With Christmas a distant memory and most New Year's resolutions near breaking point, there's one season to look forward to during the dreary months of winter — Festival Lineup Announcement Season.
Just one week after the New Year, major festivals around the country began to announce the lineup for their big summer and springtime confabs, ending months of speculation by a cottage industry of journalists, bloggers and megafans.
On Jan. 8, Goldenvoice announced the lineup for this year’s Coachella festival, held over two weekends (April 11-13 and April 18-20) at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif. This year’s headliners include Muse, Arcade Fire, a reunion by Outkast, Queens of the Stone Age, Beck, Lorde, Neutral Milk Hotel and The Replacements, among hundreds of others.
Six days later, organizers Festival Productions Inc.- New Orleans with the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival dropped their own lineup for the 10-day event. This year's standouts include Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, Phish, Arcade Fire, Robin Thicke, Vampire Weekend and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
Next up is the lineup announcement for Manchester, Tenn.’s Bonnaroo Festival, which usually drops in late spring (the fest is June 12-15), followed by Lollapalooza (Aug. 1-3) in Chicago, and then Austin City Limits in Zilker Park, (Oct. 3-5 and Oct. 10-12).
From there, hundreds more festival lineups will be announced, including the new Budweiser Made in America Festival in Philadelphia (date is TBA, but last year it was Labor Day Weekend), the tech-heavy Moogfest in Asheville, N.C. (April 23-27) and Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, (Aug. 30-Sept. 1). Each festival caters to indie rock, reunion bands and the still popular Electronic Dance Music, which has its own festival circuit which begins with Ultra Music Fest in Miami (March 28-30) and hits its peak in Las Vegas during the Electric Daisy Carnival, June 20-22.
And, of course, country music has its own festival circuit, which began in October with announcement for Stagecoach Festival in Indio, Calif., (April 25-27) followed this week by the lineup announcement for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, March 4-23 run at Reliant Stadium.
So what does this sudden rush of bookings mean for those whose job it is to book talent at venues?
“It’s a curse and a blessing,” said Phil Kosch, talent buyer for the House of Blues in Chicago, which goes up against both the Lollapalooza Festival and the alternative Pitchfork Festival a few weeks prior. “It’s a curse because radius clauses restrict us from booking any of the bands playing either Lolla or Pitchfork, but it’s a blessing in that it enables us to book bands playing fests outside of Chicago who are looking for a Chicago date.”
Kosch said he will spend much of January and February locking down his summer touring schedule, which usually consists of a mix of bands with national Live Nation/House of Blues deals and one-offs booked inside his market.
“We don’t feel like we’re competing with the festivals because we offer a different value proposition — ours is a $25 ticket bought a week in advance versus a $350 ticket bought months in advance,” Kosch said. “That said, the growth of the festival scene has a lot of agents and managers locking down schedules right now and, with everyone working at the same time, it often means a lot of business gets done.”
In fact, right about this time, buyers and promoters in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Northern California and even the Pacific Northwest are busily calling the agents of acts playing Coachella, trying to secure routing just outside of Coachella’s radius clause.
“It’s a race given the shortness of time they’re in the region,” said Moss Jacobs, VP of Talent for Nederlander, which operates several venues in the L.A. market including the Greek Theatre and the City National Grove of Anaheim.
Trying to make an offer against Goldenvoice (promoters of Coachella and Stagecoach) is practically impossible, considering “the amount of money and prestige a spot at Coachella brings,” he said.
Jacobs said he and other buyers will try to book acts on their second pass through L.A., but even then “you can’t announce or market the show until after the conclusion of the (second weekend) of Coachella,” which leads to a glut of on-sales on April 21 by eager promoters ready to announce their tours.
The bigger picture is that a play at Coachella can quickly boost a band's career arc and help develop a fan base that can lead to future ticket sales, no matter the venue.
“If they’re on the top half of the lineup, they deserve a second look and we’ll try to get them next time they come through,” Jacobs said.
Interviewed for this article: Phil Kosch, (312) 923-2000; Moss Jacobs, (323) 468-1700