Shaky Knees: The Festival Market’s Volatile Year

2024 started out with no greater symbol of a softening festival market than Coachella. Long the U.S. fest market’s trailblazing megafest and a bellwether for the market at large, the Goldenvoice/AEG Presents confab in Indio, California slow first weekend sell-out and not selling out its second weekend didn’t augur well for the industry. In the not too distant past, Coachella had built up such brand equity that it would sell out before the lineup was even announced. This year’s flagging sales, some reasoned, were due to rising prices, an inflationary economy, a less-than-buzzy lineup (though headliners Lana Del Rey, Tyler, The Creator and Doja Cat are a sweet spot for many), competition from stadium tours and/ or a glut of live music.

But Coachella was just the tip of 2024’s softening festival market, which saw dozens — at least close to 90 — shutter for various reasons. This included Desert Daze, Electric Zoo, Firefly, Format Festival, Life Is Beautiful, Lollapalooza Paris & Stockholm, Lovers & Friends, Made In America, Nocturnal Wonderland, Okeechobee, The Peach Music Festival, Primavera Sounds in Asunción, Buenos Aires and São Paulo, Something In The Water, Wonderstruck and, just this month, Bésame Mucho, a Latin music fest set for Dodger Stadium with Shakira, Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull.

“Like everyone else, I see what’s being reported and see a lot of events being canceled and I’m not completely sure what to attribute that to,” says Ashley Capps, co-founder of Bonnaroo and director of Knoxville, Tennessee’s critically acclaimed Big Ears Festival, which draws roughly 32,000 people over four days and curates a musically adventurous and omnivorous fest for fans who skew older. “Part of it, in my estimation, is just a matter of volume. I don’t mean the number of festivals per se, although that’s part of it, but the number of tours and the number of shows going on any given night, even in a town the size of Knoxville, is sometimes astonishing compared to what it was just a few years ago.”

Others within the industry point out that for top artists, festivals, which can provide seven or eight figures for premier talent, don’t have the appeal or payoffs they once did. “The bigger companies are buying tours,” said Michael Berg, a festival owner, talent buyer and partner in events including the North Coast Music Festival in Chicago.He told Pollstar in June, “Because of the economic cost of firing up the engine, it’s easier for a band to take a tour deal, go out, live on a bus and go city to city rather than fire up the machine and do just one festival. It’s just way more expensive. …It’s definitely harder to get artists to commit to festivals right now and then also to try to make a festival lineup that’s unique and not like every other homogenized one out there.”

Still, Outside Lands, San Francisco’s independently owned megafest, was one of 2024’s bright spots. “This year’s festival was a great success,” Another Planet’s Allen Scott told Pollstar in August. “At one point, six of the top 10 songs in the world were by Outside Lands artists: Post Malone, Teddy Swims, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter (two songs) and Shaboozey. We expanded the type of artists we can book at Outside Lands. We’ve always had an open playbook in terms of what we book — rock, electronic, heritage artists, Latin, roots, pop music, hip-hop, jazz. It’s a diverse audience that comes to Outside Lands and it’s reflective of the San Francisco Bay Area.”

“There’s a lot going on out there that feels cookie cutter,” says Capps, who also noted the success of this year’s Stagecoach Festival, Goldenvoice/AEG’s country fest, saying it was, “very creatively programmed.” He also discussed the complexity of putting on a festival today. “There’s a lot of dynamics at play, and some of them may be generational,” he said. “Different generations have different mindsets and ideas about what they want from these immersive experiences.”