When an estimated 80,000 people attended this year's Detroit Electronic Music Festival, all previous attendance records for the event dissolved like Alka Seltzer. Credit the Paxahau promotions team.

In addition to the 40 percent jump in attendance—from an estimated 45,000 people last year—ticket presales tripled, additional revenue from corporate sponsors poured in, and the lineup showed more diversity. In just two years the local Paxahau crew took DEMF from an unregulated free-for-all to a well-oiled moneymaker. To what does the Paxahau crew attribute the success?

According to festival director Jason Huvaere, the implementation of turnstiles and a system that tracked VIPs helped unify festival attendance number estimates that had previously varied widely. But for those who know the back story, an awareness and usage of proper marketing techniques played more of a role than any gate policy. Before Paxahau took over all of the operations for DEMF in 2006, the promotional team was best known for its after-hours parties (about 12 events a year), booking agency and record label. They'd also developed a relationship with DEMF, organizing a strong techno lineup—with performers including Dan Bell, Deetron, Luciano, and Richie Hawtin—in the underground part of Hart Plaza for the 2005 edition of the fest.

It was a position from which Paxahau could clearly see the troubles plaguing the festival. After a successful first event in 2000, which attracted more than 1 million people to Hart Plaza, a procession of musical directors—including techno godfathers Carl Craig, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson—was brought on to plan lineups and try to bridge the fest from a free to paid event. They publicly struggled to pay the bills, stay on budget and develop a system by which DEMF could actually profit: For both the organizers and the city of Detroit, which get a modest cut of ticket sales. In 2006, after another unprofitable year, the city handed the festival keys over to Paxahau. It was a move that fit right into their master plan.

"We've been promoting for 15 years, so it was a natural progression," Huvaere said.

Step One: Sponsors

One of the key but neglected components of DEMF under its previous leadership was corporate sponsors. So, the crew set about securing them, a task made easier by the fact that Paxahau had a visible, long-standing presence in Detroit's electronic music scene.

However, Huvaere took care not to "over-brand." He instead appealed to a like-minded cluster of companies that connected with the DEMF crowd. Translation: sponsors who clicked with, and appealed to, the "iPod generation" and "other discerning consumers of all ages who typically don't respond to traditional marketing and advertising," he continued.

In the end, according to Huvaere, sponsors accounted for 15 percent of the overall budget, with national brands that spoke to DEMF's constituency such as Beatport, Red Bull, MySpace, and vitaminwater sponsoring and branding entire stages.

Step Two: Surveys

Since DEMF features a variety of DJs and performers representing different electronic music genres both local and international, which in turn attracts a diverse crowd, Paxahau decided to reach out to attendees by establishing surveys to gauge audience reaction. After last year's fest, for example, about 700 festival-goers were asked by volunteers their opinions about the artist line-up.

"We listen to it a lot. Our audience is our boss," Huvaere said, noting that those surveyed wanted a more diverse array of performers, including those of a more commercial bent. Paxahau listened, and, in '08, added jocks such as Moby, Dubfire, and Benny Benassi to a bill that also featured Carl Craig, Richie Hawtin, James Zabiela and others.

Step Three: Reach

Given that the festival attracts many fans from outside of Detroit, Paxahau concentrated on implementing more online marketing this year, creating a strong presence on dance music message boards and elsewhere on the Web. They developed an impressive MySpace page, which included a countdown to the fest, and enlisted two PR agencies to manage outreaches to both mainstream and dance-specific outlets.

But meeting audience demand, of course, has to be done within the budget, the difficulty of which the Paxahau crew knows all too well. That said, talent is only half the battle; indeed, it's one of the easier contingencies to plan for. Other expenses are fraught with unknowns, which forces Huvaere and his team to peer into their crystal ball and try to predict, say, the number of people who will attend the festival and how much they'll spend on food and beverage sales.

Huvaere takes it all in stride, however. "That risk is the business that we're in."