WET weather and lower visitor numbers have failed to dampen Tamworth Regional Council's outlook on this year's country music festival.
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The council is deeming the 48th annual event a success, despite crowd numbers having dropped by 8 to 10 per cent from last year.
Wet weather, bushfires and drought have been identified as contributing factors to the decline.
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However, festival organiser Barry Harley is looking on the bright side of Tamworth's biggest yearly event.
"This year was a fantastic experience," Mr Harley said.
"Talking to industry and artists, the overall feeling is this year's event was the friendliest yet.
"I think you can put that down to having cooler weather and the rain.
"Overall, it's hard to put a number on it, but the crowd was a bit softer than in recent years. However, if the numbers were a bit low, the spirits were high enough to help compensate for it."
Mr Harley said there were several new aspects this year that he believed added to its success.
"I personally think we had a fantastic FanZone area, we opened up Fitzroy Street Plaza and we limited the trader numbers on Peel Street to help create more manoeuvrability, and help create that positive vibe," he said.
"We also worked really hard to develop the Family Zone area with improved staging and family-based activities.
"We tried to build the nighttime economy with the Fringe, which we thought was a great success.
"To us, it's about engaging all members of the family, local residents - and we feel as though the Fringe was a great way to do that."
The council will now turn its attention to surveying stakeholders of this year's festival before planning for 2021's edition.
"All of these nuances we've implemented are not just magically made up by us," Mr Harley said.
"They come from research, survey, observation, feedback and all of those things.
"We're not in a position where we can actually do everyone's feedback, whether it be positive or negative.
"All of the little things that you see, whether you agree with them or not, have come out of what we believe democratically is the majority of feeling.
"We do work hard to take all of the stakeholders' feelings into consideration, because this event does not belong to council - the event belongs to the community of Tamworth."