Amid tough times and cancellations for music festivals, one local promoter is putting on an Adelaide event based on a fresh approach to what works and what the punters want.
The Adelaide promoter dancing to a different music festival beat
This graphic: Jayde Vandborg.
In the wake of music festival cancellations such as Harvest Rock, Groovin the Moo and Vintage Vibes, co-director and founder of Gluttony, Daniel Michael, says the recipe for music festival success has changed.
Daniel says the way forward is for festivals to have a “niche”, with “more targeted” lineups.
“I think what we’ve seen with the festivals being a hard sell is that people don’t want to pay for 15 or 20 acts when they want to see three or four of them,” he says.
“There’s always going to be exceptions to that, if the desire to see one of the acts is so strong that they just don’t care.
“But I think people’s music tastes are being curated by AI a little bit, so whether you’re on Spotify or YouTube or whatever, you’re then fed more of the same things that you like.”
This theory coincides with live music industry expert Dr Sam Whiting’s opinion on Triple J’s Hack.
Comparing music curation today to 10 to 15 years ago, Daniel says: “People might have been listening to a radio station and that radio station has professional music directors who then go ‘ok, we’re going to have a mix of music’”.
“People’s tastes were probably spread broader to different things,” he says.
“So that basket of different music styles that you get at say A Big Day Out or a Stereosonic back in the day made sense because the radio station was playing all of those artists.”
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Harvest Rock was cancelled for 2024. This picture: supplied.
Daniel believes it is why “massive international touring acts” like Taylor Swift are reaching new levels of popularity, because people are “just getting fed the same stuff over and over in their algorithm and they’re not getting fed those mid-tier or lower pop acts”.
He says “being a promoter is difficult” and that “if you can’t get the lineup, you basically cancel or you’re probably going to go broke”.
“And that’s what’s been happening,” he says.
“I do think that the quest for dollars and ticket sales has just meant that they’ve cooked up this formula that worked really well for a long time, and then people just roll out the same thing ‘let’s just get the biggest act we can, put them all on the same bill’.”
He compares this formula to a grocery shop.
“If you went to the supermarket, and the only thing you could buy was a box of groceries that someone else had chosen for you and you had six of the 20 things in the box you wanted, you’d be a bit annoyed,” Daniel says.
“I think that model is probably going to struggle.
“What I think will do better is when people go ‘ok, here’s a box of apples. If you want some apples, buy this box. If you don’t want apples, don’t buy it’.”
A live Pendulum show. This picture: supplied.
Just last week, Groove Events – also directed by Daniel – announced it would debut drum and bass festival Our Sound at the beginning of December this year at Bonython Park. Daniel has wanted to do this “since 1995” as he used to work as a rave promoter and thought now was the right time given the current state of AI-generated music tastes.
“We’re doing a stylised event representing drum and bass over a few different eras, and that’s what people will get,” he says.
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“So the idea is ‘hey, this is a thing, and you know what you’re getting, and you’re not going to end up buying a box with a whole lot of tomatoes in it when you didn’t want tomatoes’.”
Daniel believes focusing on niches is a method to hosting a successful music festival and why he thinks “stylised [events] like this will work”.
“Don’t buy a ticket if you like heavy metal and don’t like anything else because that’s not what [Our Sound] is. Don’t buy a ticket if you only like chilled-out house music, because that’s not what this is,” Daniel says.
“Do buy a ticket if you like drum and bass because that’s what this is, you know? So everyone who buys a ticket, knows that they’re getting full value for their ticket, right?
“They know that if they like drum and bass, they’re going to get drum and bass all day and that’s the point of it.”
The reason for hosting Our Sound comes off the back of selling out two Pendulum shows – who are headlining Our Sound – in Gluttony’s open-air 1200 to 1500-seater venue during Fringe season this year.
“I’ve known those guys for a long time. Their first gigs outside of Perth were in a club night I was running, a little 300, 400-person club – and then all of a sudden, they were superstars and they made this incredible music that is important to a lot of people,” Daniel says.
“I feel like they’re on a bit of a roll and I wonder if the curation of music by AI is part of that.
“There are people who are listening to drum and bass now who weren’t alive when they first started making tunes.
“So I wonder if those people listening to music are then getting fed Pendulum by the AI because it goes ‘well if you like that, you’re definitely going to like this’ in a way that a radio station wouldn’t because the music’s not new.”
Tash Sultana on the Vintage Vibes festival stage – which was cancelled this year – in 2023. This picture: Andrew Beveridge.
Daniel says that while this method will “take some time for promoters to work out”, it will also mean that “smaller and medium-sized promoters are able to do more things”.
“Rather than a big promoter coming in and wiping out all wallets and meaning that there’s no money left for anyone else to do things,” he continues.
“Small and medium-sized promoters are more likely to be taking risks and experimenting and also giving opportunities to newer and a more diverse range of artists.
“So I think whilst in the short term, the music festivals cancelling is bad, in the medium and long term, it’s probably quite a positive outcome.
“If everyone can go ‘okay, well, someone’s going to do an event here, and they’re going to play this kind of music, and they’re going to give this local band a warm-up spot because they’re quite similar to the headliner’.
“I think that process will be a net positive result for people’s choice when it comes to what kind of gigs they want to go to, but the gigs will be smaller.”
Sign up for Our Sound presale tickets through the website, starting at $75.
Our Sound will take place on December 7 at Bonython Park/Tulya Wardli which is located at Livestrong Pathway, Adelaide.
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