Woodstock 50 Canceled This Past Week - What Does It Say About The Future Of Festivals?

Source: TownSquare.Media.com

On the 30th of July, it was revealed that the Woodstock 50th Anniversary concert was canceled. The second rendition of the legendary concert of “3 days of peace and music” went down in a pit of flames after months of complications and “unforeseen setbacks,” as the co-founder described them.

According to a report from Detroit News, this outcome is likely the consequence of there simply being too many festivals in North America at the moment. Festivals this past year included Austin City Limits, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, as well as Coachella.

However, even some of the most legendary and respected concert festivals have been struggling to sell out, including Lollapalooza among them. It was reported that as Lollapalooza rolled out this weekend in Grant Park of Chicago, organizers struggled to sell all of the tickets.

In prior years, the Lollapalooza festival would sell out quickly, however, with the rise of various festivals, there is an oversaturation of the market, and consumers have too many options. Moreover, all the same festivals compete for similar acts, and much of their line-ups end up looking the same.

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Furthermore, several organizations have either taken breaks or called it off altogether, including the Panaroma Festival, intended to be the East Coast’s response to Coachella, as well as Los Angeles’ FYF Festival, which was canceled after fourteen years.

Woodstock 50, in particular, was fraught with line-up issues as well as permit problems and venue changes. Originally, Jay-Z, Santana, Imagine Dragons, Halsey, and Miley Cyrus were slated to perform but one by one each act dropped out.

Moreover, as the names came and went, it hardly had anything to do at all with the original festival, so the issue of holding it altogether became a question. Tickets for Woodstock 50 never went on sale and as the organizers rushed to find a new venue at the last minute, acts decided to cancel their performance there altogether.

This past Wednesday, the producer, Michael Lang, finally announced the show would no longer go on, and with the sheer number of festivals continuing this summer, it’s hard to imagine that many consumers even care.