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Post by 3post1jack1 on Aug 15, 2019 8:09:09 GMT -5
Why are music festivals so expensive? | The Economist
good video. confirms a lot of things festival nerds like us already know, but it's nice to see it in a video format. plus that boomtown festival looks pretty cool. have no idea what the lineups are like but i'm crazy about the idea of hiring actors to create a theme for the weekend. i don't know what the story would be, but wouldn't be cool to be at bonnaroo for the weekend and stumble across actors engaged in scenes, with occasional updates via pretapes on the monitors before big acts, and somehow the whole story resolves itself before the sunday headliner. it'd be like a concert gag done at scale, feels very "sleep no more" to me.
other topics covered, spoilered if people want to watch the video first:
-festivals are more expensive because live performance is the primary revenue stream for artists in the streaming age. in other words artists are asking for more money.
-LN and AEG own a significant chunk of festivals, so they are able to offer multiple festival deals to artists, which results in festivals feeling samey, which has resulted in a decline in festival attendance (in europe) since 2016
-LN and AEG owning multiple festivals allows them to spread risk. so if one festival isn't successful because of weather or whatever, it's fine because another festival will help recoup costs
-a polling of European festival goers find the vast majority attend a festival for "the experience" rather than lineup. only a tiny percentage attend because of headliners. this doesn't feel true in the states, but american festival preferences tend to drag behind european, so maybe this is coming down the pipe, or maybe it's already the case and I just don't know it.
-pre-industrial revolution we were in a commodities economy, post industrial revolution we were in a goods economy, now we are in an experience economy. so festivals promising or hinting at having some experience that will help you find your "true self" or somehow better yourself are what sells. so as much as we have mocked bonnaroo selling "vibes" and "experiences" instead of a lineup over the past few years, it looks like they were actually ahead of the curve on this.
-building on the above point, the instagram post is the equivalent of the rinky dinky souvenir you used to buy in the goods economy to remember your trip. nobody cared about the souvenir except you, and nobody really cares about your instagram post except you. this was illuminating to me, since I don't have a ton of instagram followers or get many likes, but i do take lots of photos at festivals, and think very hard about which ones i'm going to post on instagram. and when i want to remember the festival, i don't go into my photos app, i go to my instagram profile and flip through the pictures/videos, since to me these were the souvenirs that best represented my experience. so it's really more for me rather than an audience, even though i post them on "social" media.
anyway the video made me think a lot, interested in the impressions of other inforoo'ers.
Wasnt there only about 20 folks at their coachella show? Not saying it would be the same on the farm, but I'd think that would impact their scheduling somewhat at least.
Post by 3post1jack1 on Aug 16, 2019 13:01:09 GMT -5
for those who don't listen to WTF pod, there has been on ongoing thing for a while wherein Marc Maron doesn't like Steely Dan. Finally this year Steely Dan clicked for him. he talked about it with a guest, and went into it a few times in the intro.
then he got an email from Donald Fagen, who he has never met or corresponded with, saying "i knew you'd eventually come around". turns out fagen is a WTF listener and was well aware of Marc's previous disinterest in Steely Dan.
for those who don't listen to WTF pod, there has been on ongoing thing for a while wherein Marc Maron doesn't like Steely Dan. Finally this year Steely Dan clicked for him. he talked about it with a guest, and went into it a few times in the intro.
then he got an email from Donald Fagen, who he has never met or corresponded with, saying "i knew you'd eventually come around". turns out fagen is a WTF listener and was well aware of Marc's previous disinterest in Steely Dan.
i got a kick out of that.
this is Mr Faqen himself, posted to the steely dan website back in the 90's:
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