No Festivals Until 2021??!! [Updated]

[Updates 4-18-2020: Taylor Swift has cancelled her entire 2020 tour. Of course not EDM related however it is a sign that major music shows will not occur this year.

Imagine Festival in Atlanta is bucking the trend with their show planning for the middle of September at the beautiful but infamous site used for Tomorrowworld in the past.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has suggested no major sporting or live music events for an entire year and the mayor of New Orleans said no events should happen in 2020 leading to the cancellation of Jazz Fest, Voodoo Festival and the Essence Festival.]

The New York Times this week put together a roundtable from the Center for American Progress. One of the participants, bioethicist Zeke Emanuel, stated:

… restarting the economy has to be done in stages, and it does have to start with more physical distancing at a work site that allows people who are at lower risk to come back. Certain kinds of construction, or manufacturing or offices, in which you can maintain six-foot distances are more reasonable to start sooner. Larger gatherings — conferences, concerts, sporting events — when people say they’re going to reschedule this conference or graduation event for October 2020, I have no idea how they think that’s a plausible possibility. I think those things will be the last to return. Realistically we’re talking fall 2021 at the earliest.

While we hate to agree with Emanuel, it seems probably at this point that no festivals will take place in 2020. Already today the Mayor or New Orleans has said no festivals should happen this year which includes the already delayed Jazz Fest as well as the upcoming Voodoo Fest.

To be able to hold a festival with 100,000+ attendees such as Coachella or EDC just 6 months from now seems unlikely in the current environment as social distancing would be impossible. Having said that, just 3 months ago we could not have fathomed making this statement so we will hold out hope that later this year we will be ‘Under the Electric Sky’ at EDC or complaining about influencers at Coachella!

We should also mention that this suggests that the larger nightclubs in the US and around the world (i.e. Ibiza) will not open until the end of this summer at the earliest and quite possibly even later.