Ultra Enterprises, the company behind Miami’s Ultra Music Festival (UMF) and Ultra music events globally, has been hit with a lawsuit over its alleged refusal to offer cash refunds to those with tickets for the cancelled UMF 2020.

The 2020 festival, scheduled for 20–22 March in Miami, Florida, was called off in early March, becoming one of the first casualties of the Covid-19 pandemic that went on to claim almost the entire festival summer.

The proposed class action, filed in the US district court for southern Florida, accuses Ultra of conversion and unjust enrichment. Plaintiffs Samuel Hernandez and Richard Montoure claim the company’s insistence that they must hold onto their tickets and transfer them to UMF 2021 or ’22 is based on “impermissible ticket contract terms”, according to Law360; Ultra’s terms and conditions say it reserves the right to issue a full or partial refund, or no cash refund at all.

This, argue Hernandez and Montoure’s lawyers, means UMF – by reserving the right to keep money paid for tickets regardless of whether it puts on the show – is “essentially (and impermissibly) rendering its obligations under the [T&Cs] illusory, and the agreement itself an unenforceable unilateral option contract.”

“We do not believe Ultra Music Festival has the right to shift the burden of this extraordinary crisis onto its customers”

Hernandez sought refunds on four of six tickets he bought, for a total of US$3,000, while Montoure wanted a refund of two three-day passes he purchased for about $1,000.

“We understand that the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted every part of the global economy but we do not believe that gives the Ultra Music Festival the right to shift the burden of this extraordinary crisis onto its customers, who, in some cases, paid hundreds of dollars to attend this festival,” Joe Sauder of Sauder Schelkopf – which is also suing South by Southwest on behalf of out-of-pocket ticketholders – tells Rolling Stone, “and now the Covid-19 pandemic has or will preclude them from ever using any credit.

“We look forward to seeking to recover cash refunds for our clients and the class members.”

In addition to Ultra and South by Southwest, several ticketing companies are also facing legal action over their refusal to offer cash refunds for cancelled shows, with SeatGeek and StubHub the target of one and two legal actions, respectively.

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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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In a matter of weeks, the global live music industry has come to a virtual standstill, with shows called off and fans forced inside by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

But while ‘normal’ concerts are off the cards, a wave of virtual events are springing up to take their place, taking advantage of social media, virtual reality and online worlds to bring fans closer to artists at a time when both concert performer and concertgoer are stuck indoors.

Sweet streams
By far the most popular way of connecting with housebound fans, many of the world’s biggest artists, including Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Pink, John Legend, country singer Keith Urban and Latin star Juanes have streamed live performances on their social media accounts in recent days.

Others, such as Miley Cyrus, Christine and the Queens and Lizzo, are broadcasting largely non-musical content that offering a glimpse into their self-isolating lives, while likes of Bruce Springsteen are making past concerts available for free. UK singer Yungblud, meanwhile, took the opportunity to create The Yungblud Show Live, an anarchic hour-long show (featuring a concert segment, drinking games and a cooking lesson) filmed in LA following the postponement of his upcoming tour.

In the classical music world, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra has made its ‘digital concert hall’ video streaming service, featuring over 600 concerts spanning more than a decade, free to all before 31 March.

“We already miss our public very much and hope that in this way we can remain in contact with our audience, at least virtually,” says Olaf Maninger, the orchestra’s principal cellist.

Elsewhere, in Europe’s clubbing capital, promoters have gone one step further by creating a 24-hour ‘virtual club’, dubbed United We Stream, in order to “save Berlin’s club culture in quarantine”. (The German capital’s nightlife been on lockdown since Friday 13 March.)

Launching today (18 March) at 7pm local time, the initiative will see the empty clubs streaming several hours of DJ sets and live performances every day, with the venue changing each night. Participating clubs include the Watergate (which will host tonight’s first show, with Claptone, Monika Kruse and Mathew Jonson), Tresor, Kater Blau, Salon Zur Wilden Renate and Sisyphos.

Fans are encouraged to donate €10, €20 or €30 a month in exchange for a ‘virtual club ticket’, with all funds going directly to a relief fund to support clubs and event organisers during the closure.

“We already miss our public very much”

Faces for radio
Miami’s Ultra Music Festival (UMF) was the first major western festival to fall victim to the coronavirus, having been pulled by city councillors just over two weeks out, on 4 March.

Now reborn as a ‘virtual audio festival’ on US satellite/internet radio platform SiriusXM, Ultra will take the form of an audio-only event, running from Friday 20 to Monday 23 March (its original dates) and featuring live performances by DJs scheduled to perform at Ultra Miami, including Afrojack, Major Lazer, Martin Garrix, Above and Beyond, Armin van Buuren, Nicky Romero and Oliver Heldens.

Ultra Virtual Audio Festival will be broadcast on a temporary SiriusXM channel, UMF Radio (channel 52), which will also air previous Ultra sets by stars such as Marshmello, the Chainsmokers, Kygo and Carl Cox.

Scott Greenstein, president and chief content officer of SiriusXM, says: “With the postponement of beloved events, necessary changes in people’s everyday life and need for social distancing, we know our listeners are seeking a sense of community more than ever.

“To encourage that, we are pleased to be working with Ultra Music Festival to provide our listeners with this virtual audio festival featuring the diverse line-up of artists the UMF delivers year after year, as well as exclusive fresh, new sets from some of the biggest names in dance music.”

UMF 2020 ticket holders will receive an email in the coming days offering access to UMF Radio and other SiriusXM programming.

In the UK, meanwhile, the cancelled Country to Country (C2C) festival – due to take place on 13–15 March at the O2 in London – was replaced a special show on BBC Radio 2, which was originally to have broadcast from the event.

Radio 2’s Country Festival, presented by ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris, Bobbie Pryor and the Shires’ Ben Earle, featured live performances from artists scheduled to play C2C, including Luke Combs, Eric Church, Darius Rucker, the Cadillac Three, Old Crow Medicine Show, Brett Young and Tenille Townes.

“We know our listeners are seeking a sense of community more than ever”

Game on
Passing the time while ill by playing video games is nothing new, but the current period of self-isolation will be the first time many experience a live event inside a virtual world. Marshmello’s groundbreaking Fortnite concert last year opened the floodgates opened for live music in gaming, with rock bands Korn (in AdventureQuest) and the Offspring (in World of Tanks), DJs Ekali (in Minecraft), Reggie Watts and Blasterjaxx and EDM label Monstercat (in Sansar) among those to have organised large virtual concerts since.

Mojang’s Minecraft – the open-ended world-builder which, with nearly half a billion players, is arguably the biggest game in the world today – is no stranger to hosting music events, holding its first live concert, with AlunaGeorge, Broiler and Lemaitre, in March 2016. It also hosted Fire Festival, with Ekali, Arty, Hudson Mohawke, Luca Lush and over 5,000 ‘festivalgoers’, early last year, with another 80,000 tuning in via live stream.

Upcoming live entertainment in Minecraft includes Second Sky-inspired music festival Second Aether, which will take place on 28 and 29 March, and an as-yet-unnamed festival set to take place at Club Matryoshka (a virtual nightclub hosted on a private Minecraft server) on 26 April.

https://twitter.com/ClubMatryoshka/status/1237750285428121600

Sansar, a virtual-reality online world from Linden Lab, the maker of Second Life, also plans to host several virtual live events in the months ahead. Sansar – which has partnerships with Monstercat, Spinnin’ Records and Roddenberry Entertainment (Star Trek), among others – yesterday (17 March) released a guide to creating an event inside the game, touting its credentials as a platform for “free virtual events amid [the] coronavirus emergency”.

“Sansar is no stranger to large-scale live events, and we’re here to help you and your audiences stay safe, productive and connected during the coronavirus outbreak,” says Sansar community manager Galileo Linden, noting that the game can accomodate “a conference for work, an educational workshop, a live performance or even a music festival”.

“We’re here to help you and your audiences stay safe, productive and connected during the coronavirus outbreak”

Reality check
Amid the gloom on global stock markets, MelodyVR maker EVR Holdings was one of few shares not in the red on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) today, its value surging with growing demand for concerts on virtual-reality headsets, according to the London Evening Standard.

In its Covid-19 update to the LSE, EVR says it has has seen a 56% spike in sales for MelodyVR over the past week as most major concerts were cancelled. “MelodyVR’s technology was originally created to enhance the live experience for music fans around the world who were unable to access performances either as a result of their location, age, cost of attendance or ticket availability,” the company explains.

“The restriction of both mass gatherings of the general public and international travel has already begun to adversely impact the global music industry, and while our vision was never to act as a replacement to live events, we believe that our technology affords fans the closest possible opportunity of experiencing the next best thing to actually being at a venue or show without physically being present.

“We have not sought to actively capitalise on the events of the last few weeks, yet having experienced a 56% increase in average sales over the course of the last seven days we anticipate this trend of MelodyVR platform usage to continue.”

Also having a good day is popular rhythm game Beat Saber, which announced today it has sold more than two million copies, cementing its reign as the best-selling virtual reality-exclusive title. “[T]he game has also proven to be a successful platform for artists to connect with fans, selling over 10 million songs through downloadable content,” reads an announcement on the Oculus blog.

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The flagship Miami edition of electronic dance music (EDM) event Ultra Music Festival has been cancelled in a bid to prevent the spread of coronavirus, Covid-19.

The decision, made during a meeting between local politicians and festival organisers, was reported by the Miami Herald on Wednesday (4 March).

The 165,000-capacity festival, which was due to take place from 20 to 22 March in Miami, Florida, was set to feature acts including Flume, AfroJack, Armin Van Buuren, Amelie Lens, Martin Garrix, Carl Cox and Eric Prydz. According to the festival website, over 90% of tickets had been sold.

The Miami festival is the second in the Ultra franchise to be called off this week. The Abu Dhabi edition of the event was cancelled on Tuesday. A statement on the festival website reads: “The local organisers of Ultra Abu Dhabi have cancelled the upcoming event. Tickets will be refunded through the original point of purchase.”

East Everything, Major Lazer, Nicky Romero, Seth Troxler, DJ Snake and Eric Prydz were set to perform at the festival, which was scheduled to take place at the 25,000-capacity du Arena on 5 and 6 March.

The consequences that Covid-19 is having on the live music industry has formed a key topic of discussion at the ongoing ILMC

The EDM festival franchise has events in twelve countries worldwide. Upcoming editions in Sydney and Melbourne on 7 and 8 March are still scheduled to go ahead.

The consequences that Covid-19 is having on the live music industry has formed a key topic of discussion at the ongoing International Live Music Conference (ILMC) in London, with top industry executives stressing that shows will continue to go on wherever possible.

Although concerts have been cancelled in many Asian territories, and the governments in countries including Italy, France and Switzerland have issued bans on public events of a certain size, business as normal continues in many markets such as Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.

A UK medical advisor recently stated there is “no clear rationale” for closing events to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

A blanket ban on all events in the north of Italy, the European nation worst affected by the virus, is to be extended to the whole country, according to a draft decree seen by Reuters, that orders “the suspension of events of any nature… that entail the concentration of people and do not allow for a safety distance of at least one metre (yard) to be respected.”

All schools and universities have been closed in the country and all major sporting events are to be closed behind closed doors for the next month. More than 3,000 cases of the virus have been recorded in the country.

Photo: Ducbeo2000vp/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) (cropped)

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Streaming platform Cloud Cover Music has examined the changes in music festival experiences across the United States over the last few decades in a new survey asking respondents about sobriety, drug intake, sex, memorable acts and life-changing experiences.

The study finds that 24% of those surveyed reported being sober at music festivals. Alcohol consumption at festivals has been higher in the past decade than previously, rising from 64% in the noughties to 71%.

The survey finds that festivalgoers in the 1980s were more likely to consume marijuana or hard drugs, witness violence and rioting, have sex and witness nudity at a festival than they are now. 83% of attendees in that same decade described festivals as life-changing, compared to 53% in the 90s, 62% in the noughties and 65% now.

Burning Man consistently proved to be the least sober event, with 45% of festivalgoers saying they drank alcohol and consumed a mixture of drugs at the event

82% of respondents stated that Woodstock 1969 was life-changing, making it the most impactful music festival on the survey. However, the festival had only 17 survey respondents. Ultra Music Festival was voted the second most life-changing music festival with 78%, followed by Electric Daisy Carnival (75%) and Burning man (73%).

Burning Man consistently proved to be the least sober event, with 45% of festivalgoers saying they drank alcohol and consumed a mixture of drugs at the event. The results coincide with secondary ticketer TickPick’s survey of drug consumption at festivals last year. In contrast, 72% of respondents say they did not consume any substances at Warped Tour.

Across genres and festivals, Red Hot Chili Peppers were ranked the most memorable act at music festivals, with Jane’s Addiction, Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé and Tiësto also making the top five.

The full study can be read here.

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EDM festival franchise Ultra Worldwide has revealed plans for new events in India and Australia.

The Australian event was announced yesterday at Ultra’s flagship Ultra Music Festival in Miami, headlined by dance music giants including Chase & Status, Justice, The Prodigy, Underworld and Major Lazer.

https://www.facebook.com/umfaus/videos/1269935583125976/

No location has yet been announced, although the first edition of the festival is slated for February 2018.

The Australian live market contracted in 2015, the most recently available data, hit by a string of festival cancellations, including Big Day Out, Soundwave and Future Music. Last April also saw the axing of EDM event Stereosonic, meaning Australian dance music fans should welcome Ultra’s first festival down under.

Ultra is also apparently seeking to capitalise on India’s growing appetite for EDM by following Electric Daisy Carnival to the subcontinent.

In addition to announcing the launch of Ultra Music Festival Australia, the live stream of Ultra Miami also revealed the existence of two new festivals in India – in Delhi and Mumbai (Bombay) – bringing the total number of Ultra events for 2017 to 24.

Ultra launched in Hong Kong last year.

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