Music is Life Festival: Gladstone residents speak out about refund pain

People who purchased tickets to the Music is Life Festival have been left in the lurch after the group behind the event recently declared the company to be in liquidation.

Some Central Queensland residents who purchased tickets to attend the Music is Life Festival to be held at the Gladstone Showgrounds are in a state of disbelief after event promoters recently revealed the company behind the event had gone into liquidation.

Major headline acts including Bliss N Eso, Choirboys, Shannon Noll, Travis Collins and Samantha Jade were set to take centre stage from April 8-11.

The Music is Life Festival line-up for 2022 advertised on Instagram. Picture: Larah Fedalto.

Then on February 26, with fewer than two months until the festival was scheduled to take place, event promoters Didge Group, led by Mark Di Ruggiero, shared the disappointing news of the festival’s postponement once again “due to the pandemic”.

A Music is Life event planned for Biloela in July 2021 was also postponed.

Music is Life organisers urged ticket holders to not apply for refunds and instead encouraged their customers to “keep them as you already have for this long”, while also declaring to those wanting a refund it “must be done in writing within 21 days”.

Gladstone local Kara, who preferred to keep her surname private, said she “paid $878 for tickets back in 2020 and applied for a refund the day after the event was cancelled”.

Kara claims she has not received any communication from the Festival is Life event co-ordinators and now says she is “100 per cent sure” she “will not receive any refund for the tickets”.

“Sixty-five thousand dollars in refunds have been paid out, I haven’t received mine. One postponement is fine but two and now nothing, pretty sh---y form right, where has the money gone,” Kara said.

In April, event promoters shared “there are currently unresolved legal reasons prohibiting us from refunding the remaining tickets”.

Gladstone resident Wezley Stark Pitt has taken it upon himself to submit a claim against the Music is Life Festival group notifying the Queensland Office of Fair Trading of the situation on behalf of ticket holders.

“I’ve been documenting the event since February; I have ticket holders sending me emails and have sent most of my reports to the Office of Fair Trading in an effort to keep the promoter accountable,” Wezley said.

The Observer has obtained an email recently addressed to ticket holders from event organisers that clearly states the Music is Life Festival has been left with “no other alternative” than to “place the company into liquidation/deregistration”.

In an updated statement published on the Music if Life website promoters further wrote “we, (Music Is Life), have not pocketed any money as some people would like to think, $65,000 has gone back to customers via way of refunds (all of which can be verified)”.

“There was also gossip that we did not even have a venue secured and that this particular person stated he got this info from his “reliable source”,” they said.

“This is a total fabrication and Music Is Life can send him the proof of the acknowledgment from the venue stating the cost of the venue etc if they like, so whoever his “reliable source is”, is a liar.”

The official event website has recently been reduced to a single statement declaring the website will now “unfortunately cease to exist in the near future as will our email address”.

Meaning Gladstone ticket holders will now have to deal with the fallout on their own.

Event organiser, Mark Di Ruggiero was personally contacted by The Observer to provide a comment to which he responded with “all ticket holders have been informed of the current situation”.