Samantha Donovan: Well it's been a difficult year for music festivals, with the cancellation of some of the country's biggest events. In New South Wales, the Splendour in the Grass festival pulled the pin only weeks after announcing Kylie Minogue would be one of the headline acts, while the touring regional event Groovin' the Moo announced it hadn't sold enough tickets to go ahead. So it's a tough environment for new festivals, but in Adelaide, organisers of a jazz event are hoping they'll succeed. This report from Angus Randall.
Angus Randall: A New Orleans-style jazz band winds its way through Adelaide's Rundlemore shopping strip. It's part of the city's second annual Jazz Festival, one of the few festivals to launch post-COVID.
Kaya Blum: People were looking for an opportunity to kind of get out and celebrate and try and reinvigorate our live music ecosystem.
Angus Randall: Kaya Blum is the festival's artistic director. She knew if she was going to put on a show, it had to be low risk, and that meant programming small shows in small venues.
Kaya Blum: Jazz works really well in quite an intimate environment, so by actually programming a festival that puts the musicians into some of the existing live music venues, that creates that really great atmosphere. It's a lot less risk than say some of the bigger festivals where they've got massive infrastructure costs, huge insurance, public liability costs.
Angus Randall: Australia's large festivals are continuing to struggle. Multi-day festival Splendour in the Grass cancelled due to what it called unexpected events. Regional one-day event Groovin' the Moo was more blunt. It blamed poor ticket sales. And last month, East Coast festival Pandemonium Rocks cut several high-profile bands from the bill in what appeared to be a cost-cutting measure. Kaya Blum says even for her smaller-scale event, she's still dealing with significant uncertainty.
Kaya Blum: Costs have ballooned, but we've also got issues with an economic downturn, and it's a lot harder for people to be able to afford to go out, so people are leaving it to the last minute.
Angus Randall: After being burnt by COVID cancellations, music lovers are holding off on buying tickets the moment they go on sale. And while some festivals remain a labour of love, the industry has consolidated around a few big operators, like Live Nation, which owns the company behind Splendour in the Grass. Dr Sam Whiting is a lecturer in creative industries at the University of South Australia.
Sam Whiting: A lot of these festivals are carrying a lot of debt from the COVID period, and I also think festival promoters have become more risk-averse and much more business-minded when you've got multinationals involved who are just going to pull the plug if they see a loss coming.
Angus Randall: He says there's still a market for genre-specific festivals, but the days may be numbered for festivals that try to have something for everyone.
Alex Taylor: Festivals that cater to a dedicated, maybe niche audience, like metal or jazz or hip-hop or dance, those festivals are still doing quite well, and I think it has a lot to do with the way that we consume music now. It's much more targeted and curated through digital media platforms like Spotify, where the platform's feeding you what it already knows that you want to hear, which means that our tastes are much more concentrated than they used to be when we accessed music mainly through radio for young people, Triple J, who took a broad brushstroke approach to programming. Festivals would often follow that programming style. You're offering something for everyone, but not enough for them to make that massive commitment for a multi-day music festival and the price associated.
Angus Randall: The reported death of the music festival is nothing new. When the big day out imploded after two decades as the country's biggest summer festival, there were fears others would follow suit. But Dr Sam Whiting says festivals will find a way.
Sam Whiting: We worried then about the death of music festival, and I think what we're seeing now is a shift in audience behaviours and consumption, not spelling the death of the music festival, but I think maybe spelling the death of the multi-genre, little bit for something for everyone approach to programming. I don't think that's the way we consume music anymore. So I think music festivals are going to become more targeted, more genre specific and more niche. And I certainly think they have a future in that regard.
Samantha Donovan: Dr Sam Whiting from the University of South Australia. Angus Randall reporting from the Adelaide Jazz Festival.