificates need not be printed; Organizers can instead attach Award Certificates to registrations for participants to later download or view if they wish
New in 2025 - Award Recipients will receive Donor Details so that they can send thank you letters to donors
All Donor/Sponsor Income and all Financial Awards are recorded and reported in MusicFestivalSuite's Treasurer's Report

Video Support

New in 2025 - Festivals can happen LIVE on video using a Canadian-made videoconferencing tool, giving festivals an Online Venue that can operate concurrently with In-Person venues
Festival Participants can link videos directly into their registrations
Videos can be viewed directly in a Festival Participant's Profile or in the Administrative Portal
Adjudicators can view all the videos for a class within the same screen
Adjudicators can link a response video directly to a class, which can then be viewed by Festival Participants
Adjudicators can download Adjudication Sheets directly from within their profile with no effort by Festival Volunteers
Adjudicators can upload their Adjudication Sheets completed directly to the regisrtation
New in 2025 - Adjudicators can write directly on Adjudicator Sheet PDFs using our Dropbox Integration, saving paper
Improved in 2025 - Festival Organizers can add certificates or other PDF files to the Adjudication Sheets to create a complete Festival Results Package
Subscribing Festivals can make the entire festival, without Adjudicator Response videos, open for public viewing - In Development
New in 2025 - Stop paying for ZOOM, MusicFestivalSuite comes with it's own Videoconferencing solution for all Committee and Board Meetings and more
All video usage adheres to a strict Privacy Policy that aligns with federal and provincial legislation including the Private Information and Personal Electronic Documents Act, Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, the Personal Information Protection Acts of Alberta and British Columbia, and Quebec's Privacy Act

Support

Festival Administrators have constant access to online help in the form of instructional videos, and additional training is available at Subscribing Festivals' request
Festival Participants have constant access to online help and help videos to help them create their profiles and register in their festivals
Video tutorials and print resources are provided to Subscribing Festivals to distribute to their users to make the system easy, and provide Administrators with the tools they need to operate their festivals
An internal Support System allows festival participants to receive direct support from volunteers, who can also seek direct support from MusicFestivalSuite staff
Festival Users, Organizers and MusicFestivalSuite Staff can add attachments like screenshots to the internal Support System tickets
At any time, email and online videoconferencing is available over and above subscription support, and allows MusicFestivalSuite to provide support at any time during the registration process or during the festivals

Communication

Festival Organizers can send emails to any user through MusicFestivalSuite, with a 99% reputation with spam detectors
Festival Organizers can filter their email recipients list so that they can target exactly who they want to target, and filters are saved from previous sessions
MusicFestivalSuite adheres to Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation as well as Personal Information legislation both federally and provincially
Festival Organizers can also create Drafts and preview their emails before sending them
Festival Organizers can see a full history of all emails sent through MusicFestivalSuite
Emails are fully formattable, allowing you to make your emails look exactly how you want them to

Fidelity of the Data

The software can store up to 10 backups of the entire festival at any given time.
Backups are done by manual request, or any time technical staff perform any system maintenance
Data is accessible on the cloud and by using any web browser the Subscribing Festival chooses (we prefer Google Chrome)
Data from previous years is easily accessible simply with the click of a button
Festival data older than 2 Festival Seasons is archived to reduce server load and in anticipation of upcoming privacy legislation requirements
Personal Information is never divulged, even by accident, to users
We adhere to a strict Privacy Policy that aligns with federal and provincial legislation including the Private Information and Personal Electronic Documents Act, Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, the Personal Information Protection Acts of Alberta and British Columbia, and Quebec's Privacy Act
We prevent personal data from being intercepted legally by international sources, such as the United States of America through the application of their Patriot Act

The Whole System, Regardless of Your Size

The subscription includes the anual use of User and Administration Portals, Email Automation, branding and all integrations including with Stripe, Dropbox, SendGrid and VDO.Ninja. The access fee also includes all updates, access to all support tools and consistent personalized support. Whether you are a large or small festival, you still get the whole suite of tools.

$100 Access Fee, $100/100 Registrations

Your subscription is always based on the number of Registrations you accepted in the previous year. For every 100 registrations, your subscription is $100 plus a $100 access fee. As an example, a festival with 476 registrations last year will be charged $500 for that number of registrations plus the additional $100 access fee.

Incentives exist for larger festivals. Once your total subscription reaches $1000, the access fee is waived. There is also a maximum subscription fee of $1500, so beyond 1500 registrations you will no longer see your subscription rate increase.

$250 Initial Setup Fee in your First Year Only

Setup for you is easy. We install your syllabus into our system* and brand your version of MusicFestivalSuite to match your festival by creating email accounts that MusicFestivalSuite will use to generate your communications, utilizing your logo and colour scheme, and making a subdomain that will be both your portal to your festival management as well as your Participant's portal for registering. Other companies charge up to $400 for this service without branding or support, yet we also provide Administrative Tutorial Videos and a Manual for Administrators to make learning easy. Once done, you never have to worry about this cost again.

*If your syllabus is based on a provincial syllabus such as in Alberta or Saskatchewan, the provincial syllabus is already entered for you. All we need to import is your local addenda to the syllabus, and help you with setting your Registration Fees.

What if additional support is needed?

Additional in-person and online videoconferencing support is also available at $50/hour. Many first-year festivals take advantage of this opportunity, and budget between $250 and $500 for their first-year's worth of training just in case they want the extra support. Every festival can request these services at any time by contacting our dedicated Support staff.

Join our growing list of Subscribing Festivals!

Subscribe for the Next Festival Season!

We also do websites!

Many festivals look for a low-cost alternative for their websites. Once a website is set up, WindyJMusic works to keep maintenance costs low, as little as $135 annually. However for festivals that require a more substantial presence on the web, WindyJMusic can still provide. Please contact us to learn more!