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TheNewUnion

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9 hours ago, Tbrady94 said:

 

He's already headlined some of the biggest UK festivals with Reading and Leeds being biggest, and there's talk of him headlining Glastonbury too.

 

He's absolutely massive in the UK.

There's always a degree of variation with these things. Kings of Leon are huge here in the UK but went about 15 years without playing a single show in France, while The Killers did a big UK stadium tour in 2022 but were supporting the Chili Peppers at Werchter, to give two examples.

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8 hours ago, TheNewUnion said:

Read a really good article about the problems facing music festivals

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jan/12/uk-festivals-face-really-tough-year-due-to-fewer-headline-acts-and-rising-costs

There's not enough "big" bands to go around now. 

 

Journo's are quite lost when reporting about live music business; every year they write the same article and sell the same narratives.

Dirty little secret: most years will be like this from now onwards; and it started already a couple of seasons ago.

Margins for organizers (that allow investing in more bands and more popular ones) have decreased. On the other hand, artist fees are up. That makes booking big bands much harder.

I'm not sharing any exclusive info, some of you here already connected the dots, but it's tiresome to read random stuff in newspapers. "Tough year"; well, not only this one, baby. 

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8 minutes ago, Tbrady94 said:

I think Sam Fender is much bigger than KOL in the UK nowadays. Like I'm unsure whether they would close out Leeds/Reading currently, but Fender would.

True - I don't think KOL sold out a UK tour last year of BST Hyde Park and multiple arena shows while Fender's arena tour raced out the door and he pretty much sold out his 4 night stadium run scheduled for summer. So it's a changing of the guard in thar respect.

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4 minutes ago, MagneticField85 said:

 

Journo's are quite lost when reporting about live music business; every year they write the same article and sell the same narratives.

Dirty little secret: most years will be like this from now onwards; and it started already a couple of seasons ago.

Margins for organizers (that allow investing in more bands and more popular ones) have decreased. On the other hand, artist fees are up. That makes booking big bands much harder.

I'm not sharing any exclusive info, some of you here already connected the dots, but it's tiresome to read random stuff in newspapers. "Tough year"; well, not only this one, baby. 

Makes you wonder what will change it tbf. Or if this just another place where the pandemic has screwed up the economics that underpinned things for so long.

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1 hour ago, Tbrady94 said:

I think Sam Fender is much bigger than KOL in the UK nowadays. Like I'm unsure whether they would close out Leeds/Reading currently, but Fender would.

Sure and, in Portugal, KoL are bigger than Fender, but both are not enough to sell out a big festival.

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12 hours ago, Tbrady94 said:

I think Sam Fender is much bigger than KOL in the UK nowadays. Like I'm unsure whether they would close out Leeds/Reading currently, but Fender would.

What does the UK have to do with this? In the UK, The 1975 and Gerry Cinnamon are also big, but these names wouldn't top mainland EU fests too. 

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12 hours ago, MagneticField85 said:

 

Journo's are quite lost when reporting about live music business; every year they write the same article and sell the same narratives.

Dirty little secret: most years will be like this from now onwards; and it started already a couple of seasons ago.

Margins for organizers (that allow investing in more bands and more popular ones) have decreased. On the other hand, artist fees are up. That makes booking big bands much harder.

I'm not sharing any exclusive info, some of you here already connected the dots, but it's tiresome to read random stuff in newspapers. "Tough year"; well, not only this one, baby. 

why are margins now so thin? Why did coviud have that effect? Not disputing your ppoint in any way, genuinely curious to know...

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