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