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Photo Credit: Soundside Music Festival
The live entertainment sector continues to face disruption, with dozens of prominent events canceled or postponed globally. The Soundside Music Festival in Bridgeport, Connecticut is the latest casualty—canceling just two months before it was slated to take place.
Organizers for Soundside cited “circumstances beyond our control” as the reason for canceling the September music festival. The Killers and Weezer were slated to headline. Fans who purchased tickets have been promised refunds, but the lack of specificity regarding the underlying cause highlights the broader uncertainty in the current music festival landscape.
Industry insiders point to a convergence of pressures that are undermining live music events. Ticket sales have been notably slow for many festivals—established names like Pitchfork Music Festival and Atlanta’s Music Midtown have both canceled their shows this year. Poor ticket sales are driven in part by changing consumer habits, with fans opting for stadium tours by megastars and spending thousands of bucks to see one artist.
“You go all in to see Taylor Swift, and you don’t bother with the music festival,” one insider said last year as festival cancellations rolled in. Economic factors are also compounding these trends, with persistent inflation and the rising cost of living squeezing both production costs and consumer wallets.
The cost of running a live music festival after the pandemic has also ballooned, owing to higher fees for artists, increased production expenses, supply chain difficulties, and the cost of label for transporting and building the stage and sound equipment.
More than 90 festivals have been canceled in 2025 alone, with over 170+ canceled in 2024. This signals a systemic industry issue that shows no signs of abating. And those cancellations aren’t exclusive to the United States either—the United Kingdom and Australia have seen similar waves of cancellations. Africa Oyé, Cambridge Folk Festival, Fieldview Festival were all canceled in the UK, while Glastonbury announced a break in 2026. Glastonbury’s fallow year means the UK festival scene will be even slimmer next year with these losses.
