by Carlos Esqueda
Lights turn off and the crowd can’t contain the excitement that fills the open air as the highly anticipated headliner of the night steps on stage. First song comes on and you turn to your friend with that “ohh hell yeah” look as the beat drops and the music begins to shake the ground beneath you, and as if rehearsed, every single lyric is belted out in harmony. Some will say the aura is “…impossible to describe unless you’ve been to one”, others say music festivals are “… the epitome for all music junkies”. One thing is for sure, the music festival hype has hit the big screen, and the ambiance each of these events creates has ignited a frenzy over what it means to experience music.
We all know that on average, the music fest goer can expect: overpriced food, The Hunger Games part 3 (A.K.A finding a bathroom stall), an almost guarantee that you’ll lose some of your possessions, “camping” (A.K.A finding some room on the ground), and not getting that Instagram worthy picture you envisioned. Yet once it’s all over we undoubtedly yearn to do it again and again. So what makes music festivals so popular? It may well be the benefits creating a music festival brings not only music festival goers but everyone else involved in their making.
If one thing is for sure it is, that it’s difficult to describe music festivals because each provides us with different experiences. One thing is true however of all music festivals, the community that is created, is unmatched by any other musical experience. People gather at these events with one purpose: to celebrate music, and whether you are a busy college student with ever rising debt or a business executive with 50 hour work weeks, music festivals have become three-day getaways from the hardships of the real world. But not only do we as consumers benefit from these events, our consumption alone has helped many up-and-coming artists as well.
It’s undoubtedly true that Generation Y has dominated social media, and the power we have created for ourselves by being social media moguls has in turn created tremendous opportunities for obscure and underground artists to land themselves within the contract of a recording label. We have made it so simple to share and multiply the fan base and recognition of any one person, that this ease of availability to online distribution and preferment has helped jumpstart an artist’s career and help him or her gain an audience with as little as a click on a button. As a production company the trends that are carried online are becoming more and more important to finding the appropriate acts to lineup a music festival. Finding an artist on Soundcloud or Hype Machine who has a huge following may well mean an invitation to perform at a music festival, this being an attempt by these production companies to imitate the online trends of consumption. The platform for artist growth that social media has shaped has with it made music festivals a platform for the launch of their careers.
Not only have music festivals helped foster the growth of an artist, but the commercial gain companies have is ample as well. Corporate sponsors and music festival producers will pay huge lumps of money to re-invent a plot of grassland, and produce a theatrical wonderland of not only music, but product tasting as well. Drinks, freebees, tiny villages are created to be filled with their goods. At music festivals you can almost guarantee that a brand name will spread like wildfire; from photo booths, to tags on social media, to a pool of readily available subscribers aiming to win some free swag. No wonder the amount of budgeted marketing for music festivals has drastically increased, these venues are about the easiest ways of getting consumers to come to you rather than investing in Neuromarketing techniques aimed at attracting them.
Although obvious that the companies branding themselves within a music festival are bound to gain some money and exposure, those behind the curtains of it all are also looking at millions in revenue. Just this past year Coachella fest made a whopping 82 million dollars in revenue and broke attendance records, and even though a lot of that revenue comes from ticket sales alone, a huge clump is made up by the market that is created inside the venue. The “overpriced everything galore” music festivals have created inside is also a huge contributor to the monetary success of these events and music festivals have Price Elasticity of Demand to thank. Decrease the number of substitute goods for a common good such as water, and all of the sudden there is a drastic increase in the demand of that $5 water bottle. Not only that, but these music festival producers are also beginning to pay celebrities to attend and float around the VIP sections with you…why? Well, when we place celebrities in a pedestal, we crave to be and live just like them, so maybe purchasing a VIP ticket will do just that, maybe staying onsite at venue camping or partnering hotels for the 3 days will heighten this feeling, if only for 72 hours.
It’s not about bringing music to people anymore, it’s about selling an experience and draining your pockets. And even though this type of wealth primarily stays within the festival grounds, the increase in music festivals has also meant an increase in money generated locally. Booking hotels, eating out, buying that last minute fanny pack and tarp, local businesses see an increase in revenue as well, and they are certainly not complaining. Despite the fact that these aspects have underwritten the success and popularity of music festivals, in large part, it only benefits the big corporate promoters and investors and this in turn discharges some negative outcomes for music festival goers.
About 10 years ago we only had a few festivals to choose from, now from the months of April to August it is almost guaranteed that a music festival will be taking place somewhere near you. But can we attest that with this increase in music festivals, there has also been an increase in demand knowing most music festivals have refused to lower their costs? In a survey I conducted amongst my friends 57% of them said that they have attended a music festival and 63% claim they will attend one within the next year. However gauge how fast ticket sales are stirring within music festivals across the world and you’ll notice that most festivals are having a hard time selling out. I like to say I am part of a group of friends who are well acquainted with the music festival scene, and therefore my own projection of the demand in music festivals may not serve as claim enough for the entire population, but it’s simple, if the majority of festival goers are within the ages of 18-27 how can music festival producers expect increases in ticket sales when they refuse to lower costs?
Most of the individuals I surveyed said that their incentive for attending a music festival was mainly due to the lineup. With the increase in artistry created by our social media undertakings, and the recent consideration corporates have placed in our digital trends, music festival producers are starting to chase after the same pool of talent. These individuals are demanding to book similar bands within a small timeframe, and as a result many of these bands are able to mandate higher pay. Music festivals are overrunning talent cost and burdening the consumer with the extra costs by increasing ticket prices. As a result this has derailed the ability of the largest market of consumers (those within the ages of 18-27) to buy tickets at all. However, a “feasible” solution that these producers have found has been to oversell the venues, and increase the amount of tickets available to deduce the impact on each consumer, this might have been obvious if you were at Outside Lands this past year and felt a little claustrophobic
So it is true that the lack in record sales for artists has resulted in higher demands in pay for these music festivals, the odds seemed to have landed in their favor when investors saw a bright future in the music festival industry and decided to pay attention to our online consumer patterns. Promotional strategies and advertising and branding approaches have amplified in cost and in effort in order to help music festivals differentiate themselves amongst their competitors. Even though more festivals means allowing more people to enjoy music, I ask myself if this bubble will ever pop knowing there has been a huge increase in costs for both consumers and producers?
An economic ‘bubble’ of any kind tends to pop when the corporates fail to recognize the greater costs of their continued growth. Music festivals have continued to pop-up at every corner and they seem to lack the understanding that lowering costs may well be the only way to stay alive. In my opinion the only way to come out alive in this game is to lower prices and localize a music festival lineup. You can’t be the next Coachella and go 0-100 real quick, creating a music festival of that mass not only takes time, but the efforts of Generation Y to carry the hype with it; meaning generating the appropriate artistry and ambiance. An underground music festival only a few get to brag about with projected up and coming artists can grow to be the next Coachella in the years to come… and once it does, that’s when producers should start getting scared. Being the next big music festival means competing for bigger names that attract a greater surge of people, and overcrowding/overpricing to compensate the greater costs, all for what can possibly be greater profits and opportunities of expansion or a total blunder and burst.
We have to put trust however in the way social currency works… if everyone knows about it… it isn’t cool anymore. Once music festivals hit the major leagues it becomes rather difficult to stay alive because we have a tendency to aim for the unknown, exclusivity, and secrecy that counter-culture ambiances provides us. So I’m not quite sure where we can expect the music festival scene to be in a few years when most of us, including myself, are still enjoying these events. However, what I am sure of is that the bubble continues to grow and if music festivals fail to deliver the experience we have grown to expect, while lowering costs, the bubble might pop!
