Why Music Festivals Are So Expensive

Music festivals have been increasing in popularity since the early 1960s, and their popularity has not declined since. Take California’s Coachella Music Festival for example. It was started in 1999 with an audience of 25000 people. Today, 20 years later, that number has grown to two hundred and fifty thousand. Music festivals have definitely increased in popularity all over the world, but something else about them increased too: the ticket price.

In 1979, a ticket for the Glastonbury Music Festival, UK’s biggest music festival, cost little over 5 pounds. In 2019, the same ticket was being sold at 250 pounds. Let us try to put that into perspective. If the prices had grown because of inflation, the ticket price would only have been 5 times greater. However, the ticket prices are almost 50 times greater in actual practice. So that begs the question: why are ticket prices so expensive?

The main reason for this is the artists themselves. The internet is where people get their music now. Long gone are the days where selling CDs and LPs was the main income for artists. Artists now make their money on tours, and releasing a new album is just an excuse for another tour. In 1969, Jimmy Hendrix was paid today’s equivalent of 125000 dollars for his promotional tour at Woodstock. In 2019, Ariana Grande was paid 8 million dollars for a performance at the Coachella Music Festival. This is almost 64 times greater, and the funny thing is you can view the same thing on the internet for free. So that means people do not actually care about the ticket price. So what do they care about?

Almost 53 percent of music festival goers have said that the overall experience at the festival is what they came for. So they are essentially buying into the festival and not just the music. Sure, the music is important, but if the overall experience isn’t good enough, there is a good chance they won’t come back. This is why music festivals are trying to create a unique name for themselves. Beyond the music, beyond the noise, if the people can get something they cannot from anywhere else, they are going to come back every year. There are big companies that hire big hot shot singers and bands and conduct the same festival in different parts of the world within a span of just weeks. However, even though this means a large income for the big companies, there is a downside. Since they are selling their experience the same way everywhere, their festivals become monotonous. Smaller festivals can therefore, capitalise on their uniqueness and make more money, making up for their lack of a wide expansive cross country reach.