Definitely noticing this, with EDC Vegas not selling out this year(its always sold out by April or early May, not even a "80% Sold out" post on their FB yet, Yikes!) is a big sign of a retraction/correction.
Lets take a look at Festivals that were canceled over the last 12-18 months-
(off the top of my head, I am sure there are many more)
-
EDC UK
EDC NY
TomorrowWorld
Mysteryland
Stereosonic Festival
Decibel Festival
Hard Day of the Dead
T in the Park
Vertex Festival
The Wrecking Ball
Pemberton Music Festival
Beyond Wonderland Bay Area
Its ironic that this is exactly what happened in the late 90's early 2000's. I remember a point in California when there was literally a massive 30-40k person rave (Huge for back then) every weekend. It got to the point where there were 2 in the same city each weekend. Then all of a sudden the market got way over saturated and all the kids that only went to eat Molly and hand massage each other got burnt out, and the scene died for a long time. Everything got smaller and only the big names survived (Coachella, ULTRA, EDC, Lollapalooza, etc.)
Here we go again...........
Yeah you nailed a lot of it on the head. Here's the thing too, I've spoken to some people in the music ticketing industry, and according to them it's really really difficult for festivals to profit. In this day and age they can literally take a loss for 4 years before starting to make a good profit. That's an absurd amount of time to grow as a festival in this market, usually they don't have the time to get to that point, as we're seeing some of them cancel in the first year. Some of those ticketing companies won't touch festival deals for that reason, it's a bad business decision.
But yeah, with too many festivals around, it makes it hard for even a festival like EDC to get decent bookings. I didn't wanna say it before but their lineup this year is incredibly weak. I remember the year I saw Pretty Lights, Bassnectar, Flume, Eric Prydz, Disclosure, Gaia, etc. all the same weekend. There isn't anything like that this year.
History is repeating itself..... The bubble is definitely popping slowly. How about concerts? Are they doing decent?
Concerts will continue to do fine, it's almost an entirely different business model without the same risks. It just depends on the individual artists.
Worth mentioning that Live Nation/Ticketmaster owns most venues that artists tour at, and they're doing fine. They bought out Insomniac not too long ago for example (somewhat exempt from what I said above although they still are struggling a bit clearly)
blue moon is actually really easy for me I never get hungover from it haha
