Stone Music Defy Critics And Want Muse For 2014

Promoters of the inaugural Stone Music Festival have vowed to bring the event back next year – perhaps with Muse or Kings Of Leon – despite admitting slow ticket sales for the year's inaugural event.

Stephen Duval of SEQ has told theMusic.com.au today that the event has a three-to-five year business plan and that the response from the fans and artists was enough encouragement to continue on with the event. The two-day festival took place at Sydney Olympic Park's ANZ Stadium over the weekend, with Van Halen and Aerosmith headlining Saturday and Billy Joel Sunday.

“Sales were lower than what we had hoped,” Duval said today. “[But] we're definitely confident it will be back, we're back by one of the biggest financiers in the world in JP Morgan out of New York.

“We knew it was going to be a difficult push but we were looking at the event itself… if the festival had a bad response then we'd look at the future [but] you can always come back from the financials.”

He added, “It was quite a fatigued market at the moment and we knew the economy wasn't great… but sales weren't so low that it wouldn't be back.”

Although exact numbers weren't immediately available, it was believed that organisers sold over half of 25,000 capacity on Saturday, while there were visibly fewer people in attendence on Sunday.

Duval's SEQ is a financier to sport, music and entertainment events and was originally just the financier to Stone Music Festival. Following the event's initial announcement they played a bigger hand in the running of the event, taking over from promoter Richard Cartwright. “The promoter got less involved as we got more involved,” Duval confirmed.

After identifying some early issues, including comments made by a rival promoter, SEQ “brought in a lot of support around the event.” Just weeks before the event rival promoter Andrew McManus agreed to move his Aersosmith headline show into the festival.

Apart from a few sound issues with Van Halen, Duval said that the response had been 'overwhelmingly positive', a sentiment echoed by theMusic.com.au's reviewer. It is the general consensus amongst punters and media today that the performances and the festival's logistics were impressive.

Stone Music may not brand itself as a “festival” next year and as organisers “will be reviewing whether it will be post-summer or pre-summer festival.”

What will stay the same is Stone's approach of picking a 'rock headliner' that will be exclusive. That ethos – and costs associated – is built into their existing business splan.

“You do have to pay [more] to get the band for a fly-in-fly-out when there's not other shows, but in another sense you've got a wider range of acts available because you don't have to build a schedule.”

Duval stressed that Stone won't always be for the over 35 market, either.

“It's not always the '70s or '80s, we might be looking at late '90s, 2000s or current bands next year… It could be Muse or Kings Of Leon or Pearl Jam, or it could be The Eagles, but it will always be rock and they'll be exclusive.”