10m+ stream BBC Glastonbury 2020 coverage
The BBC’s Glastonbury Experience was a break-out streaming hit, with more than ten million views on the corporation’s on-demand platform, BBC iPlayer, as of Tuesday 30 June.
Running from 10am local time on Thursday 25 June until late on Monday 29 June – commemorating the 50th anniversary of Glastonbury Festival that never was – the Glastonbury Experience aimed to bring the spirit of the legendary festival to viewers at home by broadcasting past performances on iPlayer, television, radio and the BBC Sounds audio streaming service.
In addition to broadcasting sets on TV (BBC Two and BBC Four), including Adele (2016), Beyoncé (2011), Coldplay (2016), Jay-Z (2008) and David Bowie (2000) – the first time Bowie’s performance has ever been broadcast in full – the BBC created a ‘pop-up’ Glastonbury Experience channel on iPlayer. That channel additionally featured shows by the likes of the Killers (2004), Radiohead (1997), Christine and the Queens (2016) and Billie Eilish (2019).
At press time, a BBC Music spokesperson tells IQ, there have been 10.2 million requests for Glastonbury content on iPlayer so far – and with content available for another 30 days, the corporation says it expects that number to grow.
Adele’s set was the most-watched programme on BBC Two, with an audience of 2.1m
Overnight figures for television content, meanwhile, show that Adele’s set was the most-watched programme on BBC Two, with an audience of 2.1m (the biggest for a BBC Two Glastonbury programme since 2017).
Sunday evening’s edition of Glastonbury Backstage Acoustics, with an audience of 261,000, was the BBC Four programme with the highest audience, followed closely by Nile Rodgers and Chic (2017), which had an audience of 258,000. For your background information these initial figures are not consolidated so are only an early indication of the performances of Glastonbury related programming on BBC TV and BBC iPlayer this weekend.
Glastonbury Festival will return on 23–27 June 2021.
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BST Hyde Park 2020 cancelled
AEG Presents’ British Summer Time (BST) Hyde Park will not take place this year, as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic claims another UK summer staple.
The festival, which was to take place over two weeks from 2 to 12 July, was set to feature headline acts including Post Malone, Little Mix, Kendrick Lamar, Pearl Jam, Taylor Swift and Duran Duran.
The cancellation follows that of All Points East festival, which was called off at the end of March.
“It is with great sadness that we have made the difficult decision to cancel BST Hyde Park 2020,” reads a statement from organisers.
“After closely following government actions and statements during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as consulting with our partners The Royal Parks and wider agencies, we have concluded that this is the only possible outcome.”
“It is with great sadness that we have made the difficult decision to cancel BST Hyde Park 2020”
Ticketholders will contacted by ticketing agencies by 6 May with information on the refund process.
“We look forward to welcoming you back in 2021 and will be in touch about plans soon. In the meantime, please follow the advice and stay safe,” state organisers.
This year was to be the eighth outing for BST Hyde Park, combining two weekend of music with free-to-access midweek events. Over the years, BST has seen performances from acts including the Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi, Celine Dion, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, the Cure, Black Sabbath and Barbra Streisand.
Other UK events to be called off this summer due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic include Glastonbury Festival, Isle of Wight Festival, Download, Lovebox, Parklife, Womad, Cambridge Folk Festival, Country to Country Festival, Radio One’s Big Weekend and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as industry conferences including The Great Escape and the Ticketing Professionals Conference.
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Sick Festivals: 300+ events now affected by coronavirus
With the coronavirus forcing festival cancellations on a daily basis, music data start-up Viberate has launched Sick Festivals, a list of some 5,000 music festivals, updated daily, tracking which events are on, which are postponed and which have been cancelled altogether.
Slovenia-based Viberate has, at the time of writing, identified 141 cancelled and 185 postponed festivals. The data is sourced from artists, venues, events and festivals featured in Viberate’s blockchain-based music industry database, which the company hopes will become the ‘IMDb of music’.
The idea for Sick Festivals came when one of the company’s founders, techno DJ Uroš Umek (aka DJ Umek), started receiving a slew of festival cancellations, he explains: “Just a week ago, I played on the Resistance stage at Ultra in Melbourne and Sydney, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. When I landed back home and turned my phone back on, most of my upcoming gigs had already disappeared from my calendar.
“That was when I realised how serious this outbreak had become in a matter of days. It feels eerily dystopian.
“It’s up to us to do whatever we can to manage the damage”
“Now it’s up to us to do whatever we can to manage the damage. At Viberate, we quickly put together a service that we hope will help people see what’s going on with the festival they had been planning to visit, and shed a light onto industry professionals’ income loss, which is no laughing matter.”
In addition to listing festivals’ current statuses, Sick Festivals allows fans to express their disappointment at cancellations/postponements, demonstrated by a sad-face emoji next to the festival’s entry. (At press time, Coachella had 19,175 sad faces, some 5,000 more than Ultra Miami and 9,000 more than Glastonbury.)
Viberate, one of the first wave of music-focused cryptocurrencies, started out as an Airbnb-like service which promised to cut out the agency middle man and connect unsigned musicians (who would be paid in Viberate’s native crypto, the vibe) with a database of those who might want to book them.
Nearly three years on, its creators are focused on building blockchain-powered database that maps the entire live music business, including artists, music venues, booking agencies, festivals and other music events.
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Glastonbury Festival 2020 is cancelled
The organisers of Glastonbury Festival have cancelled the event’s 50th anniversary edition this summer.
The festival is regarded to be the first and largest domino, which may well trigger further festival cancellations across Europe.
This year’s festival was set to feature performances by Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Paul McCartney and Diana Ross, among others.
“We are so sorry to announce this, but Glastonbury 2020 will have to be cancelled, and this will be an enforced fallow year for the Festival,” reads a statement from organisers Michael and Emily Eavis.
“Clearly this was not a course of action we hoped to take for our 50th anniversary event, but following the new government measures announced this week – and in times of such unprecedented uncertainty – this is now our only viable option.
“We would like to send our sincere apologies to the 135,000 people who have already paid a deposit for a Glastonbury 2020 ticket”
“We very much hope that the situation in the UK will have improved enormously by the end of June. But even if it has, we are no longer able to spend the next three months with thousands of crew here on the farm, helping us with the enormous job of building the infrastructure and attractions needed to welcome more than 200,000 people to a temporary city in these fields.
“We would like to send our sincere apologies to the 135,000 people who have already paid a deposit for a Glastonbury 2020 ticket. The balance payments on those tickets were due at the beginning of April and we wanted to make a firm decision before then.
“We understand that it is not always easy to secure a Glastonbury ticket, which is why we would like to offer all those people the chance to roll their £50 deposit over to next year, and guarantee the opportunity to buy a ticket for Glastonbury 2021. Those who would prefer a refund of that £50 will be able to contact See Tickets in the coming days in order to secure that.
“We were so looking forward to welcoming you all for our 50th anniversary with a line-up full of fantastic artists and performers that we were incredibly proud to have booked. Again, we’re so sorry that this decision has been made. It was not through choice. But we look forward to welcoming you back to these fields next year and until then, we send our love and support to all of you.”
Ticketholders can find more information on the Glastonbury Festival website in the coming days.
Photo: jaswooduk/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) (cropped)
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Demand ‘higher than ever’ for Glastonbury 2020
More than 2.4 million people registered to get their hands on Glastonbury Festival tickets over the weekend, with all 135,000 tickets selling out in just over half an hour.
Glastonbury 2020, which will take place from 24 to 28 June at long-time home Worthy Farm in Somerset, marks the 50th anniversary of the event.
“We have now sold out. Thank you all for your incredible, continued support. Demand was higher than ever, with over 2.4 million people registered. Bring on 2020!” posted Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis on Sunday (6 October), just 34 minutes after tickets had gone on sale.
Coach packages had sold out in just 27 minutes three days before.
“Demand was higher than ever, with over 2.4 million people registered”
A resale of any unwanted or unpaid for coach and ticket packages for Glastonbury 2020 is set for 16 April, followed by a resale of general admission tickets on 19 April. Details of a “special ballot” for the sale of 50 pairs of tickets will also be announced in the next few days.
Fans can also register interest in volunteering at the festival through Glastonbury partner charities Oxfam, Greenpeace and WaterAid.
Glastonbury Festival 2019 took place from 26 June to 1 July, with headline performances from the Cure, Stormzy and the Killers. Tickets for last year’s event also sold speedily, with all being snapped up in 36 minutes.
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