Going to an electronic dance music (EDM) festival or concert event with a group of friends is all about the experience, without question. There is, however, the painful reality of cost to consider before and after any EDM experience. Everything is getting more expensive, including concert tickets and amenities for said shows, as well as add-ons and VIP experiences no working class human could afford.
The main issue with EDM profiting as much as it does is twofold: the price of tickets will continue to go up, therein isolating the majority of EDM fans with lower incomes to fewer and fewer shows, while simultaneously raising the exclusivity of access to the genre to solely the privileged class. Once the privileged class is all you see in the audience, you start to question the genuineness of both the DJ and the genre on whole, and then the sponsors and vendors start to notice too. To put it in simpler terms, you lose contact with the common man and woman, you lose the “realness.”
One solution to that problem is to simply make the festivals bigger. Expanding a festival's capacity only goes so far before class discrimination again rears its ugly head around. An article on Smartasset.com, "The Economics of Electronic Dance Music Festivals," explains using the Center of Gravity Festival in Kelowna, Canada as an example: "The Center of Gravity (COG) Festival really began to take its current form three years ago. And since then its ticket prices have increased by 81% for a three-day pass. That increase is largely attributed to an increase in the size of the festival. COG simply offers more to attendees than it did three years ago. With that comes an increased need for security and emergency respondents. This year COG will spend roughly $70,000 in contracting local law enforcement to maintain order."
Like many people there for a good time, one never thinks about the cost of security at an event, mainly because EDM is such a welcoming, kind experience. One does not consider the depth of what security actually does in clubs though, especially when one considers the fact that night clubs attract the worst kind of people. Loud drunks, creepy dudes, and every single kind of snob exist to turn up in ‘da club,’ and to think that not at least a portion of them have some kind of elitist superiority complex is completely naive.
Look at the classic Chappelle's show skit, "Real life camera speed vs. slo-mo speed." In slo-mo, Chappelle walks around the club with enough swagger to turn every head in front of him, while the crowd just dances with plastic smiles. In real life speed, however, Chappelle's speed is stop and go at best. He is constantly getting bumped into, he is getting dirty looks from everyone around him, and the skit ends with Chappelle getting assaulted for spilling the wrong guy's drink.
Again, one may argue that is focusing on the negative, but absolutely nobody of legal drinking age can deny the next fact that merch and drinks at any festival are too expensive. An article on Youredm.com, "Top DJs Say Ibiza is Getting Too Expensive, Ruining the Magic," demolishes Ibiza for catering to only the rich: "In terms of overrated, played-out, upscale clubs, Spain's Ibiza definitely takes the cake...Steve Angello, Afrojack, and Paul Oakenfold, among others, have come forward, voicing their disapproval of the club's current system gauging attendees for everything they've got…These days it seems the shows are basically all about star credit, bragging about who you've seen and how much you spent on drinks."
Living in the age of spin, social currency has become a norm for any conversation, and often isolates more than stimulates socialization, despite how tantalizing the details may be. Even subtle comments about place trigger certain individuals to feel as though they are not doing or making enough, when the reality is they simply can't. The article goes on to comment on the cost of an Ibiza ticket, "According to BBC, a ticket starts at "75 euros" ($100) and a drink will cost you about "15 euros," nearly $20. I don't know about you, but no drink is worth that much."
Concert ticket prices are rising at an alarming rate everywhere as well. Tickets for Electric Daisy 2019 started at $319 apiece (EDC.com), so you can barely imagine how many organs one will have to sell to get a VIP ticket to the greatest EDM event of the year.
An article on Thefader.com entitled, "Why Concert Tickets Are Too Expensive," examined ticket prices on whole, and the findings were unsettling to say the least: "In North America, average ticket prices overall increased by 20% between 2010 and 2015. According to trade publication Pollstar's end of year report in 2015, the price of tickets to live music hit an all-time high that year, with an average cost of $74.25."
The reasons for this increase: "Staging is more extravagant than ever, audiences want a spectacle, and booking fees are silent but deadly." Buying things offline, one is used to shipping costs going up suddenly, or delivery fees adding more for the convenience. Additional fees are manipulated behind the scenes, just a tad murkier than a simple delivery charge, as Thefader.com article notes, "Hidden additional fees have never been popular with ticket buyers — mainly because they unexpectedly jack up the ticket price by an average of 21%, according to New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman. In his 2016 report, Schneiderman finds that ticket retailers generally add higher service charges than other online vendors (such as Amazon and Etsy)."
The big question after examining all this is still, what if one has a bad time at the festival they saved up a grand for? Before answering that, let us break down what a concert really costs. Reddit users on a thread about EDC costs seemed to emphasize that $1000 was the standard for the Las Vegas-based concert.
Reddit User Youngleche commented, "You can definitely do it with $1000. I guess it depends on where you live and how you get there." That is reasonable, so let us do the math. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, so let us use that as our base wage. If you work 138 hours at $7.25 an hour, you make roughly $1000 over 3.5 weeks of working, but that is only if you are lucky enough to work 40 hours a week. It could always take longer, and you may want more money for emergency spending, so let us go ahead and make it an even 4 weeks.
Keep in mind that is just the money you need for the festival, that does not factor in food, shelter, you know, the things human beings need to survive. When it boils down to it, you are using one month's earnings (one month of your life) exclusively for an EDM festival that lasts 3 days.
So, one circles back to that lingering question, what happens if you spend $1000 on a bad time? I have heard horror stories about Coachella and read the unnervingly bleak Independent.co.uk article on Burning Man, "Burning Man: What's it really like to survive nine days in Nevada's Black Rock Desert?" (despite the fact Burning Man hates associating itself with the word festival). If you spend $1000 and only feel the pain of hemorrhaging that much money, you will not want to go back next year. The experience may be otherworldly and even spiritual to some degree, but the reality is that money governs access to that experience, and inflation will only make concerts and festivals costlier as time goes on.
The silver lining to this trend is the true fans. Those who truly love EDM, the ravers who were in the warehouses and basements right at the start of it all, the real fans will continue appreciating the artists who share that ideal, not just the individuals in it for the fame and fortune.
The fans there for the popularity will move on to whatever trend commands their attention next. The people who truly love electronic music will still have it and there won't be as much garbage to sift through. EDM will never truly go away, it likely will just undergo a few mutations now and again, but what we know to be true electronic music will still be at the core of it all.