Another Australian music festival has cancelled its planned 2025 events, with the R&B focused Souled Out event on Thursday confirming it would not go ahead this month.
According to ABC News, the festival was due to commence at Melbourne’s Caribbean Park on Saturday, February 22, before dates in Sydney and Brisbane.
In a post on Instagram Thursday afternoon, the festival noted that it “did not reach the level of support needed to remain financially viable” and as such would be cancelled for 2025.
Souled Out was to feature a range of American headliners including Jhené Aiko, Don Toliver, Vince Staples and 6lack, all of whom boast mammoth followings in the hip hop and R&B communities.
Upon announcing their line-up in December 2024, festival co-founder Emal Naim was confident that the festival would fill a gap for a certain group of music lovers in Australia.
“The success of Souled Out 2024 showed Australians were craving for a modern R&B festival, so we’re here to stay and we can’t wait to keep feeding this vibrant community of R&B fans”
That 2024 festival was headlined by US superstar Summer Walker and Canadian singer PartyNextDoor, with events taking place in Gold Coast, Auckland, Perth, and sold-out dates in Melbourne and Sydney.
The festival had sold early-bird tickets for events in Perth and Auckland for 2025, but never announced dates or venues for those shows.
The cancellation is just the latest blow for the Australian festival market, following on from the cancellation of large-scale events Splendour In The Grass and Groovin The Moo for the second year running.
“Like many festivals in Australia, we have faced ongoing challenges in the current market,” the festival’s statement reads.
Last year, arts investment and advisory body Creative Australia released a report into the music festival sector that found more than one-third of Australian music festivals were losing money as the sector faced increased operational costs.
The report found only 56 per cent of music festivals in 2022–23 were profitable, and that young audiences were no longer the sector’s primary market.
Organisers assured ticketholders that they will automatically receive refunds from ticket seller Oztix within the next 14 days.
Last week, the Courier Mail reported that Souled Out Pty Ltd were named as the respondent in a Supreme Court matter by event management and coordination company EventCo Group Pty Ltd., who are listed as providing site management, production management and stage management for Souled Out’s five events in 2024.