Primavera Sound Barcelona 2023 + Primavera Sound Madrid 2023

[scatteredscreens]

6 minutes ago, Gregorick said:

I wasn't expecting solutions to all of the problems that this year presented but it would have been nice to know what kind of things they are thinking of changing to make water access better, improve movement around the site etc.

Seems like this Q&A was really just an acknowledgement of the problems so I'm somewhat optimistic they will work on improving those aspects but we won't hear for a while. They certainly won't be upping the capacity again this year (without some sort of drastic overhaul) but I wouldn't bet on them reducing it either. Gabi's responses in particular sound like he saw no crowding problems this year at all, which is a little worrying as it was fairly obviously too busy at some places.

Seems quite tone deaf to me. Even the acknowledgement of things is like, oh yeah we'll try and sort it, etc. Very loose and non comital. The people who book this festival and the artist relations side of things is obviously god tier but for me personally I'm gonna have to see some changes before I go back again, never mind how good the line up is.

[Gregorick]

2 minutes ago, JedTheHumanoid said:

That's really not how I read it. he talks specifically about limiting the size and issues with BITS

That is true but I specifically meant him doubling down on this:

"But the festival wasn’t oversold. There is a limit to how many people can attend and we didn’t pass that."

[JedTheHumanoid]

2 minutes ago, Gregorick said:

That is true but I specifically meant him doubling down on this:

"But the festival wasn’t oversold. There is a limit to how many people can attend and we didn’t pass that."

it's two different things, if a festival is oversold it's crowded everywhere. that wasn't the problem this year, the problem was that people were not spread across the entire festival grounds. I guess that's what he meant

 

[jannybruck]

I'd be really disappointed if they got rid of Bits.

I just can't commit to an early bird and essentially giving them float money with all this uncertainty around what they're actually doing for next year.

[JedTheHumanoid]

Just now, jannybruck said:

I'd be really disappointed if they got rid of Bits.

I just can't commit to an early bird and essentially giving them float money with all this uncertainty around what they're actually doing for next year.

I don't see them giving up bits. he talked about the beach area, the far far away part of bits only

[xxialac]

Mad Cool is (checks notes) taking place on Wednesday and they haven't yet shared information on how to get to and from the site - in fact the location is not even disclosed on their website! - nor a timetable, nor an explanation of what you are allowed to bring.

Whilst I'm disappointed about the double stage thing, it's massively admirable that the festival is being so transparent as to do a Q&A like this (do other festivals do this?). And it's entirely fair that fully 12 months away and also with the need to also gain the consent of the council and the bridge owner, they don't have all the answers yet as to how to improve things but are committed to making attendees more 'comfortable' next year.

Edited June 30, 2022 by xxialac

[BenG92]

En route to Rock Werchter and there were literally 3x as many free water taps while waiting for the shuttle to the grounds than there were at Primavera itself 🤣

[puckno]

To me it is quite obvious that Gabi and the festival have not surveyed the users from the different ticket categories etc. In my view the new Mordor design is shitty and I am sure a lot of people think the same. And the new VIP areas were horrible. I am getting depressed of Gabis answers.

"The new positioning of the main stages, which has been a success"

To me this is alternative facts.

Edited June 30, 2022 by puckno

[puckno]

The way they answer on the Ciutat gig que situation implies they will continue with the same system next year. That is gross.

[xxialac]

4 minutes ago, puckno said:

To me it is quite obvious that Gabi and the festival have not surveyed the users from the different ticket categories etc. In my view the new Mordor design is shitty and I am sure a lot of people think the same. And the new VIP areas were horrible. I am getting depressed of Gabis answers.

"The new positioning of the main stages, which has been a success"

To me this is alternative facts.

I'm unhappy as you are about the twin stage set up but it's clearly him just stating his opinion and whilst I strongly disagree, there are some people on here and elsewhere who've said that they preferred the setup to the old one.

[Orens]

Gabi: I want to give you an exclusive. I am going to stop being the spokesperson for the festival. This is the last interview I am going to do, anywhere. From now Alfonso Lanza will be in charge of all this.

[JedTheHumanoid]

6 minutes ago, puckno said:

To me it is quite obvious that Gabi and the festival have not surveyed the users from the different ticket categories etc. In my view the new Mordor design is shitty and I am sure a lot of people think the same. And the new VIP areas were horrible. I am getting depressed of Gabis answers.

"The new positioning of the main stages, which has been a success"

To me this is alternative facts.

I don't know, I kind of liked it. Im happy it stays.

I don't know what's their criteria for calling it success, but I'm sure there are people who liked it and others that didn't

[puckno]

1 minute ago, xxialac said:

I'm unhappy as you are about the twin stage set up but it's clearly him just stating his opinion and whilst I strongly disagree, there are some people on here and elsewhere who've said that they preferred the setup to the old one.

Yes I have no doubt these people exists.

[xxialac]

4 minutes ago, puckno said:

The way they answer on the Ciutat gig que situation implies they will continue with the same system next year. That is gross.

That's completely misquoting him. He didn't imply that at all.

[JedTheHumanoid]

3 minutes ago, puckno said:

Yes I have no doubt these people exists.

 

[scatteredscreens]

7 minutes ago, Orens said:

Gabi: I want to give you an exclusive. I am going to stop being the spokesperson for the festival. This is the last interview I am going to do, anywhere. From now Alfonso Lanza will be in charge of all this.

Clearly didn't like being called out for the mistakes he made.

[puckno]

3 minutes ago, xxialac said:

That's completely misquoting him. He didn't imply that at all.

I disagree with you. He voiced his opinion on 15% reserved tickets, thinking this is the best. 'There has always been lines'. And bla bla bla.... Not really acknowleding the huge problem with people standing in line hour after hour in the blistering sun to not get in, to not know if they can get in, hours they could have spent on other things being in this wonderful city. The way I read the transcript lack both an acknowledgement of the problem and an acknowledgement they need to do things very differently.

[JedTheHumanoid]

3 minutes ago, puckno said:

I disagree with you. He voiced his opinion on 15% reserved tickets, thinking this is the best. 'There has always been lines'. And bla bla bla.... Not really acknowleding the huge problem with people standing in line hour after hour in the blistering sun to not get in, to not know if they can get in, hours they could have spent on other things being in this wonderful city. The way I read the transcript lack both an acknowledgement of the problem and an acknowledgement they need to do things very differently.

the way I see it, he listed the various options and wrote the downsides of each of them, and ended by saying they'll need to think about it

no magic solutions here, when a lot of people want to enter a small place, something's gotta give

[xxialac]

6 minutes ago, puckno said:

I disagree with you. He voiced his opinion on 15% reserved tickets, thinking this is the best. 'There has always been lines'. And bla bla bla.... Not really acknowleding the huge problem with people standing in line hour after hour in the blistering sun to not get in, to not know if they can get in, hours they could have spent on other things being in this wonderful city. The way I read the transcript lack both an acknowledgement of the problem and an acknowledgement they need to do things very differently.

Fair enough on that earlier comment but he also said:

"We will see what format we use for entry" and he also said "We have conducted a survey about this and are still waiting for the result"

That is not implying that it will be the same system next year, clearly no decision has been made either way.

And the 15% pre-sold IMO is such a small number it doesn't materially affect people's chances of getting in. And of course next year there will be a tonne less people in Barcelona with only one weekend taking place.

Edited June 30, 2022 by xxialac

[puckno]

Overall, this english transcript of the interview was a huge disappointment. It was low in content on acknowledging many of this years problems, zero info on if anything will be changed for the vip packages, the line problem for venues, and so on. I still trust the festival for the lineups, there is no competition on depth and quality. They have still lost me for everything else, the interview did nothing at all to reinstall trust, quite the opposite actually. Though, I will still go back next year. Due to their consistent great lineups, to the great audience, and Barcelona being Barcelona. 

[JedTheHumanoid]

1 minute ago, puckno said:

Overall, this english transcript of the interview was a huge disappointment. It was low in content on acknowledging many of this years problems, zero info on if anything will be changed for the vip packages, the line problem for venues, and so on. I still trust the festival for the lineups, there is no competition on depth and quality. They have still lost me for everything else, the interview did nothing at all to reinstall trust, quite the opposite actually. Though, I will still go back next year. Due to their consistent great lineups, to the great audience, and Barcelona being Barcelona. 

I think saying that the stages stay side by side means the VIP areas in front are not coming back. to me it looks like the most important part of VIP package, but never bought one so maybe I miss something.

on all other subjects - I really didn't expect any answers this early, we're less than a month since it ended, and almost a year to go, "we're working on it" was the only reasonable answer I expected, they didn't ignore any of the issues we saw

 

[xxialac]

I would have been more worried if they arrogantly stated that they had worked out all the answers already. I thought they struck a fair balance between humility/honesty and defending some of the points they did feel more confident about.

It's been only 3 weeks since the last one ended and 47 weeks until the next one. Not unreasonable that they can't tell us the detail for the next one as these things take time.

With the major differential in price between early birds and later release tickets, presumably it shouldn't be difficult to get your money back in the secondary market if you decide against going at a later date. 

 

[ConfidenceMan]

23 minutes ago, xxialac said:

I would have been more worried if they arrogantly stated that they had worked out all the answers already. I thought they struck a fair balance between humility/honesty and defending some of the points they did feel more confident about.

It's been only 3 weeks since the last one ended and 47 weeks until the next one. Not unreasonable that they can't tell us the detail for the next one as these things take time.

With the major differential in price between early birds and later release tickets, presumably it shouldn't be difficult to get your money back in the secondary market if you decide against going at a later date. 

 

This echoes a lot of what I was going to say. I don't speak Catalan so I was relying on the Twitter translation thread but I thought most of it was reasonable, especially given the context of the issues emerging elsewhere about bars, travel, Covid and crowd control. 

We don't need to re-litigate the issues like the bridge closure etc as we've discussed that extensively in the other thread, and I agree - if Gabi had said "we've got it all figured out", I'd have nearly been more irritated that they didn't fix things last time! 

Some of the issues are bad organisation and comms, and under estimating demand (Ciutat, bars, vip etc), and others are out of their control to an extent (the bridge access is a local authority decision, the beach capacity is, the noise levels are etc) 

I do think a little clarity on what's to be included in VIP next year would have been a good idea though, given the price difference and the changes this time. 

I don't think I'll be buying an early bird tomorrow but I certainly wouldn't rule out immediately regretting that decision. 😂

[LastSeeker]

Interesting to see they are already thinking out the possibility of ditching the beach area (which I assume is the whole of the current "bits" area as per the last few years layout)

Quote

Gabi: At the moment, we are at a stage of reflection, re-thinking the festival site. Maybe next year there won’t be the beach zone, that’s a possibility, limiting the festival capacity a little.

If the bridge is not available for use by regular ticket holders then this area is simply not workable in my view. Very few people will be using it during the main acts as it costs so much time to get to and back from. Ideally I'd like to know if this area is continuing before I commit funds for next year as it has multiple impacts on booking strategy, capacity and timetable management from the organisers (i.e. they need to create bigger clashes to spread folk out on smaller site).

Quote

Alfonso: If you do free reserved tickets, like at Brunch, people get the tickets then don’t show up. We got lots of no shows at Brunch. And that was really frustrating.

This however concerns me. You are the organisers, you figure out the logistics! Ideally BEFORE the festival starts. The whole Brunch debacle was laughable and the end result easily predicable. How about communicating the capacity of brunch ahead of time? Ideally on all posts / images mentioning it before selling tickets? That way folks are aware of how likely (or not) they might be able to attend.

Don't want to seem like I'm only complaining, I do love this festival and I can forgive some of the errors this year due to exceptional circumstances but it was pretty obvious to me just walking into the site on Thursday that there were major issues and a lot of that was due to decisions made (or not made) by organisers in the build up and need to be fixed in the future. My concern is with the Madrid edition next year the focus will be on setting that up rather than getting the Barcelona edition back on track.

[JedTheHumanoid]

12 minutes ago, LastSeeker said:

Interesting to see they are already thinking out the possibility of ditching the beach area (which I assume is the whole of the current "bits" area as per the last few years layout)

I don't think the beach refers to whole of the bits area. I think it's only the sandy part, where Dice and Xiringuito Aperol are. Tous and Night Pro stays