How
Coachella, Bonnaroo and More Festivals Revamped the Music Industry
(By Steve
Knopper, Rolling Stone, 13 May 2104)
In 2001, the
last time Outkast
hit the road for a major tour, they were coming off a multiplatinum album and a
Number One single, "Ms. Jackson." André 3000 and Big Boi played 46
shows on the Stankonia tour, and grossed $4.8 million, according to
Pollstar. That sounds impressive – until you compare it with the reunion tour
they're launching this spring and summer. Outkast will play fewer gigs – 40
shows, every one at a festival – and make vastly more money: around $60
million, according to concert-business sources.
Welcome to
the strange economics of the modern rock festival, where every summer, defunct
or dormant bands reunite to earn more for a few gigs than they did in years of
touring and recording. Outkast, who haven't released so much as a new song in
eight years, are the most extreme example yet: Unlike many big festival acts,
they're not famous for their live performances. "For the good bands,
there's always going to be demand if you're away a long time," says
Charles Attal, a partner with C3 Presents, which produces Lollapalooza and
Austin City Limits. Outkast's success reflects a new reality: Thanks to huge competition
for "event bookings" that sell $300 tickets and even more expensive
VIP packages, festivals can afford to pay headliners up to $4 million.
All of this
is possible because festivals have come to dominate the music industry, with
more than 60 slated to take place in the U.S. this year. Fifteen years ago,
when Coachella organizers got 25,000 people to see Rage
Against the Machine and Beck
in the California desert, nobody could have predicted that an event like Las
Vegas' Electric Daisy Carnival would draw more than 400,000 people for a single
weekend. "Festivals have become a huge part of American culture,"
says Pasquale Rotella, chief executive of Insomniac, promoter of Electric
Daisy, which began as a rave in 1997. "When we first started, it was
really foreign – all people could remember was Woodstock. It made it really
difficult to explain. That's no longer true."
Festivals
have changed the way music is experienced – and released. A fan with a Spotify
account and a Bonnaroo ticket can sample hundreds of bands, live or on record,
in one weekend. "It's a good time to be a fan, if you just want a piece of
everything," says Ben Dickey, manager of indie band Spoon, whose new album
coincides with a tour that includes dates at Governors Ball and Shaky Knees
this summer. "[Spoon] is going to play to tens of thousands of people at
each festival – that's a pretty huge promotional platform for new songs." It's not just big names who are cashing in.
In the Nineties, when Neutral
Milk Hotel recorded their landmark album In
the Aeroplane Over the Sea, the group was lucky to make a few
hundred dollars per show. But this summer, the band, whose last LP came out 16
years ago, will pull down much more money a night at festivals like Bonnaroo
and Pitchfork. "You can add a lot of zeroes, basically, to what they
made," says Jim Romeo, the group's booking agent.
A decade
ago, festivals had distinct personalities: Coachella had the alt-rockers,
Bonnaroo was more of a jam-band event. But as crowds grew, major headliners
became harder to find, which meant more pressure to score high-profile reunions
or megastars like Bruce
Springsteen, whom Bonnaroo's promoters spent years wooing before he
agreed to headline in 2009. The fiercest competition is regional. Cliff
Burnstein, co-manager for Metallica
and Red
Hot Chili Peppers, says California is one of this summer's big
battlegrounds, now that Jay Z's Made
in America will be in Los Angeles, joining Outside Lands in San Francisco and
BottleRock in Napa Valley. "They will fight over the acts," he says.
Major
festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza regularly sell out within hours of
announcing their lineups. One way those fests stay on top is with "radius
clauses," which means bands can't perform at any other show – not even a
club gig – within, say, 300 miles and four or five months of their festival
date. That can make bands' summer schedules increasingly complicated, to the
point that mega-booking agency William Morris has had to create a separate
department devoted exclusively to making bands' deals with festivals and
managing their touring routes. "It's like playing air traffic
control," says William Morris' Kirk Sommer, agent for the Killers
and the Arctic
Monkeys. "You have to think about how playing Governors Ball in
June could affect another festival in the fall."
Of course,
not every festival succeeds – in recent years, Rothbury in Michigan, Bamboozle
in New Jersey and Kanrocksas have folded, despite snagging strong headlining
names such as the Black Keys and Foo Fighters. Bamboozle suffered from promoter
infighting, Kanrocksas had trouble selling tickets and Rothbury couldn't line
up consistently huge headliners. "It
sometimes takes years of development to get these events into
profitability," says Bob Roux, Live Nation's copresident of U.S.
concerts. In the earlier days of U.S. festivals, it was easier for independent
companies to build a festival on niche music, like jam bands or electronic-dance
DJs. That's not the case today. "There's a lot more politics and a lot
more investment to make something happen," says Insomniac's Rotella.
Given the
recent boom, you might think festivals have hit a saturation point. But
numerous band managers and promoters say there's still room for growth.
"It's getting dense," says Attal. "But I don't think it's peaked
– it's just hit a pretty good stride."
Even for baby bands – if they get the right time slots and are able to
play effectively to big crowds – festivals can make the difference between just
surviving and thriving. "A festival pays three and a half or four times
more than the average club show," says Dylan Baldi of Cloud Nothings, who
are playing Bonnaroo, Pitchfork and several European fests this summer.
"We're still a small-scale band, but the festival shows make you realize
what happens when you try to become more popular."
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