Westfest New Zealand Distances Itself From Soundwave Australia

New Zealand music festival Westfest from Australia’s troubled Soundwave making it clear that the two events are totally independent of each other.

While Soundwave negotiates with financiers and administrators to pull it past the 2016 event, Westfest assures punters that it is a totally different operation and will go ahead regardless of what happens across the Tasman.

Kill Your Stereo captured a Facebook post by the Westfest organisers which has since been edited. The original post said, “As Im sure many of you know, Soundwave is in real financial trouble and has had issues securing many acts at all, meaning we have way less options too.. understandably, acts are sketched about playing Soundwave if they dont know if they are going to get paid”.

The post still mentions tough times in the touring business. “Its a really hard time to put on any music festival – Soulfest and Echo Festival both got cancelled due to poor ticket sales. We looked at not doing Westfest in 2016 but we figured a smaller show is better than no show! The last 2 Westfests have lost money and this one will as well, but we are aiming to keep this going for the long term and we aren’t quitting now”.

Westfest has now confirmed its line-up for the 2016 festival event.