Speaker 1: Als media.
Speaker 2: Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh.
Speaker 3: If Robert can do his a tonal shreeks, then I
Speaker 3: can sing off key yo, I'm back. Help me all
Speaker 3: up in your feed. Wast these rap gus get all
Speaker 3: up in your feed. That's a wu tang reference again
Speaker 3: to the Black delegation, shout out y'all showing up on
Speaker 3: the in the subreddit. You feel me, Black folks showing
Speaker 3: up and showing out. I appreciate y'all.
Speaker 4: I was wrong. It's more than five of us. I
Speaker 4: shout out to you, man. I love y'all.
Speaker 3: Thanks for showing up, and shout out all the Latinos
Speaker 3: who tapped into and le puez. Hey gontodo MI hint
Speaker 3: ben at gay when valivo listen.
Speaker 5: We gotta really invite our Latino brothers and sisters, our
Speaker 5: Theos and diaz and also our Asian black people, the
Speaker 5: penoise and Penis, our Athes and Quias.
Speaker 4: You're all a part of our delegation here, all of
Speaker 4: our USO. We love y'all.
Speaker 3: The whole diaspora of people who seizon their chicken and
Speaker 3: wash their legs. I love y'all, And to this whole
Speaker 3: delegation once we add it all together is about twenty
Speaker 3: of us to you. I say, y'all want something from
Speaker 3: the gas station. I got you so today. I don't
Speaker 3: want to ruin your breakfast. I don't want to ruin
Speaker 3: your coffee. I'm just gonna ruin your music. This is
Speaker 3: about the death of the music festival. It already happened
Speaker 3: here all right now, y'all know I'll be playing. I'm
Speaker 3: playing about all this like I'm only talking to the
Speaker 3: melanated folks. Y'all.
Speaker 4: Y'all know I'm playing, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is why while I slowly wink at
Speaker 3: the brown folk, I'm just playing, y'all. I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 3: messing around. It's called opening. You know, you guys got
Speaker 3: a great sit to humor here. All right, let's get
Speaker 3: to it. Festivals like, am I right? You know, if
Speaker 3: you're anywhere within a five to ten mile radius of
Speaker 3: my age, I mean.
Speaker 4: Festivals is like these are like a write of passage.
Speaker 3: You know, I am not only a festival goer, but
Speaker 3: a festival performer and as an artist. It was like
Speaker 3: festivals were kind of in a lot of ways how
Speaker 3: I marked the years. There were people that I really
Speaker 3: only saw like once a year, when I was at
Speaker 3: that festival, whether it was other acts, other bands, or
Speaker 3: even a lot of times the volunteers or the people
Speaker 3: that like put the event together, like you believe it
Speaker 3: or not, you kind of make friends, you know, and
Speaker 3: he's again, these are people You're like, Dang, I can't
Speaker 3: believe it was a whole year, you know, And it
Speaker 3: was a good way to make sure as an artist
Speaker 3: that you were making new music and had something new
Speaker 3: to perform. Oh, and make sure you had some new
Speaker 3: merch because you know, if you played your cards right,
Speaker 3: if you've listened to my show, I've talked a lot about, like,
Speaker 3: you know, the science of festivals and as a performer
Speaker 3: of like this could either be a complete waste of
Speaker 3: time and money if you're on at like the main
Speaker 3: stage at like twelve noon when it's like a trillion
Speaker 3: degrees outside, you know, but if you can get that
Speaker 3: right as the sun set, like if you're not the headliner,
Speaker 3: if you could get that right at sunset, right where
Speaker 3: the sun just breaks the horizon line coming down that.
Speaker 4: That golden hour set.
Speaker 3: The crowd isn't shitfaced yet, you know, they're at the
Speaker 3: top of their molly.
Speaker 4: You feel you're riding the high.
Speaker 3: It is just settled in or whatever drugs that these
Speaker 3: people are on, they've kind of just settled in right there.
Speaker 3: They're relaxed, they're willing to sing along. Nobody's getting trample jet.
Speaker 3: It's not like the frenzy that kind of happens at
Speaker 3: the headliner situation, where like somebody might die. Shout out,
Speaker 3: astro world. I say that not as a joke. I'm
Speaker 3: saying things can go wrong, but oh the experience. Man, Like,
Speaker 3: I don't know how old you are, and obviously you
Speaker 3: can't answer me. Do you remember the last like big
Speaker 3: festival you went to, you know, back when your knees
Speaker 3: were good and it was okay for you to stand
Speaker 3: for twelve hours And there's somebody you know, having sexual
Speaker 3: intercourse in the porter potty. You know, you're stepping over
Speaker 3: barf right, and you just paid thirty dollars for a
Speaker 3: bottle of water, you know that you could stuff into
Speaker 3: your clear backpack because you weren't allowed to bring anything
Speaker 3: else in there. But man, that's probably a euphoria, especially
Speaker 3: if it's a group or a band that you really
Speaker 3: like that you saved up all year to go see.
Speaker 3: You know, some people were like festival operas, Like that's
Speaker 3: their thing. They spend their summer going to music festivals.
Speaker 3: Since twenty twelve up to twenty fourteen, like the music
Speaker 3: fest has been guys, we've.
Speaker 4: Kind of been on borrow time.
Speaker 3: We've we lived through a music festival renaissance. According to NPR,
Speaker 3: since twenty thirteen, everything sold out, the four mega giants, right, so, Coachello, Bataru,
Speaker 3: Lolla Palooza in Chicago, Austin City Limits Music Festival in Texas.
Speaker 3: It was like this never ending flow of amazing, amazing events,
Speaker 3: and you know what, they were kind of affordable. In
Speaker 3: the next five years, you had things taken forth like
Speaker 3: Pitchfork in Chicago, Hangout Music Festival on the Beach and
Speaker 3: the Gulf Shore outside Lands, Bali Music, Mount Oasis, Electronic Music.
Speaker 4: Festival, Forecastle Festival. Right, and I'm even.
Speaker 3: Gonna add in this, before all this for hip hop stuff, dude,
Speaker 3: we had rock the bells. Like we lived in a
Speaker 3: time where you could see all of your favorite artists
Speaker 3: in the most epic locations. You'd see people who if
Speaker 3: you were to try to buy their tour ticket, it
Speaker 3: would cost the same amount if they were headlining the
Speaker 3: thing but you could see all your favorite acts. Part
Speaker 3: of this was because we listened to radio, you were
Speaker 3: exposed to more things and it was probably the fun
Speaker 3: part about a lot of times about music festival is
Speaker 3: because you probably saw that act, your favorite band, your
Speaker 3: favorite rapper, you saw them at a hole in the
Speaker 3: wall five years ago, which was like ten bucks to
Speaker 3: get in, and you might have snuck in or got
Speaker 3: on the list because you knew somebody that knew the DJ.
Speaker 3: And now you're like, I followed this crew from when
Speaker 3: they were like playing a whole in a wall with
Speaker 3: ten people, where there was more staff at the bar
Speaker 3: than on this and now you're like, dude, you feel
Speaker 3: like you were a part of their evolution. Like you
Speaker 3: saw Chance at the Subterranean, Now he's headline at Bonaru.
Speaker 3: What a feeling you're part of the story. Well, that's
Speaker 3: probably a relic of the past, and let's talk about it.
Speaker 3: So festivals for most of the last decade have been
Speaker 3: everywhere like whatever type of music you like, whatever subgenre,
Speaker 3: whatever part of the world you want to go to,
Speaker 3: there's a music festival that you can show up at. Now,
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four, more than half of them across
Speaker 3: the world were canceled.
Speaker 4: I lost count on this page.
Speaker 3: I'm about to read to y'all from Musicfestival Wizard dot Com.
Speaker 3: Festival's canceled so far in twenty twenty four. Okay you
Speaker 3: ready for this? Shindig twenty twenty four, Melt twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: Sideways Festival, No Stock Field, Maneuvers, Tower z The Quintinin
Speaker 3: Big Slap, Electric Zoo Peach twenty twenty four. All the
Speaker 3: Music Festival Life Is Beautiful Festival, Country Thunder Florida, Swanee
Speaker 3: Roots Festival, edc China, Lucidity Festival in Santa Barbara, Desert
Speaker 3: Days in Lake Paris, Pinefest in the UK, Good Vibes
Speaker 3: Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sierra Nevada World Music Festival
Speaker 3: in Booneville, El Dorado Music Festival in the UK, Sudden
Speaker 3: Little Thrills in Pittsburgh, Big Ridge Rock Fest in Virginia,
Speaker 3: Lollapalooza Paris Music Midtown Atlanta, Lovers and Friends Fest in
Speaker 3: Las Vegas, which I was really sad about. Riverside Festival,
Speaker 3: Glasgow in where Glasgow, Soul Bloom Sacramento tw Classic twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, in Belgium, Kaylamijas in Kaylamijas, Spain, Caldoora music
Speaker 3: festival in Queensland, Made An America Festival Philadelphia, Oblivion Access
Speaker 3: Austin Texas, Meadows in the Mountains twenty twenty four in Bulgaria,
Speaker 3: Imagine Festival in Rome, Georgia, Splendor on the Grass in
Speaker 3: Byron By Australia, Body and Soul Festival in Ireland, Moon
Speaker 3: Rose Festival. I'm tired of I'm not even done yet,
Speaker 3: I'm not even halfway through this thing.
Speaker 4: Festivals died in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Digital News reports that sixty festivals in the UK alone canceled.
Speaker 3: Ashley King wrote this article on August twenty third, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, for Digital Music News, and in that she
Speaker 3: says the United Kingdom has lost one hundred and ninety
Speaker 3: two music festivals since twenty nineteen, according to the Association
Speaker 3: of Independent Festivals the AIF, which is a not for
Speaker 3: profit trade festival association that represents the interest of over
Speaker 3: two hundred independent UK music festivals that range from five
Speaker 3: hundred to eighty thousand people. The AIF estimates that the
Speaker 3: UK lost ninety six events during the COVID pandemic thirty
Speaker 3: six festivals and in twenty twenty three, more than sixty
Speaker 3: to date in twenty twenty four. That brings the total
Speaker 3: number of festival closures either due to cancelation or post
Speaker 3: pullment up to one hundred and ninety two since twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: one hundred and ninety two festivals. Some may argue that, well, damn,
Speaker 3: you shouldn't have had that many festivals, Coachella, Lollapalooza, and
Speaker 3: of course the infamous burning Man with the most on
Speaker 3: brand people that go that call themselves burners. Now, I
Speaker 3: don't want to sit here and make fun of you burners,
Speaker 3: because I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 4: A lot of y'all listen to this show number one
Speaker 4: and number two.
Speaker 3: I don't know if there's anybody more free, anybody more
Speaker 3: comfortable in their own skin.
Speaker 4: Listen.
Speaker 3: This might sound like a joke, Okay, I'm dead serious.
Speaker 3: It's like the white guy with dreadlocks. I mean, white
Speaker 3: people with dreads are just most of the time, Okay,
Speaker 3: Like this may sound like a joke, I'm deadly serious.
Speaker 3: They be so okay with themselves and will do whatever
Speaker 3: they got to do to continue to stay present and
Speaker 3: be cool with themselves, no notes. It's the guy doing
Speaker 3: hypostatic breath work, freestyling for way too long in the
Speaker 3: dig redoce section. You know what I'm saying, Like he's
Speaker 3: super okay with himself anyway. Burning Man for the first
Speaker 3: time since twenty eleven, did not sell out for the
Speaker 3: first time, And the tickets are usually released in tears
Speaker 3: and some go on sale in the beginning of the year,
Speaker 3: and then this part I'm getting from the Guardian, but
Speaker 3: the main starting in April, right, which typically gets snapped
Speaker 3: up in minutes, like Burning Man sells out in minutes.
Speaker 3: Seventy three thousand people are able to attend Burning Man,
Speaker 3: but this first time since twenty eleven, they did not
Speaker 3: sell out. Coachella saying they saw a fifteen percent decline
Speaker 3: in tickets. It's the biggest festival in North America. Coachella
Speaker 3: is fifteen percent ticket decline. Festivals were a way for
Speaker 3: you to discover new music, to meet new friends.
Speaker 4: It's like camp for like your twenties.
Speaker 3: You know, you get to wear your dumb ass outfits, right,
Speaker 3: you get to stand out in the sun, you get
Speaker 3: to drink, you get to day drink, and you get
Speaker 3: to just lose your mind for a little bit.
Speaker 4: This might be the end, the endling.
Speaker 3: You may have attended your last music festival as we
Speaker 3: know it. So the question is why who killed the
Speaker 3: music festival? Why is the festival not festiving it? Why
Speaker 3: is it not festive? Why can't y'all sell no tickets?
Speaker 3: Do we not like music anymore? Do you like music?
Speaker 4: Still? I thought, I still like? Do you like music? Still?
Speaker 4: What the hell happened in y'all?
Speaker 2: Oh? Oh oh oh oh?
Speaker 4: We'd back back back back, yack back uh erh.
Speaker 3: To understand the future as to what the hell happened,
Speaker 3: we have to ask ourselves how we even.
Speaker 4: Got here such a nerd I am.
Speaker 3: I don't think I need to tell you what a
Speaker 3: music festival is, because I mean, I think you know
Speaker 3: what it is. It's an incredibly overpriced concert that features
Speaker 3: maybe four groups that you like, where you are going
Speaker 3: to stand outdoors somewhere brave the weather day, drink and
Speaker 3: then get to lose your mind for the last like
Speaker 3: three hours and just really enjoy, you know, a moment
Speaker 3: that you'll really never forget. Depending on how nasty and
Speaker 3: ratchet you are, how outside you are, you might look up.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying, I don't. Look, it's none
Speaker 3: of my business. I suggest you don't. That's just me
Speaker 3: being an old head. But either way, man, they're a
Speaker 3: great time. But please understand that festivals, music festivals go
Speaker 3: like back to get this, five eighty two b C.
Speaker 3: At least according to white people's history, because you know,
Speaker 3: silly you, nothing happened anywhere else.
Speaker 4: Except for Europe.
Speaker 3: That was music festivals in Africa, Central South America, Asia,
Speaker 3: no nowhere else.
Speaker 4: It don't.
Speaker 3: History started in Greece. We were too busy building pyramids.
Speaker 6: Right anyway, I'm gonna lead out put oh, but every
Speaker 6: cracking you up. They'd be like the first music festival
Speaker 6: on record in ancient Greece during the Pytheon Games, which
Speaker 6: is fine, it's it's fine, it's fine, but understand, at
Speaker 6: the way the world just the only one.
Speaker 3: That ever happened anyway, So five eighty two BC, right,
Speaker 3: And like the Olympic Games, the Pytheon Games took place
Speaker 3: every four years and included poetry reading, a speech, right,
Speaker 3: and other musical game like competitions. People gathered to enjoy,
Speaker 3: like hymns and instruments instrumental performances at the Apollo at
Speaker 3: the Apollo I'm So Black dedicated to Apollo, which was
Speaker 3: the god of arts and music. Now fast forward to
Speaker 3: the seventeenth century, where you have like classical music festivals
Speaker 3: and like the type of like exclusivity right where like
Speaker 3: when in the seventeenth century when like classical music just
Speaker 3: basically ate Europe and music festivals originally were like supposed
Speaker 3: to be a gathering where people could, like what you think,
Speaker 3: gather and celebrate music.
Speaker 4: However, here's where it starts coming into focus.
Speaker 3: The wealthcap was widening across Europe, so festivals gradually became
Speaker 3: kind of like how they are where they're a little
Speaker 3: bit exclusive, catering primarily to more higher educated upper class.
Speaker 3: And the shift became apparent as events became more exclusive
Speaker 3: and had increasingly restricted access. This is from ndlbeast dot com.
Speaker 3: They have a whole section on like the history of
Speaker 3: music festivals. One could argue, like this like the prototype
Speaker 3: of like the VIP section. You know, I'm saying, like,
Speaker 3: you know, you can get the pit tickets or you
Speaker 3: can stand outside with the pores and just listen from
Speaker 3: the outside. So this trend kind of continued for centuries
Speaker 3: where like a lead class. I think almost like was
Speaker 3: the beginning of the breaking of music in general. They
Speaker 3: were control the access to culture. I have a friend
Speaker 3: that wrote a book called Don't Be Precious. Now, me
Speaker 3: and this friend differ in a lot of ways, but
Speaker 3: he's just a punk rock dude, and his approach to
Speaker 3: making art is like, you can't have this like restricting access,
Speaker 3: right because it becomes it just like upper class art
Speaker 3: is this creation of the leisure class, because one they
Speaker 3: have the patron to pay for them to be able
Speaker 3: to sit down and contemplate the stars, like you got
Speaker 3: all precious about it, you feel me. So some of
Speaker 3: that has to do with again, the wealth gap. So
Speaker 3: when you restrict access to hearing music, it draws deeper
Speaker 3: into the divides between like the educated upper class and
Speaker 3: then the traveling folk musicians who performed for the commoners.
Speaker 3: And that's like this stuff you see on you know,
Speaker 3: corny little movies. Then the world wars come, right, and
Speaker 3: there's like a music revival, right. So when the First
Speaker 3: World War broke out, obviously change of lifestyle meaning everything
Speaker 3: went to like you know, war effort. So this is
Speaker 3: a really interesting quote. It says, I'm the same MDL beast.
Speaker 3: As society focused on wartime efforts and staying safe, the
Speaker 3: exclusivity of music festivals to the upper class disappeared. In
Speaker 3: a turn of events, the working class population was now
Speaker 3: turning to music more than ever. Jazz and folk emerged
Speaker 3: as popular genres right to avoid the scrutiny of the elite.
Speaker 3: Groups of musicians with similar tastes would gathering diede bars
Speaker 3: and underground clubs. By the time the war had ended,
Speaker 3: jazz has cemented itself as the genre of the era.
Speaker 3: So now we're talking Harlem Renaissance, juke joints, and the
Speaker 3: emergence of like again this where black people come in
Speaker 3: a lot of times the role that just the all
Speaker 3: out anti black racism has unintentionally because of it, created
Speaker 3: some of the most dopest things, some of the most
Speaker 3: dopest American experiences. Or I just read up on how
Speaker 3: with HBCUs which are historic black colleges that now white
Speaker 3: people trying to attend. They like your school of fund well,
Speaker 3: because we wasn't allowed it yours anyway, So let me continue. So,
Speaker 3: World War two played a pivotal role in creating the
Speaker 3: Newport Folk Festival, organized by Lewis and Elaine Lauryland, a
Speaker 3: couple met during World War Two and came together to
Speaker 3: revolutionized Rhode Island's music artistic community by promoting jazz with
Speaker 3: the foundation in as in blues, in country and pop music.
Speaker 3: They expanded to attract over eleven thousand people in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty four. Then the sixties the birth of the modern
Speaker 3: music festival. Right obviously Woodstock, which was the invention Monterey
Speaker 3: International Pop Music Festival. This is the rock festival as
Speaker 3: we know it, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin who it was
Speaker 3: the place to be a cultural experience as we know it.
Speaker 3: Again is that then you got like the Berlin Wall
Speaker 3: in the music revolution. This is where festivals become political
Speaker 3: and cultural. They become a statement and a big one
Speaker 3: was in the nineties when they did the Berlin Wall
Speaker 3: tearing Down Music Festival, which was an amazing thing, right
Speaker 3: where underground stations, power plants, World War Two bunkers and
Speaker 3: abandoned buildings all started to serve as makeshift concert halls.
Speaker 3: This is why Europe became such a place for music festivals.
Speaker 3: It became a sign of freedom and solidarity. And then
Speaker 3: the music festival took a shit. They just died in
Speaker 3: the nineties after this all can be explained in when
Speaker 3: they tried to redo Woodstock just a shit show with
Speaker 3: like Limp Biscuit.
Speaker 4: And all them you a shit show.
Speaker 3: There's a documentary on Netflix about the absolute disaster that
Speaker 3: that new Woodstock was, y'all. I'm talking like y'all thought
Speaker 3: Astro World was bad where them kids was raising so
Speaker 3: much and people die. You talking about understaffed. Y'all think
Speaker 3: Firefest was a disaster, my nigger, Well, nah, I don't
Speaker 3: think anything was worse than firefests so far a good thing.
Speaker 4: It didn't happen like y'all remember Firefest?
Speaker 3: Oh lord, honestly, I can't believe I made it almost
Speaker 3: twenty minutes into this and then mentioned Firefest because it
Speaker 3: is the perfect example of what went wrong in the
Speaker 3: music festival world. Because, like I said, this disaster in
Speaker 3: the nineties to two thousands, if you were able to
Speaker 3: survive like I said earlier, like the Bonnarous Coachella's Austin
Speaker 3: City limits, if you were able to survive Lollapalooza, then
Speaker 3: you came out the other end and became the go
Speaker 3: to places.
Speaker 4: Right, tell your ride for folk music.
Speaker 3: You became the go to places that if you were
Speaker 3: going to try to have a career.
Speaker 4: As an artist, you have to play one of these festivals.
Speaker 3: No matter how much money you don't make at these things,
Speaker 3: you have to do it because this is where not
Speaker 3: only do you get the necessary co sign, you also
Speaker 3: get discovered. Like as far as fans like, you make
Speaker 3: new fans, you se merge people, walk away with the
Speaker 3: T shirt. You're on this T shirt that says Bonnarou
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, and your name is so like even
Speaker 3: if you're way down on the bottom, Grab your little screenshots,
Speaker 3: take your little Instagram photos, because now you're in the game.
Speaker 4: And the game it.
Speaker 3: Was, which leads us to what went wrong because this
Speaker 3: was not only a money making endeavor. This was a
Speaker 3: money making endeavor in twenty fourteen, are y'all ready for this?
Speaker 3: I don't think you ready for this? In the boom years,
Speaker 3: according to an analysis done by a Finance Buzz, in
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen, general emission prices for major and music festivals
Speaker 3: increased by fifty five percent that outpaced just inflation period,
Speaker 3: y'all jacked up the price. So listen, So if your
Speaker 3: ja rule head ass, of course I'm gonna build a festival.
Speaker 3: You're looking at Burning Man, You're looking at Bonnarou, You're
Speaker 3: looking at all these things.
Speaker 4: You're like, bro, let's just get an island and make
Speaker 4: a festival. There's so much money to be made.
Speaker 3: But you know what, capitalism being capitalism, it's gonna keep capitalism.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about what killed the festival.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, oh, oh, you see, I just did my
Speaker 3: own fade out and fade in music. Y'all see that. No,
Speaker 3: don't ask me what note that was. So what killed
Speaker 3: the festival? There one number of things. First of all, yo,
Speaker 3: ask for not going I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3: We're not blaming the victims here. Some of these answers
Speaker 3: are pretty obvious, like again, you know astra World like,
Speaker 3: but astral World is just a good picture of everything
Speaker 3: that went wrong in the concept of a music festival.
Speaker 3: So the first problem is, yeah, capitalism, sometimes you are
Speaker 3: led to believe that what is will always be right.
Speaker 3: That's what a stable economy lulls you into believing. But
Speaker 3: anybody that knows how money works, it's booms and busts,
Speaker 3: the bubble will pop, and how a bubble pops is
Speaker 3: almost always our own fault in this sense, the housing bubble,
Speaker 3: you know of two thousand and eight when your mama
Speaker 3: and him lost their house because the reality was they
Speaker 3: shouldn't have never got that loan in the first place.
Speaker 3: These people knew good and well that you was not
Speaker 3: able to keep up with that mortgage. But we were
Speaker 3: selling too many houses. It was going too good. So
Speaker 3: the thing was for almost the you know, almost a decade,
Speaker 3: you couldn't make enough festivals. The industry couldn't keep up
Speaker 3: with the demand. And yo, this the blog error. This
Speaker 3: the two Doe Boys. Yeah, Pitchfork like this the blog error.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying. When Fader was like a
Speaker 4: thing that you would want to go soon.
Speaker 3: So like it all kind of worked together around this
Speaker 3: time before all these spots got bought out hip hop DX,
Speaker 3: like all these pages got bought out. Like I said before,
Speaker 3: it was like this boom in twenty fourteen of a
Speaker 3: trillion festivals that started happening. Now what happened was ticket prices.
Speaker 3: This's the first one. We're making so much money. You realize, Dang,
Speaker 3: if I charge one hundred, I bet you I could
Speaker 3: charge to hundred if I charged doing it, I bet
Speaker 3: you I could charge foe hundred because if you charge
Speaker 3: foe hun and then I could argue I'm getting bigger acts.
Speaker 3: So in the boom years, according to this analysis by Finance,
Speaker 3: buzz ticket prices since twenty fourteen for most music festivals
Speaker 3: increased by fifty five percent. Like that's super outpacing even
Speaker 3: inflation in the same time period. This isn't like cost
Speaker 3: the living type shit type beat.
Speaker 4: No oh, I'm raping y'all.
Speaker 3: Do you know that Burning Man cost five hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy five dollars to go to If you was going,
Speaker 3: you was probably gonna make some sort of like art
Speaker 3: installation to destroy you doing that all your own money,
Speaker 3: which meant what.
Speaker 4: Same thing happened in the seventeenth century.
Speaker 3: It just becomes a place for the elite because can't
Speaker 3: nobody else afford to go. You know what else happened
Speaker 3: to a lot of festivals is corporation's bottom. You know
Speaker 3: who bought complex BuzzFeed and you know who bought it
Speaker 3: from buzzfeedn't work.
Speaker 4: Nt WRK, It's an investment firm.
Speaker 3: You know who owns the Pitchfork Festival, Condy nast a
Speaker 3: media company. They bought the blog and folded it into GQ.
Speaker 3: It's just a corporation. Capitalism. Capitalism broke the festivals under
Speaker 3: the banner of capitalism, not so much the cost of
Speaker 3: the ticket and the soaring cost of living.
Speaker 4: It also costs too much to make the festival.
Speaker 3: To John Roston, he's the CEO that AIF, the Independent
Speaker 3: Association of Festivals.
Speaker 4: He says, the toilet higher, I just need to buy
Speaker 4: porter potties.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty one was twenty eight thousand dollars for
Speaker 3: the exact same amount of toilets at twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: is fifty four thousand dollars. That's just the toilets. You
Speaker 3: know what happened at Astro World. He ain't have enough security.
Speaker 3: It costs so much you honestly cannot afford to put
Speaker 3: together a festival that will be alluring enough to consumers
Speaker 3: to justify spending that much money. So what do you get?
Speaker 3: A gang of corporate sponsors? And you know what a
Speaker 3: gang of corporate sponsors at a music festival is whack.
Speaker 3: It's a horrible ass experience because you're just watching a
Speaker 3: gang of commercials. Sometimes it just be labels who be
Speaker 3: putting on these artists that they trying to bring, and
Speaker 3: then the artists be trash. They don't be trash because
Speaker 3: they trash. They be trash because they're not ready for
Speaker 3: this size stage. They ain't put in the work. They
Speaker 3: didn't do the Gurney, Illinois experience that I think I've
Speaker 3: told before. What is the most terrifying experience I've ever
Speaker 3: had on tour? You don't had him experiences. You ain't
Speaker 3: played shows when it's more people at the bar, or
Speaker 3: there's more people that work there then come to see you.
Speaker 3: You're not ready for no festival stage, so it's just
Speaker 3: not fun for the concer. So I'm not gonna buy it.
Speaker 3: You can't justify this price. If I'm gonna spend that
Speaker 3: much money, I need to really, really, really really.
Speaker 4: Like this band. This need to be my favorite artist.
Speaker 3: I'm not finna stand around twelve hours pay this much
Speaker 3: money to really only see one act I like.
Speaker 4: That don't make no damn sense.
Speaker 3: And we'll talk about why they only like that one
Speaker 3: artist a little bit later, So remember this point I'm making.
Speaker 3: The second and most obvious one is COVID, which leads
Speaker 3: into the third and fourth, you had to cancel stuff.
Speaker 4: Nobody knew this was coming. Like the el's companies took.
Speaker 3: I canceled a tour. Not only I canceled a tour,
Speaker 3: I released the poetry book that I couldn't tour. I
Speaker 3: mean I personally lost tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands of dollars in touring revenue, in book sales,
Speaker 3: in merch sales, and all of it. Like, I lost
Speaker 3: so much because you just had to, and I'm still
Speaker 3: trying to get that money back. A lot of festivals
Speaker 3: just have never been able to make their money back
Speaker 3: from what they lost, so there's not enough money now. Obviously,
Speaker 3: when the pandemic ended, there was a lot of pent up.
Speaker 4: Energy to be like, I need to go outside.
Speaker 3: But that's because me and you didn't spend two years
Speaker 3: of our high school experience, our two first years of
Speaker 3: college stuck at home. Remember that's the time when you
Speaker 3: get the taste to go outside, when you start finding
Speaker 3: your drinking buddies, yo outside friends, your music friends. You
Speaker 3: have to remember those years, dude, did Those years are
Speaker 3: when you're discovering All research says it's like your taste
Speaker 3: in music happens in those years. Right, If I were
Speaker 3: to ask you what your favorite area of music, most
Speaker 3: likely it's not always, but most likely it was like
Speaker 3: the music you listened to in the eleventh grade, it's
Speaker 3: probably your favorite era. Whatever you was listening to the
Speaker 3: n is probably still your favorite era. Now, obviously that's
Speaker 3: not true for everybody. But hey, if you were seventeen
Speaker 3: you were discovering new music, you want to go to
Speaker 3: like the Cornerhouse of Blues, right, you know this is
Speaker 3: obviously I'm California centric.
Speaker 4: You wanted to hit the Glasshouse. Man?
Speaker 3: Could you just heard about this new band? Little stings
Speaker 3: like that, the Dragonfly, Whiskey of Go Go, the Viper Room,
Speaker 3: all these like smaller spots that when for us out
Speaker 3: of La these were like rights a passage. This is
Speaker 3: how you get to say I saw them win. I
Speaker 3: knew who Will I Am was for the Black Eyed
Speaker 3: Peas because I saw him at the Little Temple which
Speaker 3: is now called the Virgil when he did a beat battle.
Speaker 3: They were at the corner, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 3: And it was fun. I knew Foster of the people.
Speaker 3: They're in San Diego.
Speaker 4: You would just drive down like just at the gas
Speaker 4: lamp like Leon bridges Hell. He opened for us. You
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying, Like.
Speaker 3: Again, like we said in the earlier these these bands
Speaker 3: that you was passionate about. You was seventeen with your
Speaker 3: little Emo hare swooped over your eyes this or you
Speaker 3: was crying over you understand what I'm saying, Like hugging
Speaker 3: onto your little iPad, you know, doing that MySpace picture
Speaker 3: when you looking down. You know it's the white people
Speaker 3: think like this is when you went to go see them.
Speaker 3: If that era for you was a pandemic, you didn't
Speaker 3: acquire a taste for going out like that.
Speaker 4: You saw concerts inside a fortnite.
Speaker 3: So what I'm saying is one of the biggest things
Speaker 3: about gen Z is they don't go out.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just the reality. Not only do it
Speaker 4: ain't got no money.
Speaker 3: They ain't got no money because again inflation and fine,
Speaker 3: the cost of living is insane. But look it, gen
Speaker 3: Z don't drink like we used to drink. They do
Speaker 3: fewer drugs, they have less sex. Part of that is
Speaker 3: because one they hella anxious and.
Speaker 4: I don't blame them.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at my daughter now and I'm like, I'm sorry, baby,
Speaker 3: you probably not gonna buy no house ever. I don't
Speaker 3: even know when you're gonna move out. I don't know
Speaker 3: what to tell you. I'm not mad. I ain't gonna
Speaker 3: push you out of this house, because where you're gonna go,
Speaker 3: you're gonna get seven roommates.
Speaker 4: I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: They do fewer drugs, they drink less, and they don't
Speaker 3: go nowhere because one, they anxious as hell. They nervous
Speaker 3: around being around that many people. And if they are
Speaker 3: gonna go out, if you ask them, the number one
Speaker 3: thing they say is like, I ain't got nobody to
Speaker 3: go with I mean I could go. I ain't got
Speaker 3: nobody to go with you, cause you ain't got no friends.
Speaker 3: You don't go nowhere, right. I've been looking at my
Speaker 3: own child, like why you here?
Speaker 4: Cuz, like don't you you're a go nowhere.
Speaker 3: She's starting to now, but listen, you gotta really really,
Speaker 3: really really.
Speaker 4: Really want to see this person that you're going to see.
Speaker 3: She bought Billie Eilis tickets in February the concert next month.
Speaker 3: She decided, if I'm gonna spend this money this one,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna spend it on right, because it's.
Speaker 4: Worth her money.
Speaker 3: She loves them, she loves her, she got the album,
Speaker 3: she went to the listening party, She's like, this is
Speaker 3: who I'm gonna go see. They don't look and see
Speaker 3: who's playing, or just pull up at adult music spot
Speaker 3: and just be like, oh, one, who's playing. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: discover new music. Now that don't happen. You can't put
Speaker 3: on no festival if people ain't willing to come, which
Speaker 3: leads me to one of the other problems they did,
Speaker 3: which is the music industry itself. It is shocked themselves
Speaker 3: in the foot because the big dogs, just like I
Speaker 3: said happened in the seventeen hundreds, are doing fine. If
Speaker 3: Live Nation and ticket Master own every venue, they only
Speaker 3: gonna put the artists that they won't own their it
Speaker 3: costs too much.
Speaker 4: So they're like, I understand what's going on with y'all festivals.
Speaker 3: I know we doing all right, because if you are
Speaker 3: an industry artist with the machine behind you, number one,
Speaker 3: you don't need a festival.
Speaker 4: You booked the Greek theater yourself.
Speaker 3: Why would I allow myself as an artist for you
Speaker 3: to pay me?
Speaker 4: Guess who turned down Coachella next year? Rihanna and Kendrick.
Speaker 3: Why would either of them play that when they know
Speaker 3: they can be the only artist and sell just as
Speaker 3: many tickets. Kendrick played Staples. I'm calling his Staples because
Speaker 3: I'm from LA. I know it's just a corporation. He
Speaker 3: played Staples four nights in a row where the Lakers played,
Speaker 3: but that was after doing four nights at the Honda
Speaker 3: Center in Orange County. These are eight Southern California shows,
Speaker 3: sold them all out. Why the hell would I give
Speaker 3: that money to Coachella when I could do it myself.
Speaker 3: Live Nation already taking a huge ass cut. Ticketmaster already
Speaker 3: taking a huge ass cut. Scalper's already taking a huge
Speaker 3: ass cut. There's no reason for me to give my
Speaker 3: time and my ticket draw to you when they can
Speaker 3: all go to myself. You did this to yourself music
Speaker 3: industry by locking out all the small venues. You know
Speaker 3: what else the music industry did to itself streaming the
Speaker 3: algorithm that also killed the festival. You know why, because
Speaker 3: you're fed the same music. Algorithm says you like this,
Speaker 3: you probably don't like that, which means.
Speaker 4: We know all people be like music all sound the same, because.
Speaker 3: It does because The goal is to play music that
Speaker 3: feeds the algorithm. You create music that gets your streaming
Speaker 3: numbers up. This is the point I was making earlier.
Speaker 3: While you like, I don't know nobody else on this thing,
Speaker 3: and I'm only really concerned about the headliner. This is
Speaker 3: the point I was making earlier. Algorithm, you create music
Speaker 3: that works on TikTok. So music has this formula. They
Speaker 3: did the same thing with coffee shops. You know why
Speaker 3: coffee shops look like brutaliss mid century, all of them Instagram.
Speaker 3: We're all looking at the same aesthetic. So therefore all
Speaker 3: coffee shops look the same. The same thing happened with
Speaker 3: music the algorithm. So you have these entire very specific niches.
Speaker 3: But can everyone in your weird niche. Are there thirty
Speaker 3: artists in your very weird niche that can bring ten
Speaker 3: thousand people out to a field? No, because there's only
Speaker 3: forty of y'all that like this music that's online streaming.
Speaker 3: There's no human editorial, there's no DJ that's saying, yo, dude, long,
Speaker 3: look at this.
Speaker 4: No, look at this.
Speaker 3: You're stuck to doing it yourself, and hopefully you can
Speaker 3: climb out your algorithm, right J McDonald says, a genre
Speaker 3: unfocused festival poster lineup starts to just look like a
Speaker 3: playlist that has been made and personalized for somebody else. Okay,
Speaker 3: you want to do a genre specific one, let's just say, okay,
Speaker 3: kpop fly on and acts from Korea? How much you're
Speaker 3: gonna sell all these tickets for? How many k pop
Speaker 3: acts do you get?
Speaker 4: You don't book nobody local? Do you how much money
Speaker 4: that would cost? Or you say I'm gonna do a
Speaker 4: k pop day? All right?
Speaker 3: So you do a three day festival. One day's k pop,
Speaker 3: one day's EDM, one day's hip hop.
Speaker 4: Uh, nobody's bout a three day pass.
Speaker 3: So one day might be trash And how do you
Speaker 3: build it? What does the flyer look like? I don't
Speaker 3: know half of these people. I ain't never even heard
Speaker 3: of that. No single act can sell a festival, and
Speaker 3: if you try to do a multi different act thing,
Speaker 3: it's just gonna confuse the consumer. So if you're putting
Speaker 3: on the festival, your only option is to just go big.
Speaker 3: This has to do with money, So you are going
Speaker 3: to overspend, right, because it's like, how are you gonna
Speaker 3: get people here? You get Taylor Swift. Do you know
Speaker 3: how much money you gotta offer somebody like a Taylor
Speaker 3: Swift for her to give her performance to your festival
Speaker 3: rather than just to do her own show.
Speaker 4: And the consumer says, again, is this worth my money?
Speaker 3: I'm willing to throw this money at this big act
Speaker 3: because that's what the Alcali, that's.
Speaker 4: Who I know.
Speaker 3: They're not gonna risk no more because music discovery is
Speaker 3: now algorithmic. You're not just gonna go pull up at
Speaker 3: a spot and be like, who's this open or they're dope.
Speaker 3: The industry did it to itself. You killed your own
Speaker 3: performance market. And because Live Nation brought up all the
Speaker 3: small venues where artists really get their chops and really
Speaker 3: create fan bases and really you get to discover and
Speaker 3: make connections with it, there's no places for them to play.
Speaker 3: All that's left are the big industry artists and why
Speaker 3: again would they give their ticket sales to a festival?
Speaker 3: And lastly, climate change. It's hot as hell. The last
Speaker 3: two burning bands poured rain and flooded. Before that, it
Speaker 3: was like one hundred and twenty nine million degrees.
Speaker 4: It's hot.
Speaker 3: It's too hot to be out there like this climate y'all,
Speaker 3: and enough water. It's hot as hell. It's hot as hell,
Speaker 3: or it's floody. It's hot or it's floody. Ain't no
Speaker 3: more nice days outside. I find the stand outside all day.
Speaker 3: You crazy?
Speaker 4: You gonna make me pay extra for shade. It's an
Speaker 4: extra one hundred dollars so I can have a humbrother.
Speaker 4: I'm good. Just hold on, we're staying home. Staying home.
Speaker 3: Okay, now again, let's rebuild the world. What can we
Speaker 3: do better? That's in our control. So festivals might be done,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't mean we don't still love music. If
Speaker 3: you're a music lover, here are some suggestions I can
Speaker 3: give you that would keep your favorite bands in the game.
Speaker 3: The first is the easiest one for you, which of course,
Speaker 3: is buying or streaming their music. If you're gonna stream,
Speaker 3: here's the thing, dude, I'm not an old guy to
Speaker 3: say that, like your release Radar or your New Music Friday,
Speaker 3: that algorithmic playlist that's like customized just for you, it's great.
Speaker 3: My request that I think would help is this. If
Speaker 3: a song pops on and you dig it, save it
Speaker 3: number one, and then too, go to the album, go
Speaker 3: to that artist's page and give them a follow and
Speaker 3: listen to the album. You heard the song, the song
Speaker 3: was dope, and if it really resonate, I'm not begging
Speaker 3: you to do something that you don't like, listen to
Speaker 3: that album, you know the whole Like artists blowing up
Speaker 3: on TikTok. That's why Universal was just like man tried
Speaker 3: to dead all that, you know, So if the artist
Speaker 3: blows up on TikTok, you you really like that, it's
Speaker 3: not like yo, like go to that artist page, go
Speaker 3: to their music like, you know.
Speaker 4: Instead of just like shooting a video like that. Stuff's
Speaker 4: short lived.
Speaker 3: If you're artists, like obviously you hope that one day
Speaker 3: that happens, but that's not sustainable. You can't tour off that.
Speaker 3: That's what happened to a lot of ours. Why I
Speaker 3: Spice cancel half for tour dates is because there's not songs.
Speaker 4: There's TikTok audios. You feel me.
Speaker 3: That helps the artists know when they try to go
Speaker 3: get a show that they can prove that, like, hey, listen,
Speaker 3: these are listeners. When you go to my Spotify page,
Speaker 3: we go to any Spotify page, the first number you
Speaker 3: see is monthly listeners but that don't mean followers. I
Speaker 3: have this weird upside down thing. Most people have more
Speaker 3: monthly listeners than followers. I'm the opposite. I have three
Speaker 3: times more followers than monthly listeners, which means these people
Speaker 3: are going to be alerted when I drop music. Why
Speaker 3: I have that is because I toured so hard. I
Speaker 3: played every possible dumb, ugly venue I possibly could, like,
Speaker 3: gotted out the mud, shook hands, stayed after, stayed at
Speaker 3: the merch table, took pictures, got email addresses, got phone numbers,
Speaker 3: came back, you know, signed everything. I would stay after
Speaker 3: the show for an extra hour until everybody got their
Speaker 3: picture and everybody got their stuff signed, hard fought so
Speaker 3: that way, You're right, I'm not cranking out music that
Speaker 3: feeds the algorithm.
Speaker 4: You're right. But when I drop an album, they no.
Speaker 3: So my request as the consumer is follow that artist
Speaker 3: like close to the album. And secondly, the most obvious
Speaker 3: one is like dude by merch. Oh my god, y'all,
Speaker 3: I'm saying like merch has been the difference between car
Speaker 3: insurance and not. For me, merch has been the difference
Speaker 3: between can my daughter stay in her you know, dance
Speaker 3: class her after school, like ballet class. Merch Like merch
Speaker 3: is how we paid for our daughters. So during the pandemic,
Speaker 3: hell merch it paid our rent because all he had. Now,
Speaker 3: as an artist, you need to have dope merch.
Speaker 4: That's what I mean.
Speaker 3: If your merch sucks, that I mean, it is what
Speaker 3: it is. I can't ask you to, you know, purchase
Speaker 3: something that's trash. Artists make dope merch. You know, I
Speaker 3: have vinyl. Vinyl costs a lot, but you can go
Speaker 3: to my website there's vinyl like that stuff.
Speaker 4: Those make a difference.
Speaker 3: And then I'd also ask, like, if you really dig
Speaker 3: an artist, this is on the artist's job to like
Speaker 3: sign up for their newsletter, find out when they're touring,
Speaker 3: and just and go to their shows. And when you
Speaker 3: get there like another game. I think I told this
Speaker 3: on the Politics podcast too, where it's like most of
Speaker 3: the time as the artist, I keep the door like
Speaker 3: meaning the ticket sales, and then the venue keeps the bar.
Speaker 4: So their thing is like, well, they're going to make
Speaker 4: a ton of money on the bar.
Speaker 3: But that's how I get to come back is if
Speaker 3: this venue says, oh, yeah, he brought you know, three
Speaker 3: hundred people here, they respected my staff, they bought drink
Speaker 3: and me as an artist, my team, I'd be silly
Speaker 3: on stage, but we're very, very professional. I take my
Speaker 3: reputation very serious. We make sure that like the talent buyer,
Speaker 3: the venues, everybody taken care of.
Speaker 4: We're not yelling at the sound man. You know, we
Speaker 4: keep a clean green room.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 3: Those are things you could do as an artist, but
Speaker 3: as a consumer, like I know the algorithm's fighting against you,
Speaker 3: but like, if you really like a group, go out
Speaker 3: of your way, even if it's on the discovery things. Again,
Speaker 3: the big people is easy. Beyonce's tickets are gonna come
Speaker 3: find you. You ain't gotta go find them. But Johnny
Speaker 3: Swim but the hot shakes, right, that's what they call
Speaker 3: go find them because at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: it's your presence. If you're gonna stay in music, you
Speaker 3: have to get butts in seats. Is this for us
Speaker 3: to save music festivals? I don't care they did that
Speaker 3: to themselves. I'm just trying to save live music because truly, truly,
Speaker 3: there is nothing like it.
Speaker 1: Oh oh oh oh oh oh, it could happen.
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