Festivals are a rite of passage for young people. Most GCSE and A-Level students go to Reading and Leeds to have a paradigmatic first experience of live music.
As a fresh-faced and excitable 16-year-old in 2018, I paid £70 for a day ticket to the event; which was steep compared to other large-scale gigs at the time. For this year’s Reading/Leeds, day tickets began at £110, reaching up to £195 in later released tiers – a huge hike that undoubtedly calls into question ‘is it worth it?’. This increase extends widely across UK festivals. Latitude, in Suffolk, charged £202 in 2019 for a weekend ticket. This year, the same ticket was £308 – a staggering climb of almost 50% in only five years. Victorious Festival, in Portsmouth, was traditionally more affordable, with day tickets at £40 in 2019, but the same tickets in 2024 were £65 – and that was just tier one. By way of reference, the minimum wages at present for the brackets of under 18s and 18-20 are £6.40 and £8.60 respectively. In 2018, they were £4.20 and £5.90. Granted they have improved, but did not keep up with the rate of inflation during the current cost of living crisis, in which the money necessary to pay for basic needs has gone up, and the money available for leisure activities has gone down.
To try to mitigate this and increase accessibility, most websites do have payment instalment plans in place, but of course this doesn’t detract from the overall price. Organisers say that due to a combination of lingering Covid-related effects, Brexit, and inflation generally increasing running costs, the rise was inevitable. Partly in response to this, a crowdfunding campaign called ‘First Festival’ has been pioneering. People whose 18th birthday fell between September 1st 2019 and August 31 2023 are eligible to apply, if they fall into one of three groups: having been denied the pivotal cultural experience of attending a first festival due to the pandemic, those who face particular barriers to accessing arts and culture, and those unable to afford festivals due to the cost of living crisis, and if selected, can receive funding to attend a UK festival of their choice. Nevertheless, the funding is not guaranteed, which can make this an unsustainable solution for the long-term.
While this may all seem rather doom and gloom, the interesting thing to note is that these tickets are still selling. It was hard to miss the Taylor Swift fiasco, in which a staggeringly low number of fans managed to secure entry to the star’s Eras Tour.
Tabitha Wilson, MA Journalism student and music journalist said: “I paid 337 for each of my tickets to see Taylor with my sister. I personally think it was worth it because I am a huge fan and the seats are good with VIP extras. However I do think that tickets are becoming way too expensive for most people.”
Even more staggering is the inflated resale prices, which reach upwards of four figures, yet are sold on so fast that sourcing one is like finding a needle in a haystack. Glastonbury tickets went from £265 to £340, but are as hard to come by as ever.
However, recent graduate Maisie Hon-Jacobs thinks that “the rising prices has led to an end of the casual and consistent nature of gigs and music culture”.
He also said: “Because they’re so expensive, young people often will only attend gigs of artists they know very well, as they don’t want to risk a large amount of money.
“This stops us from being able to discover new artists and means there’s no spontaneous element to live music.”
Most people are able to find the money for a reduced number of events for select artists, but anything outside of this is sadly difficult to attend, whereas in days gone by, small local gigs were a great way to discover new music.
It shouldn’t be forgotten though that there are many ways of gaining free entry to gigs and festivals via volunteering, both through charities and the event organisation itself. Recent graduate Beth Greatwood said: “I started volunteering as I simply couldn’t afford the rising prices. “It’s a great way to enjoy the spaces you like in a cheap way.”
As well as being a volunteer steward directly through El Dorado festival (which did involve erratic, long shifts), Beth worked with WaterAid at Green Man in 2022, doing four hours of cleaning a day which meant she was able to access the festival as a normal customer would the rest of the time. As a result, she had an advantage when applying for the following year’s festival round, and excitedly managed to go to Glastonbury, where she had a full free ticket in exchange for staying another few days afterwards to help the clean-up.
However, in most instances, a full deposit needs to be paid to secure a volunteer place – and this is the equivalent cost of the ticket. It’s refundable upon completion of the volunteering, but of course relies on a prospective volunteer generally having somewhere in the region of £250-£400 going spare to suspend, potentially for months at a time.
While this makes sense, it still means many young people are prevented financially from accessing the music. There’s also a number limit on volunteers, and applications for more popular festivals can be almost as competitive as buying the tickets. Despite the fun Beth has had volunteering, she admits there are downsides to it. She said: “Although volunteering is mainly enjoyable as it’s easy to make a lot of friends, there’s a huge downside, which is that in a lot of cases, you need to give up time at the festival or miss acts you had looked forward to seeing, and it’s far less relaxing or liberating than having a ticket.”
So volunteering is great – but far from a perfect system.
‘Inaccessible’ may be too pronounced a word, but I think it’s fair to say that live music is certainly becoming less accessible for young people.