Today it was announced the 2016 Soundwave Festival has offically been cancelled. The festival will also definitely not be returning in 2017.

So why did the festival get cancelled you ask?

Basically, noted big mouthed misogynistic arsehole and Soundwave promoter, AJ Maddah owes a lot of bands, managers, support staff, hire services and even the ATO a reported estimated value of around 25-30 million dollars from Soundwave 2015.

This outstanding debt meant most bands on the Soundwave 2016 lineup demanded to be partially paid a guarantee up front, before agreeing to play. This also meant management companies already owed money from Soundwave 2015, refused to let other bands on their roster agree to play Soundwave 2016. Thus a very light on lineup in comparison to years past, was met by very light on ticket sales.

Over the last few days bands have slowly began voicing their concern.  NOFX, Bring Me The Horizon and L7 all pubically stated their terms had not been met and that they were pulling out. 

Posting to Twitter, AJ Maddah confirmed the news:

“I am devastated to have to announce the cancellation of Soundwave 16 due to poor ticket sales. I am very sorry. I tried my best. Thank you to all the fans, bands and people who supported the event for the last 12 years, I wish we could have ended it on a better note."

Refunds are apparently available from Eventopia, but don't expect that to happen anytime soon. That looks like another battle set to be played out in court. 

A lot of tour promoters around the country have breathed a sigh of relief, as the often ludicrous amounts of money AJ was known for offering bands to play Soundwave, created a very monopolised touring market. As bands ditched trusted promoters to take up the big money offers, the talent pool of touring bands available not only got smaller, but also had a negative flow on effect. Former Soundwave bands and managers held very unrealistic financial expectations of their net touring worth in Australia, demanding inflated payments from promoters that were just not viable, as a result of AJ's actions.

Known for having a terrible track record with his treatment of local bands and virtual non-inclusion of them at times, AJ did very little for the local music scene. This is perhaps best summed up in this account by Clarity Records owner, Crisis Alert frontman and Stolen Youth bassplayer, Matt "Footy" Horvath:

"In 2011 Soundwave Touring booked an Australian tour for Title Fight and Touche Amore. After a long line of Australian bands being asked to do the tour, STOLEN YOUTH were asked because of no other bands being available. Soundwave expressed how urgent they needed to know whether we could do it or not because of how fast the tour was coming up and they desperately needed a support. Having just paid for and released an album by ourselves, just booked flights to go and tour Europe we were flat broke and could not afford to do this tour.

However, it would have been a great opportunity to do a tour with those bands, especially having just released the album 'Dark Century' and to play in front of some people who would never have heard of us before. We also had other factors that were holding us back from doing this tour, but we worked through them and gratefully accepted the tour. After we confirmed the tour we scrapped everything bit of money we had left and proceeded to book flights, book vans, arrange accommodation and merch, etc (usual tour related stuff). We confirmed with Soundwave that we had done this and everything was set.

Weeks went on and the show dates were getting closer and we hadn't received any finer details or hadn't seen any announcement that we were playing. Then a whisper fell from the sky saying that another band was doing the tour support (completely unknowing to the band that Stolen Youth had already confirmed to do the tour) and that Stolen Youth were no longer doing the tour.For days I tried to contact Soundwave and I got no response. After a few days I then got a call from someone who worked at Soundwave (who turned out to be a young lacky who had nothing to do with the original correspondence and I guess was just dumped with doing the dirty work) to inform me that Stolen Youth were no longer on the tour and we are being replaced. After a lot of back and forth and us arguing our case, we were not to do the tour and not be reimbursed for flights we had already booked. Therefore we were left with no tour and no money (remember we were meant to be leaving to Europe not long after that). We were completely 100% screwed over from Soundwave and it is something that the band never really recovered from financially.

I share this story because it brings me great pleasure to read that Soundwave Festival is cancelled and (hopefully) will not be coming back. Goodbye. Australian music will do just fine without you."

So join us in bidding AJ Maddah and Soundwave a fond farewell and let it be further proof that karma is a real bitch. Treat people like shit, expect the same in return. 

We look forward to the ongoing litigtion, debt recovery and possible bankruptcy ahead, couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke!