Back in November, Pitchfork Festival announced that it wouldn’t be happening in its hometown of Chicago in 2025. They called the decision “difficult” and said it “was not made lightly,” but didn’t offer much in the way of an explanation for the move, though there was plenty of speculation about slow sales for the 2024 edition being part of it. As Stereogum points out, festival co-founder Mike Reed of Chicago-based company At Pluto has now spoken with WBEZ about the cancellation. He said it had left him “relieved and happy” that the fest wouldn’t continue as it was, telling WBEZ, “The compromise you have to make on festivals like this is not something I’m deeply interested in.”
Reed told WBEZ that booking the festival since Condé Nast purchased Pitchfork had become “increasingly difficult,” and that the mass media company was trying to push the fest in a more pop direction:
As for Reed, he felt increased pressure from the festival’s new owners to chase after commercial pop acts such as Justin Bieber or Demi Lovato. That signaled to him that the owners were unaware of the alternative nature of the music that made Pitchfork special in the first place. Alanis Morrissette headlined last summer, but Reed and his producing team already “had our fill” with the festival once it ended.
He also brought up rapidly rising costs in securing artists, production and beyond, and the difficulties in implementing unpopular new VIP options, and in procuring corporate sponsorship to help offset those costs, “there’s only so many major sponsors to go around,” he told WBEZ. “It’s a piece of the pie everyone is going after.” He said that, over a decade ago, guarantees for headliners ranged from about $12,000 to $20,000, and now stat at $1 million. “If you saw that in any other industry,” he said, “it would be insane.”
Read the interview in full on WBEZ.
Last year, Condé Nast revealed plans to roll Pitchfork into GQ and laid off more than half of Pitchfork‘s staff in the process, including their Editor In Chief.