R.I.P. Music Festivals

Ok, maybe that's going too far! Let´s better speak about the end of music festivals at least as we have known them this far.

As a definition, something that's mainstream is conventional and if we talk about the mainstream in music, we'd be speaking about the bands that most of the people listen to and which can be found in the most followed streaming playlists. When it comes to music festivals, it seems to me that a big amount of them are turning mainstream too and I´ll tell you why.

Live music has always been a big money making machine, and with companies looking for new ways to get income, big corporations like Live Nation or AEG Live, long time ago decided to take a bite of this lucrative cake that music festivals has become in the last two decades. If you are not yet familiar with these two names, Live Nation is the world’s largest concert and events promoter, while AEG Live is the globe’s second-largest presenter of live music and entertainment events. Together they are bringing up to 40K shows per year and own up to 150 music festivals all around the globe which is simply a massive undertaking.

Festivals have turned into events of monstrous dimensions with high budgets and therefore great risks for promoters who must advance large amounts of money. So, finding adverse weather conditions (festivals are outdoors) or a slow sale of tickets can knock down the work of a whole year and shake the foundations of the whole festival if they do not have everything well tied. Faced with such complicated scenario, it seems easy to understand the appearance of this large corporations monopolizing an industry that we see changing year after year.

But hey, how does that affect us? Well, if you live in a big city probably you won´t be affected very much since all the artists will end up touring in your city, but if that is not your case, the fact that large corporations continue to gobble up festivals, I'm afraid it will end up killing the independent spirit by replacing genuine festivals with mainstream versions replicated everywhere by repeating the formula: same format, same artists, different place.

We seem to accept globalization in favor of its mod cons and we also love what is different and unique but, ain't that a contradiction? Whether beauty is in diversity it´d be good to understand that we should maintain the identity of the music festivals. We have to take more care before they all look and sound the same. Major festivals are great and they need to exist but lets not forget also to impulse the diversity and empower medium size festivals and small promoters.

Cover photograph by Matias Altbach