The year the music festival died

By Greg Rosalsky,

Wailin Wong, Angel Carreras, Kate Concannon

Published October 8, 2024 at 3:06 PM EDT

Is 2024 the year the music festival died? Festivals are getting canceled left and right, from Northern California to Florida to Virginia.

Big name festivals that used to sell out in minutes struggled to sell tickets this year, too, like Burning Man and Coachella.

And it's not just America. By one count, over 60 music festivals were canceled in the UK this year alone. In Australia, so many festivals were canceled that one newspaper there recently asked, are the nation's music festivals extinct?

Today on the show, the music festival recession. What's behind it and is it temporary or a permanent cultural shift?

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Greg Rosalsky

Since 2018, Greg Rosalsky has been a writer and reporter at NPR's Planet Money.

See stories by Greg Rosalsky

Wailin Wong

Wailin Wong is a long-time business and economics journalist who's reported from a Chilean mountaintop, an embalming fluid factory and lots of places in between. She is a host of The Indicator from Planet Money. Previously, she launched and co-hosted two branded podcasts for a software company and covered tech and startups for the Chicago Tribune. Wailin started her career as a correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires in Buenos Aires. In her spare time, she plays violin in one of the oldest community orchestras in the U.S.

Angel Carreras

Angel Carreras is an assistant producer for The Indicator from Planet Money. He is a Bakersfield-raised, Cal State Long Beach graduate. He previously worked at KCRW, the NPR member station in Los Angeles. He has produced award-winning and character-driven work, with subjects that have included masked puppeteers, mutual aid groups, and community activists.

Kate Concannon

Kate Concannon is the Supervising Senior Editor at The Indicator from Planet Money. She leads this small, collaborative team of hosts, reporters and producers in making sense of crucial, but often complex and confusing, economic news in just 10 minutes a day.