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how to book Fleetwood Mac...?


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"Glastonbury are in a privileged position, whereby they sell out in advance. They could book my granny and still have a festival. The rest of us are still in the realms of having to book a decent line up and make it attractive to people and want them to come."

He sounds a bit bitter.

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"Glastonbury are in a privileged position, whereby they sell out in advance. They could book my granny and still have a festival. The rest of us are still in the realms of having to book a decent line up and make it attractive to people and want them to come."

He sounds a bit bitter.

I didn't read it like that, I felt he was just recognising how it is. If he books the wrong band for IoW he's going to struggle to sell tickets, so he'll need to be more prepared to go the extra mile to try and get those bands.

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It always come down to the same thing. If a potential headliner is solely interested in the fee, Glastonbury will always lose out. If they're interested in the prestige and exposure that comes with headlining the most famous festival in the world (that's also televised on the BBC) they'll play.

I've always wondered whether the extra revenue generated by playing Glastonbury (record sales, tickets, etc) makes up the shortfall in fees.

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It always come down to the same thing. If a potential headliner is solely interested in the fee, Glastonbury will always lose out. If they're interested in the prestige and exposure that comes with headlining the most famous festival in the world (that's also televised on the BBC) they'll play.

I've always wondered whether the extra revenue generated by playing Glastonbury (record sales, tickets, etc) makes up the shortfall in fees.

I think, Neil might have his own view though, that it could well happen next year (if gigs are still happening).

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If Isle of White was as diverse as Glastonbury, it wouldn't have to rely on breaking the bank just to get a headliner.

When you only have a handful of stages you need enough of the right bands on the bill to make you want to buy a ticket.

I think you're looking at things the wrong way around. Glastonbury is an exception in the festival market, while everyone else operates in much the same way as Giddings (tho with differences in the scale of event each is putting on).

Quite how Glastonbury got to be that exception could be claimed via many things, and perhaps it's really all of those things - because others have tried to create similar events and failed, for whatever reasons.

Giddings has extra issues to most other fests, in that the IoW is far more difficult (and costly!) to access for festival infrastructure and performers and staff and for punters.

Bestival is aiming as being similar to Glastonbury and it puts more on than IoW. But it still sells on its headliners, they're a very important part of making it work.

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It always come down to the same thing. If a potential headliner is solely interested in the fee, Glastonbury will always lose out. If they're interested in the prestige and exposure that comes with headlining the most famous festival in the world (that's also televised on the BBC) they'll play.

I've always wondered whether the extra revenue generated by playing Glastonbury (record sales, tickets, etc) makes up the shortfall in fees.

I'd say you've about nailed it in the first para.

For the second, for an older band like Fleetwood Mac, I'm sure it would more-than make up for the shortfall in fees - but that still doesn't mean they'd necessarily go for it. People have all sorts of things to do with money they might earn (even if already loaded), and that might give them a priority of wanting the money now, up-front and guaranteed.

One of things which I suspect often gets in the way is the attitudes of managers to the "make it up from record sales" idea, as they often aren't getting a cut of the record sales but would get a bigger cut of a bigger fee.

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Not bitter at all. I don't think much of his festival at all but he always seems like a straight talking bloke. Never hear him taking pot shots at anyone.

[Cue people finding examples of the latter]

Yeah, I thought he came across very well there. He talked about how the music biz has changed over the years he's been part of it, and saying it's fully professional now - but not bitching about it, instead saying it was right that it was. If you're going to be doing these things on this sort of scale, you need to be doing it right.

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I wonder as more and more bands tick off Glastonbury, how many more "legends", or wanna be legends, will come to Glastonbury to tick it off some sort of gig bucket list? The likes of Fleetwood, Madonna, Prince; the ones still touring.

Obviously eventually we will run out of those bands (although some can repeat like The Who) and in 20 years we will be left with the bands who have stood the test of time from today (say Coldplay, Muse, Arctics...). The problem is then that it isn't anywhere near as exciting for these bands to come to Glastonbury, because they played it so many times over the 15 years they were active. Fleetwood Mac/The Stones never played it, so they have that excitement factor. Will 20 years time youth be excited by Coldplay? It will depend on if these bands split up and don't tour for 15~ years, then I imagine booking a reformed Arctic Monkeys will actually be an exciting prospect. Less so if they release an album every 3 years and headline Glastonbury every 8.

That got a bit rambly, in short, it will be interesting to see what the headliner situation is in 20 yers time.

Edited by Festival Liam
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Think Live Nation should take a leaf out of his book, both Download and Leeds/Reading are dying on their arses due to piss poor artist bookings. It wasn't that long ago that Leeds/Reading was sold out in less than a day and Download used to always get close to capacity eventually, no chance of either doing that now!

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I wonder as more and more bands tick off Glastonbury, how many more "legends", or wanna be legends, will come to Glastonbury to tick it off some sort of gig bucket list? The likes of Fleetwood, Madonna, Prince; the ones still touring.

Obviously eventually we will run out of those bands (although some can repeat like The Who) and in 20 years we will be left with the bands who have stood the test of time from today (say Coldplay, Muse, Arctics...). The problem is then that it isn't anywhere near as exciting for these bands to come to Glastonbury, because they played it so many times over the 15 years they were active. Fleetwood Mac/The Stones never played it, so they have that excitement factor. Will 20 years time youth be excited by Coldplay? It will depend on if these bands split up and don't tour for 15~ years, then I imagine booking a reformed Arctic Monkeys will actually be an exciting prospect. Less so if they release an album every 3 years and headline Glastonbury every 8.

That got a bit rambly, in short, it will be interesting to see what the headliner situation is in 20 yers time.

Music is evolving, in twenty years time I doubt there'll be bands around that were as huge as those that we currently see as legends.
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I wonder as more and more bands tick off Glastonbury, how many more "legends", or wanna be legends, will come to Glastonbury to tick it off some sort of gig bucket list? The likes of Fleetwood, Madonna, Prince; the ones still touring.

Obviously eventually we will run out of those bands (although some can repeat like The Who) and in 20 years we will be left with the bands who have stood the test of time from today (say Coldplay, Muse, Arctics...). The problem is then that it isn't anywhere near as exciting for these bands to come to Glastonbury, because they played it so many times over the 15 years they were active. Fleetwood Mac/The Stones never played it, so they have that excitement factor. Will 20 years time youth be excited by Coldplay? It will depend on if these bands split up and don't tour for 15~ years, then I imagine booking a reformed Arctic Monkeys will actually be an exciting prospect. Less so if they release an album every 3 years and headline Glastonbury every 8.

That got a bit rambly, in short, it will be interesting to see what the headliner situation is in 20 yers time.

Harvey Goldsmith has had a bit of a slamming in the other thread, but this is the main point he touches on. We're unlikely to see so many absolutely huge bands bands in the future (for a variety of reasons) and so festivals are going to have to change, and even ME has recognised that the festival can't rely on mega bands to fill the top slots. It was a bit bizarre that he mentioned Glasto in the same sentence as 'the need to diversify' but that's exactly what festivals will have to do.

I think the Stones' decision to play was more likely a result of a hard nosed business decision rather than any excitement (how much more excitement does a band that played Altamont need), but evidently FM didn't feel the same way this year. In the future I'd imagine legacy acts will have exactly the same decisions to make.

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