Australian Festivals - boom and bust

[5co77ie]

interesting piece here about the collapse of the Australian festival market - in particular the bigger festivals.

This is not a specifically Australian problem - though it is magnified here to some extent by the high Australian dollar (meaning more young people opt to spend disposable income on travel) and by the saturation of the local summer festival marketplace, fuelled by European and North American rock bands and electronic dance acts coming here in their ''off season''. At the recent Bigsound music industry conference in Brisbane, one of the seminars was called ''Festivals - Are They The New Pub Rock?'' The last few years have seen an almost blanket saturation: too many festivals offering much the same entertainment for a similar demographic. Some have survived and even thrived, such as the Falls Festival in Victoria, Tasmania and now Byron Bay, Splendour in the Grass and the East Coast Blues and Roots festival, also in Byron Bay, and Stereosonic, which has this year ambitiously added an extra day in each city.

Edited October 21, 2013 by 5co77ie