Music Festivals Hit Hard by Coronavirus: This Startup Has the Data

With the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc across the world, music festivals are announcing cancelations or postponing dates on a daily basis. This puts economic strain on not only the performing artists, event organizers, and the teams involved, but also on anyone with flights, hotels, and festival tickets already booked and paid for months in advance, now struggling to get info in time to get their bookings refunded. To help everyone stay on top of things, Slovenia-based music data company Viberate has put together a comprehensive list at SickFestivals.com, updated daily.

The service monitors around 5,000 festivals worldwide and lets you know which ones are canceled or postponed, so you can plan accordingly. The data is sourced from Viberate’s massive global database of artists, venues, events, and festivals. Currently, they’ve identified 141 canceled and 185 postponed festivals.

The idea for Sick Festivals came when one of the startup’s founders, renowned techno DJ UMEK, started getting an avalanche of show cancellations: “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 realized how serious this outbreak had become in a matter of days. It feels eerily dystopian. 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 the industry professionals’ income loss, which is no laughing matter.”