It has been confirmed that this year’s edition of Germany’s MELT festival will be its last due to overwhelming changes within the festival landscape.
READ MORE: Why have so many UK festivals been cancelled or postponed?
MELT first launched in 1997 and is one of Germany’s biggest outdoor electronic music festivals. Organisers have made the difficult decision to end the annual fest, pointing to “insurmountable changes in the festival landscape” as the main reason.
Festival director Florian Czok added (per DJ Mag): “Despite our commitment and efforts in recent years, we recognise that the original Melt no longer fits into the German festival market and cannot withstand the developments of recent years without radically altering the festival concept. It’s a difficult decision, but we believe it’s time to explore new paths and create space for fresh ideas.”
MELT 2024 is set to take place July 11 through 13 and will be returning to its usual location, Ferropolis – also known as the city of Iron – in Gräfenhainichen, Germany. You can purchase tickets here.
Overmono, Chase & Status, Bonobo, Eris Drew, DJ Python, Honey Dijon and Marcel Dettmann and more are set to perform at the fest.
In the UK, it was recently announced that 40 UK festivals have now been cancelled for this summer, and new reports have found that over 170 have disappeared over the past five years.
In the past five years alone, 172 festivals in the UK have disappeared. 96 events were lost due to COVID, 36 were lost throughout 2023, and now, 40 have already been lost since the start of the year.
The new figures were shared by the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) – the UK’s leading not-for-profit festival trade association, which represents the interests of 202 UK music festivals, ranging from 500 to 80,000 capacity.
AIF has warned that this is a trend that will continue to grow without government aid, and revealed that, without intervention, the country will see over 100 festivals disappear in 2024.
It highlights how the main issue at hand is the unpredictable rising costs, and that the UK hasn’t had a single steady festival season since the pandemic to help it recover – meaning that festivals are under more financial strain than ever.
The report from AIF also comes after NME looked into why so many UK festivals have been cancelled or postponed in recent years, and spoke to industry experts to shed light on the rapid decline.
It highlighted how Herefordshire’s Nozstock Hidden Valley announced that 2024 would be their final incarnation after 26 years due to “soaring costs” and financial risk”, and Shepton Mallet skating and music festival NASS announced that they wouldn’t be putting on an event this summer either as it was “just not economically feasible to continue”.
Others mentioned were the cancelled Dumfries’ Doonhame Festival, Bluedot – which announced a year off for the land to “desperately” recover after being struck by heavy rain and cancellations last summer – Nottingham’s Splendour, which was canned this year due to planning delays from a financially-struggling city council, and Barn On The Farm shared that it would be taking a fallow year due to financial constraints.
Discussing the issues at hand, co-manager for the latter, Oscar Matthews, told NME: “From our perspective, the festival in 2023 itself was brilliant – it was a really successful year – but we were hit majorly on a financial level by a mix of increased production costs and a very big reduction in ticket sales,” he said. “That hit us from both angles and meant we suffered quite substantial losses, despite the actual running of the festival going so well.”
It was also argued that with the continued loss of grassroots music venues throughout the UK, smaller music festivals are needed to produce the headliners of major events in the future.
“It’s inevitable and it’s already started, but when you start to lose smaller festivals, events, gig spaces and venues, the opportunities disappear for new and emerging talent to get on stage and get their music heard,” he added. “They’ll suffer and that will inevitably have a knock-on effect further up the chain.
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