Big-name music festivals are shutting down, ticket sales in free-fall, costs are spiralling. But beyond the dirge there are some upbeat tones. Joshua Barnett reports.
If you’ve been following the headlines, you might think Australian music festivals are on life support. However, a report published in September 2024 by Creative Australia – Soundcheck Two: Analysis of Australian Music Festival Models and Operations – paints a more nuanced picture, one where the giants struggle while grassroots festivals find a way to thrive.
First, the big problem: running a festival has never been more expensive. According to Creative Australia, insurance premiums have skyrocketed across all festival types, with some organisers seeing costs rise by over 1,300% since 2019.
Add in “user-pays policing fees” (which, in NSW, are particularly brutal), staging costs, artist fees, and marketing, and it’s a wonder anyone can afford to put on a festival at all.
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Dylan Oakes, organiser of Newcastle’s West Best Block Fest, has seen this struggle first hand. “This particular festival is well over a six-figure festival,” he says, “And we worked for ten months without getting paid.”
For small operators, numbers like this surely mean that they’re not sustainable. The same goes for the big commercial festivals that rely on huge crowds and international acts; rising costs are making their business models untenable.
Focused on supporting grassroots music, West Best Bloc highlights homegrown talent while fostering a strong community-driven atmosphere. Now in its fourth year, West Best Bloc Fest has grown into a key event in Newcastle’s live music calendar, attracting a dedicated audience and government support, allowing it to grow while keeping ticket prices affordable.. “We proved ourselves to Newcastle, and now we’re getting funding,” Oakes says.
The festival is helping to build a thriving musical ecosystem where artists earn enough from a single gig to go on to fund recording sessions, venue owners make money, and audiences remain engaged.
Small festival success
So why are the likes of Splendour in the Grass, Falls Festival, and Good Things hitting the wall? It’s not just the costs, it’s changing audience behaviour.
According to Soundcheck Two, younger audiences are buying tickets later than ever before Large festivals, which need to sell around 70% of tickets in advance to avoid cancellation, are now rolling the dice on whether punters will show up. More often than not, they don’t.
Dylan Oakes believes the failure of major festivals isn’t due to a lack of talent, but a generational shift. “The people who grew up on those festivals are now getting a little bit older, starting families, moving on from the music scene,” he explains. Meanwhile, younger music fans are gravitating towards smaller, niche festivals with stronger community ties.
Dylan Oakes of West Best Block Fest
For every failed major festival, there’s a smaller, independent festival quietly kicking goals. Soundcheck Two found that small not-for-profit festivals and grassroots events are the most likely to be financially sustainable.
Their lower overheads, local lineups, and community backing allow them to survive in a market where big-budget events are collapsing.West Best Block Fest is one of these success stories, as Dylan Oakes explains:
“The funding and financial outlay is definitely towards the artists. That’s what’s going to keep them coming back. And that’s what the next generation that are in school want to play at West for.
“It’s not about the money… but my whole theory on this particular festival is if they can play our festival for one day, they should earn enough money to then go to a studio.
“And then the studio gets work, and then they record a single, and then they have to go back into our venues and they have to do a single release. So in my world, I create like a little economy for us.”
The Live Nation Elephant
Live Nation’s grip on the Australian music industry has been profound and controversial. Through strategic acquisitions, the entertainment giant has entrenched itself across ticketing, event promotion, festival ownership, and venue management, raising concerns about monopolistic practices.
Investigations by MWM, ABC’s Four Corners, and The Guardian have detailed how Live Nation’s dominance has stifled competition, leaving independent operators struggling to survive.
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Despite being a multibillion-dollar corporation, Live Nation has received over $24m in federal and state government grants intended to support Australia’s live music sector. These funds were meant to sustain struggling festivals, yet several Live Nation-owned festivals, including Splendour in the Grass, Falls Festival, Spilt Milk, and Harvest Rock, have been canceled in recent years.
None of the cancelled festivals have yet to announce a return date.
In addition, Sydney City Limits and Download Festival, which also received government funding, have not gone ahead since 2018 and 2020, respectively.
Live Nation has not returned any of the public funding, instead stating that the money was redirected toward staff retention and other events during the pandemic. Critics argue that taxpayer dollars should not be subsidising a multinational corporation with the resources to weather financial downturns, especially when many independent festivals and live music venues have collapsed due to rising costs and lack of support.
Live Nation’s market dominance has also played a role in the decline of small and mid-sized live music venues. Since COVID, over 1,300 venues have closed, accounting for nearly a third of the sector. Industry analysts point to Live Nation’s ability to dictate ticket prices, artist availability, and festival operations, making it increasingly difficult for independent operators to compete.
In response to mounting concerns, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is being urged to investigate Live Nation’s business practices, with calls for stricter regulations to curb anti-competitive behavior.
Government intervention
The Australian government has responded to the crisis with initiatives like the Revive Live program, which offers grants of up to $200,000 for music festivals But while funding helps, many in the industry say policy and regulation need an overhaul.
Dylan Oakes points to licensing and government red tape as a major hurdle: “The relationship between councils, state governments, and licensing police is terrible,” he says. “Parts of council don’t even know what the other parts are doing. If small festivals are going to thrive, they need not just funding, but less bureaucratic interference.”
We have all these different regulatory bodies, liquor licensing, police, councils, but there’s no one single task force that actually facilitates communication between all of them.
“Instead, they just drag their feet and throw obstacles in our way.”
Community-driven, locally-focused festivals are proving to be the most resilient part of the live music industry. The old model, massive lineups, inflated ticket prices, international headliners, may no longer be viable. If policymakers are serious about saving live music, they need to rethink how festivals are taxed, regulated, and insured.
And for punters? It might be time to forget the dream of a Splendour comeback and embrace the local, independent scene, because that’s where the real music is still playing.
This post was originally published on Michael West.