FlashFest2015 took audiences by storm Thursday night with performances by Rae Sremmurd, the Chainsmokers and Jeremih at the M.A.C. Center.

Justine Palmer, a freshman nursing major was excited for the concert, said she thought the concert would be fun and crazy and that she was looking forward to Rae Sremmurd.

“They’re a good band and cool group,” Palmer said.

Jared Jacob, an adolescent childhood education major, said he was hyped for Jeremih as he was standing in line and thought the artist has a future in the rap genre. 

Those students and most students at Kent State might not know, what does on behind the scenes to make FlashFest happen and free for students each year.

Kelly Kress, a junior managerial marketing major and member of the Undergraduate Student Government, or USG, programming board, said the board looks for up-and-coming artists when deciding who to book for the event.

“[Up-and-coming artists] are the people we can most often afford so we look through people’s twitters and see who is popular and see who has songs coming out,” Kress said. “It’s actually pretty hard to find artists because it’s combination of finding people that fit within the budget and people that are available.”

The Chainsmokers’ had “Let Me Take a Selfie” song so they were pretty popular and then with Rae Sremmurd, everyone wanted to hear so that’s why we picked them and they were available and in the area at this time, Kress said.

Kress said there’s a lot of planning around which artists have events and talking with the artists to set a price for them to come to Kent State.

“Some of the things you have to plan around, that you wouldn’t think about, are that most of the popular artists that people suggest are playing at Coachella right now or other big music festivals like awards show for country music is this weekend,” Kress said.

One huge milestone that USG programming board faces every year is the budget to book artists.

“I think that’s the hardest thing that people don’t understand, is we can’t get Drake because we don’t have a budget to have those kind of people come here,” Kress said.

The organization pays out of pocket, that is adding in artist costs and production costs, but USG also get some allocations for the university, Kress said. That accounts for the lights, crew and stage set up for each artist.

“(The artists) all ask for really ridiculous things behind the stage, like they want fruit platters and they want 29 black towels, so you have to factor all that in as well,” Kress said.

For Jenna Pauley, a freshman Integrated Language Arts major, as well as many others Flashfest 2015 did not disappoint, especially with Jeremih’s performance. “

That’s the person that most people knew. I think everyone left after Jeremiah…there definitely was a lot of dancing, it was a lot of fun I didn’t expect it to be so fun.,” Pauley said.

Kress said that USG is planning on mixing it up, and doing all different genres for next year’s FlashFest.

Contact Dara Sander at [email protected].