Beyond The Valley, Meredith and Good Things music festivals are making a big comeback
Summer music festivals including Beyond The Valley, Meredith and Good Things are defying the box office blues for the Aussie industry.
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It was the moment of truth in a year of uncertainty for the team behind the four-day camping festival Beyond The Valley.
In the seconds before tickets for this year’s event went on sale, everyone in the Untitled Group office in inner-city Melbourne gathered around a computer screen.
Mike Christidis, one of the four co-founders and managing partners of the independent live music events company, said it was like watching a lottery draw.
“You are always nervous going into the onsale; our whole office gathers around a screen and we watch people going into the waiting room which turns into the queue and then into tickets sold. We were so overwhelmed by the support this year,” he said.
Beyond the Valley, held at the Barunah Plains near the Victorian surf coast in late December, sold an impressive 85 per cent of their tickets during the festival’s pre-sale and general sale last week.
The event’s successful ticket ballot comes in a tough year when Bluesfest announced next year’s event will be its last hurrah, and other festival institutions including Splendour in the Grass, Groovin’ The Moo and Spilt Milk have taken the year off due to high costs and unpredictable ticket buying habits.
As some in the industry bemoan the doom and gloom of this correction in the global festival scene – a cycle which tends to repeat each decade – and demand government handouts to clear their debts, other promoters staging gigs this summer season are celebrating strong demand for their events.
The teams behind Beyond the Valley, Good Things, Wildlands, Lost Paradise, Meredith Music Festival, Palm Tree festival, Harbourlife and the Night at the Barracks concert series have demonstrated a carefully curated, genre-focused line-up coupled with a good reputation for staging punter-friendly events will move tens of thousands of tickets in a day.
Good Things promoter Chris O’Brien has witnessed the festival boom and bust cycle over his three decades in the business, including stints with the pioneering events Big Day Out and Soundwave.
And the secret to surviving and thriving in a climate where production costs have skyrocketed, international agents have hiked artist fees against a depreciated Australian dollar, and fans have become more discerning with their entertainment spends, is to stay in your lane and not grow too big.
“I think you have to park your ego; just because you think you can go bigger, doesn’t mean you should, because it makes programming so much more difficult – artist fees go up and ticket prices go up,” he said.
“We have to get festivals to a sustainable level.”
Good Things does rock music – from heavy metal to punk, alternative to heritage – with this year’s line-up featuring Korn, Sum 41, Violent Femmes, The Living End, Jet, L7, Mastodon, Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) and … Dragon.
Programming a couple of surprises in your line-up is also a clever strategy to engage fans in pre-ticket sale debate.
“If you go back to the glory days of festivals in Australia, the late 1990s and early 2000s, you bought a ticket the second they went on sale because you knew there would be great music, great facilities and you would be hanging with your best mates,” O’Brien said
“Our demo ranges from 16 to 60 and it’s a great festival to be at because the people watching is as good as watching the bands.”
The Beyond the Valley team have also booked a couple of “heritage” surprise acts for their 2024 festival, which is headlined by Aussie DJ megastar Fisher, rap "It" girl Ice Spice and English electronic duo Chase and Status.
The inclusion of two names – early 2000s girl group Sugababes and English pop star Natasha Bedingfield – popped some eyeballs when the line-up dropped.
Christidis said while Beyond the Valley has a reputation for curating exciting line-ups which appeal to electronic and alternative pop fans, it is a festival’s “culture” and sense of community that can shift the box office dial to “sold out.”
“I really am proud of what we’ve been able to build with the culture around the festival. Some people may only know two or three acts on the bill but they trust in the brand to deliver the experience they want, particularly when they’re parting ways for $600 or $700 for a top-tier festival ticket these days,” he said.
Both O’Brien and Lost Paradise creator Simon Beckingham believe the festival experience is as much about discovering your new music obsession as it is about seeing your favourite acts.
“The headliners quite often sell the tickets, but the talking points are the random micro-moments you have,” Beckingham said.
While Spilt Milk pulled the plug on their 2024 festivals, they have just announced a smaller, more focused series of shows in November for Perth, Newcastle and Gold Coast under the banner of House Party, starring pop prince Troye Sivan, global chartslayers Glass Animals and drumming pop icon G Flip.
As the summer festival season shapes up to be a good one despite the economic pressures, O’Brien would like to see governments across Australia reduce red tape, and the over-policing of events in NSW.
But he doesn’t believe it is up to Federal or State governments to bail out struggling events.
“If you can’t run a sustainable business without money from the government, you don’t deserve to be running a business.”
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