One could say that at a time when thousands of people die every day because of him coronavirus in every corner of the globe, it's not so important what will happen with the summer music festivals.
Someone else could say that given the situation you will hardly be able to hear with confidence from someone about what will happen.
That's all right. No one can say the opposite. However, because there is already a lot of talk about the economic impact that the pandemic will have on the next day, then this is definitely a serious issue.
Η music industry, after all, it is worth many billions of euros and in addition there are thousands of people working in it.
Let's start from the basics. Based on the data we have today and always according to what epidemiologists say in the best case for Greece, the spread of the virus will begin its downward course from mid-April or early May.
However, the fact that the downward trend will begin does not mean much because the new cases will have to be minimized. This means that this process will also take some time. Maybe a month? So immediately - we have arrived immediately in June. And this based on the best case scenario.
Obviously, until then, any restrictive measures taken by the government in addition to the current ones will have been reduced to the extent that this will be considered safe, but is that enough to be able to organize festivals that will gather thousands of people in small spaces?
The answer to the above question seems to be easy and already many have decided. It will hardly be possible for them to take place no matter how good the intention of the organizers is to "run" faster than they would normally do.
Many major events have already been canceled or postponed to either the autumn or the following summer (although this actually means cancellation).
Naturally, all the festivals scheduled for April and May, which were canceled without a second thought, have suffered a lot.
The situation for the June festivals seems to be a bit more complicated. The iconic Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England, with more than 200.000 visitors a year, has already been canceled, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and headlining Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney and others! For this festival alone, it seems that the financial losses for the organizers amount to 130.000.000 dollars!
The same goes for The Governors Ball Music Festival at New York scheduled for late May and early June.
The same bad luck happened to the Firefly Music Festival, which is one of the largest open-air festivals on the east coast of the USA. Firefly was scheduled for June 18, 19, 20 and 21 with headliners names like Rage Against The Machine, Billie Eilish and Blink-182.
In terms of hard music, the first big blow came with the cancellation of the iconic Download Festival that was scheduled for the three days of June 12-14 and as announced by the organizers will not take place. This year's headliners would be Kiss, Iron Maiden and System of a Down!
The big bet now seems to be what will happen to all the festivals scheduled for either late June or July. Especially for our country, in fact, at that time we are expecting two big festivals. The RockWave that will host, among others, the legendary Deep Purple and of course the long-awaited Release Festival with headliners like Mercyful fate (13/6), Judas Priest (17/7), Sabaton (22/7) and Slipknot (24/7).
First, a crush test, however, should be considered their concert Red Hot Chili Peppers on June 5 as part of the Eject Festival to be held in Markopoulo.
Hope and wish of all of us is that everything goes well. To be healthy and in a few weeks from now to drink beers together listening to great music.
Until this wish comes true, however, the music industry is counting great losses. Those canceled festivals return the money to those who had already bought tickets. In the rest, of course, the pre-sale has a big drop.
But they are not the only ones. Many people have lost or will lose their jobs. In addition, the bands themselves face a problem of survival as in addition to their fees they also lose large revenues from the sales of their products in concerts they. It is indicative, in fact, that many bands have recently canceled many of their concerts in various countries due to health restrictive measures, asking their fans to continue to buy products in order to support them financially.
In addition, some bands that had already released souvenirs for specific festival which have been postponed or canceled have been put up for sale via the internet saying with an obvious humorous mood to their fans that each of us would like a t-shirt from a festival that έγινε never happened!
Aside from the joke, however, it should be noted that according to Forbes, expert analysts claim that the losses in the music industry may reach $ 5 billion and may eventually exceed them!
Another big question arises for Autumn. Scientists can not yet say with certainty that there will be no second wave Covid-19.
As of now, as mentioned earlier, there are many summer festivals postponed to September or October. Will these take place normally? Even here one can not give a specific answer.
And here is another important element that needs to be added. The closed spaces. If for the summer this can be overcome by sitting the one who is afraid away from everyone else, here such a thing can not happen. Will people be able to overcome their fear of being in a place that will accommodate thousands of people?
The only fact is that life is not going to stop. Concerts will be scheduled, but most likely, their fate will be directly related to the course of the virus, the analyzes of scientists and the mood of music lovers to shake off fear.
But as they said Queen, "The show must go" and what we all have to believe is that soon our lives will return to normal and our summer (both autumn and winter…) will be filled with music!