#047: The Death of the Mega Music Festival is Brewing
“Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently” — Henry Ford
The mega cross-genre music festival has been a staple of summer time for over three decades now. Starting in 1967 with the Monterey Pop Festival, the large outdoor music festival was born with a strong emphasis on folk and singer-songwriter music. Two year later there was Woodstock, but that was a one-off event and not an annually recurring music festival. Making the birth of the large U.S. cross-genre mega music festival Lollapalooza in 1991/1992. This was followed in the years after by now many dozens of festivals that have become a part of the pop lexicon, including Bonnaroo, Coachella, Governor’s Ball and so many more. When these festivals originally started, we were still in the era of network tv, billboards and radio dominating the media landscape. This was pre-social media, pre-music/video streaming and in a time where nearly every person was aware of the biggest songs, tv shows, movies in culture. But now fast-forward 30+ years later and clearly a lot has changed. In 2023, the media landscape is so fractured that only 4-5 songs or movies per year capture the cultural zeitgeist and rise to the point of awareness from nearly all (i.e. Top Gun: Maverick, Barbie etc). Everyone has their own personally curated feeds through the endless video streaming platforms, tv channels, playlists within music and algorithms feeding you content on TikTok/Instagram to create the information that you receive and engage with daily.
Due to this shift in the media landscape, it makes it more difficult to not only become a fan of a range of great artists/shows/movies, but sometimes to even be aware that they exist. This is the reason, over any other, that I’m predicting the death of the cross-genre mega music festival in the years ahead. I had a friend send me a note when reviewing the Lollapalooza line-up this year saying that he didn’t even know most of the artists performing. I’ve had this same thought when looking at any music festival line-up’s recently. But this isn’t due to the promoters booking small artists who don’t have real fan bases. This is due to it being too difficult in today’s world to know everything that exists.
How many of the following artists are you a fan of? Or how many could you even name one song? NewJeans. Noah Kahan. Peso Pluma. Shenseea. Luke Combs. Lil Baby. Joshua Bassett. These are all artists in different genres, but all of these artists have massive fan bases and very successful careers. If you aren’t in the music industry or a die-hard music fan, I would guess that you’ve only heard music from 2-3 of these artists at a maximum. So then why would you go buy a $500+ weekend ticket to a music festival? Especially when money is tight or if the country is in an economic downturn. At the same time, expenses, artist booking rates and insurance rates for these festivals continue to rapidly increase. Already in 2023, Made in America Festival (Jay-Z’s festival), Bamboozle and Desert Daze were cancelled and are going to review their plans for 2024. Sasquatch Fest in Washington State officially went belly up this year. This is why I predict that we’re coming to the end of an era for the massive music festival.
Does that mean that I predict the death of the music festival entirely? Hell no. I expect that there will be a pivot to lean in on the fracturing of the media landscape and more festivals will emerge that cater to a specific genre or demographic in order to achieve a higher level of success. We are seeing this already with the massive success of Rolling Loud for Hip Hop, EDC for electronic music and the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas for people in their 30’s/40’s who are nostalgic for the biggest artists from the late 1990’s/early 2000’s. This allows for a fan to purchase a ticket to a festival in which they likely know 70-80%+ of the artists, at a lower ticket price, and they will have an even better experience on-site. The biggest of the big festivals will survive due to their longevity and brand names alone (i.e. Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza etc). But expect many of the big cross-genre music festivals that are just a step or two below those to be replaced with more niche and targeted festivals in the years ahead.
