Is The Party Over? Music Festivals Grapple With A Changing Industry

It’s no secret that the music festival industry in North America — and the rest of the world — is having a rough year. Over the last few months, dozens of events have faced bad weather, poor ticket sales, revoked permits, and outright cancellations, and many festivals have never recovered from the COVID pandemic.

When comparing this to the late 2010s, when festivals were sprouting up like heads of a Hydra, it’s left many people wondering — what’s going on? Is it simply the economy? Rising insurance costs? Bad lineups? Perhaps it’s another, secret factor that only the event organizers themselves are privy to.

You’d be hard-pressed to deny that music festivals aren’t a staple part of culture. Events like Woodstock in 1969 shaped not only the music of the 1970s but also politics, environmentalism, psychedelic acceptance, and cinema. FYRE Festival’s cancellation inspired two documentaries and a plethora of memes. Coachella has become almost as notorious for fashion and style as New York or Paris Fashion Week. Humanity has been gathering to listen to music, drink alcohol, and stave off sleep in lieu of partying for nearly as long as we’ve existed. So, if these events are so important to us — what does it mean that so many are going under?

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