Festivals

I've been thinking about festivals a lot lately, what with festival season just starting. I did a quick trawl of the Internet to see what my options are, and I'm amazed by just how many festivals there in this country. Sadly, having a lot of festivals means that there tends to be a lot of repetition in the line ups.

I started going to festivals in 1998, going to the Ozzfest and Reading that year, both of which actually turned out to be quite significant in one way or another. The Ozzfest was the first to happen in the UK, proving the viability of heavier festivals in the wake of the death of Monsters of Rock. The heavier line up and multi stage format set the format for the hard rock/metal festivals to come, to the point that this years Sonisphere is using its layout for the main stage/second stage change overs.

Reading was significant in two ways. The first was that it was the last Reading festival to be solely that. Leeds was introduced the following year, aping the V festival format. The other was that it absorbed the Phoenix festival, which was cancelled on relatively short notice as the tickets just weren't selling. Reading didn't sell out either - I bought my ticket to the festival the week before.

Nowadays it's hard to imagine a festival collapsing, which shows the change that has taken place. Reading/Leeds and the V festivals always sell out on the day tickets are released, and the other festivals on the circuit do more than well enough to be enable their survival.

While this is good in some ways, it has had a negative impact as well. If you were to compare the line ups of the larger festivals, you would fine that there is a much higher number of bands playing more than one of them. In many cases the concept of an exclusive headliner has gone out of the window as well.

Take, for example, the metal festivals this year. So far we've had Hammerfest and Download. We've still yet to have Sonisphere, Bloodstock or Hard Rock Hell. Even taking Hammerfest and HRH out of the equation due to them falling out side of the festival season, that leaves three multi day festivals, vying for customers in a market that has traditionally only sorted one.

Sonisphere took of the headliners that would likely have gone to Download in other years, and in both cases they have headlined Download multiple times. This made Download get creative to be able to compete, and they picked smaller bands and concentrated on the strength of the overall line up. This line up has since been seen as one of the best in recent years.

Sonisphere has struggled, it appears, both with bands and ticket sales. The lineup is very safe and the tickets are expensive. Couple that with the most recent 'big' announcement being Limp Bizkit, a band that reformed to play Download, and they're looking out of ideas. Ticket sales have been slow, and while that could in part be down to how expensive they are, it seems that Downloads more creative line up combined with the festivals history had won out.

Bloodstock, on the other hand, is a much smaller, more specialist affair. It has the ethos of a European festival, which gives it at less diverse line up than the other two but that in turn draws people in. The majority of the bands are exclusive to the festival, which means that there will be little to no crossover with other festivals, which is how it used to be.

Sonisphere seems to be proving that festivals are hitting saturation point. It's no longer enough to throw together a half decent line up and hope for the best. With the bands playing more than one festival, the more creative line ups are winning out.