Back in June, Tone Deaf reported on an investigation by The Economist, who ran an audit of music festival lineups around the UK and discovered that we’re basically running out of festival headliners.

Many organisers have noticed the trend and have decided to go boutique, avoiding major lineups peppered with superstar bands and artists to focus on smaller, niche events catered towards a specific sector of the music-loving market.

The main issue with the seeming lack of festival headliners is obviously the lack of a bullish music industry to support them. Without a glut of major acts, you don’t much of a pool from which to draw your headliners and the problem is getting serious.

Now, writing in an op-ed for Billboard, EDM superstar Laidback Luke has expanded upon this phenomenon, arguing that the reason why we’re seeing less diversity in the lineups of major league festivals is because organisers simply aren’t willing to take risks.

As the producer and DJ writes, lineups for major festivals, particularly in the EDM world, aren’t being determined by an interest in providing unique entertainment for music lovers but by specific metrics guaranteeing a return on investment.

With millions at stake and corporate investors on the hook, lineups are dictated by audience surveys, polls like the DJ Mag Top 100, Facebook traffic, and positions on influential charts like Beatport’s.

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“Musical curation disappears,” Luke writes. “So somehow it ends up being the same usual suspects playing the same rundown of hits and playing it safe. The stakes are too high with so much money involved, so risks can’t be taken,” he adds.

While this model can obviously be applied to the greater festival market, the EDM boom has made the genre’s festival scene significantly more competitive, with artists like Luke getting signed to exclusivity deals which bar them from playing certain venues or events.

Luke also tackles the role of “pay for play” in securing high chart positions on platforms like Beatport, where “payola” can cover everything from offering refunds to punters for buying certain tracks to offering prize competitions for paying customers.

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