At a time when many festivals seem to be struggling, the hugely popular Soundwave festival has had two huge blows this week.
First, Public Transport Victoria announced there would be no public transport available to or from the venue this year, including trains, trams and buses, “due to other citywide commitments.”
This has led to panicked punters trying to sell their tickets online, although festival organizers have created ways around the problem, including running shuttle bus services to and from North Melbourne and Footscray Train Stations – tickets must be pre-booked via the official Soundwave web site here.
Car pooling is also encouraged, with a limited public car park available at the nearby Riverbank. Another suggestion, aside from parent and taxi drop offs, is the park and ride from Moonee Valley Racecourse. All except drop offs need to be pre-booked via the web site (as linked above).
In a bigger blow for Adelaide fans, promoter AJ Maddah has announced that this year will be the final event in South Australia, which means that from 2016 the tour will be east coast only.
Maddah revealed last week that ticket sales had been “pathetic” in the City of Churches, and that despite the leg being his favourite, he needed at least 6,000 more sales to convince him to keep the date.
Ticket sales have picked up since this announcement, however Maddah said the numbers were, “nowhere near enough” and this weekend will see the “last ever Adel SW.”
A permanent fixture on the summer touring schedule since 2007, Soundwave (which originated in Western Australia in 2004) dropped the Perth leg of the tour last year, with Maddah citing, “a perfect shitstorm” of factors – including low sales, high operating costs and government interference – behind the decision.
“Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong,” Maddah said of the Perth debacle.
“It’s really, really sad but the reality of the situation is that Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne have been subsidising Perth since the thing went national.”
Soundwave 2015 will happen over two days in Adelaide and Melbourne this weekend, and Sydney and Brisbane next weekend, headlined by Slipknot, Faith No More, Soundgarden and The Smashing Pumpkins.
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