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Caloundra Music Festival, one of the Sunshine Coast's biggest live music events, is no more.
On Tuesday, Sunshine Coast Council confirmed they had discontinued funding for the event, which had faced the same brunt of rising costs and dwindling ticket sales affecting major music festivals across the board.
"Following the adoption of the 2024-25 Council Budget on June 20, the Caloundra Music Festival will no longer be funded by Council," a statement issued by the council confirmed.
The festival had already been shelved for 2024, with festival director Richie Eyles telling ABC Sunshine Coast in April that economic factors were largely to blame.
"People are doing it tough, disposable income is not there, and ticket sales, concerts, festivals are one of the first things to go," he said.
"The only sensible decision we could have made at this point in time was to cancel this year's event because the numbers didn't add up. But let's hope that's not the way it stays."
The long-running, family-friendly festival was established in 2007 and drew tens of thousands of people to King's Beach each year.
Those attendances had been getting smaller over the years, with the festival never getting back to its pre-COVID size. According to Council documents, just over 13,000 people attended the festival's 2022 event, compared to the almost 33,000 who ventured out in 2019.
"Rising costs, falling ticket sales and uncertainty in the music festival industry were felt to be too great a risk in the current climate," Mayor Rosanna Natoli said in a statement.
"We recognise that music events are important for our community and Council will continue to deliver smaller events and programs."
Over the years the festival has hosted a broad array of local and international stars, from chart toppers like Powderfinger, Missy Higgins and Jimmy Barnes to cult favourites like Parliament-Funkadelic, Galactic and Old Crow Medicine Show.
The loss of the festival is a significant blow for the Sunshine Coast's arts and music communities, leading Sunshine Coast councillor Terry Landsberg to implore people to support similar events in the area.
"I urge you to support other events, like the upcoming Big Pineapple Music Festival and Council's 10-day multi-arts Horizon Festival which will be held May 2-11 next year, coinciding with the 2025 Labour Day Public Holiday," Cr Landsberg said.
"I know the artists and patrons will be greatly disappointed and I encourage festival fans to support other festivals, venues and artists by purchasing tickets often and early."
Caloundra is just the latest casualty in what has been a horror year for music festivals in Australia.
Speaking with triple j's Hack program earlier this year, Australian Festival Association managing director Mitch Wilson said all music festivals were currently faced with greater challenges than usual.
"We're seeing costs up 30 to 40 per cent across the board, and ticket sales just aren't where they need to be to cover those costs," they said.
"Australian festivals are really struggling at the moment because of the strength of the Australian dollar, and travel costs are through the roof."
Tentpole events like Groovin the Moo, Splendour in the Grass and Dark Mofo have had to hit pause on operations for 2024, while those that do go ahead face huge increases in operating costs for basics like staging, toilets, fencing, permits, transport, cleaning and police.
"I don't want to get the abacus out, but I can tell you it's an extraordinary amount of money," promoter Andrew McManus, whose Pandemonium Rocks event took place with a reduced line-up, told the ABC earlier this year.
"Unfortunately, with the state of play, our build costs over the last three years have doubled," he said of setting up one leg of an event like Pandemonium.
"That bill price used to be $250 [thousand], now it's $500,000."
Earlier this year, a report from arts investment and advisory body Creative Australia found that just 56 per cent of music festivals reported a profit in the 2022-23 financial year, with more than one-third of festivals reporting a deficit and 8 per cent breaking even.