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Australia’s “first music festival to incorporate NFTs” has gone bust

The Grass Is Greener Festival – which was heralded as the first music festival in Australia to incorporate NFTs – has gone bust.

Hand Picked Events and Marketing, the company behind Australia’s first (and hopefully last) music festival to incorporate NFTs, The Grass Is Greener Festival, has gone into administration following a disastrous 2022 marred by event cancellations and artist withdrawals.

The organisation reportedly owes up to $2.5 million according to the Gold Coast Bulletin, with debts owed to artists, suppliers and ticket-holders alike.

the grass is greener
Credit: The Grass is Greener

The festival proper was announced in July of this year, with events to take place in the final weekends of October in Carins, the Gold Coast, Geelong and Canberra. However, financial issues saw the cancellation of the Canberra and Geelong shows, as well as the withdrawal of numerous artists from the festival lineup, most notably Australian drill scene pioneers ONEFOUR.

ONEFOUR stated at the time that the festival organisers had “failed to honour their obligations and cannot deliver the show we and our fans expect.”. Shortly thereafter international acts Ty Dolla $ign, ZHU, and Maya Jane Coles also announced their withdrawal from the festival lineup, presumably seeing the writing on the wall as well.

 

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The Grass Is Greener festival made headlines in July for becoming the first Australian music festival to incorporate NFTs into its ticketing system and “on-site experience” access, because horrendously inefficient, slow, and needlessly complex blockchain technology is exactly what our live music ticketing systems need.

If you require a good chuckle, I suggest going back and finding some of the articles announcing the festival’s move to NFTs as it’s rather funny to see crypto-bros’ enthusiasm for the initiative knowing now that the trail the festival was blazing was a financially ruinous cul-de-sac. My personal favourite is an article from Life Without Andy titled The Grass Is Greener Is Integrating NFTs Into This Year’s Festival – Here’s What You Need To Know which enthusiastically proclaimed “this year’s festivities are no doubt set to lead the way for Aussie festivals to come” – yeah, sure they are.