EXCLUSIVE: Mushroom Axes Future Music Festival

2 April 2015 | 1:00 pm | Mitch KnoxAndrew Mast

The event's full-time staff will be let go, though there are plans for a new festival to take its place

Future Music Festival. Pic by Julian Smith

Future Music Festival. Pic by Julian Smith

The national touring circuit will see a major shake-up next year with regard to Future Music Festival as the event's promoters, Mushroom Group, announced today that they would be discontinuing the annual dance-music celebration.

According to the Group — which only bought into the festival two years ago — dwindling audience numbers at each of its five iterations, in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, in conjunction with rising operational costs, are at the core of the untenable difficulty of keeping Future alive.

"Despite the considerable critical acclaim of the 2015 festival, the last two years of ticket sales for the festival have underperformed, meaning Future Music Festival will not be returning in 2016", Mushroom said in a statement, adding that they were "saddened" to have to make the decision, but that — encouragingly — they are "developing a new festival concept, which is planned for the same time period previously held by Future Music Festival".


key points — future music festival axing

  • Dwindling audience numbers and rising costs key factors in the decision
  • Touring festival model 'a thing of the past' — Group Chairman Michael Gudinski
  • Full-time staff to be made redundant
  • Replacement festival for same time frame to be announced in near future
  • Boutique festival Sugar Mountain and under-18s event Good Life remain unaffected

"When we became involved in Future, we focused on delivering a high-quality event with the best available talent," Group Chairman Michael Gudinski told theMusic.com.au. "However, the cost to physically stage the events has significantly increased, even in just two years.  The fluctuating dollar also hasn’t helped and the increasing popularity of EDM in the States has seen DJ fees escalating out of control."

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The Prodigy @ Future Music Festival Melbourne, 2015. Pic by Andrew Briscoe

The shock decision comes in the wake of a highly successful year for the event, which saw high-profile artists such as Drake, The Prodigy (pictured, by Andrew Briscoe) Die Antwoord, Seth Troxler, Timmy Trumpet, Sven Vath and more than 200 other acts entertain audiences in five capital cities — Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide — but, despite this, Group Chairman Michael Gudinski believes the touring festival model is simply unsustainable, and already being abandoned en masse abroad.

"In my opinion, Australia is following a trend that’s already been seen in America where touring festivals have become a thing of the past," he told theMusic.com.au. "Instead, stand-alone location festivals such as Coachella and Lollapalooza are going from strength to strength. In England and Europe, travelling festivals just don’t happen."

"In my opinion, Australia is following a trend that’s already been seen in America where touring festivals have become a thing of the past." — Mushroom Group Chairman Michael Gudinski

As a result of the festival being dissolved, the small full-time team whose duties were specifically Future-focused now face redundancy, although Gudinski has said there are already plans in the works to create a new festival to fill the hole in the calendar left by the event's demise.

"As the festival is a once-yearly event Future Music Festival employed just a small handful of full time staff members," Gudinski said. "The majority of Future staff were on contracts, which have now largely wound up. While we are never happy to make anyone redundant, we feel somewhat fortunate that we’ve only had to make four full-time staff redundant with the closure of the festival.

"A number of roles for Future were looked after by existing in-house staff already working at Mushroom, i.e. our Promotions team handled all publicity and promotions for the festival. Those people are unaffected and will continue to work within Mushroom Group."

There's good news for younger music fans, though, with the news that the dissolution of Future will have no run-on effect to under-18 event Good Life, which will continue full steam ahead as its own concept.

"Good Life will continue to have its own life separate to Future," Gudinski confirmed. "The team behind Good Life run a number of highly successful events separate to Good Life Festival itself and they will continue to roll these out. The 2015 Good Life Festival also saw us develop the event as not just a music festival but a lifestyle event for under-18s with rides, waterslides, celebrity meet-and-greets and much more. We plan to fine-tune the formula for 2016 and beyond and feel the festival has great scope for further development."

So, too, is there positive information for Sugar Mountain's growing army of faithful fans, with Mushroom's recent involvement with the cult-favourite event sure to keep the remaining Group team busy while other event ideas are incubated in-house.

"2015 was our first year of involvement with Sugar Mountain and we were extremely happy with how the event went," he said. "The combination of arts and music seems to have really captured the imagination of those attending and the feedback we’ve had on the VCA site has been fantastic.  Our current aim is to let Sugar Mountain grow organically but we see great potential for the long-term. We anticipate that word of mouth from those that attended in 2015 will be a major marketing tool for us for 2016."


why michael gudinski believes future failed

  • Difficulty in making large-scale festivals work in smaller markets 
  • Lack of government funding 
  • Crowded Aussie festival marketplace 

Pic by Andrew Briscoe

Gudinski is quoted in Mushroom's statement as saying the decision to axe Future "was not made lightly", a fact made apparent by the comprehensive consideration that he clearly afforded it, taking into account peripheral issues such as the disparity of market size in Future's locations — "Festivals on a large, multi-stage scale are hard to make work in smaller markets … in some cases they are the most expensive locations to travel to, as far as transport and freight," he says — and even the possibility of being able to tap into government funding.

"Music fans have subsequently become more choosy and less willing to pay the ticket prices required to fund a festival like Future." — Michael Gudinski

"State Government support is generally based on unique events that will attract people to their State," Gudinski explained. "No government is going to be interested in a national touring event. The Queensland Government recently invested money into supporting CMC Rocks, and I believe Splendour has also received some government support in the past.  Both are obviously unique events that attract people to an area for the purpose of attending that event."

In addition, Gudinski points to the somewhat crowded Aussie festival circuit, in which "an unusual number of promoters [compete] for artists", resulting in an inevitable heightening of "the fee that an artist can demand when a bidding war ensues", he says.

"Consumers in Australia have also had a considerable number of festivals and headline concerts available to them in the past few years and music fans have subsequently become more choosy and less willing to pay the ticket prices required to fund a festival like Future," he added.

The festival had suffered wider woes for some time, which arguably added to the ticket-sale problem: the recent Asian leg of the event was cancelled a week out after it failed to obtain a license, while Future has a prickly history with headlines, attracting attention for arrests at the festival, over drugs intended for the festival, and facing crackdowns from police-dog squads.

However, it's not all bad news, as Gudinski is tight-lipped — yet evidently excited — about the prospects moving forward as far as the projected replacement event is concerned, hinting that the new festival will take on a few more boutique characteristics to place quality over quantity.

"We’re still in the very early stages of planning and I don’t want to give away too much information to our competitors but we will likely be focusing on a reduction in the number of markets and developing an approach that recognises the desires and needs of today’s music fan," he said.