How Much Do Bands Get Paid At Festivals
Coachella; Credit: Jamey hopkins/Wikipedia
Past Chris Parker
It's every bit though the sad, lamentable death of recorded music was accompanied by a boot-donkey wake. Sure, label executives have had to sell their fancy homes and put their kids in public schools, merely the residual of the states accept been feasting on a musical smorgasbord.
Nothing ameliorate exemplifies this than Coachella, the crown gem among destination music festivals, a sort of spring break for music lovers. Iii days of music, over 150 bands, repeated over ii weekends (the 2nd calendar week starts on Fri) featuring a wonderful cross-department of music world erstwhile and new – Red Hot Chili Peppers, Moby, Wu Tang Association, Social Distortion, Japandroids, Vampire Weekend, and more.
Coachella is part of a rapid build-up in stationary music festivals, big and small, beyond the state and reflective of alive music's explosion of growth since the millennium. While information technology won't recoup for a 50 percent drop in U.Southward. recorded music sales since 1999, concert ticket sales filled nearly 40 percent of that loss between 1999 and 2009.
During that time, North American live music revenues trebled from $1.v billion to a tiptop of $4.6 billion before receding a fleck during the recession. Last twelvemonth, concert revenues were $4.iii billion versus $7 billion in music revenues (more than half digital, for the first time). While downloading may have sapped music sales, information technology's only amplified people's want to feel music upward close and personal.
"You text. You don't call, you don't write notes. Yous don't pop upwards at your friends' firm. You Skype. We're not touching each other," says the rapper Murs, who founded the Paid Dues festival in Los Angeles. "Technology has separated the states and then much, it's natural for us to have this want to come together and [festivals] really cater to that communal nature."
Encounter also: Our Paid Ante 2013 review
It'due south a booming concern, even for newcomers. Last yr Firefly Music Festival premiered at a racetrack in Dover, Delaware, drawing more than xxx,000 patrons daily, making in the neighborhood of $9 meg in ticket sales lone. It's estimated to take injected upwards of $12 1000000 into the local economy.
"There'south an increased trend of multi-faceted, social events and people are more willing than ever to make certain they don't miss out on experiential, destination weekends with friends," writes Joe Reynolds, CEO of Ruby Frog Events, the festival'southward founder.
Sensing a score, the field'due south getting crowded. A hardly exhaustive list on Wikipedia logs 110 different major festivals across the land. Live Nation lone put on 18 last yr, including Jay-Z'due south new Made in America, Sasquatch in the Gorge in Washington, and Atlanta's Music Midtown, each of which sold out. Three of the country's biggest, most established festivals – Coachella ($47.3 million, 78,500 daily, six days), Lollapalooza ($22.5 1000000, 100,000, 3 days), and Bonnaroo ($xxx meg, fourscore,000, four days) – regularly sell out early.
That's the power of an established brand. A 2010 Bloomberg story pegged Bonnaroo's profits at $12 one thousand thousand a yr, which would explain the $five million in charitable donations fabricated during its first decade of existence. Information technology'southward besides why so many promoters are taking their shot.
When you consider the $254 meg Coachella brought to the desert region around Indio (and $90 million to the city itself), you can see why a metropolis would do whatever it can to assist. Apparently that but holds until a festival's established itself, at which signal yous grab for more. (See, Indio proposed, then ultimately withdrew, a $4-$6 million ticket revenue enhancement.)
"I of the obvious reasons music festivals have taken off is a lot of people think they can make a lot of money with them, and information technology'southward non that easy," says Grayson Currin, who co-founded the Hopscotch Festival in Chapel Colina, North Carolina, now entering its fourth year. "The margins are pretty small."
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Coachella founder Paul Tollet came upwards the way virtually festival promoters do – in bars and clubs. He began past booking his older brother'south Perry's band The Targets. While attending Cal-Poly Pomona, Tollet hooked upwards with Goldenvoice founder Gary Tovar, who funded his promotion company with gain from pot dealing. Tovar somewhen took a rap and went to jail, signing over his command in the company to Tollet and his partner Rick Van Santen in '91.
They moved to a 200-square-foot Beverly Hills address to impress the booking agents and benefited from Nirvana's breakthrough as the bands they'd been promoting for years suddenly became large draws. They had plenty of cash flow, and were booking 175 shows a twelvemonth, but were digging themselves deeper in debt.
Coachella was going to be the big score that pulled them out of debt. Tollet described it as a "Hail Mary" in an OC Weekly story a year ago. He wasn't lying. They were sacked for $1 meg. Goldenvoice vice president Skip Page recalls the accountant bawling loudly that terminal night of the commencement Coachella when it became clear how much money they'd lost.
That would've been information technology, had it non been for the relationships Tollet had built with bands over the years. Headliners such as Beck, Rage Confronting the Machine, and Tool waited patiently for as many every bit five months to get paid. Employees regularly accepted checks with more than bounciness than a SuperBall. Tollet and Van Santen eventually sold their promotion visitor, Goldenvoice, to AEG Live for merely enough money to pay off all the people they owed. (Tollet initially retained total control of Coachella and withal holds l percent ownership.)
"Guys like us, we didn't make whatsoever money," says Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman, who attended Cal Poly-Pomona with Tollet and became friends. "Paul and myself, nosotros had to bring in partners to brand it work. Paul put his heart and soul into information technology, only it was his center and soul, so he had to bring in AEG to share his whole business organization because he believed so much in it. I had to bring in Vans as a partner to kind of proceed me going until we gained traction. I know that it takes a while to be successful."
Sponsorship is key to any festival, even if it tries to keep things low-fundamental – as Goldenvoice does at Coachella, more than its sis state-themed fest, Stagecoach, the following weekend. It can exist the difference between losing and making coin, specially in the beginning, and it helps salve the wounds when the weather turns foul. (Rain is an outdoor festival promoter's greatest enemy and single biggest wild card.)
Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell tried for a while to go on the corporate brands at bay but establish sponsorships the but acceptable way to keep ticket prices down. From 2003 to 2010, music sponsorship of concerts and multi-solar day festivals doubled from $574 million annually to $i.17 billion, with much of that increase coming from festivals.
Of course, sponsorships aren't sitting on a shelf like bottles of Mount Dew. The good ones typically are reserved for established festivals, and sometimes not fifty-fifty then. While at that place was a moment when Warner Brothers considered buying Paid Dues from Murs, he hasn't had any luck finding a top-of-the-nib partner for arguably the finest hip-hop festival in the country. This while securing backing from shoe companies for his solo tours.
"Information technology's funny because I haven't been approached by anyone. People tend to shy away from hip-hop. For something that'due south been proven every bit an art form and is here to stay – and then many people dorsum abroad from it. Information technology'due south like pulling teeth to get a sponsorship. I appreciate Monster Free energy, Heineken, and some of these sponsors for us, but to get a title sponsor…," Murs says with a sigh. "I understand it's a risk, because information technology's simply the nature of hip-hop culture in that location are some tearing aspects to it, but there's a departure between gangsta rap and what Paid Ante represents."
Ruby-red Hot Chili Peppers
Even subsequently bringing in AEG Alive, it wasn't all smooth sailing for Coachella. Its 2001 render was almost sunk by failure to land a suitable headliner. The festival received a lifeline from Farrell, who reunited Jane's Addiction for the second fourth dimension to play Coachella. By 2003, it had begun to gather existent steam with a headlining pecker featuring Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys and a reunited The Stooges. Past 2004 it was a sellout, and has remained and so ever since. Even concluding yr when it added a second weekend, information technology sold out in hours, the lineup still unannounced.
"We've evolved to the point where there are a lot of artists who want to play Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, and because these festivals are so well established and in some cases sell out before they even announce the talent, that puts the promoter in a very good negotiating position," says editor Gary Bongiovanni of manufacture trade publication Pollstar. "They're able to become better deals, though that only works with the established festivals."
In that location are merely so many large-proper name acts to anchor a big festival, and they earn good money. While the lowest-rung act at Coachella made $15,000 in 2010, headliners can control seven figures. It's turned into a nice living for some acts.
"In that location'southward a whole circuit of bands now that seems similar all they practice is play festivals, and it's turned into a fairly lucrative career," says Lyman, though the drop-off is steep from ane shelf to the next. "It drops off very quickly. Kings of Leon, Arcade Burn down, Mumford and Sons, Chili Peppers, yous're at one echelon, and so [the coin] does go downwards steeply."
For bands further down the rungs, an appearance at a big festival like Coachella or Bonnaroo carries validation and helps attract the attention of other festival promoters. Beyond that, at that place's the opportunity to attain an audience who might never otherwise hear your band.
"The festival scene has inverse everything for musicians and bands. Nosotros're just thankful to be a part of it," says Adam Grace of alt-country group Truth & Salvage Co. "There's so many bands and so few slots to fill. Information technology feels really good to kind of be in the guild. It'southward so important doing it just to reach multitudes of people. We know one Bonnarroo operation in terms of fans can be worth iii months of touring. And so, business organization-wise, they're great gigs. That'southward why everyone wants to practice them."
The growth of dance music and outdoor festivals mirrors trends in Europe with longer traditions. England has several historic outdoor events, such as Reading and Leads and Glastonbury festivals. They have been in existence since the early on '60s and '70s, respectively. The Glastonbury Festival draws more than than 175,000 a twenty-four hour period, (though information technology took 2012 off).
That fervor has taken fourth dimension to cantankerous the pond. In England, live music has outsold recorded music since 2008.
"Since Coachella has gone on, there are countless festivals around the [U.S.], and we're at present into our second generation of kids knowing how to get to festivals," says Lyman. "We didn't take that – unlike Europe where there's third and quaternary generations of kids going to festivals."
Explosive festival growth in Europe has sprouted ii,500-iii,000 festivals yearly and 670 in England lonely, a 73 pct increase since 2003. That's a lot more than here and crusade for suggestions of over-saturation.
Terminal yr, it reached a breaking signal. More than a dozen major English festivals shut down (Big Arctic, Sonisphere, Cloud 9), thank you to the European union's ongoing financial troubles, Olympic competition (Glastonbury cited an expected shortage of porta-potties), and a very rainy summertime. Market place saturation, combined with the difficulty finding big enough acts for fans to justify the several-hundred-dollar expenditure, also contributed to the situation.
"The economics are ever difficult, in part considering if in that location isn't an established festival, you lot take an awful lot of competition for that talent," says Bongiovanni. "There are certain weekends, especially over the summer, where at that place are so many major festivals going on in Europe, and information technology's amazing there's enough talent to spread around through them."
In America, there's the added challenge that whatsoever independent concert promoter is competing with Live Nation and AEG Alive, who have added leverage because they can promise additional gigs at area amphitheatres and clubs under their control.
"Nosotros're in a situation of David and Goliath, where the larger festival is run by very big music corporations," says Jon Largay, founder of Phoenix's McDowell Mountain
Music Fest. Withal, MMMF scored a stellar lineup this year featuring the Roots, The Shins, Les Claypool, Heartless Bastards, Deer Tick, Edward Sharpe, Dr. Dog, Umphrey'due south McGee, and Yonder Mountain String ring.
"When you invite forty bands to play, you don't have a total say in your ending lineup," he says, acknowledging that this time they got almost all their top choices. "Nosotros're very excited with the bands that elected to play this year, to a indicate where we're maybe a little lucky from that standpoint. Peradventure our relationships with the agents are good and maybe they sympathize why we're doing information technology."
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The concert industry is most 60 percent the size of the recorded-music market over here. But that didn't prevent a number of bigger music festivals from shutting downwardly during the last few years.
Among them are Southward Florida's Langerado, Canada's Pemberton B.C., Catalpa Music Festival, New Jersey's All Points Westward, and Denver's Mile High Fest, the latter two created by Goldenvoice/AEG Live. All but Langerado failed to survive past their 2d year, a testament to the difficulty in getting a new festival off the basis, fifty-fifty for established operators.
Melvin Benn, director of the UK promoters Festival Republic (Reading and Leeds, the canceled Big Chill), described it as "gambling in its crudest form," since a promoter ordinarily promises to deliver the appurtenances without knowing if people will testify. The bigger companies may have fifty-fifty more than incentive lately to pull the plug than smaller promoters, who can tolerate smaller margins and a slow build.
"I don't remember the climate to lose money to build a festival is out there anymore, because nigh of the companies that are behind these festivals are beholden to something," says Lyman. "They're beholden to a Live Nation, to their stockholders, and it'due south hard to justify going out in that location and losing a million bucks."
This has opened the door for local promoters to launch festivals in secondary and tertiary markets that maybe don't e'er get the biggest acts. Music festivals' sometimes sketchy economic science scare the large boys off. Bongiovanni reports this is all the same an expanse of nifty growth.
"There are a lot of these events, and they're quite successful, but they're not looking to sell 100,000 people," he says. "Obviously it's easier to exercise 20,000. The economic science work a lot easier also."
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