The Exclusive Value of a Ticket to Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and More 2012 Summer Music Festivals
Not only a great list, but a unique way to sift to the acts only seen there. There are a couple of “grampa fests” to avoid if you are under 45 — these become obvious when you look at the exclusive acts, and you can see which multi-day fests lean eclectic, R&B, C&W, and electronic easily enough.
In summer music festivals, as with TMZ news scoops and the vintage car market, exclusivity is the name of the game. The thinking goes like this: Festival attendees are looking for a good time and a good deal. They’re more likely to pay the high cost of a ticket to a multi-day festival with dozens of bands if the festival is their only chance to see some of those bands.
The pursuit of exclusivity is what drives the so-called radius clauses included in the contracts bands sign with festivals. A common radius clause says that a band may not play another show for 60 days before and after the festival within a 300 mile radius of the festival grounds. For a band playing Bonnaroo, in Manchester, Tenn. on June 10, that would mean four spring and summer months with no shows in Nashville, Atlanta, Louisville or Tuscaloosa. (Raleigh’s fine. So is Little Rock.)
As we did last year, we wondered what the huge number of festivals around the country would look like if you could judge them by their exclusive bookings, that is, if you look at more than 20 summer festival lineups and eliminate any act that appears on more than one.