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Why are music festivals so expensive? | The Economist | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Why are music festivals so expensive?
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I have never been to a music festival
until today surprising I know because in
the past 20 years they've become
increasingly popular
let's take California's Coachella it's
been running since 1999 when it had 25
thousand attendees 2017 there were
almost 250,000 of them and as festivals
have grown so if ticket prices in 1979 a
ticket for Glastonbury the UK's biggest
festival cost five pounds in 2019
it was 248 pounds to put things in
perspective if ticket prices rose with
inflation it'd be five times more
expensive today in reality they're 50
times more so why are festivals so
expensive running a festival takes a
huge amount of work this is Jenny Jordan
she's a festival expert we never
imagined the level of details going to
lack Mitchell is a festival producer he
runs boomtown one of the biggest
independent music festivals in the UK
it's like setting up a small town we've
got hundreds of lines of budgets you've
got to make sure that you've got water
to make sure you've got Wi-Fi internal
traffic management external drive
management toilets for different
security companies food stewarding drink
artists internal transport their list is
just bonkers at boomtown it also takes
12,000 crew 1596 tons of scaffolding 3
million litres of water
in 2000 bins and all that costs but then
there's one more thing that makes
music and actually it all comes down to
this it's much more difficult now to
make money selling recorded music the
rise of streaming has basically flipped
the economics of the music industry
always hey this is Tom Standage he's the
head of all things digital at the
Economist and a drummer in his spare
time it used to be that you made your
money from selling records selling CDs
selling LPS and you promoted them by
going on tour and now you make your
money by going on tour and releasing an
album is just really an excuse for
another tour and as the importance of
touring has increased so have artists
fees at Woodstock in 1969 Jimi Hendrix
got today's equivalent of $125,000 in
2019 at Coachella ariana grande was paid
eight million dollars that's sixty four
times more people out that really think
that we're making millions we barely
broke even last year even though the
festival completely sold out because
it's so expensive to put on artists are
really really tricky because they will
get offers from the big corporate
festivals there are like five times what
we can afford here's the deal
over the past decade two companies Live
Nation and AEG Live have become a
dominant force in the festival market
they've been pushing prices up and
buying smaller festivals out now they
own close to a third of the British
market alone Live Nation's net worth in
2019 was estimated at fifteen point six
billion dollars and they're scaling
their business models turning the likes
of the Lava Palooza festival into a
franchise and exporting it to countries
across the globe companies control the
risk by running a number of different
festivals that allows you to have
mitigating factors if the weather is
awful one weekend you've got another
festival with income potentially a
couple of weeks later it allows them to
get some economies of scale and it
allows them to get the top artists
stores so that they can offer them more
than one day over the summer period
that's very effective and this means
that the most popular acts headlined
many of the big festivals
well these economies of scale may be
cost-effective for the big companies the
risk is that festivals feel more samey
and perhaps that's one of the reasons
why overall festival attendance has
declined since 2016 in Europe 18 percent
of surveyed festivals reported a
downturn in ticket sales as the market
gets more challenging some independent
festivals have turned economic necessity
into an opportunity when we launched
boomtown we had no chance competing on
big acts as well so we had to kind of
create this model in this experience it
was unique and had its own sort of
identity that says help out away from
other festivals this is where it gets
interesting a ten year British audience
survey revealed that headline acts are a
deciding factor for only 8% of festival
goers but 53% said the overall
experience is the reason they bought
their ticket we asked these festival
a lineup would drag me in but when I'm
here sometimes I don't even see any
music I'll be honest I don't know if any
of the pretty music
that's nothing doe the music its
atmosphere and that's part of a much
bigger picture in the past 20 years the
Western world has shifted from buying
things to buying these kinds of things
in other words experiences my name is
Joe pine and I'm gonna tell you all
about the experience economy Joe has
written a book called
well the experience economy well what's
happened as we've gone from an agrarian
economy based off commodities through an
industrial economy based off goods
through a service economy and today
we're in an experience economy what
experiences really do is that they
engage everyone inside of them it's this
engagement that the likes of boomtown
are banking on to pull in the punters
new friends in 2019 boomtown hired 2,000
actors to draw festival goers into a
variety of immersive experiences spread
across 110 venues throughout the festival
festival
I have a question I would like to ask
can you tell me who really was the man
behind the basket and it's all designed
to create this unique communal
experience living in the digital age
that we are now at there's more need
than ever for people to connect that's
what festivals do the best in the
digital age also means we can document
these experiences and of course show
them off online we take selfies not
because we think we're going to get the
perfect picture but because we were
there and it proves that we were there
these are similar to that souvenir that
you picked up on your seaside holiday
that means absolutely nothing to anybody
else but it's so important to you that
is if you like the kind of evolution of
what happened before if you went around
to someone's house you could see what
records they had what CDs they had and
that was a kind of social media really
posting stuff on Instagram is just a
kind of updated version of that and in
the spirit of keeping up to date pretty
much every music festival is now selling
the experience so what else will
convince festival goers that their
tickets offer value for money what's the
future of this incredible city in other
words what's more experiential than
experience now is the experience that
changes us in some way and that we call
a transformation and the transformation
is the fifth and final act and I'm
offering this progression of economic
value we're using experiences as the raw
material to guide people to change to
help them achieve their aspirations so
expect to hear that a ticket to a
festival in the future will be an
investment in a truly transformative
experience one that will offer an
opportunity to help you discover your
better self and when that might even be
worth it thank you so much for watching
this film click the link below to learn
more about the role artists are playing
in rising ticket prices also you can
watch our film about how digital
disruption is changing the music
industry it's really interesting and of
course if you like this film
click that subscribe button subscribe to
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