It Could Happen Here - Who Killed Live Music? feat. Prop

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

Of the many things we will leave in 2024, one that really hurts is the music festival. 50% of music festivals across the world were cancelled. Today Prop tells y'all about the main reasons this happened and what we can do to save the music.  Sources:https://www.musicfestivalwizard.com/music-festivals-cancelled-so-far-in-2024/  https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2024/09/17/g-s1-23026/music-festival-cancel-inflation-price-streaming https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/08/23/60-uk-music-festivals-canceled-in-2024-alone/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone. It's John, also known as Dr. John Paul.

And I'm Jordan or Joe Ho. And we are the Black Fat Film Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Oh, chat. This year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey show, Angela Carrasso and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Film Podcast on the iHeartRadio app. Have a podcast or whatever you get your podcast, girl.

Ooh, I know that's right. Hey, I'm Gianna Perdenti. And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions. So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu,

AKA Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality,

cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here? Fiasco

is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn. In our first season, Bush v Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history. So if you're trying to make sense at the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you listen to podcasts. Call zone media. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. If Robert can do his atonal streaks, then I can sing off key. Yo, I'm back homie. All up in your feed. Watch these rap gets get all up in your feed. That's a Wu Tang reference again to the black delegation.

Shout out y'all showing up in the in the subreddit. You feel me black folks showing up and showing out. I appreciate y'all. I was wrong. It's more than five of us. I shout out to me. I love y'all. Thanks for showing up and shout out all the Latinos who tapped into and that lay place. Hey, come to do me hint.

Ben I got when I leave. All the Latinos who tapped in to, andale pues. Hey, con todo mi gente, ven aca. Buen valido. Listen, we gotta really invite our Latino brothers and sisters, our Tios and Tias, and also our Asian black people, the Pinoy's and Pinay's, our Ates and Cuyas. You're all a part of our delegation here. All of our Usos, we love y'all. The whole diaspora of people who seasoned a chicken and washed theiros. We love y'all. The whole diaspora of people who season they chicken and wash

their legs. I love y'all. And to this whole delegation, once we add it all together, there's about 20 of us. To you, I say, y'all want something from the gas station? I've got you. So today I don't want to ruin your breakfast. I don't want to ruin your coffee.

I'm just going to ruin your music. I don't want to ruin your breakfast. I don't want to ruin your coffee. I'm just going to ruin your music. This is about the death of the music festival. It already happened here. All right. Now y'all know I'll be playing, I'm playing about all this.

Like I'm only talking to the Mellon native folks. Y'all know I'm playing right. I mean, this is why I, why I slowly wink at brown folk. I'm just playing y'all. I'm sorry. I'm messing around. I mean, this is why I slowly wink at brown folk. I'm just playing y'all. I'm sorry. I'm messing around. It's a cold opening.

You know, you guys got a great sense of humor here. All right, let's get to it. Festivals, like, am I right? You know, if you're anywhere within a five to 10 mile radius of my age, I mean, festivals is like, these are like a rite of passage. You know I am not only a festival goer but a festival performer and as an artist it was like festivals were kind of in a lot of ways how I marked the years. There were people

that I really only saw like once a year when I was at that festival whether it was other acts, other bands or even a lot of times the volunteers or the people that like put the event together like you believe it or not, you kind of make friends, you know, and these again these are people you're like dang I can't believe I was a whole year, you know, and it is a good way to make sure as an artist that you were making new music and had something new to perform oh and make sure you had some new merch because you know if you played your cards right if you've listened to my show I've talked a lot about like you know the science of festivals and as a performer of like this could either be a complete waste of time and money if you're on at like the main stage at like 12 noon when it's like

a trillion degrees outside you know but if you can get that right as the sunset like if you're not the headliner if you could get that right at sunset, right where the sun just breaks the horizon line coming down that that golden hour set, the crowd isn't shit faced yet. You know, they're at the top of their Molly. You feel it? You riding the high, it is just settled in or whatever drugs that these people are on. They've kind of just settled in right there. They're relaxed.

They're willing to sing along. Nobody's getting trampled yet. It's not like the frenzy that kind of happens at the headliner situation where like somebody might die. Shout out Astroworld. I say that not as a joke. I'm saying things can go wrong. But oh, the experience, man.

Like, I don't know how old you are and obviously you can't answer me. Do you remember the last like big festival you went to? You know, back when your knees were good and it was okay for you to stand for 12 hours and there's somebody, you know, having sexual intercourse in the porta potty, you know, you're stepping over barf, right?

And you just paid $30 for a bottle of water, you know, that you could stuff into your clear backpack because you weren't allowed to bring anything else in there. But man, that's probably a euphoria, especially if it's a group or a band that you really like, that you saved up all year to go see. You know, some people were like festival hoppers, like that's their thing. They spend their summer going to music festivals. Since 2012 up to 2014, like the Music Fest has been, guys, we've kind of been on borrowed time. We've lived through a music festival renaissance.

According to NPR, since 2013, everything sold out. The four mega giants, right? So Coachella, Botteroo, Lollapalooza in Chicago, Austin City Limits, music festival in Texas. It was like this never ending flow of amazing, amazing events and you know what? They were kind of affordable. In the next five years, you had things taken forth like Pitchfork in Chicago, Hangout Music Festival, On the Beach in the Gulf Shores, Outside Lands,

Bolly Music, Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Festival, on the beach in the Gulf Shores, outside lands, Bali music, Mount Noasis Electronic Music Festival, Four Castle Festival, right? And I'm even gonna add in this, before this for hip hop stuff, dude, we had rock the bells? Like we lived in a time where you could see all of your favorite artists in the most epic locations.

You'd see people who, if you were to try to buy their tour ticket, it would cost the same amount if they were headlining the thing. But you could see all your favorite acts. Part of this was because we listened to radio. You were exposed to more things. And it was probably the fun part about a lot of times about music festivals because you probably saw that act your favorite band

Your favorite rapper you saw them at a hole in the wall Five years ago, which was like ten bucks to get in and you might have snuck in or got on the list Could you knew somebody that knew the DJ and now you're like I followed this crew From when they were like playing a hole in a wall with 10 people where there was more staff at the bar than on this. And now you're like, dude, you feel like you were a part of their evolution. Like you saw Chance at the subterranean. Now he's headlining Bonnaroo. What a feeling. You're part of the story.

Well, that's probably a relic of the past. And let's talk about it. So festivals for most of the last decade have been everywhere. Like whatever type of music you like, whatever subgenre, whatever part of the world you wanna go to, there's a music festival that you can show up at. Now, in 2024, more than half of them

across the world were canceled. I lost count on this page I'm about to read to y'all from musicfestivalwizard.com festivals canceled so far in 2024. Okay you ready for this? Shindig 2024, Melt 2024, Sideways Festival, Nasdaq, Field Maneuvers, TowerZ, The Quintetent, Big Slap, Electric Zoo, Peach 2024, All the Music Festivals, Life is Beautiful Festival, Country Thunder, Florida, Swanee Roots Festival, EDC China, Lucidity Festival in Santa Barbara, Desert Days in Lake Paris,

Pine Fest in the UK, Good Vibes Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sierra Nevada World Music Festival in Boonville, El Dorado Music Festival in the UK, Sudden Little Thrills in Pittsburgh. Big Ridge Rock Fest in Virginia. Lollapalooza Paris. Music Midtown Atlanta. Lovers and Friends Fest in Las Vegas, which I was really sad about. Riverside Festival Glasgow in Ware, Glasgow. Soul Bloom Sacramento. TW Classic 2024 in Belgium. Cala Mijas in Cala Mijas, Spain,

Caldor Music Festival in Queensland, Made in America Festival, Philadelphia, Oblivion Access, Austin, Texas, Meadows in the Mountains 2024 in Bulgaria, Imagine Festival in Rome, Georgia, Splendor on the Grass in Byron Boy, Australia, Body and Soul Festival in Ireland, Moonrose Festival. I'm tired of, I'm not even done yet. I'm not even halfway through this thing.

Festivals died in 2024. Digital News reports that 60 festivals in the UK alone cancelled. Ashley King wrote this article on August 23rd, 2024 for Digital Music News. And in that she says, The United Kingdom has lost 192 music festivals since 2019. According to the Association of Independent Festivals, the AIF, which is a not-for-profit trade festival association that represents the interests of over 200 independent UK music festivals that range from 500 to 80,000 people. The AIF estimates that the UK lost 96 events during the COVID pandemic, 36

festivals, and in 2023, more than 60 to date in 2024. That brings the total number of festival closures, either due to cancellation or postponement up to 192 since 2019 192 Festivals some may argue that well damn you shouldn't have had that many festivals Coachella Lollapalooza and of course the infamous Burning Man with the most on-brand people that go that call themselves burners Now I don't want to sit here and make fun of you burners because I'm pretty sure a lot of y'all listen to this show. Number one.

And number two, I don't know if there's anybody more free, anybody more comfortable in their own skin. Listen, this might sound like a joke, okay? I'm dead serious. It's like the white guy with dreadlocks. I mean, white people with dreads are just most of the time. OK, like this may sound like a joke. I'm deadly serious.

They'd be so OK with themselves and will do whatever they got to do to continue to stay present and be cool with themselves. No notes. It's the guy doing hypostatic breath work, freestyling for way too long in the didgeridoo section. You know what I'm saying? Like, he's super okay with himself. Anyway, Burning Man, for the first time since 2011, did not sell out for the first time.

And the tickets are usually released in tiers and some go on sale in the beginning of the year and then this part I'm getting from the Guardian but the main starting in April right which typically gets snapped up in minutes like Burning Man sells out in minutes 73,000 people are able to attend Burning Man but this is the first time since 2011 they did not sell out Coachella same they saw a 15% decline in tickets. It's the biggest festival in North America. Coachella is 15% ticket decline.

Festivals were a way for you to discover new music, to meet new friends. It's like camp for like your 20s. You know, you get to wear your dumb ass outfits, right? You get to stand out in the sun. You get to drink. You get to wear your dumb ass outfits, right? You get to stand out in the sun, you get to drink, you get to day drink, and you get to just lose your mind for a little bit. This might be the end, the endling.

You may have attended your last music festival as we know it. So the question is, why? Who killed the music festival? Why is the festival not festiving? Why is it not festive? Why can't y'all sell no tickets? Do we not like music anymore? Do you like music still?

I thought, I still like, do you like music still? What the hell happening, y'all? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, John also known as Dr. John Paul and I'm Jordan or Joe Ho and we are the Black Fat Film Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Oh chat, this year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angelica Ross, and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Alpha Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcasts, girl. Ooh, I know that's right. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzales and Chris Patterson-Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio

app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. In the aftermath of a transformative election like the one we just had, it's hard to read the news without asking yourself every five seconds, how did we get here? That's exactly what we're always trying to figure out on Fiasco, a history podcast from the co-creators of Slow Burn. In our first season, Bush v Gore, we examine an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which came down to a recount in Florida and ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history. In many ways, it's the beginning of the story we're living through right now. So if you're trying to make sense of the present moment,

check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore, and find out how a statistical tie in the Florida vote count put the nation into an unprecedented holding pattern, during which American voters waited with bated breath to find out whether Al Gore or George W. Bush would be the next president of the United States. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Prenti. And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline,

the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Too, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%.

I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting 8, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos. I'm a psychology professor at Yale, and I started to notice that a lot of my students weren't all that happy.

So I created a new class. Welcome everybody to Psychology and the Good Life. It became the biggest class in the history of years. I'm a little bit surprised to see as many of you are here as are here, but that's great. But it's not just my students who need to understand the science of wellbeing. And that's why we launched the Happiness Lab,

so you can learn about it too. Are you ready to feel happier? Head to the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or if you like to listen. Brought to you by the 2024 Subaru Share the Love event, now through January 2nd. We're back, back, back, back, back, back, back. To understand the future as to what the hell happened, we have to ask ourselves how we even got here.

Such a nerd I am. I don't think I need to tell you what a music festival is, because I mean, I think you know what it is. It's an incredibly overpriced concert that features maybe four groups that you like where you are going to stand outdoors somewhere, brave the weather, day drink, and then get to lose your mind for the last like three hours and just really enjoy, you know, a moment that you'll really never forget.

Depending on how nasty and ratchet you are, how outside you are, you might look up, you know what I'm saying? I don't look, it's none of my business. I suggest you don't. That's just me being an old head. But either way, man, they're a great time. But please understand that festivals, music festivals go like back to, get this, 582 BC,

at least according to white people's history. Because, you know, silly you, nothing happened anywhere else except for Europe. There was no music festivals in Africa, central South America, Asia, no nowhere else, you know, history started in Greece. We were too busy building pyramids, right? Anyway, I'm gonna lead out. Oh, but I'd be cracking me up. They'd be like the first music festival on record

in ancient Greece during the Pythian games, which is fine. It's fine, it's fine. But understand, I know in the world, this is the only one that ever happened. Anyway, so 582 BC, right? And like the Olympic games, the Pythian games took place every four years and included poetry, reading a speech, right?

And other musical game-like competitions. People gathered to enjoy like hymns and instruments, instrumental performances at the Apollo, at the Apollo, I'm so black, dedicated to Apollo, which was the god of arts and music. Now fast forward to like the 17th century where you have like classical music festivals and like the type of like exclusivity, right? Where like when in the 17th century when like classical music just basically ate Europe and music festivals

originally were like supposed to be a gathering where people could like what you think, gather and celebrate music. However, here's where it starts coming into focus. The wealth gap was widening across Europe. So festivals gradually became kind of like out of the hour where they as events became more exclusive and had increasingly restricted access. This is from ndlbeast.com. They have a whole section on like

the history of music festivals. One could argue like this, like the prototype of like the VIP section, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, where you can get the pit tickets or you could stand outside with the pours and just listen from the outside. So this trend kind of continued for centuries where like elite class, I think almost like

was the beginning of the breaking of music in general. They were control the access to culture. I have a friend that wrote a book called Don't Be Precious. Now me and this friend differ in a lot of ways, but he's just a punk rock dude. And his approach to making art is like, you can't have this like restricting access, right? Because it becomes this just like upper class.

Art is this creation of the leisure class, because one, they have the patrons who pay for them to be able to sit down and contemplate the stars. Like you got all precious about it, you feel me? So some of that has to do with, again, the wealth gap. So when you restrict access to hearing music, it draws deeper into the divides between like the educated

upper class and then the traveling folk musicians who performed for the commoners. And that's like the stuff you see on, you know, corny little movies. Then the World Wars come, right? And there's like a music revival, right? So when the first World War broke out, obviously change of lifestyle, meaning everything went to like, you know, war effort. So this is a really interesting quote. It says on the same MDL beast, as society focused on wartime efforts and staying safe, the exclusivity of music festivals to the upper class disappeared. In a turn of events, the working class population was now turning to music more than ever.

Jazz and folk emerged as popular genres, right? To avoid the scrutiny of the elite, groups of musicians with similar tastes with gathering dive bars and underground clubs. By the time the war had ended, jazz cemented itself as the genre of the era. So now we're talking Harlem Renaissance, juke joints and the emergence of like, again, this where black people come in. A lot of times the role that just

the all out anti-black racism has unintentionally because of it created some of the most dopest things, some of the most dopest American experiences. Well, I just read up on how with HBCUs, which are historic black colleges, that now white people trying to attend them. Cause they like, your school look fun. Because we weren't allowed in yours. Anyway, so let me continue.

So World War II played a pivotal role in creating the Newport Folk Festival, organized by Lewis and Elaine Loryland. A couple met during World War II and came together to revolutionize Rhode Island's music artistic community by promoting jazz with the foundation in jazz and blues and country and pop music. They expanded to attract over 11,000 people in 1954. Then the 60s, the birth of the modern music festival, right? Obviously Woodstock, which was the invention Monterey International Pop Music Festival.

This is the rock festival as we know it. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, it was the place to be a cultural experience as we know it again is that. Then you got like the Berlin Wall and the music revolution. This is where festivals become political and cultural. They become a statement. And a big one was in the nineties when they did the Berlin Wall tearing down music festival, which was an amazing thing, right? Where underground stations, power plants, World War II bunkers and abandoned

buildings all started to serve as makeshift concert halls. This is why Europe became such a place for music festivals. It became a sign of freedom and solidarity. And then the music festival took a shit. They just died in the 90s. After this, all can be explained in when they tried to redo Woodstock just a shit show with like Limp Bizkit and all them you a shit show there's a documentary on Netflix about the absolute disaster that that new Woodstock was.

Y'all, I'm talking like y'all thought Astroworld was bad where them kids was raging so much and people die. You talking about understaffed. Y'all think FireFest was a disaster? My nigga, well, nah, I don't think anything was worse than FireFest so far. Good thing it didn't happen. Like, y'all remember FireFest?

Oh Lord. Honestly, I can't believe I made it almost 20 minutes into this and then mentioned Fire Fest, because it is the perfect example of what went wrong in the music festival world. Because, like I said, this disaster in the 90s to 2000s, if you were able to survive, like I said earlier, like the Bonnaroo's Coachella's Austin city limits, if you were able to survive Lollapalooza, then you came out the other end and became the go to places, right? Tell your ride for folk music. You became the go to places that if you were going to try to have a career as an

artist, you have to play one of these festivals, no matter how much money you don't make at these things. You have to do it because this is where not only do you get the necessary cosign, you also get discovered. Like as far as fans, like you make new fans, you sell merch, people walk away with the t-shirt, you're on this t-shirt that says Bonnaroo 2021 and your name is on so like even if you're way down on the bottom, grab your little screenshots, take your little Instagram photos because now you're in the game and the game it was which leads us to what went wrong because this was not only a money-making endeavor, this was a money-making endeavor. In 2014, are y'all ready for this?

I don't think you're ready for this. In the boom years, according to an analysis done by a finance buzz, in 2014, general admission prices for major and music festivals increased by 55%. That outpaced just inflation period. Y'all jacked up the price. So listen, so if you're Ja Rule head ass, of course I'm gonna build a festival.

You're looking at Burning Man, you're looking at Bonnaroo, you're looking at all these things, you're like, bro, let's just get an island and make a festival. There's so much money to be made. But you know what? Capitalism being capitalism. It's gonna keep capitalizing. Let's talk about what killed the festival.

Oh, oh, oh, oh. Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan or Joe Ho. And we are the Black Fat Film Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Oh, chat. This year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angelica Ross, and more.

Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Alpha Podcast, or whatever you get your podcast, girl. Ooh, I know that's right. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson-Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. In the aftermath of a transformative election like the one we just had, it's hard to read the news without asking yourself every five seconds, how did we get here? That's exactly what we're always trying to figure out on Fiasco, a history podcast from the co-creators of Slow Burn. In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examine an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which came down to a recount in Florida and ended

with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history. In many ways, it's the beginning of the story we're living through right now. So if you're trying to make sense of the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore, and find out how a statistical tie in the Florida vote count put the nation into an unprecedented holding pattern,

during which American voters waited with bated breath to find out whether Al Gore or George W. Bush would be the next president of the United States. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Predenti. And I'm Jemei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline,

the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. Mm-hm. But you also have a lot of questions.

Like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Too, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10% to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10% to 15%, and you end up getting eight,

that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos. I'm a psychology professor at Yale, and I started to notice that a lot of my students weren't all that happy. So I created a new class. Welcome everybody to psychology and the good life. It became the biggest class in the history of Yale. I'm a little bit surprised to see as many of you are here as are here, but that's

great. But it's not just my students who need to understand the science of well-being. And that's why we launched the Happiness Lab, so you can learn about it too. Are you ready to feel happier? Head to the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or if you like to listen. Brought to you by the 2024 Subaru Share the Love event, now through January 2nd. You see, I just did my own fade out and fade in music. Y'all see that?

No, don't ask me what note that was. So what killed the festival? Well, a number of things. First of all, yo ass for not going. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We're not blaming the victims here. Some of these answers are pretty obvious.

Like again, you know, Astroworld, like, but Astroworld is just a good picture of everything that went wrong in the concept of a music festival. So the first problem is, yeah, capitalism. Sometimes you are led to believe that what is will always be, right? That's what a stable economy lures you into believing. But anybody that knows how money works, it's booms and busts.

The bubble will pop. And how a bubble pops is almost always our own fault. In this sense, the housing bubble, you know, of 2008, when your mama and them lost their house, because the reality was they shouldn't have never got that loan in the first place. These people knew good and well that you was not able to keep up with that mortgage, but we were selling too many houses.

It was going too good. So the thing was for almost a decade, you couldn't make enough festivals. The industry couldn't keep up with the demand. And yo, this the blog era. This the two dough boys. Yeah, Pitchfork, like this the blog era. This the two dough boys. Yeah. Pitchfork like, this the blog era. You know what I'm saying? What fader was like a thing that you would want to go to.

So like it all kind of worked together around this time before all these spots got bought out. Hip hop DX, like all these pages got bought out. Like I said before, it was like this boom in 2014 of a trillion festivals that started happening. Now, what happened was ticket prices. That's the first one. We're making so much money, you realize, dang, if I charge 100, I bet you I could charge 200. If I charge 200, I bet you I could charge 400. Because if you charge 400, then I could argue I'm getting bigger acts.

So in the boom years, according to this analysis by Finance Buzz, ticket prices since 2014 for most music festivals increased by 55 percent. Like that's super outpacing, even inflation in the same time period. This isn't like cost of living type shit, type beat. No. Oh, I'm raping y'all. Do you know that Burning Man cost $575 to go to? If you was going, you was probably going to make some sort of like art installation to destroy you doing that on your own money. Which meant what? Same thing happened in the 17th century. It just becomes a place for the elite.

Cause can't nobody else afford to go. You know what else happened to a lot of festivals is corporations bottom. You know who bought Complex? Buzzfeed. And you know who bought it from Buzzfeed? Nitwork. N-T-W-R-K. It's an investment firm.

You know who owns the Pitchfork Festival? Condi Nast, a media company. They bought the blog and folded it into GQ. It's just a corporation. Capitalism. Capitalism broke the festivals. Under the banner of capitalism, not so much the cost of the ticket and the soaring cost of living. It also costs too much to make the festival.

According to John Rosten, he's the CEO that AIF, the Independent Association of Festivals, he says the toilet hire, I just need to buy Porter Potties in 2021 was $28,000. In 2021 was $28,000. For the exact same amount of toilets in 2024 is $54,000. That's just the toilets. You know what happened at Astroworld? He ain't have enough security. It costs so much. You honestly cannot afford to put together a festival

that will be alluring enough to consumers to justify spending that much money. So what do you get? A gang of corporate sponsors. And you know what a gang of corporate sponsors at a music festival is? Whack. It's a horrible ass experience

because you're just watching a gang of commercials. Sometimes it just be labels who be putting on these artists that they trying to break and then the artists be trash. They don't be trash because they trash, they be trash because they're not ready for this size stage. They ain't putting the work. They didn't do the Gurnee, Illinois experience that I think I've told before.

What is the most terrifying experience I've ever had on tour? You don't have those experiences. You ain't played shows when there's more people at the bar or there's more people that work there than come to see you. You're not ready for no festival stage. So it's just not fun for the, so I'm not gonna buy it, you can't justify this price.

If I'ma spend that much money, I need to really, really, really,'t justify this price. If I'm gonna spend that much money, I need to really, really, really, really like this band. This need to be my favorite artist. If I'm not finna stand around 12 hours, pay this much money to really only see one act I like, that don't make no damn sense. And we'll talk about why they only like that one artist a little bit later. So remember this point I'm making. The second and most obvious one is COVID, which leads into the third and fourth. You had to cancel stuff. Nobody knew this was coming.

Like the L's companies took. I took person, I canceled a tour. Not only I canceled a tour, I released a poetry book that I couldn't tour. I mean, I personally lost tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars in touring revenue, in book sales, in merch sales, in all of it. Like I lost so much because you just had to, and I'm still trying to get that money back.

A lot of festivals just have never been able to make their money back from what they lost. So there's not enough money now. Obviously when the pandemic ended, there was a lot of pent up energy to be like, never been able to make their money back from what they lost. So there's not enough money now. Obviously, when the pandemic ended, there was a lot of pent up energy to be like, I need to go outside. But that's because me and you didn't spend two years of our high school experience. Our two first years of college stuck at home.

Remember, that's the time when you get the taste to go outside. When you start finding your drinking buddies, your outside friends, your music friends. You have to remember those years, dude. Those years are when you're discovering. All research says is like your taste in music happens in those years. Right. If I were to ask you what's your favorite area of music, most likely, it's not always, but most likely it was like the music you listened to in the 11th grade. It's probably your favorite era. Whatever you was listening to then is probably still your favorite era. Now, obviously, that's not true for everybody.

But, hey, if you were 17, you're discovering new music. You want to go to like the corner house of blues, right? You know, this is obviously I'm California centric. You wanted to hit the glasshouse, man, because you just heard about this new band. Little things like that. The Dragonfly, Whiskey AgoGo, the Viper Room, all these like smaller spots that when for us out of LA, these were like rites of passage. This is how you get to say I saw them win.

I knew who Will. I.M. was for the Black Eyed Peas because I saw him at the Little Temple, which is now called The Virgil, when he did a beat battle. They were at the corner, you know what I'm saying? And it was fun. I knew foster the people there in San Diego. You would just drive down, like just at the gas lamp, like Leon Bridges. Hell, he opened for us. You know what I'm saying? Like, again, like we said earlier, these bands that you was passionate about, you Bridges, hell, he opened for us. You know what I'm saying? Like, again, like we said in the earlier, these bands that you was passionate about, you was 17 with your little emo hair swooped over your eyes,

this who you was crying over, you understand what I'm saying? Like hugging onto your little iPad, you know, doing that MySpace picture when you looking down, you know, that's the white people thing. Like, this is when you went to go see them. If that era for you was a pandemic, you didn't acquire a taste for going out like that.

You saw concerts inside of Fortnite. So what I'm saying is one of the biggest things about Gen Z is they don't go out. It's just it's just the reality. Not only do they ain't got no money, they ain't got no money because again, inflation and finances, the cost of living is insane. But look it, Gen Z don't drink like we used to drink. They do fewer drugs. They have less sex.

Part of that is because one, they hella anxious and I don't blame them. I'm looking at my daughter now and I'm like, I'm sorry, baby. You probably not going to buy no house ever. I don't even know when you're going to move out. I don't know what to tell you. I'm not mad. I ain't going to push you out of this house because where you going to go? You're going to get seven roommates. I don't know what to tell you.

I'm sorry. They do fewer drugs. They drink less. And they don't go nowhere because one, they anxious as hell. They nervous around being around that many people. And if they are going to go out, if you ask them, the number one thing they say is like, I ain't got nobody to go with. I mean, I could go. I ain't got nobody to go with.

Because you ain't got no friends. You don't go nowhere. Right? I've been looking at my own child like, why are you here? Because like, don't you... You don't go nowhere? She's starting to now, but listen, you gotta really, really, really, really, really wanna see this person that you're going to see.

She bought Billie Eilish tickets in February. The concert next month, she decided if I'm gonna spend this money, this one I'm gonna to spend it on. Right. Because it's worth her money. She loves them. She loves her. She got the album. She went to the listening party. She's like, this is who I'm going to go see. They don't look and see who's playing or just pull up at a dope music spot

and just be like, oh, I wonder who's playing. I'm going to discover new music. No, that don't happen. You can't put on no festival if people ain't willing to come. Which leads me to one of the other problems they did, which is the music industry itself. It has shot themselves in the foot because the big dogs, just like I said, happened in the 1700s, are doing fine. If Live Nation and Ticketmaster own every venue,

they only gonna put the artists that they won't own there. It costs too much. So they're like, Oh, I don't understand what's going on with y'all festivals. I know we doing all right. Because if you are an industry artist with the machine behind you, number one, you don't need a festival. You book the Greek theater yourself. Why would I allow myself as an artist for you to pay me, guess who turned down Coachella next year? Rihanna and Kendrick. Why would either of them play that when they know they can be the only artists and sell just as many tickets?

Kendrick played staples, I'm calling it staples because I'm from LA. I know it's just a corporation. He played Staples four nights in a row where the Lakers played. But that was after doing four nights at the Honda Center in Orange County. These are eight Southern California shows,

sold them all out. Why the hell would I give that money to Coachella when I could do it myself? Live Nation already taking a huge ass cut. Ticketmaster already taking a huge ass cut. Scalpers already taking a huge ass cut. There's no reason for me to give my time and my ticket draw to you when they can all go to myself. You did this to yourself, music industry, by locking out all the small venues.

You know what else the music industry did to itself? Streaming the algorithm that also killed the festival. You know why? Because you're fed the same music. Algorithm says you like this. You probably going to like that. Which means we know all people be like music all sound the same because it does. Because the goal is to play music that feeds the algorithm. You create music that gets your streaming numbers up.

This the point I was making earlier, why you like, I don't know nobody else on this thing, and I'm only really concerned about the headliner. This is the point I was making earlier. Algorithm. You create music that works on TikTok. So music has this formula. They did the same thing with coffee shops.

You know why coffee shops look like brutalist mid-century modern, all of them? Instagram. We're all looking at the same aesthetic. So therefore all coffee shops look the same. The same thing happened with music, the algorithm. So you have these entire very specific niches, but can everyone in your weird niche, are there 30 artists in your very weird niche

that can bring 10,000 people out to a field? No, because there's only 40 of y'all that like this music. That's online streaming. There's no human editorial. There's no DJ that's saying, yo, dude, look at this, no, look at this. You're stuck to doing it yourself. And hopefully you can climb out your algorithm, right?

G McDonald says, a genre unfocused festival poster lineup starts to just look like a playlist that has been made and personalized for somebody else. Okay, you want to do a genre specific one? Let's just say, okay, K-pop. You finna fly all them acts from Korea. How much you gonna sell these tickets for? How many K-pop acts do you get? You don't book nobody local? Do you know how much money that would cost? Or you say, I'm gonna do a K-pop day. All right. So you do a three day festival. One day is K-pop, one day is EDM, one day is hip hop. Uh, nobody's about a three day pass.

So one day might be trash and how do you build it? What does the flyer look like? I don't know half of these people. I never even heard of that. No single act can sell a festival. And if you try to do a multi different actifferent act thing, it's just gonna confuse the consumer. So if you're putting on the festival, your only option is to just go big.

This has to do with money. So you are going to overspend, right? Because it's like, how you gonna get people here? You get Taylor Swift? Do you know how much money you gotta offer somebody like a Taylor Swift for her to give her performance to your festival rather than just to do her own show? And the consumer says, again, is this worth my money? I'm willing to throw this money at this big act because that's who I know.

They're not gonna risk no more because music discovery is now algorithmic. You're not just gonna go pull up at a spot and be like, who's this opener? They're dope. The industry did it to itself. You killed your own performance market. And because Live Nation bought up all the small venues where artists really get their chops

and really create fan bases, and really you get to discover and make connections with it, there's no places for them to play. All that's left are the big industry artists and why again, would they give their ticket sales to a festival? And lastly, climate change is hot as hell. The last two Burning Man's poured rain and flooded before that. It was like 129 million degrees. It's hot.

It's too hot to be out there like this. Claim it y'all. Ain't enough water. It's hot as hell. It's hot as hell. Or it's flooding. It's hot or it's flooding. Ain't no more nice days outside. I ain't finna stay outside all day. You crazy? You gonna make me pay extra for shade? It's an extra hundred dollars so I can have an umbrella? I'm good. Just hold on, we're staying home.

Staying home. Okay, now, again, let's rebuild the world. What can we do better? That's in our control. So festivals might be done, but it doesn't mean we don't still love music. If you're a music lover, here are some suggestions I can give you that would keep your favorite bands in the game. The first is the easiest one for you, which of course is buying or streaming their music.

If you're going to stream, here's the thing, dude. I'm not an old guy to say that like your release radar or your new music Friday, that algorithmic playlist that's like customized just for you. It's great. My request that I think would help is this. If a song pops on and you dig it, save it, number one. And then two, go to the album, go to that artist's page and give them a follow and listen to the album. You heard the song, the song was dope.

And if it really resonated, I'm not begging you to do something that you don't like, listen to that album. You heard the song, the song was dope. And if it really resonated, I'm not begging you to do something that you don't like. Listen to that album. You know, the whole like artists blowing up on TikTok. That's why Universal was just like, man, tried to dead all that. You know? So the artist blows up on TikTok. You really like that sound like, you know, like go to that artist's page, go to their music. Like, you know, instead of just like shooting a video,

like that stuff's short lived if you're artists. Like obviously you hope that one day that happens, but that's not sustainable. You can't tour off that. That's what happened to a lot of artists. Why I Spice canceled half her tour dates is because there's not songs. There's TikTok audios.

You feel me? That helps the artists know when they try to go get a show that they can prove that like, Hey, listen, these are listeners. When you go to my Spotify page, when you go to any Spotify page, the first number you see is monthly listeners, but that don't mean followers. I have this weird upside down thing. Most people have more monthly listeners than followers. I'm the opposite.

I have three times more followers than monthly listeners, which means these people are going to be alerted when I drop music. Why I have that is because I toured so hard. I played every possible dumb, ugly venue I possibly could. Like got it out the mud, shook hands, stayed after, stayed at the merch table, took pictures, got email addresses, got phone numbers, came back, you know, signed everything. I would stay after the show for an extra hour until everybody got their picture show for an extra hour until everybody got their picture and everybody got their stuff signed. Hard fought. So that way, you're right. I'm not cranking out music that feeds the algorithm.

You're right. But when I drop an album, they know. So my request as the consumer is follow that artist. Like go to the album. And secondly, the most obvious one is like, dude, buy merch. Oh my God. Y'all I'm saying like, Merch has been the difference between car insurance and not for me. Merch has been the difference between can my daughter stay in her, you know, dance class, her afterschool, like ballet class, Merch. Like Merch is how we paid for our

daughters during the pandemic. Hail merch. It, it paid our rent. Cause it's all he had. Now, as an artist, you need to have dope merch. That's, I mean, if your merch sucks, I mean, it is what it is. I can't ask you to, you know, purchase something that's trash. Artists make dope merch.

You know, I have vinyl, vinyl costs a lot, but you can go to my website, there's vinyl. Like that stuff, those make a difference. And then I'd also ask, like, if you really dig artists, this is on the artist's job too, like sign up for their newsletter, find out when they're touring and just, and go to their shows.

And when you get there, like another game, I think I told this on the hood politics podcast too, where it's like, most of the time as the artists, I keep the door, like meaning the ticket sales and then the venue keeps the bar. So their thing is like, well, they're going to make a ton of money on the bar. But that's how I get to come back is if this venue says, oh yeah, he brought, you know, 300 people here. They respected my staff. They bought drinks and me as an artist, my team, I'll be silly on stage, but

we're very, very professional. We can, I take my reputation very serious. We make sure that like the talent buyer, the venue is everybody taking care of. We're not yelling at the sound man. You know, we keep a clean green room. Like those are things you could do as an artist, but as a consumer, like, I know the algorithms fighting against you, but like, if you really like a group, go out of your way, even if it's on the discovery things, again, the big people

is easy Beyonce's tickets are going to come find you, you ain't got to go find them, but Johnny swim, but the hot shakes, right? That's what they call it. Go find them. Cause at the end of the day, it's your presence. If you're gonna stay in music, you have to get butts in seats. Is this for us to save music festivals?

I don't care. They did that to themselves. I'm just trying to save live music because truly, truly, there is nothing like it. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions.

Thanks for listening. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, andTF and me Mandy B as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional Relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating sex and love. That's right every Monday and Wednesday We both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms with a blend of humor vulnerability and authenticity We share our personal journeys navigating our 30s,

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