Is there a future for The Great British Music Festival?

Mud,music,madness(no not the baggy trousers kind!) the British music festival is engrained in our society. However, a problem appears to be growing for the organisers of these getaways for a large majority of the nations public. In a recent interview with The Times, festival guru Michael Evis (Owner of the farm in which Glastonbury is held) expressed his concerns about the future of the iconic festival saying "it may only have three years left."
Why is this?

One reason this may be is simply the fans attending these festivals have seen it all before. It's now seeming that only a certain number of acts are considered good enough to headline the top festivals and consistently these bands are appearing on festival line-ups after only a year or two of having previously headlining, one example of this is Def Leppard at Download headlining again this year having done so in 2009. This repetition must be beginning to bore the fans having to watch the same bands over and over. It appears that there are very few festivals willing to give up and coming acts their chance of headlining. One example of a festival inclined to do this was Sonisphere giving Biffy Clyro a headline slot, which was met positively by fans and reviewers alike. However, giving these acts the opportunity is not without its risks which may be putting may festivals off doing so. This can be seen with Eavis being quoted as saying that Glasto almost went bankrupt in 2008 when the festival controversially booked Jay-Z. The problem may however lie not in the festival organisers but in the bands themselves. Prehaps their albums have not skyrocketed them to the success of deserving to top the bill on the main stage of a festival. One band that springs to mind when thinking of this is Queens of the Stone Age. Despite having hugely recogniseable anthems (No One Knows, 3's and 7's) and having been around for over a decade, they have never headlined a British festival. Until the continuous recycling of artists of headliners is fixed then the interest in the major festivals will continue to drain.

Another reason why these festivals could be at risk of dissapearing is the huge inflation of the ticket prices in recent years. It is no longer cheap to attend these festivals. A ticket for one of the major festivals will set you back upwards of £190 for a weekend ticket. Using the Reading and Leeds Festivals as an example in 1989 a weekend ticket was a modest £32.50, In 2000 this had doubled to £80 and this years price being a huge £192.50. Clearly as festivals were growing more popular the organisers capitalised upon the loyalty of the patrons attending the festivals. However, it has reached a point where their greed has outgrown their justification for purchasing a ticket, many fans mindset is "why spend £190 on a festival where you can go and see many more music acts at stadium shows for a small fraction of that fee?"  It is these unjustifiable prices that are affecting the major festivals with many of them failing to sell out and putting them in risk of extinction.

Also, with the influx of smaller festivals coming on the scene, this is causing more difficulty for many of these minnows of the festival world with many of them just not selling enough tickets in the current recession. This is resulting in many casualties dying a death without the transfusion of ticket money to keep them afloat. Casualties include Glade Festival and Northern Lights Festival.  Also, these smaller festivals find themselves being muscled out of the business by the financial might of companies such as Festival Republic who own numerous festivals and therefore book the best acts due to their high bank balances. However, with these major festivals not selling out this will limit their expendatures in the coming years.

A further problem is the number of previously loyal festivalgoers choosing to travel abroad for music festivals. Festivals such as Benicassim and Coachella have seen a huge increase in the amount of Brits coming to soak up the music,atmosphere and sun! The appeal of these festivals is easy to see with the mix of a holiday and a festival with the tickets to these festivals being cheaper or the same price as their British counterparts. Also, these foreign festivals also can guarentee a brilliant line-up due to there being no exclusivity of certain bands being only able to play certain festivals like there is in this country. These foreign festivals are contrubuting to the seeming slow death of the British Music Festival.

And so with the festival season in full swing the problems are there for all to see with Reading and Leeds still having 40% of their overall tickets to sell and being sold for below face value and Latitude,Download and WOMAD all  failing to sell out. It may be a time for those attending to savour the moment as it may be one of the last