The Dollars and Sense In Festivals

Whilst the world continues to face Greece's economic woes, other surrounding European countries brace themselves for a tanking Euro. Countries will have to tighten their belts whilst certain leisurely aspects of life are scrutinized. More specifically the right to fork out a bunch of money for your favorite festival.

You’ve got Creamfields in the UK, Dissonanze in Italy, Exit in Serbia, Time Warp in Germany and even the mammoth Amsterdam Dance Event, the list is pretty much exhausting. We can only draw from this only one current conclusion, live music has become a key route to profitability.

A massive resurgence within the electronic and dance music festival market arose since the inception of piracy. Revenue from the live music industry is up 4% this year and festivals like Glastonbury 2010 sold out within 24 hours. In the UK alone the live market raked in £1 billion, whilst globally the live market brought in $20 bn USD for 2009.

However there is a dark side to all this, a bubble is growing everyday in the market and the pin lays somewhere within the near future. We have to prepare for the gloomy prospect that the over saturation of the live festival market combined with the bad state the EU economy is in, might send the festival market to a crashing halt.

Festival promoters usually have to pay headliners in their fluctuating local currency, budgets are squeezed and the newer festivals have to secure funding from advertisers or cultural organizations if they want to continue. Lets not forget, flights, logistical production costs and accommodation expenses.

Let's take a look at the UK festival market, it exploded over the last few years and now holds 400 to 450, a small portion of them electronic music and dance festivals. Whilst alot of them do come and go, they self destruct because of their own inexperience or naivety. One that has thrived is the Glade Festival, an electronic festival that started up around eight years ago and now boasts an audience of around 20,000 visitors.

Creative director of Glade, Nick Ladd explains his survival tactics with in the flooded festival market, “Festivals come and go all the time, People don’t really realize how hard it is to make money from festivals and keep them going until they put one on and lose a packet”.

Glade-festival-2010-cancelled_header_image

“A lot of the smaller events in the UK that sprang up in the last 3 years have fallen away as a result, it’s not as easy as it looks!

We started out putting on free parties and smaller gigs, started our record label Nano Records, did the Glade at Glastonbury, built our organization slowly from the ground up over about 8 years before we took the plunge and launched Glade as a festival.

It’s still precarious, but a lot of events don’t start with that kind of foundation and as a result tank a pot of money and then disappear after a couple of years wondering what happened.”

Let’s not be overly pessimistic, we need new and interesting dance and electronic festivals, they are absolutely vital to the growth of the industry. Where else are you going to find such a huge array of artists connecting with an audience on so many levels?

Artists are constantly reaching an entirely new and different crowd every time they play to a festival audience, you can catch people unaware and that’s a crucial process for an artist wanting to spread their wings, similarly for the crowd, they get access to an array of various sounds and acts they may not have ever been exposed to.

However, it’s hard not to ignore the fact that Spain and Greece currently have growing unemployment rates, an astonishing 40% unemployment rate in Spain amongst their 25 years and under age group, 19.5% overall alongside 10.5% in Greece.

Would any of these unemployed music fans be able to fork out €165 for festivals like Spain’s electronic giant Sonar or Rock am Ring's €170 price tag ?

“I would try to get the money together”, says Natalie Weber, 24, an unemployed music fan based out Berlin, Germany. “But it also depends on the festivals, ones like Melt! are reasonable, but on the other hand festivals like Rock am Ring or Roskilde or Sonar are also heavily overpriced. I don’t think festivals where you’re favorite band like The Strokes play a 20- 30-minute gig is worth it. It will certainly be harder in the future, there is only a handful of young people that earn a lot of money, I hope they will change and do something about the prices otherwise people wont go anymore.”

George Karnavas who is Synch's project manager sheds some light on the situation, “We now have zero state funding which was about the 20% of the budget. Also commercial sponsorships are cutting down budgets while the budget for talents is going up. A difficult combination.

It seems logical that long term problems in the festival market will arise in Europe, especially if the current crisis continues. But the live business is crazy so all options are open. In the end people need to go to live events and this will not stop.”

So just how do you entice crowds to pay £100 or more for a festival when there is little pocket money to spare and a lot of competition out there?

“At Glade we have got lots of ways of working off a ticket and reduced prices for students as well as new ideas that offer £1000 grants and tickets for people who want to produce their own area at the gig.” Nick Ladd explains.

Since finishing this feature, untimely news arrived that Glade Festival 2010 had cancelled their edition for this year. A fitting reminder that even the most assured of festivals hold a shaky position in today’s live music scene.

Links & backgrounds

Glade Festival

Synch Festival

Music Industry - IFPI

The Guardian - Live Music

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Tags for this article:

Dollars, Economics, Festivals, George Karnavas, Glade, Glastonbury, Greece, Nick Ladd, Rock am Ring, Sonar, Synch, The Strokes, Unemployment

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text: Ari Stein

Photo: Via Flickr CC