Are we gonna see the end of music festivals? Coachella, which is happening right now in the California desert, is not on the decline seeing how fast tickets were sold and how hyped the whole thing was, but I am talking about the future of music festivals in general. What will happen to them in 10, 20 years, can we keep doing this forever? Look what happened to the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Mayor Regalado called for an end of the festival after violence started the first day: as a result 76 people were arrested, 118 were treated by paramedics, and a 21-year-old guy was even found dead in his car… this is getting totally out of control. Of course, Miami officials have ended their bid to ban the festival because it brings way too much money to the city (it generated over $223 million in 2013) but we have to wonder if there won’t be an escalation of these types of incidents. The crowds are getting bigger, the drugs and the booze more and more available, and I wonder about the security… see what happened in SXSW in Austin last month! Things like this are always possible as long as there are big crowds, excitement, drunk people and an overwhelmed security.
Security apart, I wonder whether people will ever get tired of all this at some point, generations succeed to others and you don’t necessarily enjoy what your grandparents did, the formula may wear out and festivals will have to renew themselves to attract people at the risk of disappearing. See how many guest/surprise guests were at Coachella this year? Beyonce, Jay Z, Snoop Dogg, P Diddy, Gwen Stefani, Justin Bieber, the whole mainstream music business was there – people who aren’t even considered as Coachella headliners by the way. It seems that it is not enough to have just some band play their hits, people want more, they want Solange with Beyonce, Nas with Jay Z, Pharrell with Gwen Stefani, Arcade Fire with David Bowie,… errr they got Debbie Harry which isn’t bad either.
Every year they have to top the previous year. A few years ago we had the Tupac hologram, and what could be next? More celebrities paid to pause for selfies with complete strangers? Looking at my Twitter feed, people really love those! In fact some people go to Coachella just for the celebrity sightings.
The Independent is reporting that ticket sales for UK festivals have slowed down and ‘the Oxford Folk Festival, the Bay Festival on the Isle of Man and Truck Festival, which had been going since 1998, collapsed’ in 2012. In total 30 festivals went bankrupt, and even Glastonbury has problems. If this is happening in England, it doesn’t seem to be happening in the US, Coachella is still very hot right, but I see so many new festivals popping up every year,… some of them grow fast (FYF fest comes to mind) and so far so good, but are we going to reach a saturation soon? When is the bubble going to burst? Furthermore, except the small festivals which promote unknown bands, the big ones aren’t that interesting anymore, they look so similar and have lost their personality. As much as I like them, Arcade Fire and QOTSA are playing respectively 10 and 22 festivals this summer! Talk about copycats!
For my part, I still think festivals like Coachella are useless for music, they are about something else than music, things like fashion, brand/corporate endorsement, big money, and I could easily have seen half of the bands playing there in Los Angeles clubs and theaters, in much better conditions, but I was not interested by at least 90% of the them! At the end, I don’t care if big festivals disappear one day, bring me any good band at the Echo, the Echoplex, the Satellite, the El Rey, the Fonda, the Bootleg,… and I will be happy.