“It feels eerily dystopian…” Techno legend Umek helps partygoers keep track of cancelled festivals

The growing coronavirus epidemic cpmtomues to impact the music festival industry, with some of the biggest events scheduled for this year – including Glastonbury and Coachella – already put to the sword.

This has not only put economic strain on artists and event organisers, but also for festival goers, who in many cases have booked flights, hotels and tickets well in advance.

To help attendees keep up to date with the swathe of cancellations, Slovenia-based music data company Viberate, which was partly founded by techno legend Umek, has developed a web platform, www.sickfestivals.com, which is being updated daily.

The service monitors around 5,000 festivals worldwide, using data sourced from a global database of artists, venues, events, and festivals. Currently, the site has identified 141 canceled and 185 postponed festivals.

“Just a week ago, I played on the Resistance stage at Ultra in Melbourne and Sydney, nothing seemed out of the ordinary,” Umek commented. “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.”

At the same time, ‘eerily dystopian’ times require an eerily dystopian soundtrack… such as this 2002 stormer, courtesy of Slovenia’s finest. 🙂

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