The Issue: Is the Oxfordshire market for music festivals completely saturated now?

Hugh Phillimore, founder and director of Cornbury Festival at Great Tew

Sorry but it is all about money. As everyone in the live music world knows the UK Festival market is saturated.

Artist fees are on the up, new health and safety measures about to be introduced will further add to organisers’ overheads along with increases in policing costs, a possible rise in the PRS rate (compulsory fees paid for the use of copyrighted material, ie songs) and even ongoing discussions regarding landowners paying additional rates to host festivals on their land.

The holy grail of more choice may result in spreading the market too thinly, ultimately resulting in festival business casualties. The business model that festivals work on is extremely precarious and very risky. The success or failure of a festival can just hang on the weather.

Currently we’re lucky in Oxfordshire – all the festivals offer something different so don’t directly compete. Truck – cool, young, indie – Wilderness – arts, theatre, and older hedonism – Feastival – cool acts, celeb hosts and lots of food – Cropredy – Fairport Convention and mainly folk-based music – and Cornbury – heritage acts with Radio 2 newcomers in a family-orientated village fete atmosphere.

Festivalgoers want safe, well-run events. Organisers need to know what they are doing with regard not only to health & safety and risk assessment but must also be properly covered with appropriate insurance, stewarding and policing – which all cost money.

Punters need to know that when they buy a ticket their money is safe. In the last few years there’s been a huge increase in people being ripped off, buying tickets for events that don’t happen.

Local councils can stop events from happening on the same weekends on the basis of avoiding over-stretching the emergency services but I don’t think they can ultimately block a well-presented event proposal.

Simply, we’re all subject to the laws of economics. With the great British summer already packed with music and non-music events, there’s barely space for any more. The world of festival promoting is not for the faint-hearted and anyone going into events to make money is a fool – my younger self included.

NO

Seb Reynolds, Oxford music promoter and keyboard player

Befitting a city that has produced such vital musical talent as Foals, Radiohead, Ride, Supergrass and Stornoway, we have a thriving music scene.

And we have more than enough interest in new music to support such excellent opportunities to catch many of the hot new national and international bands as Steventon’s Truck Festival and Wilderness Festival at Cornbury Park.

When one talks about the Oxford music scene, what one is really referring to are several scenes that mostly co-exist happily, all with their own cliques and sets, and all with their own music festivals.

For the blossoming Americana/ country scene there are events such as Halfway to 75 and Wood Festival that cater to the ever-growing demand for all things country.

On the folk side, we have the Oxford Folk Festival which continues to thrive, and the reliably excellent Tandem Festival that brings a charmingly rustic, world music-tinged edge to the folky proceedings, as well as Towersey Festival out at Thame, and Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, which all bring punters from all over the world to enjoy a fair number of folk music legends as well as the cream of the crop of today and tomorrow’s stars.

In terms of local band showcases, there are some fantastic events such as The Punt in May, organised by local music magazine Nightshift.

It features the best of new Oxfordshire acts in venues across the city centre throughout an evening.

The now-legendary Wittstock brings mostly Oxfordshire acts out to the Railway Inn in Culham for a weekend of musical madness, and Charlbury Riverside brings the Oxfordshire music revelry to an idyllic site on the river just outside Charlbury.

If you are more of a Radio 2 listener and fancy catching legends such as Tom Jones, Lulu, Razorlight and a plethora of other household names in the pastoral surroundings of Great Tew Park then Cornbury Festival is for you. And even at Cornbury there is still the Riverside stage where you can catch the cream of Oxfordshire talent too.