Big Day Out, where did it all go wrong?

So the Big Day Out shutting down is sad news, for well over 20 years it has been an incredibly important and amazing part of the Australian music scene, for many years it was considered easily the biggest, best and most important music festival in Australia, in the last few years, there were recent festival which saw absolutely stunningly fast sellouts within days, even hours of tickets being released but sadly it had become a shadow of it's former glorious self and shut down, so what exactly went wrong, while it's hard to analyse behind the scenes and politics there are various elements that affected them.

One of Big Day Out's strengths for a long time was that there was nothing else like it and it was often leading the way and the only real big music festival happening all around Australia, eventually other festivals decided to come in and give it a crack but at the end of the day didn't really put a huge dent into the Big Day Out, however the electronic music invasion did really start to tighten the screws and put pressure onto them.

Touring one band around Australia can be incredibly expensive, let alone a massive line up of many, many big bands with a lot of gear to cart around the country.  With electronic music festivals, most DJ's either used top of the line Technic turntables (Vinyl has significantly been dying down in the last 10 years or so), top of the line Pioneer CDJs or the growing use of DJ's bringing their own laptops and DJ controllers, back in the day of Vinyl DJ's, record crates used to weigh many, many kilos, surprisingly even CD's can prove to be a bit weighty, but these days, USB's, laptops and midi controllers are all relatively light weight and are often carted around by the performers themselves.  There's little drama or challenges with changeovers compared to switching bands over as DJ's all virtually use very similar equipment, plus while big name acts like Skrillex or Deadmau5 may charge a bit, there are rarely any bands and usually don't command near the levels of money that some of the big name bands do.  In short, electronic festivals can be done very cheaply.

Then of course, we have had a massive switch towards the popularity of EDM (electronic dance music), this has definitely made it harder for the Big Day Out to compete, it definitely didn't kill them off at first but they started to adopt more EDM acts and it certainly put some pressure and competition on them.  Of course seeing a live band won't compare to DJ's so they were still relatively safe and had different offerings compared to most festivals, well maybe except Soundwave.

Soundwave is Australia's major hard rock and metal festival, this has a focus on rock bands and headliners have included the likes of Marilyn Manson, Iron Maiden, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, they've managed to obtain the major acts.  Many people made comparisons to how this festival was what Big Day Out used to be like in the good old days, Soundwave grew very strong over the year attracting major acts and had a very strong dedicated crowd with many claiming that Soundwave would often have much better line ups and were often confused by what the Big Day Out was often doing.

Soundwave's main success was the fact that it was big name acts and giving people what they want, Big Day Outs lineups seemed to make later sense in the year's gone on.  For example 2008 was one of the most successful Big Day Out lineups with Rage Against the Machine headlining the way, the following year the headliner was Neil Young, most of the 18-30 year olds had no idea who he was, the 40+ crowd knew who he was they were somewhat excited but while they love going to concerts to see the bands they like, they're not big on being around all the young drunken yobbos at Big Day Out.

Both events had very different ways of responding to people's thoughts of the line-ups.  Soundwave owner AJ, would often chat to people on Twitter about suggestions on what bands to get, see what's popular and at least talk to a lot of the bands mentioned to see the possibilities of getting them to come down at a Soundwave in the future.  Upon a Big Day Out lineup release that fans found very disappointing (especially compared to Soundwave), the promoters stuck their fingers in their ears and kept going on about how great the line up is and decided to ignore the critics and potential festival goers, who in return, ignored their event.

Big Day Out then slammed Soundwave, claiming that what they were doing was unsustainable and suicidal.  How could a festival be bringing over so many international acts?  It would raise expectations greatly, it's insanely risky, there's no need for overkill with their lineups, Big Day Out claimed it could do a much better and simpler lineup.  Punters were not impressed and just saw jealousy, AJ from Soundwave claimed he was just getting the people what they want and despite the costs people will pay money to see them and they did.

There was also the controversial decision of Kanye West in 2012.  A festival well known for having the likes of Tool, Rammstein, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine headline, all of a sudden Kanye West is the headliner, what is going on.  This confused fans greatly, this alternative rock event is now a pop music festival?  Plus it's Kanye West, he has a lot of fans but a lot of people hate his ego so much they don't want anything to do with him.

Music festivals are expensive and many people limit their festival choices to their music choices.  Do you like metal and rock?  Soundwave.  Do you like the latest big name EDM acts?  Future Music.  Feel like a roadtrip and camping?  Southbound.  Each festival saw a distinct target market, gave them an experience and the acts to go with it, it honestly felt like Big Day Out was just a bunch of great acts but with no apparent rhyme of reason, they didn't do one area good, now that was fine when it was the biggest and best but the music festival scene was becoming pretty packed, Big Day Out didn't really have a set target market.  It was an embarassing year, Kanye West got cut from the lineup in Perth and Adelaide, Perth usually gets in excess of 30000, it was lucky to get around 8000 that year, not exactly how they wanted to celebrate their 20th anniversary.  The 2013 line-up was well received but by then, the majority of fans had given up and stopped caring, they experienced all the other festivals and the summer festival crowd voted at all the festivals except BDO.

Big Day Out went from "the music festival" to just some festival without sense or purpose.  They didn't have an easy to describe vision, they wanted to be the best music festival but best at what?  Music is incredibly subjective and the whole idea of being a jack of all trades meant they were a master of none.