If you thought all the festival & show cancellations were getting bad, were here to let you know – they are only getting worse.
Shambhala, Electric Forest, Burning Man, Tomorrowland, Voodoo, Life is Beautiful, Buku, & tons of other festivals around the world have completely cancelled plans for 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak that started in February.
At the beginning of the outbreak, many festivals like Bonnaroo & EDC Las Vegas only postponed their events until September & October. Now because of the complete cancellation of other festivals, including Voodoo which isn’t until the end of October, it becomes less & less likely that any large scale events will be happening in 2020.
One big question is if shows will come back before bigger events, & that will most likely be the case. As the worlds restrictions around social distancing relax, certain things will come back faster than others. Gyms, Restaurants with 50% capacity, & other things will come back first, then we may start getting back into some of the smaller venues. 300< person venues with 50% capacity seems like they will be one of the first things to come back. I wouldn’t expect big shows at arenas or Red Rocks until a vaccine is developed.
Many artists have been doing solo live streams from their homes as well as bigger Festival streams. Almost every week now you can find somebody streaming & usually multiple people streaming from every level, from the underground to the pros. Some just have a webcam view, & some have full custom visuals specifically made for each live stream. ‘Shades’ was one of the most impressive a few weeks ago. While these don’t completely replace the experience of being at a live event, these live streams are able to keep us musically connected in a way that has not been possible until very recent times. I think even once events come back, these streams will become a lot more prevalent in the music community.
The FDA as of now says the earliest a vaccine could be developed is March of 2021, but other ‘Experts’ claim we wont have large scale events, including sports & festivals, until fall of 2021. Well see how that pans out for festivals next year, including Okeechobee in the beginning of March, which was one of the only major festivals to happen this year.
Sources :
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/touring/9323647/concerts-canceled-coronavirus-list
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/shambhala-music-festival-cancelled-2020-coronavirus
https://djmag.com/news/tomorrowland-2020-officially-cancelled-due-coronavirus
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