This week, we kick off our 2024 Year in Review series, reflecting on the year’s biggest surprises, letdowns and unveiling our annual “Best of the Year” lists.

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Several hours before One Love Music Festival was scheduled to take place on 21st December 2024, the organiser announced that the festival was cancelled due to “insufficient funds to cover the event’s costs.” The festival, announced in August with tickets sold from as low as RM99, promised 12 performers, with headliners consisting of Indonesian artists such as Nadin Amizah and Feby Putri and local acts such as Hujan, Bunkface and Masdo. 

When the cancellation news broke, the front row you needed to secure was on Twitter or TikTok. These platforms became the epicenter of frustrations directed at the festival, as people had public meltdowns in real time. You could feel the outrage from ticket buyers who received the news when they had just arrived at their hotels or were driving late at night from other states. One TikToker even recorded themselves calculating the festival expenses, questioning how “insufficient funds” could justify the cancellation of a supposedly high-selling event.  

The festival also had targeted a young audience, which led to a wave of comments from students lamenting how their hard-earned savings for the festival had gone to waste. The headliner, Indonesian singer-songwriter Nadin Amizah, received the cancellation news upon landing in the city. She attempted to honour fans’ requests for a private show but later clarified that her performance permit restricted her to perform solely at One Love Music Festival. To many, it was a festival beyond saving.

For much of 2024, being a music fan who enjoys the adrenaline rush of mega-scale festivals has involved a great pining threat of cancellation. Veteran music festival goers know to keep one eye on the organiser’s Instagram for a “We regret to announce…” post and the other on their wallet. First-timers, however, might be surprised to learn that the money they’ve saved up to watch their favourite artists might take ages to be refunded. This year alone, 12 festivals scheduled to be held were either postponed or cancelled, with some announcements made merely days before its scheduled dates. The reasons are more or less the same, with low ticket sales being its biggest factor. Other factors baffled the most of us; TongTong Fest promised lineups of the freshest names in the SouthEast Asia music scene, only to be cancelled less than two weeks prior due to several factors, including clashes with the eve of Malaysia Day, which fell under The Central Agency for Application for Filming and Performance of by Foreign Artists (PUSPAL) blackout dates. Meanwhile, Good Vibes Festival hit a two-time streak of festival cancellations in an almost similar fate, as the King’s coronation took place on the first day the festival was scheduled to be held and supposedly, a comeback from their The 1975 disaster last year.

But the music festival industry this year doesn’t just have cancellation problems; it’s also dealing with an oversaturation of music festivals.

In 2024, 43 music festivals were announced, and 31 of them actually took place. Whether they succeeded in terms of ticket sales, featured vibrant lineups or dealt with management challenges was beside the point. These festivals happened. Of course, this figure doesn’t include free-entry food festivals with mega concerts sprinkled on the side, international artists’ concerts or the countless small gigs held every weekend, which are too numerous to track.

31 festivals for a music industry that’s supposedly small, barely recovering post-pandemic, regressing, not healthy, low quality, could-never-be-Indonesia, confined by conservative restrictions is a lot of festivals to be held in a single year. Seven were held in May alone with two festivals cancelled for low ticket sales. That’s at least one music festival to be attended every week in May. Sure, you don’t have to attend all the music festivals announced, but when you’re this spoiled for choices, one can only nauseate at the thoughts of their weekends filled with nothing but music festivals.

Out of the 31 festivals, many faced their own share of problems. Most frustrated attendees turned to Twitter right after the festival adrenaline rush had subsided to vent their experiences through detailed threads, inviting others to join in their outrage. Expect every grievance to be aired with enough detail to make you feel their anger too: the overpriced food, seating problems, security issues, poor sound system or the false promise of supposedly extended public transportation hours that left attendees stranded and scrambling to get home. Some had performers issues, such as After Race Fest 2024 which announced the cancellation of Macklemore, its headliner and an artist who sparked the #MacklemoreInMalaysia movement by radio station FLYFM, just one day before the event.

Another number to pay attention to: Twelve festivals this year were headlined by Hujan, Masdo, Bunkface, or all of them at once. Not only have they carved their names as the biggest bands to find success in the late 2000s to 2010s, but this year, they’re also known as the holy trinity of festival headliners. All three have successfully grown a fanbase so strong over the last decade, releasing seemingly timeless material that watching kids who weren’t even born when Hujan first debuted in 2005 scream their songs out loud either makes you feel old or delighted by the band’s enduring success. But having the same headliners perform at 12 festivals in a single year feels like an overdue and wasted opportunity to showcase the best of the current Malaysian music scene. Artists like Lunadira, Golden Mammoth and Mafidz are all headliner materials — if you can’t imagine it, perhaps you need to have better imagination on what headliners should look or sound like.

Lazy curation isn’t limited to headliners either. Most of this year’s festivals featured predictable lineups — a mix of well-known mainstream and indie artists —making it seem to outsiders as though Malaysia has only 15 good artists, with everyone else locked in a basement, waiting for their turn to emerge. Recycling lineups to sell tickets and uphold nostalgia as music’s most worthwhile currency, while forgoing opportunities to spotlight rising talents, only tells us one thing: the organisers are not doing this to champion the local music scene, no matter what they boast to the audience at their press conferences.

On the surface, the music scene feels more alive than it has ever been in the past decade. The narrative that the Malaysian music industry isn’t thriving is a shameful attempt to undermine our progress because let’s face it: Malaysia is making money off music now more than ever. In 2023, the industry generated a record-breaking revenue of RM303.89 million – the highest ever recorded since 1998. The music industry is apparently so thriving that the government is feeling a lil FOMO too: In November, Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil announced the Malaysian Music Industry Development Study (KPIMM) and the establishment of the Pro Tem Music Industry Committee (JK-PTIM), which “aimed at supporting the growth of the music industry as a new sub-sector with the potential to drive the nation’s economic growth.”

And the most tangible evidence that the music festival industry is booming is the increasing number of music festivals sponsored by big corporations. This year, major companies invested heavily in sponsoring or organising their own music festivals, because clearly, it’s attracting big cash. It’s what’s trending. It’s what Generation Z wants. It’s not the next big thing; it’s already inescapable all over social media. This decision is seemingly bolstered by the cancellation of Good Vibes Festival. Its cancellation for two years in a row has left a void in the music festival industry, prompting organisers to try to fill the gap. But Good Vibes took years and years to build its reputation as an iconic music festival — Matty Healy incident notwithstanding — that when today’s rookie organisers try to replace such a reputation overnight, the ambition feels so… reckless.

Contrary to popular belief, an abundance of things happening in the scene isn’t an indicator of a healthy scene. If anything, it masks deeper issues, thus calling for more critical analysis and strict accountability to maintain the industry’s integrity. When the focus shifts to quantity rather than quality with little to no accountability, you get whatever we’re facing now: an overabundance of music festivals driven by unchecked greed. At this rate, we’re not inspiring more people to appreciate local music; we’re only encouraging more greedy organisers to join the rat race.

Until we figure out what to do with our music festival industry, we’ll just have to deal with the same fiasco in front of our eyes: festivals driven by prosaic vision; lineups so recycled you no longer get post-concert depression; watch emerging talents treated as nothing but fillers; impactful festivals struggling to find sponsorships; organisers dealing with PUSPAL’s century-old regulations while PUSPAL’s social media admin is busy gaining fans on TikTok, and when things get too tangled in the maze, a cancellation announcement with barely any refund policy will be ready to roll out. But a smart ticket buyer would’ve learned the signs of what to avoid: It’s flashy but lazy. It promises a bright future for the local talents, but always seek validation from international artists. It asks for your suggestions to improve, but it’s merely a façade to show they care. But most of all, it thrives off your chronic case of FOMO and desperate need for post-concert thrills, fooling you into thinking next time, it’ll be different. So, who’s having fun?