Table of Contents
Introduction
Music festivals are an extremely important component of the music industry. Each year such events bring together various music genres – from synth-pop to deathcore –, attracting thousands of people from different countries, with visitors ranging from teenage freshmen to retired music lovers.
The aim of this essay is to determine whether British music festivals make any impact on the society and the music industry and what kind of value they possess. The concept of value will be central to this work, and it will be discussed along with ideas and facts about music festivals. The issue will be considered from two perspectives, economic and social. The claims in this essay will be based on the evidence from academic literature as well as real-life data.
Value
To begin with, “value” is not an unambiguous term. The complexity of studying and understanding value lies in its affiliation with several academic disciplines, for instance economics or sociology. For each field of study the meanings are different, sometimes even incomparable. However, music is such a broad concept that it can possess value of various kinds at the same time. According to Jerrold Levinson (2015), kinds of value that are specific for music can be classified as artistic and non-artistic.
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Artistic value includes music’s aesthetic value, that is usually appreciated through experience, as well as non-experiential traits, such as the originality of a piece of music or its influence on future composition. The most notable kinds of non-artistic value include economic, practical, moral and cognitive values. Practical value can be divided even further into social, entertainment, therapeutic and other kinds of value, the list is rather open-ended. All of these values are displayed in music itself, and a music festival, being some kind of an intermediary, makes it possible to reflect all of them on the audience.
Economic
A festival is a unique event that combines music and other leisure activities, involving numerous performances from bands and musicians (Bowen and Daniels 2005). The main aim of each performing artist, not taking into consideration their personal feelings and emotions, is to gain money from their presence at the event – more precisely, from playing their music live.
To understand music as something that can bring profit and, respectively, possess economic value, it is necessary to put it into the capitalist framework of the contemporary society – Britain, according to the Index of Economic Freedom – a database that considers qualitative and quantitative factors to measure countries’ economic freedom – a prerequisitive to capitalism –, can be considered a capitalist country.
One of the main components of a capitalist system is a commodity. As defined by Karl Marx, it is a thing that satisfies one’s needs in one way or another. The definition is rather simple, yet it is hard to simply fit music into this frame. «Music is never simply a commodity or, rather, it is never a commodity in a simple way» as its commodification depends on the means of composition, recording, production, distribution and consumption combined. A festival makes it easier to comprehend music as a commodity, unlike an abstract concept of music as a whole – festival grounds act as a marketplace (McKay 2015b), where commodities, including music, are exchanged.
Money, the ultimate commodity, plays an important role in measuring value. Considering a festival from an economic perspective, it is an event that generates tremendous turnover. For instance, T in the Park alone contributed as much as £40 million annually to the Scottish economy. The biggest British festivals, such as Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds or Download, attract up to 120,000 people each year, with a ticket worth roughly £200 each – as much as £24 million of clear profit.
But even the hypothetical numbers are rather astonishing, as can be seen from a case presented by Music Venue Trust: Glastonbury is known for selling out before the announcement of headliners, and 2018 was not an exception. However, not everyone was able to obtain a ticket as the demand outweighed the supply. But having counted every individual who was a potential ticket holder at the time of sales, it can be concluded that as many as 800,000 people were ready to spend £253 to hear some music live, which equates to almost £200 million.
What is more, music festivals have other economic impacts, such as creating jobs and encouraging music tourism. According to a report by UK Music, as many as 13,543 jobs were sustained at music festivals in the UK in 2015, and 2,195,000 music tourists from all over the world attended these events. This number stands for 64% of the whole audience, pointing out that the contribution by tourists is highly valuable.
Even though a festival combines a variety of activities on its grounds, it is important to realize that music is the main thing that attracts consumers to festivals and makes it possible to generate huge profits. Commodified for mass consumption, music played at festivals possesses substantial economic value, that is monetarized by ticket sales, and this value makes festivals – as well as the music industry itself – thrive.
Social
Another important aspect of the idea of music festivals is the social value that they promote, or the ways in which a festival makes an impact on the society or an individual. A festival, unlike any other event, allows listeners to fully engage in a musical performance. Pascoe et al. (2005) emphasized the social and emotional benefits that are obtained through engagement with music and came to a conclusion that music can “exalt the human spirit, transform the human experience and bring joy, beauty, and satisfaction to people’s lives”.
Socializing is an inevitable part of attending a festival, and interacting with others or exchanging knowledge contributes to one’s socialization. Socialization is a process by which people learn how to become proficient members of the society. Throughout this process individuals learn how to accept societal norms, beliefs and values. Its first stage occurs in the childhood, and the second starts in the adolescent and continues through life. A music festival, in this perspective, can play a role of a secondary socialization agent, with average attendants aged 16-28. According to an empirical study by Packer and Ballantyne (2010), many participants noted that attending a festival contributed to their social well-being. The authors emphasized the impact on Social Acceptance, Integration and Actualization.
Social Acceptance means accepting various types of human behaviour without discrimination or prejudice. A festival is a unique place where visitors may notice people who, in other circumstances, would seem rather different, yet still fully accept their behaviour. As quoted in the Packer and Ballantyne (2010) study: “that’s the whole point of them is that there’s so many different types of people can come together”. Social Integration defines how well people ‘blend into’ the society, how much they have in common with others.
Festivals create a new social reality where music, being a unifying force, brings together people from different backgrounds. Many relationships made in such conditions remain stable even after the event, securing people from social isolation. And Social Actualization means being optimistic about the future of the society – participants of the study also noted that festival experience gave them hope for a better tomorrow. Combining these three aspects, it becomes clear that festivals create a strong social appeal, contributing to people’s social well-being.
Other than that, music festivals possess therapeutic value. The ability of music to cure is a rather well-known fact, however, an active engagement in a live musical performance can help one achieve better results than simply listening to recorded music. During the festival participants feel that they play a central role in it rather than passively consume music – that leads to making the experience more personal and memorable. Having researched the works of Abraham Maslow, Schaefer et al. (2014) call musical experience a ‘peak experience’, and believe that peak experiences usually lead to positive changes in people’s lives.
The participants of the research associated their musical experience with positivity, harmony with the crowd, and said that those feelings helped them make further changes in life. Eleanor Halls, a journalist, recalls that going to Reading Festival at the age of 16 felt like the beginning of something new, “a milestone I felt I’d earned with age”. Experiencing such feelings and emotions is extremely important, especially for young people – being happy increases productivity, performance, and even overall lifespan. Therefore, a festival, being a place where music, socializing, taking part in activities combine, provides a unique opportunity to increase one’s mental well-being and ‘emotional field’.
What is more, a festival can influence the mental state of not only one individual but a whole group of people. Music plays the central role in gathering visitors at a festival, and in some cases it can bring something more than a simple feeling of joy. It times of sorrow a music event might be the only place to give people strength to go on – an example of such event is ‘One Love Manchester’ in May 2017. This event can be called a small, one-day festival, as it featured a number of various musicians, but the reason for organizing it varied from the usual.
Ariana Grande, Coldplay, Liam Gallagher and many more shared the stage in order to remember the victims of a terrorist attack at Grande’s concert several days prior to the show. Hundreds of people were brought together by music to share their emotions, their love and hope. As later announced by Michael Dugher, UK Music chief executive, the show “highlighted the incredible power of music to heal”. Therefore, visitors united by grief can find relief at a music festival, and this is truly priceless.
Conclusion
Having considered various aspects of a music festival phenomenon, it becomes clear that this event is highly valuable. Statements by academics and researchers as well as real-life examples prove that music festivals play a crucial role in shaping the society. They influence the British society in many ways, from boosting the economy to educating and comforting the individuals. Glastonbury, Download and other festivals happen once every year, and for many people this time is always associated with joy, fun and their favourite music. As time goes on, festival culture evolves, but it will always bring meaning and value to people’s life.
