With Rising Expenses, Can Music Festivals Keep Up?
With Rising Expenses, Can Music Festivals Keep Up?
Music festivals are having trouble staying afloat with the rising demands of today’s circuit
Music festivals have become a community where friends can have fun jumping around in the hot sun while listening to talented musicians. Though these festivals are nothing but enjoyable for the patrons, they can be very stressful for the organizers behind the scenes. Venue costs, equipment, dates, medical, and security, are only some of the many aspects that a successful festival needs to sort out before the actual day comes. These preparations are why so many festivals, both small and large, are finding it harder to survive the demands.
Oxjam is a music festival that is hosted by the popular charity Oxfam, who raise money to fight poverty and suffering around the world. The festival is held in multiple cities throughout the UK and is coordinated by volunteers. They raise money through fund-raisers leading up to the event, so that the festival itself can be free to the public. This year, Oxjam Southampton failed to return.
Last year’s manager of Oxjam Southampton, Steve Lowis, stated that “the problem is all about timing and support”. The event was put on at a time when the students of the city had not yet returned for university. With students as the main supporters, only a handful of people showed up to the beneficiary gigs. Also, the city council didn’t help fund the event, which led to financial and promotional issues. “We made more money on cake sales then we did at any of the gigs we put on. Which was just like what?” Lowis commented. “Over the years I never really found the answer to the formula to getting people out to shows.” With such a small turn out it seemed hard to legitimize the large amounts of money being put into the festival.
Oxfam was not the only Southampton-based music festival that failed to return this year. Another local festival called Ejector Seat could not endure the growing costs. “Despite the various income sources that we've developed with food vendors, contractors, in-kind donations and sponsors the costs of the festival are too high for us to put it on without the help of funding,” a statement on the festival’s website read. Manger Charlie Hislop commented, “I hate to let people down.”
Southampton has not been the only city to notice the ever-growing demands of the festival scene. Recently, a number of festivals have tried and failed to even begin. Danny Hagan, founder of the unsuccessful Third Rail Festival, believes the main issues revolve around the high start up costs. “The need to differentiate from all the other events puts greater demand on cash flow, and requires more to be spent before the initial ticket income is received.” The organizers of Alt-Fest, a failed Kettering festival, elaborated on start-up costs through their Facebook statement. “The festival was going to cost £1,703,000 in total to put on, including artists, riders, travel, accommodation, production: power, staging, sound, lighting, track way, fencing, water, waste, the venue fee, security, medical assistance, traffic management, health & safety, marketing and much more.” Even with Marilyn Manson as a headliner, Alt-fest was ultimately too costly to continue through their means of crowd funding.
Blissfields Festival, an annual show in Winchester, brings in around 4,000 patrons and even won the Best Small UK Festival award in 2007. In 2008, they were forced to cancel due to an increase in costs from trying to expand. According to Bliss, this tends to happen when a festival begins to attract more attention. “Agents are always expecting more fees especially for headliners, and as you event appears to be more successful they are not afraid to ask. People are expecting more from a festival than they did 10 years ago.”
On a larger scale, even massive well-known festivals like Glastonbury are seeing the increase of expenses. In 2008, Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis told Toby Walne for the Mail on Sunday that, “The festival generates a huge amount of money - about £26.5m this year. However, the costs for holding the event are astronomical and eat up almost everything. We hope to make a profit of about £2million this year.” Since then, the costs have just been growing. Each year, the festival has been increasing their ticket prices in order to balance the increase in production value, yet patrons still buy the expensive tickets and sell out the show in record time. Standard tickets cost £220 + £5 booking fee per person this year for the event and sold out in just twenty-five minutes. Eavis commented on the ticket prices in 2008 saying, “I do try and hold it down, but the minimum rise we can get away with is ten quid more,” and obviously this practice has continued over the years.
For most festivals, the key to success is having a structured plan from the beginning. Some festivals only make it to their actual day of, due to an extraordinary amount of work handled in advance. “We have managed by not pushing our growth too much, knowing how many tickets we are likely to sell and budgeting accordingly, keeping to a budget is the most important planning we can do,” Bliss commented. SMILEfest, a student-run festival put on by Southampton Solent University, begins their planning months in advance in order to be successful by spring. Professor Martin James, academic advisor for the festival, commented that, “there are all of these hidden costs” and unfortunately planning can only go so far.
So where does this leave music festivals, when even the biggest names are seeing an increase in expenses? Patrons are expecting bigger spectacles every year and it becomes harder to pull off with a limited budget. With so many festivals to choose from, the need to differentiate is essential and expensive to the point of small-scale failure. Although the obstacles are growing, music festivals continue to do their best to meet the demands. Bliss remarked, “We work to grow the festival as a community…where all ages can enjoy alongside each other without compromising the quality of music.”
