Soundwave’s council woes continue

Following last week’s revelation that beloved heavy music festival Soundwave won’t be returning to Adelaide next year and that it will return to its one-day format, promoter AJ Maddah has expressed the lack of support for the event isn’t just coming from punters.

Last week the one-time Big Day Out promoter tweeted that organisers “can’t bring a show of this magnitude down again for so few people...” Maddah said the snub is due to “pathetic” ticket sales for the February 21 and 22 leg but also said he would monitor the market and hasn’t ruled out a possible return in the future. Over the two-day stop in Adelaide at the weekend, just 12,000 punters attended; this is down 8,000 from 2014, which saw 20,000 attend, and down 33,000 from 2013 when 45,000 attended.

However, his dealings with Adelaide City Council regarding sound restriction and planning permission haven’t exactly been favourable. In April last year the Council released a statement revealing the festival's organisers had forfeited its $10,000 bond for last year's event due to a breach of noise criteria and noise bond conditions. Last night, Maddah tweeted that the Council will again be keeping the bond, indicating that organisers broke the sound restriction for more than 33% of the event’s duration.

Adelaide City Council took to Twitter this morning, hitting back at Maddah’s tweet to indicate they hadn’t assessed whether they’ll be keeping the bond just yet.

A spokesperson from City of Adelaide told TMN Maddah's suggestion that Soundwave had again forfeited its bond was "not correct." The spokesperson said the Council hadn't gotten as far as looking at data from the weekend's performances and should have a result by the end of the week.