Opinion: Glastonbury Hosts World-Class Electronic Music. The Problem Is Getting to See It.

[themunn]

On 7/4/2024 at 8:25 PM, Spindles said:

The assembly looks perfect for it to me, big enclosed space, about 4 times the capacity of the old silent disco tents. 

I can't say I've heard a single person mention the assembly during or since the festival.  Did anyone actually go there?

 

To be fair the venue itself didn't open until quite late - I went down a few times during the day and it was just people partying outside didn't really look like much of a stage, so wouldn't be surprised if most didn't realise it opened into a club later on. Did make it for Craig Richards and it was VERY hot so can understand why they keep it closed while sun is up

[bob323]

2 hours ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

"The festival should change its entire operation so that I, the main character, can be the only one who waltzes straight into the big names without having to plan or sacrifice anything else"

so your saying it's our fault for wanting to see very popular bands scheduled at very precise times and locations for mass crowding???

Edited July 6 by bob323

[CaledonianGonzo]

22 minutes ago, bob323 said:

so your saying it's our fault for wanting to see very popular bands scheduled at very precise times and locations for mass crowding???

 

You can easily see those popular bands bob. You just need to get there in time.

[bob323]

12 minutes ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

 

You can easily see those popular bands bob. You just need to get there in time.

(this not me! i only saw 4 bands in the whole fest)

 

but.. people will want to see popular bands, it really is not very hard to predict. so if you have say Shania Twain at the pyramid stage and then another big name on the other stage - just after she finishes, it's not very hard to predict whats going to happen to the 50k+ of people. blaming the mass crowds for doing mass crowdy things, does not help or change anything

 

Edited July 6 by bob323

[Suprefan]

On 7/5/2024 at 1:19 PM, Alex DeLarge said:

I think the unpopularity at the minute of indie/ alternative music is contributing to the bigger crowds.

 

Young people aren't going round the festival checking out indie music they've never heard of before. There's no NME/ music press telling you the top five hottest bands to check out or whatever. 

We have all of music pretty much at our fingertips but it means you fall into a rabbit-hole of your own tastes. Therefore there's big groups at hot, current names like Bicep and Mall Grab, then also the big nostalgia stuff from when we had a monoculture. 

 

 

The other thing is more people just want to go where the perceived party is. They dont care if its totally a name or not. They hear the sounds and flock to it. I would find it a very fascinating thing if they flipped the programming and made all the dance stuff be in the day and all the bands late night til morning. See what kind of shift there is with crowds. 
 

I mean you clearly saw Barry Cant Swim having a large crowd in the broad daylight shows the appetite there is. But theres only so many artists that might be willing to dj/perform with the sun out. But  you never know, maybe they can try it. If you could put a Calvin Harris on the Pyramid at 5pm lets see what that does and shows what they arent calculating crowd wise

[Alex DeLarge]

54 minutes ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

 

You can easily see those popular bands bob. You just need to get there in time.

 

 

I was at the pub today and I met some people complaining they missed Charli XCX after watching Dua. Literally I was in that field over an hour before. We had to sacrifice seeing Dua but we still made it.

[HappyInAField]

15 hours ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

"The festival should change its entire operation so that I, the main character, can be the only one who waltzes straight into the big names without having to plan or sacrifice anything else"

🙄

 

"The festival should overlook well-meaning debate about overcrowding and safety risks so that I, the main character on a forum, can sit and post smug messages without having to sacrifice the opinion I already have"

 

FIFY

[CaledonianGonzo]

Good shout.  We'll see if any wholesale changes arise.

 

John Kerridge answered a question I asked him on Twitter regarding the Sugababes on WH. I guess I didn't phrase it particularly well, but the sense I got was that he didn't see booking acts that fill the field was problematic in itself as long as there was the right sort of crowd management oversight.

[Skip997]

2 minutes ago, CaledonianGonzo said:

 the right sort of crowd management oversight.

Reduce tickets by about 20,000

[CaledonianGonzo]

Fag packet maths suggests that would take about £7M out of the budget - which would have to come from somewhere, potentially resulting in actual compromises to safety that they don't have to make at the moment.

[MilkyJoe]

27 minutes ago, Skip997 said:

Reduce tickets by about 20,000

I don't think reducing tickets by 20,000 would change much. You'd still get overcrowding at certain stages that should probably have been planned better. Crowd management is the best way to avoid these problems and closing stages, or fields is proof that they are working hard to manage the issue.

 

There is also a huge amount of people online saying they didn't have a problem with crowds this year. Isn't it all relative to individual plans?

[CaledonianGonzo]

There were posts on the Site Quieter? thread from folk working on the security side that seemed to be saying that there were new systems in place to clamp down on the numbers of people there without tickets.  And certainly in my experience the site overall was quieter than 2022 / 2023.  I think that's a more meaningful area to target.

[HappyInAField]

12 hours ago, Suprefan said:

The other thing is more people just want to go where the perceived party is. They dont care if its totally a name or not. They hear the sounds and flock to it. I would find it a very fascinating thing if they flipped the programming and made all the dance stuff be in the day and all the bands late night til morning. See what kind of shift there is with crowds. 
 

I mean you clearly saw Barry Cant Swim having a large crowd in the broad daylight shows the appetite there is. But theres only so many artists that might be willing to dj/perform with the sun out. But  you never know, maybe they can try it. If you could put a Calvin Harris on the Pyramid at 5pm lets see what that does and shows what they arent calculating crowd wise

 

Yes yes yes to this. 2025 might be the best year for a trial. Pre-fallow, pre-whatever might change with the post-Sir Michael era (hopefully not yet...)

 

Stick Bicep on subbing Pyramid. Four Tet headlining Other. A hyped DJ like Jyoty or Eliza Rose early afternoon at Other, then regulars like Midland on WH? It worked for Nia Archives

 

Spreading DJ's around won't make people happy, but it could set up a much better 2027

[Alex DeLarge]

The site felt a lot quieter than 2022 to me.

[GrumpyRaver]

6 minutes ago, Alex DeLarge said:

The site felt a lot quieter than 2022 to me.

Me too… other than Sugababes and Thur night Silver Hayes, I didn’t encounter any problems with crowds at all. Felt really chill to me.

[MEGATRONICMEATWAGON]

8 minutes ago, Alex DeLarge said:

The site felt a lot quieter than 2022 to me.

 

1 minute ago, GrumpyRaver said:

Me too… other than Sugababes and Thur night Silver Hayes, I didn’t encounter any problems with crowds at all. Felt really chill to me.

 

When you talk about the site being quieter, do you mean in general (along walkways, queueing for food etc) or just at the shows themselves?

[Spindles]

2 minutes ago, MEGATRONICMEATWAGON said:

When you talk about the site being quieter, do you mean in general (along walkways, queueing for food etc) or just at the shows themselves?

For me a bit of both, moving around was much easier than 2022 and probably as easy as I've found it any other year.  I attended a good number of gigs that drew a big crowd, but few were so packed it was uncomfortable (I've become progressively more crowd averse the older I've got and this year I had zero issues being in the thick of it). 

 

I think that whatever they were doing to combat gatecrashers was working, apart from a handful of poor choices I thought they did a good job of scheduling acts to spread the crowd.  I get the feeling that a lot of people left before the headliners on Sunday evening because nowhere was as busy as I expected.

[Alex DeLarge]

8 minutes ago, MEGATRONICMEATWAGON said:

 

When you talk about the site being quieter, do you mean in general (along walkways, queueing for food etc) or just at the shows themselves?

 

 

 

Generally everywhere! I'm an outlier because I didn't see Shania, Bicep or Avril. 2022 just felt like consistently everywhere I went there were masses upon masses of people queuing for food, blocking off areas, it was hard to sit down a lot of the time.

 

I experienced a lot of busy crowds this year - Justice for one, but I never felt like I didn't have enough space to dance or move about if I wanted to. 

 

Food queues if you were smart about it were a lot easier to get through this year. 

 

There were times in 2022 I'd see somewhere was too crowded and I'd try and go elsewhere - just for that to be rammed as well.

 

edit: one thing that did take the mick this year though was toilets - awful, awful times waiting over half an hour for a slash. I don't condone peeing on the land but I can imagine if you have a weak bladder you'd be screwed. 

Edited July 7 by Alex DeLarge

[JeniHimdrix]

Can the big name dance acts not just start much earlier? Splitting the crowd and forcing an earlier start to proceedings for some might thin out late night participants to more hardcore night owls. This and more late night non dance options with smaller names all round. Everyone wins? Bulldozing the bits of the festival that make it unique so that we can have more late night capacity for big name dance acts is just going to change the character of the festival irreparably to me.

 

Just spotted this is exactly what mouserat said in post 2!

Edited July 7 by JeniHimdrix

[MEGATRONICMEATWAGON]

7 minutes ago, Spindles said:

For me a bit of both, moving around was much easier than 2022 and probably as easy as I've found it any other year.  I attended a good number of gigs that drew a big crowd, but few were so packed it was uncomfortable (I've become progressively more crowd averse the older I've got and this year I had zero issues being in the thick of it). 

 

I think that whatever they were doing to combat gatecrashers was working, apart from a handful of poor choices I thought they did a good job of scheduling acts to spread the crowd.  I get the feeling that a lot of people left before the headliners on Sunday evening because nowhere was as busy as I expected.

 

Yeah, regarding extra ppl on site, I did read that it was harder to get mates tickets for holding a hammer and putting on a high-vis for 10 minutes.

[GrumpyRaver]

1 hour ago, MEGATRONICMEATWAGON said:

 

 

When you talk about the site being quieter, do you mean in general (along walkways, queueing for food etc) or just at the shows themselves?

Both… only long queue I had for food was getting crumble outside Left Field on Sunday night, but that coincided with the end of Avril, and only time I felt busy on walkways was heading to Janelle, but was walking against the Shania tide

[Skip997]

4 minutes ago, MEGATRONICMEATWAGON said:

 

Yeah, regarding extra ppl on site, I did read that it was harder to get mates tickets for holding a hammer and putting on a high-vis for 10 minutes.

There was a noticeable reduction in crew numbers and the options to smuggle in were greatly reduced by the use of QR coded “build and break” wrist bands for early arrivals.

 

Meant I more than doubled my shifts, but got loads more meal tickets than normal 

[MEGATRONICMEATWAGON]

1 hour ago, Alex DeLarge said:

 

Generally everywhere! I'm an outlier because I didn't see Shania, Bicep or Avril. 2022 just felt like consistently everywhere I went there were masses upon masses of people queuing for food, blocking off areas, it was hard to sit down a lot of the time.

 

I experienced a lot of busy crowds this year - Justice for one, but I never felt like I didn't have enough space to dance or move about if I wanted to. 

 

Food queues if you were smart about it were a lot easier to get through this year. 

 

There were times in 2022 I'd see somewhere was too crowded and I'd try and go elsewhere - just for that to be rammed as well.

 

edit: one thing that did take the mick this year though was toilets - awful, awful times waiting over half an hour for a slash. I don't condone peeing on the land but I can imagine if you have a weak bladder you'd be screwed. 

 

Feel like I would've skipped a lot of the crowded areas as well, lol. 

 

Sugababes? Shania? No thanks. 

 

Would've been tempted by Avril, but pretty much for one song, and Bicep, prob wouldn't have made a huge effort to see either.

 

Did notice in 2023 that the food options, even later on when it's usually quieter around 8-9pm and everyone's already had their dinner, we're noticeably busier. Had to make do with Mac n cheese because erything else had a queue 30-40 deep.

[Kashkin]

I also found it quieter than the last couple of years, or certainly not busier anyway. 

[gfa]

On 7/3/2024 at 5:41 PM, Ninety9 said:

Mentioned it in another thread - Thursday either needs to be like Wednesday or open like Friday. Being half-way open is dangerous and leads to a poor experience.

 

Overall, an unpopular choice would be to have SE Corner to also finish at 3 - moving the programme earlier so Bicep would play at 11 for example and "forcing" people to stay in a particular area instead of going from Silver Hayes/Arcadia into SE Corner after 3.

 

 

Probably been replied to before but the shift of people moving to SEC after 3 when SH / Arcadia shut off isn't the problem - the issues are always around midnight to 2am when people squeeze in from the main stages