Artists with principles... Refreshing in the age where selling out is the MO
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
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Yup. I feel they wouldn't have done anything (the organisers that is) until The Last Dinner Party stood up. Good to see the larger acts take a stand. A lot of the "legacy" acts from the 2000s and before doing the rounds just want their performance fee.
Art was about counter cutlure and fighting the man... Sometime in 1980s but deff after Kurt Cobain died, selling out became the MO.
And that's why I call them regime removed. These are not people are they are NPCs doing tricks for money. They don't serve their fandoms
Kurt Cobain was the first of the new species of sellout
Nirvana signed to Geffen because in a genius A&R move they signed Sonic Youth first as a loss-leader.
Expect festivals to become either a lot tamer and the bands to get in line, or expect a revolt by the artists. These guys could pretty much crush most artists off the live festival circuit. Most of the festivals are pretty small, but they also own Sziget, which is one of the biggest if not the biggest festival in Europe. There has already been a few boycotts for these.
KKR & Co. bought superstruct entertainment, who own and organise this festival with a few others last year for €1.3bn
KKR: From Greece’s “red loans” to the occupied territories of Palestine
Flow Festival faces boycott calls over Israel links
[Archived Link] Loud music, silent takeovers: How private equity is reshaping Europe’s festival scene
Many artists backing out of music festivals snapped up by private equity firm KKR
Many Dutch artists are pulling out of festivals owned by the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR). They don’t agree with the American venture capitalist’s investments, including in companies active in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They also seem concerned about private equity invading festivals, forcing up ticket prices and food prices, and destroying the vibe.
KKR owns multiple Dutch festivals. DGTL, Mysteryland, Amsterdam Open Air, and Zwarte Cross are among the Dutch festivals that have distanced themselves from their owner in recent days, NOS reports.
The venture capitalist also bought up the British festival organizer Supertruct Entertainment last year. The company owns and operates over 80 festivals in ten countries, including Awakenings and Defqon.1 in the Netherlands, Sziget in Budapest, and Sónar in Barcelona.
Who are KKR? Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KKR_%26_Co.
Main People
Jerome Kohlberg Jr. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Kohlberg_Jr.
Henry Kravis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kravis
George Rosenberg Roberts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._Roberts
The problem is.... and I hate to say this..... the vast majority of the European middle classes that pay for and attend these festivals don't give a shit 😥. They just want to get off their faces and have a rave. If they didn't, these festivals wouldn't be so popular and would cease to exist. Yet unfortunately they are as profitable as ever.
It doesn't matter if enough artists make a stand. It should turn those festivals to beige shit pretty quickly.. Even the people you speak of wouldn't want to attend.
It's really all down to the artists and whether or not they want to support genocide and profit from it.
True. But again, the vast majority don't particularly care. They care in a middle class way of "oh how terrible it all is ... but at the end of the day I need to eat my avocados man".
These festivals don't have any trouble booking acts. And that's depressing.
Thought its Kneecap again, but turns out other Irish musicians also have the guts to do this!
Fuck Israel, genocidal scum!
Soon, Irish artists will have to put up a £1M bond which they forfeit if they mention Palestine.
Soon British artists will start to acr like Irish artists.. I hope.