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| Sun Jun 15 22:23:08 2008 Sasquatch 2008 |
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| Sun Jun 15 22:23:08 2008 Sasquatch 2008 A geek's report on the music festival. |
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| Yes, I'm late! I was at the Sasquatch 2008 Music Festival over Memorial Day weekend (24 - 25 May), but I'm just now getting to writing it up. The weather varied between beautiful and bad. When beautiful, you remembered why you went to The Gorge--a dramatic landscape with beautiful skies. When bad, you were treated to cold and relentless rain. Another Sasquatch 2008 reviewer mentioned "fans put up with sideways rain," because of the wind. 
There was a great lineup (you can see for yourself). They had several great headlining bands, such as R.E.M. and The Cure. But I was most excited to see some of the other bands that I hadn't seen in concert before, such as Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse.
Between bands, I would marvel at the crowds. From our vantage point (almost directly back from the center of the stage both days), we could see the thousands of people moving back and forth. It was a great example of emergent phenomena, watching all the invidivuals combine into an overall flow of people that could probably be well-modeled by fluid dynamics. In general, a band would play, and then there would be net outflow of people towards the bathrooms, food areas, and other stages. Towards the beginning of a set, the flow would reverse. As popular (and direct) routes got busy, people would naturally choose less congested routes.
A beer cost $8 (more for "premium" beers). The economics of food pricing at festivals is interesting. Of course, as a captive audience, you know you'll be charged an arm and a leg for average food--it's the same as the movie theater. In fact, this phenomenon (high price of popcorn at movie theaters) is well-known and studied by economists a lot. This recent blog entry has a long discussion on it! But the short answer is that the high prices are probably close to the real value--after all, thousands of people pay the prices that are charged! It's just that the real price of the item isn't usually related to the cost of the ingredients: instead, most of the price is the labor of making the item, and (most importantly) the convenience to the consumer. I brought my own food, but occasionally I wanted something hot. For the occasional hot snack, why not pay a bit more? The convenience factor was high. For beer, the choice was between their prices or no beer at all. So they picked a price point to maximize return, where higher prices would drive more people away, and lower prices would mean selling too cheaply. Of course, there is another cost that means festivals will charge more: drunk patrons are a pain to manage. But if you're going to talk about the economics of music, it's more than beer and food prices. It is the disintegration of the standard music distribution business (see this article from Fox News or this article from The Week). CD sales are plummeting, and digital revenue isn't coming close to replacing it. I'm not sure I care about the music distribution companies--their industry may disappear, and them with it. Today we don't cry about the disappearance of coopers (barrel makers), even though their industry long since collapsed (although did not disappear entirely). No, the danger is to bands themselves. How will bands make money in the future? Probably by a combination of live performances (which accounted for most of their revenue under the old system anyway) and their own direct digital sales of their music (like what Radiohead did). For a great summary, see this report, commissioned by the Department of Canadian Heritage. For an American, it's weird to see governments funding this sort of thing, but it is an interesting report.
Top 3 bands? This is my list, although I was only there for 2 days, and only at the Main Stage:
I hadn't heard of Tegan and Sarah before, but I thought they were excellent. I've since added a bunch of their tracks to my collection. Don't get me wrong: there were a lot of great bands there, and the Presidents rocked. But those are my top 3.
As much as I studied the crowd behavior and economics of festival food prices, I was also impressed by the selection of bands at the festival. The lineup was well-done, for the quality of (most) bands and especially for the variability. I guess putting together a festival lineup is a bit like making a good mix tape (or CD or playlist...), only much larger in scale. Comments |
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