Two 'devastated' teens discuss the Laneway crisis: 'It ruined our day.'
Why brat summer is over for underage fans. Plus, Juicy Fest is cancelled and the Timeless tour is postponed on a day of festival carnage.
Back in February, teenage sisters Sara and Melissa* got themselves organised for their first Laneway festival. With two friends joining them, the Auckland-based quartet attended the long-running festival’s Covid 2024 comeback event on a whim after hearing the doors would be open to underage fans for the first time. “We went into it not knowing anything,” they said. “We just decided to go.”
At 17, they’ve just started attended music festivals regularly, but they’ve only found a handful that will let them in. Laneway, though, was different. Not only were people their age welcomed, it was a step up from any other show they’d attended. The headliners were bigger, the site was better, and it had plenty of facilities, with lots of toilets and water. It was close to home, too.
But, best of all, they didn’t have to bring their parents along to chaperone them. “The line-up was so good,” they say. “We just roamed around. It was really well planned out, better than any other festival we’ve been to.”
So, when the line-up for Laneway’s 2025 festival was released, they couldn’t believe their eyes. Some of their favourite artists – Charli XCX, Olivia Dean and Beabadoobee – were on the bill. With a line-up like that, they say the festival is directly targeting people in their age bracket. “It was insane … just teenage girl music.”
They purchased tickets immediately in the pre-sales, as did all their friends. When I ask them how many people they know going, they lose count: it’s everyone. “Everyone I know is like, ‘Are you going to Laneway?’,” they say. “Everyone’s going to Soundsplash, then first week back at school, we’re all going to Laneway.”
Not any more. The long-running Waitangi Day festival shocked its 16- and 17-year-old ticketholders on Friday by announcing they could no longer attend, despite selling hundreds – possibly thousands – of tickets to them. In a statement, Laneway officials called the announcement “unfortunate” and confirmed the Auckland District Licensing Committee had rejected its application based on intoxication concerns.
Laneway said:
“We worked closely with Police, Alcohol Licensing Inspectors and the Medical Officer of Health in good faith throughout the application process and did not anticipate this disappointing outcome. We were looking forward to providing younger audiences with the opportunity to access great live music and are truly sorry this won’t be possible.”
NZ Herald has more details on the committee’s decision, including concerns the fence Laneway was forced to put through its main stage areas to split drinkers from underage attendees “did not work well”. It also suggests the 11 people treated for intoxication wasn’t a true reflection of how many people were actually intoxicated.
“We do not believe that the applicant’s late offer to consider such a layout so that 16 and 17-year-olds can attend the 2025 festival is the right way to go … We agree that 11 people treated for intoxication is a low number. However, it only means that only 11 intoxicated people sought the assistance of St John. We suspect, based on the Agencies’ reports, that there were many more intoxicated people in the crowd. It is our role to ensure that minors are not exposed to alcohol-related harm. Given our concerns about security and the occurrence of preloading, in our view the event must remain R18 this year.”
That statement calls Laneway’s request a “late offer”. So, the big question, one many were asking across social media yesterday, is this: why was Laneway selling tickets to teenagers if they didn’t already have the correct license to host them at their event?
I planned to put this question to organisers, among others, including how many teenage ticketholders had been affected. But my email to Laneway’s media rep bounced back with this automated response: “I will be away from the office on holiday and will be back on Jan 6.”
Sara and Melissa saw the news on Instagram first, then received an email about it. Then the texts began. They say the news “ruined our day”. Some of their friends had already chosen the outfits they wanted to wear. Now, none of them can go. “It’s pretty disappointing. We were so excited for it. The line-up's so good. It's devastating. Everyone's pretty upset. Our friends are like, ‘How could this happen?’”
Having teens at festivals or events where alcohol is being served has been a consistent problem in Aotearoa. At the Big Day Out, drinkers spent years being shoved into caged pens far away from main stages if they wanted to enjoy a beer at the famed and now defunct Auckland festival.
In 2017, an underage show by Lorde at the Powerstation was forced to move over licensing issues. And, at Laneway this year, the only way the festival was allowed to host underage fans was by installing a huge fence through main stage areas, causing bottlenecks at peak times.
(Yesterday, the hip-hop and R&B festival Juicy Fest was forced to cancel all four of its January festivals over its own licensing issues; I have more on that below.)
But the news comes at a time when some progress is being made in the troubled underage music space. At The Others Way festival in November, a new all-ages stage was introduced for younger music fans. Double Whammy recently held its first all-ages show with Dartz and Dune Rats as headliners. Meanwhile, consent has been granted for a two-day youth music festival in the Coromandel.
But Sara and Melissa say the Laneway news is especially hard to accept as they can’t attend the Laneway sideshow by the UK soul singer Olivia Dean at the Powerstation, which is also R18. She’s the main reason they were heading to Laneway, and it seems unlikely there will by any other sideshows. “We were pretty excited to see her [but] most of the artists are Laneway exclusives,” they say.
Their chance at having a brat summer appears to be over. They think the only way they’ll be able to see Laneway now is by standing on Old Mill Road and watching it unfold from the steep hill that overlooks the festival’s Western Springs site on February 6.
Their only other option is to “sneak in through the back”. When they tell me this, they begin laughing. Their dad is in the next room, and he might be listening in, so they have to confirm: “We’re only joking.”
* Names changed to protect identities.
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Everything you need to know.
Laneway isn’t the only festival struggling with licensing issues. With just 20 days to go, Juicy Fest organisers have cancelled the entire Aotearoa leg of the hip-hop and R&B festival. They blame alcohol licensing rejections at three of their four venues and claim it’s a targeted effort to put the festival out of business. “Juicy Fest has faced tough opposition from authorities and police in running our event in New Zealand,” a spokesperson told NZ Herald. “In our opinion, this has felt intentional to put a stop to Juicy Fest New Zealand.” The festival will go ahead in Australia, and ticketholders here have been offered the chance to transfer their tickets. That’s a huge extra expense this close to the event – and Christmas.
Meanwhile, the downfall of Juicy Fest also affects the Timeless tour, a five-date nostalgia festival headlined by Boy George being run by the same team. “We are saddened to announce that, after careful consideration, we must postpone the inaugural Timeless Summer Tour, which was scheduled to take place in New Zealand and Australia in January 2025,” says a lengthy statement on the festival’s website. “We will be moving Timeless Summer Tour to indoor venues later in 2025 and we will be putting in all of our efforts to confirm all of the details and the new dates from now.”
I published my best music journalism of the year list earlier this week, but we already have some late contenders. For Harpers, the journalist Liz Pelly has dived into the “ghost artists” taking over Spotify and asks why the streaming giant is supporting them. She finds out about a Spotify program called Perfect Fit Content designed to send cheaply-made music to the top of playlists, making it much harder for established musicians to earn a living on the streaming platform. For more, Ted Goaia has a great breakdown on his Substack, The Honest Broker.
Meanwhile, Business Insider has another excellent read on the artists who made big money from Covid relief funds and how they spent it. The publication finds the rapper Lil Wayne received $8.9 million for shows he didn’t show up to, then spent the money on clothes, a festival to promote his own weed brand, and expensive airfares and hotels for a porn star and a waitress. Alice in Chains, Chris Brown and DJ Marshmello also come out of this looking incredibly bad.
What did we listen to this year? Recorded Music New Zealand has released its year-end charts, and the answer may not be what you think, with a whole lot of what The Spinoff calls “soulful dudes trying to get something off their chest” taking out the top spots. Duncan Greive has a great breakdown on what this all does or doesn’t mean; he calls the charts “wild”. You can check that out here.
For what seems like weeks, The Guardian has been teasing out its best-albums list, revealing its top 10 one-by-one. So why did make the most boring decision for its top spot? Other lists you may have missed: Stereogum’s assembled the 40 best pop songs of 2024, RNZ has a list of the year’s best local albums, Rolling Stone NZ has compiled the best Aotearoa EPs of the year, and Pitchfork has a list of the best rap albums. For my own list, you’ll have to wait until December 31.
Speaking of best-of lists, at the beginning of December, I complained that everyone was dropping them too early. What if someone released an incredible album before the end of 2024? It just happened. The outspoken local artist Eddie Johnston, aka Lontalius, sneakily released his fifth record How Can We Lose When We're So Sincere a week ago, and it’s a warped and emotional late-night listen of excellent trip-hop and woozy emo-R&B. Put it on high rotate, immediately…
Bonus beat.
I’m wondering if there’s a bigger alcohol licensing story here.
I was speaking to a respected longtime venue owner and license holder last night. They’ve also acquired many special licenses over the years and said that it had suddenly become way more complicated to get one for the PTA school events they help with (quiz nights, school discos- for the parents, not the kids- etc ) this year vs last year.
Has something changed at the councils’ licensing authorities?
Laneway is a mess at the moment. The festival's identity seems now far removed from where it was. I preferred it when it was a smaller boutique festival. Changing venues and trying to cater to what is popular on TikTok I think is the wrong path.