Ang Lee

Free and the economics of Woodstock

1) In case you’ve been under a rock for the past week, this weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the original Woodstock Festival. 2) I recently finished reading Chris Anderson’s new book Free (which I covered in a post here). Listening to the Woodstock album again (on LP, I’m totally old skool) and thinking about Woodstock in the context of Free made me remember the announcement that changed the concert completely:

It’s a free concert from now on. That doesn’t mean that anything goes, what that means is we’re going to put the music up here for free. What it means is that the people who’re put — backing this thing, who put up the money for it, are going to take a bit of a bath. A big bath. That’s no hype, that’s true, they’re going to get hurt.

According to the New York Post, the initial budget for the festival was $500,000. The promoters’ goal was to host a three-day concert for about 100,000 people paying 5 bucks each. Although they met the goal of selling 100,000 tickets, the promoters never finished the ticket booths or fences (due to a late change in venue), and the crowd quickly became overwhelming. To avoid making a dangerous situation worse, they made the decision to turn Woodstock into a free concert.

Although great for the spirit of Woodstock, this was a devastating financial decision for the festival organizers. The Telegraph did an interesting interview with the Woodstock promoters where they explained the financial mess this way:

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