Everyone thought Aussie music festivals were dying. Organisers say that’s only half the story

The death of music festivals such as Splendour in the Grass, Groovin’ the Moo and Bluesfest have sparked widespread concerns among fans that the rest of the industry would head in the same direction.

But the organisers behind some of today’s biggest events say that it’s not a black-and-white issue.

While some festivals struggled and others were forced to shut down, the people behind events that are still alive today say it wasn’t so much of an industry-wide failure as it was “an operational reset”.

“I think each individual festival had its own unique story, and it wasn’t necessarily a trend. Because amongst all of that, there were festivals also doing fine and thriving in some cases. I mean, we certainly didn’t experience anything like that,” says Simon Beckingham, founder of Finely Tuned and the three-day event, Lost Paradise in NSW, which has just sold out for the fifth year in a row.

“But obviously, I really felt for the parts of the industry that were hit quite hard by that effect ... everything’s always a bit more nuanced and there’s always a bit more to it when you dig a bit deeper.”

Untitled Group founder, Christian Serrao, tells nine.com.au that he found himself in a similar boat. This year, one of his events, Beyond The Valley (BTV), sold out before the general sale even began.

Watching events that paved the way come to a close would surely be enough to generate some nerves among the industry. Serrao explains that he and his team’s strategy during that time was to simply “move off old school gut feel.”

“Honestly, we just backed ourselves. We know our community, we keep listening to what they want, and we’ve focused on real data on what our community is telling us,” he says.

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“We follow streaming trends; we have plenty of post-event surveys; we listen to our audience. What we do at our core is we bring people together. So, in this more digital world, all we do is just double down on our event experience, and we feel like that has worked for us really, really well.”

It’s that idea of creating a community that seems to have set the survivors apart.

Frontier Touring chief operating officer Susan Heyman tells nine.com.au that CMC Rocks, Australia’s biggest country music festival, has relied on that strategy for almost two decades

Ahead of its 20th birthday in March next year, Heyman says CMC Rocks has become an annual event for its community, with people travelling from far and wide for three days of country music in Ipswich.

“We’ve seen people don’t age out of CMC; it’s a really beautiful thing that people come as like young adults, they sometimes meet their partners there, they’ve had kids, they bring their kids, their families grow up at the festival,” she says.

“So it’s got this beautiful community attached to it, which I think is really one of the pillars that makes it so successful.”

What today’s generation of event managers all have in common is that they see their events as more than just a stage for performers. For the five days that people are on-site, it’s a community of its own.

Noticing that Gen Z – the target demographic for Beyond The Valley – had started drinking less, Serrao says the team had to find other ways to engage their audience to make them feel a sense of home.

So, they came up with the idea to partner with Salomon to start a BTV run club that went “absolutely viral”.

For Beckingham and the team at Lost, they found that rather than spending their entire budget on one or two major acts to do all the heavy lifting, their community responded better to a broader program.

“We always want to spend a lot of money on building the experience out on site, which is quite often building bespoke stages and doing really amazing production and all the stuff that people really walk away with and go, ‘Wow, that was amazing’,” he says.

Heyman shares a similar sentiment, explaining that CMC isn’t just about the music for her community. With people coming from regional locations, it’s an opportunity to visit the vendors on site and do their shopping for the year, stocking up on items such as boots and jackets that they may not be able to get in their small towns.

But an aspect of planning these events that many don’t consider is that the community extends far beyond those attending; it also includes the artists who rely on these events to help them grow their fan base.

Heyman, Serrao and Beckingham all agree that it can be a bit of a balancing act when it comes to creating a line-up with major international names that draw the crowds and up-and-coming local artists that people don’t even know they’re going to love yet. But it’s a balancing act they’ve all managed to perfect.

Heyman recalls an Aussie performer named Max Jackson who took to the CMC stage last year, and walked away with an international record deal.

For Serrao, one of his team’s biggest success stories when it comes to investing in local talent stems back to the days before BTV ever began.

Melbourne DJ Dom Dolla started out playing Serrao’s nightclubs around 15 years ago, coming in every Saturday and essentially growing with the brand.

“He was playing on every BTV bill up until a few years ago... now he’s not just headlining BTV, but he’s selling out stadiums here and across the world, so it’s a perfect example of investing in grassroots talent,” Serrao says.

“He’s just gone from strength to strength. It’s an amazing story, his one.”