By Sam Saslow
New York’s biggest music festival, Governors Ball on Randall’s Island, has made many changes to the festival this year. Gov Ball (a popular nickname for the festival) takes place at the end of May and into early June. Approximately 150,000 people attend the festival each year, most of whom are NYC teenagers. Last year Gov Ball had many big names at the festival, such as Tyler the Creator, Playboi Carti, Major Lazer, and The Strokes. On November 25th, 2019 Gov Ball announced their new age policy on Instagram. The new age policy requires you to be18 and over with an ID, but ages 17 and younger have to attend with a ticket-holding adult who is 21 years and older. This announcement made teenagers very aggravated. Many comments were complaints from teens and unhappy customers complaining about the new age policy. This was a risky decision since most of the people who attend the festival are teens under 17. Gov Ball may be losing lots of money because of this. I asked Marlowe Glass, who has been to Gov Ball for the last two years, how he felt about the new age policy. He responded by saying, “I feel like the new age policy is terrible, it takes pretty much their whole crowd out of the venue. Pretty much everyone who goes every year is under 17 and it’s terrible for their revenue.I hope this year they (Gov Ball) see how bad it is and next year they change it back, it’s just not going to work.” I also asked him why he thinks Gov Ball decided to enforce this, Marlowe said, “They probably did this because of the drug and alcohol use by underage kids at the festival.” Gov Ball probably also enforced this because of complaints from older people who attend the festival. These complaints probably were along the lines of “too much shoving”. Teenagers who attend these festivals, especially Gov Ball, love to mosh, slam, and dance to their favorite artists. From my personal experience at Gov Ball, I have heard older people at the festival complain about kids being overly excited. In my opinion, these complaints are false since some of the artists who perform instigate moshing and encourage it. Additionally, if you can’t handle the crowd you should not be going to the performers set.
When Gov Ball announced their lineup on January 16th, a lot of the teens who were restricted from the festival were no longer mad. The lineup was clearly targeted for an older crowd, including acts such as Missy Elliot, Flume, and Stevie Nicks. Gov Ball probably did this to keep teens away from the festival this year. Since New York is a big city for Hip-Hop and Rap, many NYC teens look for rappers in a lineup. Gov Ball lacked a good list of rappers and instead included rappers such as Danny Brown and Maxo Kream who are not very popular amongst NYC teens. Although the lineup did target an older crowd, it still included artists that teens would want to see, like Tame Impala, Dominic Fike, and Slowthai. From the teens I have talked to, most felt that this lineup was bad and did not want to go. However, a few teens did like the lineup and it’s acts. I think that Gov Ball is making a very bad decision by making the age limit 17 and older because, like Marlowe said, most of the people who attend the event are younger than 17. In addition, the lineup is not good enough to make me want to go. Although I like some of the acts, I would not want to spend tons of money on a ticket to an event that has very few appealing acts. This brings me to my next problem with Gov Ball, their ticket price. A 1-day ticket for GA is $125 and 3 days for GA is $315. This is a problem since Gov Ball spreads out the artists amongst the three days of the festival, so if you want to see multiple artists who perform on different days you have to spend $315. This high price for tickets may be another way Gov Ball is trying to keep away a young crowd. Gov Balls’ decisions for this year’s festival may be crucial to their revenue and may put a lot of people against them.