The threats from festival management have proven real. The City of Adelaide will no longer play host to a leg of the juggernaut Soundwave Festival, with the dates for the 2016 instalment being revealed today, a mere month removed from the conclusion of the 2015 episode.
Festival head honcho AJ Maddah has long vocalised his distaste for holding the festival in South Australia, citing the last-minute ticket buying habits of Adelaide punters and some less-than-desirable local council regulations to contend with.
But today’s revelation makes good on his promise that 2015 would be the last time the festival makes an appearance in the city of churches. With the previous scrapping of a Perth leg, this means that the 2016 Soundwave Festival will be an East Coast-only affair, with stops in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
The 2016 version will also move back to a single-day format, binning the dual-day, concurrent experiment run this year that saw festivals take place in two cities simultaneously.
Interestingly, the timing of the festival is also undergoing change, with dates shifted forward to January, away from the traditional late-February scheduling of festivals past.
On Maddah’s ever-active Twitter account, he’s even begun the process of booking bands for next year’s festival, with both Northlane and Violent Soho as good as locked in, if these tweets are anything to go by.
@Northlane Of course guys! #SW16 is shaping up to be a big one!
— AJ (@iamnotshouting) March 19, 2015
@violentsoho @DJanouris Sweet. Very proud to have you. Let’s get the specifics sorted out in private 🙂 Welcome to #SW16.
— AJ (@iamnotshouting) March 6, 2015
The full festival dates for 2016 are as follows.
2016 SOUNDWAVE FESTIVAL
Saturday, January 23rd – Brisbane
Sunday, January 24th – Sydney
Tuesday, January 26th (Australia Day public holiday) – Melbourne
Photo: Mark Metcalfe via Getty Images.
