Opinion: What does the future hold for festivals in Australia?

With the recent cancellation of the second date of Big Day Out, we’re once again shown that even the most ambitious of festival promoters are having to… well, reconsider their ambitions. It’s more than safe to say that Big Day Out isn’t going anywhere, especially with the management shuffle, but what of the rest? Summadayze doesn’t look set to return, Future had to bring in Mushroom to stay alive, Peats and Pyramid aren’t back for 2013 (not surprising on the former of course), there’s no more Parklife or Harvest – two staples of the second half of the year – and Homebake have had to rethink the way they present the event to remain relevant and survive. And don’t get me started on the hip hop festivals.

So what does all this mean? Well, let’s start with the festivals we know. Talk to anyone who approved of the Big Day Out or Harvest festival lineups, but hadn’t yet bought a ticket and the reasoning was one of the following:

1) Too expensive and I’m waiting for sideshow announcements.
2) I only care about a couple of the bands so I’m waiting for sideshows.
3) I can’t stand the crowds (note that both festivals feature headliners targeted at older consumers) so I’m waiting for the sideshows.

See the trend?

While these sorts of punters do exist – and there are plenty of them – there are tens of thousands who will happily fork out the cash to attend the events; be they interested in the lineup, the social aspect of it, the atmosphere or all of the above. So while this is important, I think the key to the changes that will be made moving forward – and indeed are already being seen – is that the industry needs to accept that the market is too small for this many “big” festivals to exist at such a high cost to the consumer. You can argue that you get X bands for X dollars all you want, but add on top of that drinks on the day, transport, merch… a festival is a very expensive day for most punters.

With Parklife this year, Fuzzy scaled down for “Listen Out”, which continues this weekend, following seemingly successful events in Sydney and Perth. The event is marketed as something more of a boutique party than a festival. Ticket prices are much more reasonable, thanks to a specialized lineup keeping costs down. A lineup that was as much “power by numbers” as anything else, was a great idea when tickets were $100 or even $130, is now less appealing when those prices are closer to $200 (or even more), especially when your average punter will happily hold off on one festival to attend the next. After all, while inflation thanks to a strong dollar may have doubled the cost of our festivals in the last decade, the wages in this country sure haven’t done the same.

The popularity of a festival like Sydney’s OutsideIn, or the staying power of Laneway, is telling of this. Sure, reputation (e.g. the “cool factor”) has a lot to do with both of these events, but at the end of the day they cater to less people, they offer more diverse and niche music and they – perhaps with Laneway being the more recent exception to the rule – maintain a low price point.

The festivals that can maintain a low price point with reduced numbers, create a superb atmosphere with a solid lineup – these are the “new” festivals of our future. And then only time will tell how big they grow in their own right until we start this cycle all over again…

So ultimately where does this take us? Every time a festival falls people scream the death of the music festival in Australia, yet there are still plenty selling out and some are even growing. Stereosonic is now a mammoth two day event, Laneway has expanded to the Asian market and I believe is the first Australian festival to break into the lucrative US scene – at least in recent memory, and Falls Festival sold out their debut in Byron Bay for this New Years. But the fact remains: the “power of numbers” is simply no longer on our side, as costs increase and the ability of the punter to attend multiple events decreases as a byproduct.

The number of “big” festivals will be consistently reduced as the years continue. We’re likely to be left with a small number of promoters throwing the major events and the rest will scale back, allowing their brands to survive – while some will allow themselves to fall and focus on other areas of their business – or as Fuzzy has done with Parklife – rebrand entirely.

Big Day Out, Soundwave, Future, Laneway, Stereosonic, Falls, Splendour and of course something like Bluesfest in Byron Bay aren’t going anywhere. But as we get more and more “mid-range” events in the next few years, rather than new entrants at large scale operations, I think the result will be something more interesting, more diverse and more exciting.

You can call doomsday all you want, but as the saying goes, when one thing falls, another pops up in its place. And let’s be honest here – the Australian market has always worked in this way. The rise in numbers of music festivals was a bubble that had to burst eventually. And I think as we’re forced to be more creative in the ways we push events in this country, the benefits can only be a positive for all music fans in Australia.

Larry Heath

Founding Editor and Publisher of the AU review. Currently based in Toronto, Canada. You can follow him on Twitter @larry_heath or on Instagram @larryheath.