Why are music festivals so expensive? — Transcript

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1. 0:00I have never been to a music festival
2. 0:03until today surprising I know because in
3. 0:07the past 20 years they've become
4. 0:09increasingly popular
5. 0:11let's take California's Coachella it's
6. 0:14been running since 1999 when it had 25
7. 0:16thousand attendees 2017 there were
8. 0:19almost 250,000 of them and as festivals
9. 0:22have grown so if ticket prices in 1979 a
10. 0:27ticket for Glastonbury the UK's biggest
11. 0:29festival cost five pounds in 2019
12. 0:32it was 248 pounds to put things in
13. 0:35perspective if ticket prices rose with
14. 0:37inflation it'd be five times more
15. 0:39expensive today in reality they're 50
16. 0:42times more so why are festivals so
17. 0:44expensive running a festival takes a
18. 0:51huge amount of work this is Jenny Jordan
19. 0:54she's a festival expert we never
20. 0:57imagined the level of details going to
21. 1:00lack Mitchell is a festival producer he
22. 1:04runs boomtown one of the biggest
23. 1:05independent music festivals in the UK
24. 1:08it's like setting up a small town we've
25. 1:11got hundreds of lines of budgets you've
26. 1:14got to make sure that you've got water
27. 1:15to make sure you've got Wi-Fi internal
28. 1:18traffic management external drive
29. 1:19management toilets for different
30. 1:21security companies food stewarding drink
31. 1:23artists internal transport their list is
32. 1:26just bonkers at boomtown it also takes
33. 1:2912,000 crew 1596 tons of scaffolding 3
34. 1:33million litres of water
35. 1:34in 2000 bins and all that costs but then
36. 1:39there's one more thing that makes
37. 1:41festivals much more expensive
38. 1:46music and actually it all comes down to
39. 1:49this it's much more difficult now to
40. 1:53make money selling recorded music the
41. 1:57rise of streaming has basically flipped
42. 1:58the economics of the music industry
43. 2:00always hey this is Tom Standage he's the
44. 2:03head of all things digital at the
45. 2:05Economist and a drummer in his spare
46. 2:09time it used to be that you made your
47. 2:11money from selling records selling CDs
48. 2:13selling LPS and you promoted them by
49. 2:15going on tour and now you make your
50. 2:18money by going on tour and releasing an
51. 2:20album is just really an excuse for
52. 2:21another tour and as the importance of
53. 2:25touring has increased so have artists
54. 2:27fees at Woodstock in 1969 Jimi Hendrix
55. 2:31got today's equivalent of $125,000 in
56. 2:342019 at Coachella ariana grande was paid
57. 2:37eight million dollars that's sixty four
58. 2:40times more people out that really think
59. 2:44that we're making millions we barely
60. 2:46broke even last year even though the
61. 2:47festival completely sold out because
62. 2:48it's so expensive to put on artists are
63. 2:53really really tricky because they will
64. 2:55get offers from the big corporate
65. 2:58festivals there are like five times what
66. 3:00we can afford here's the deal
67. 3:03over the past decade two companies Live
68. 3:05Nation and AEG Live have become a
69. 3:07dominant force in the festival market
70. 3:09they've been pushing prices up and
71. 3:11buying smaller festivals out now they
72. 3:14own close to a third of the British
73. 3:16market alone Live Nation's net worth in
74. 3:192019 was estimated at fifteen point six
75. 3:21billion dollars and they're scaling
76. 3:24their business models turning the likes
77. 3:26of the Lava Palooza festival into a
78. 3:28franchise and exporting it to countries
79. 3:30across the globe companies control the
80. 3:34risk by running a number of different
81. 3:36festivals that allows you to have
82. 3:38mitigating factors if the weather is
83. 3:40awful one weekend you've got another
84. 3:41festival with income potentially a
85. 3:44couple of weeks later it allows them to
86. 3:46get some economies of scale and it
87. 3:48allows them to get the top artists
88. 3:50stores so that they can offer them more
89. 3:52than one day over the summer period
90. 3:54that's very effective and this means
91. 3:58that the most popular acts headlined
92. 4:00many of the big festivals
93. 4:02well these economies of scale may be
94. 4:03cost-effective for the big companies the
95. 4:06risk is that festivals feel more samey
96. 4:08and perhaps that's one of the reasons
97. 4:11why overall festival attendance has
98. 4:13declined since 2016 in Europe 18 percent
99. 4:16of surveyed festivals reported a
100. 4:18downturn in ticket sales as the market
101. 4:21gets more challenging some independent
102. 4:23festivals have turned economic necessity
103. 4:25into an opportunity when we launched
104. 4:27boomtown we had no chance competing on
105. 4:30big acts as well so we had to kind of
106. 4:32create this model in this experience it
107. 4:34was unique and had its own sort of
108. 4:36identity that says help out away from
109. 4:38other festivals this is where it gets
110. 4:41interesting a ten year British audience
111. 4:43survey revealed that headline acts are a
112. 4:45deciding factor for only 8% of festival
113. 4:47goers but 53% said the overall
114. 4:50experience is the reason they bought
115. 4:52their ticket we asked these festival
116. 4:54goers why they're here
117. 4:58a lineup would drag me in but when I'm
118. 5:01here sometimes I don't even see any
119. 5:03music I'll be honest I don't know if any
120. 5:05of the pretty music
121. 5:06that's nothing doe the music its
122. 5:08atmosphere and that's part of a much
123. 5:11bigger picture in the past 20 years the
124. 5:14Western world has shifted from buying
125. 5:16things to buying these kinds of things
126. 5:19in other words experiences my name is
127. 5:24Joe pine and I'm gonna tell you all
128. 5:26about the experience economy Joe has
129. 5:30written a book called
130. 5:31well the experience economy well what's
131. 5:33happened as we've gone from an agrarian
132. 5:35economy based off commodities through an
133. 5:37industrial economy based off goods
134. 5:39through a service economy and today
135. 5:41we're in an experience economy what
136. 5:43experiences really do is that they
137. 5:45engage everyone inside of them it's this
138. 5:49engagement that the likes of boomtown
139. 5:50are banking on to pull in the punters
140. 5:53new friends in 2019 boomtown hired 2,000
141. 5:59actors to draw festival goers into a
142. 6:01variety of immersive experiences spread
143. 6:03across 110 venues throughout the
144. 6:05festival
145. 6:06I have a question I would like to ask
146. 6:09can you tell me who really was the man
147. 6:13behind the basket and it's all designed
148. 6:15to create this unique communal
149. 6:17experience living in the digital age
150. 6:20that we are now at there's more need
151. 6:22than ever for people to connect that's
152. 6:25what festivals do the best in the
153. 6:28digital age also means we can document
154. 6:30these experiences and of course show
155. 6:33them off online we take selfies not
156. 6:36because we think we're going to get the
157. 6:38perfect picture but because we were
158. 6:40there and it proves that we were there
159. 6:43these are similar to that souvenir that
160. 6:47you picked up on your seaside holiday
161. 6:49that means absolutely nothing to anybody
162. 6:52else but it's so important to you that
163. 6:55is if you like the kind of evolution of
164. 6:57what happened before if you went around
165. 6:59to someone's house you could see what
166. 7:00records they had what CDs they had and
167. 7:02that was a kind of social media really
168. 7:04posting stuff on Instagram is just a
169. 7:06kind of updated version of that and in
170. 7:09the spirit of keeping up to date pretty
171. 7:11much every music festival is now selling
172. 7:13the experience so what else will
173. 7:18convince festival goers that their
174. 7:19tickets offer value for money what's the
175. 7:21future of this incredible city in other
176. 7:24words what's more experiential than
177. 7:26experience now is the experience that
178. 7:29changes us in some way and that we call
179. 7:32a transformation and the transformation
180. 7:33is the fifth and final act and I'm
181. 7:35offering this progression of economic
182. 7:37value we're using experiences as the raw
183. 7:39material to guide people to change to
184. 7:42help them achieve their aspirations so
185. 7:45expect to hear that a ticket to a
186. 7:47festival in the future will be an
187. 7:49investment in a truly transformative
188. 7:51experience one that will offer an
189. 7:53opportunity to help you discover your
190. 7:55better self and when that might even be
191. 7:59worth it thank you so much for watching
192. 8:02this film click the link below to learn
193. 8:04more about the role artists are playing
194. 8:06in rising ticket prices also you can
195. 8:09watch our film about how digital
196. 8:10disruption is changing the music
197. 8:12industry it's really interesting and of
198. 8:14course if you like this film
199. 8:16click that subscribe button subscribe to
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