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Author|Bai Lu
Source: Jingzhe Research Institute
With the arrival of the hot summer, music festivals all over the country have entered the stage of intensive preparation and promotion. Among them, the Strawberry Music Festival took the lead in announcing the holding time and performance lineup of Wanning, Wuhan, Guiyang and Chengdu, which attracted the attention of music fans.
As eye-catching as the performance lineup announced by the organizers, there are skyrocketing ticket prices. This year’s Strawberry Music Festival Wuhan Station two-day pass is priced at 980 yuan, the full-price single-day ticket has risen to 680 yuan, and the cheapest student single-day ticket is 380 yuan.
Some netizens recalled that they used to spend 60 yuan to see old rock cannons such as Cui Jian and Laolang, but now they can only see a bunch of Internet celebrity bands in the face of thousands of yuan in ticket prices. The collapse of the once youthful ideal in reality has also made many people begin to question how a music festival that makes music fans carnival has become a business of “raising prices without improving quality”.
Music festivals are getting hotter and more expensive
How hot is the music festival? From the data during the “May Day” period in 2021 alone, we can feel that the music festival market is in short supply. According to data from Damai, 56 music festivals were held across the country during the five-day long holiday of “May Day” last year, an increase of 37% compared with the same period in 2019, while the number of box office and performances increased compared to 2019. 252%, 173%.
The increase in the number of music festivals is mainly because well-known music festival brands such as Strawberry Music Festival, Midi Music Festival, Guochao Music Festival, and Midou Music Festival have begun to sink to second- and third-tier cities in recent years. In addition to taking turns touring and singing during the holidays, they also began to perform seasonal performances in one city per week at a fixed time each summer.
In addition to well-known music festival brands, a large number of vertical music festivals have also appeared across the country in the past two years, as well as music festival brands launched by local cities to build local cultural and tourism brands. For example, the YOLO Music Festival in Changsha, Hunan, which focuses on rap, and the M_DSK Music Festival held in the Riyuewan Resort in Wanning, Hainan, etc.
The number of music festivals has increased and the market supply has also increased, so the price of tickets should have decreased, or at least remained stable, but the fact is that with the vigorous development of the industry, the ticket prices of music festivals have become more and more expensive.
Some netizens have sorted out the ticket prices of the Strawberry Music Festival Wuhan Station in the past 11 years and found that in 2011, the price of a single-day ticket on-site was 100 yuan, and the pre-sale single-day ticket for students was only 60 yuan; by 2016, the price of a single-day ticket on-site The price has risen to 220 yuan, more than double the price of 5 years ago; surprisingly, only 2 years later, the live single-day ticket of the Strawberry Music Festival Wuhan Station in 2018 “doubled” to 420 again. The fare this year has risen to 680 yuan, 6.8 times that of 2011.
It is worth mentioning that although domestic music festivals have not yet gone abroad, their ticket prices are close to international standards. Taking the 2022 Coachella Music Festival in the United States as an example, its three-day ticket price is only $449 (about 3025 yuan), which is only 1008 yuan per day. According to public information, the single-day pre-sale ticket price for the Chengdu Cactus Music Festival in 2022 has reached 999 yuan, and the single-day full-price ticket for the Wenzhou Nanxi River Star Nest Music Festival is also as high as 988 yuan.
Regarding the reasons for the skyrocketing ticket prices, on the one hand, the old music festivals such as Midi, Wheat Field, and Cactus, after more than ten years of brand management, already have the ability of brand premium. At the same time, the organizers behind Strawberry cooperate with capital to try to increase the brand valuation of music festival brands, and make profit as an important development goal. On the other hand, thanks to the huge exposure of variety shows and short video platforms, after many bands and rappers become famous, their appearance fees and tour ticket prices have also risen.
For example, the Hedgehog Band, which participated in the recording of the first season of “Summer of the Band”, in 2018, the appearance fee was only 30,000 yuan. By 2021, the appearance fee has skyrocketed to 500,000. There has not been much exposure before, but at the end of 2020, the five-member band was brought on fire by Douyin. The ticket price of the tour in 2019 is only 50 yuan, but the ticket price of the tour in 2022 has risen to 380 yuan. The “money grab” behavior that the price has increased nearly 8 times in 3 years has also caused doubts among music fans, and some netizens ridiculed it for this. Said, “Tickets are 380, are they holding me and singing on stage?”
Ticket prices increase every year, but still no money
Even though the price of music festival tickets is increasing every year, music fans will still pay for it while scolding “profiteers” from their pockets. Behind this magical plot is actually the asymmetry between the commercial development of the music festival and the growth of the audience.
In the impression of many veteran music fans, the original music festival tickets were very cheap, because in an era when social media and short videos were not active, many performance groups relied on offline performances to expand their popularity and influence. Therefore, compared to today’s overly commercial atmosphere, the early music festivals were more like a stage for display, and did not give too much consideration to the issue of event revenue. For example, the first Midi Music Festival in 2000 was actually a cultural performance held by the Midi Music School for the students. The venue at that time was the auditorium of the Midi Music School. All are free.
In the early stage of the development of music festivals, due to the limited means of entertainment for people, the live performance experience of music festivals with a strong sense of atmosphere quickly became popular in first-tier cities where young people gather. As the group of music fans continues to grow, the scale of the music festival is also getting bigger and bigger, but in order to match the spending power of the college student group, the ticket price of the music festival is still very close to the people.
Around 2010, social media entered its heyday, singers and bands had more exposure, and more and more young people began to pay attention to and like music festivals. Music festivals that were originally held in fixed cities have also begun to spread across the country. However, the expansion of the audience size and the increase in the number of music festivals bring not only influence, but also performance costs.
According to Beijing Business Daily, the single-day cost of producing a small music festival with a scale of less than 10,000 people, including venue rental, stage construction and artist fees, has reached about 2 million yuan, and the cost of a large-scale music festival with more than 10,000 people has reached 2 million yuan. The daily cost is about 5 million yuan.
Zhang Fan, the principal of Beijing Midi Music School, once made a conservative estimate that before 2012, 99% of outdoor music festivals were losing money. A more real example is the Chengdu Da’ai Music Festival held in 2012. It invested 60 million yuan and finally recovered only 3 million yuan at the box office, with a loss of more than 50 million yuan.
Under the pressure of performance costs, the early development model of “losing money and shouting” regardless of revenue was unsustainable, and music festivals also began to explore the direction of commercialization. For example, the brand sponsorship that existed from the beginning, the sale of drinks or light meals on the spot, or the later use of regional ticket sales and open performance live broadcasts to increase ticket revenue. A more favorable way to reduce cost pressure is to cooperate with local governments, which can not only save site fees, but also obtain funding and other policy support.
It is rumored in the industry that Midi, the originator of the domestic music festival, took a full 7 years to make a profit, while the Strawberry Music Festival, which was questioned by music fans from the very beginning, was too commercialized and was in a state of loss for a long time. As for other music festivals, even though ticket prices have risen year by year in recent years, there are still a few people who make money. Relevant statistics show that the music festivals held by the government account for 50% of the total music festivals, and the truly profitable music festivals only account for 20%.
When music festivals gradually become “outrageous”
Looking back at the development of domestic music festivals is not a long process, it is not difficult to find that the main reason for the explosion of the entire industry is that the entry of a large number of young audiences has created a large amount of market demand. According to the “2021 National Performance Market Annual Report” released by the China Performance Industry Association, the main consumers of the performance market in 2021 are young people aged 18 to 39, accounting for 76% of the ticket users. The three-year continuous data monitoring also shows that the proportion of consumers born in the 1995s and 2000s is increasing year by year.
In theory, the increase in market demand can promote the rapid development of the industry and provide consumers with a better consumption experience. But for some senior music fans, the music festival that is in the midst of an industry explosion has not only failed to improve the performance level, but has also produced a lot of chaos. Among them, the most typical problem is that different event organizers are inviting big-name artists based on the consideration of popularity and commercialization, resulting in the homogeneity of the performance lineup.
During the “May Day” period in 2021, the popular band Wutiaoren’s public performance schedule on social media shows that they need to transfer to Changzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Beijing to participate in the music festival within four days. During the same period, the right to reshape the statue, Jiulian Zhenren and other bands also participated in three music festivals. The homogeneous lineup not only causes the fans to experience aesthetic fatigue, but also makes it difficult for the singers to keep up with the performance quality.
What makes it even more difficult for senior music fans to accept is that some music festivals will invite some cross-border stars, Internet celebrity singers or star singers with different music styles for the sake of box office and attention, but the uneven business level and limited performances. The effect directly affects the live experience of music fans.
On the stage of the Strawberry Music Festival in 2014, actor Maggie Cheung sang the first song on stage but was out of tune, and was criticized by music fans. In 2020, after the work “Out of the Mountain” by the folk singer Hua Porridge became popular, he accidentally rolled over while singing at an offline music festival. In addition, after music variety shows such as “The Rap of China” and “The New Generation of Rap” brought hip-hop music to the forefront, music festivals that originally focused on rock and folk music also began to add a large number of rappers and Internet celebrities to the performance lineup. , which caused dissatisfaction among fans.
In past music festivals, music fans enjoyed the live performance atmosphere more, and often spontaneously engaged in a series of group interaction behaviors such as “pogo”, “diving” and “driving a train”, but the fan group could not accept this kind of behavior. The way of interaction, and the behavior of the fan group “forced to stand in the front row” and “raised the light sign” also made music fans disgusted.
Some netizens sighed on social media, “I feel that the current music festival is not pure. People who didn’t know before can dance together like crazy. When you get up, people in the whole street will toast and shout with you. Also No one will take the initiative to strike up a conversation with you or leave contact information, and will only meet next year when the show is over. At the current music festival, the stage is full of Internet celebrities and the cars are constantly overturned, and the audience is full of light signs, and the quality is indescribable. ”
From a long-term perspective, the rapid development driven by market demand is conducive to the industry’s leap from “quantitative change” to “qualitative change” in the short term, but it still remains on “quantity”. From the rising ticket prices to the conflicts between audiences, it reflects the conflicts between industry development and market demand as well as the interests of the organizers.
First of all, limited by the overall development of the music industry, there are still not many bands and singers who can participate in music festivals and have both strength and influence. Secondly, in order to ensure the box office, the organizers and some interest groups who regard concerts as means of making money have ignored the performance experience and invited traffic stars and Internet celebrity bands to form a platter music festival, which has led to different music fans, fans and tourists. Friction between audiences over musical tastes and viewing habits.
While festival organizers and organizers can optimistically view it as a labor pain before the industry explodes. However, the “Utopia” in the hearts of music fans is losing its original value and significance because it is mixed with too many commercial considerations. In the face of a music festival whose price and experience have become “outrageous”, will music fans still pay for it?
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