Soundwave Festival 2016 cancelled

Australia’s biggest annual rock festival, Soundwave 2016, has officially been cancelled due to “poor ticket sales”.

For the festival’s promoter, AJ Maddah, preperations suffered a number of setbacks with just a month to go. Headliners NOFX and Bring Me The Horizon both threw the festival’s fate into question with public comments on Twitter, while it recently came to light that the venues for Soundwave’s Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne legs had not been booked, as reported by MusicFeeds.

Problems began in September when reports emerged that the company running Soundwave went into voluntary administration over court action taken by World Stages regarding an unpaid debt. Despite this, Maddah, who was named the most powerful person in the Australian music industry in 2013, insisted that the event would go ahead.

Yet fans will be anguished to learn that Soundwave will not take place for the next two years, arguably killing any chance of the rock festival ever making a return.

Soundwave has previously attracted crowds of 50,000-plus in recent years, reaching its peak attendance in 2013 when headliners Metallica played in front of a 73,000 turnout.

Picture: Oliver Sykes of Bring Me The Horizon, who were due to headline Soundwave (credit: Shure Distribution UK)

http://www.soundwavefestival.com/