Live music festivals are incredibly high-risk businesses vulnerable to single-point failures
Ryan Schreiber · Pitchfork: Ryan Schreiber · Jun 6, 2022 · at 1:00:58
Ryan Schreiber, founder of Pitchfork, reflects on the economics and operational perils of launching and operating music festivals.
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“There is so much overhead that it's also like kind of a delicate dance where all of these things have to just happen just right. You know, you have to have a reasonable artist budget with which you can attract talent that's not going to the competing festivals, say Lollapalooza, Riot Fest, et cetera. You've got to, you know, make sure that the ticket sales are like Fair, reasonable, that you can attract a big enough crowd. You've got security concerns, vendors. There's just, there's so many moving parts. If one of those things doesn't come together, if you have like inclement weather all weekend, because it's an outdoor festival, I mean, these things can really crash the festival enterprise altogether, like kill the business. So it's a very, very high risk business.”
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