Music festivals ain’t what they used to be. Nearly a decade on from the bursting of the festival bubble, a few of the world’s grand-scale mega-fests continue to program incredible experiences. Barcelona’s Primavera Sound, which the Stereogum staff attended together this month, is very much among them. But financially, it’s getting harder to pull off a quality fest at scale. It’s why Pitchfork Music Festival, one of the best events of its kind, ceased to exist this year. The big ones that persist are mostly bleak. A quick survey of the posters for the biggest corporate fests in North America — stuff like Lollapalooza and its distant relatives Osheaga, Boston Calling, and Governors Ball — offers personality-devoid walls of text appealing to a common denominator so low it may actually be in the earth’s core. For people who actually care about music, large swaths of the festival scene are cooked.
