We're f—ked': California's music festival bubble is bursting
We're f—ked': California's music festival bubble is bursting
The demographics we target are struggling to justify the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars we charge for tickets and we can’t figure out why
Over my adult life I've watched tickets for major acts go from under a hundred to over a thousand dollars. I used to have friends who would go to concerts every other week and see whoever was in town, but now the only people you can see at a reasonable price are local indie bands, and frankly that scene just doesn't appeal to most people. The music industry is like a sheep farmer who decided to kill and skin his sheep for leather and is now surprised that the wool isn't growing back.
Every part of the Music Industry right now is fucked.
Even without the tickets most people are looking at 300-400 just to get there and pay for food/party favors for the weekend.
even more if it's a well known festival, hotel/airbnb rates can jump 300%+ given specific weekends.
I've heard that some festivals are trying to beg hotels to not bump up the prices
Yup, experienced this at EDC 2017. Rates went from ~$120 per night before the dates were announced, to over $300.
Only way I've found to beat the price hikes is, if you know roughly when a festival will be, put in reservations for multiple weekends before the actual dates are announced. Then, after you know which reservation to keep, you cancel the other ones.
Example: EDC happens in early- to mid- May. So book reservations for every weekend in from late April to late May, then cancel the others once the dates are announced.
Yup it ends up being like 1k just for lodging for say, Coachella, and 600 for the ticket. It's crazy. Can't make it work
There is also the competition with vegas festivals that seem to be getting more and more popular, and have every single band/artist you want to see (when we were young, lovers and friends). There is plenty of cheap hotel options and inventory, and people like going to vegas anyway. Also, easy to get to on budget airlines
A friend of mines band played one of those Vegas fests (not the ones you mentioned). All the bands hated it.
I only know a bit about it, but when we were young basically can happen because livenation gave pretty significant advances to a lot of bands who were struggling in 2020-2021 in exchange for a guarantee that the band will play their festivals. As a band back then, a $50k or whatever advance was kinda impossible to turn down. So livenation essentially bought fealty from every emo band and can now host a festival with all of the bands people my age liked in high school.
It is one facet of the disgusting wholesale capture of live music by livenation/ticketmaster. Many venues are also now exclusively run by livenation for the same reason - livenation "rescued" them during the pandemic, but now are reaping massive benefits on what were pretty cheap investments, at a time where there was plenty of cash flowing around for the investors and the venue owners and local promoters were fucked.