This year sets a new record with more than 50 music festivals. But is the bubble about to burst, asks Jim Carroll.
With the weather failing to play its part, the most reliable barometer that the Irish summer is here at all is the sight of pop stars and rock bands heading to the great outdoors.
This weekend, The Who, Bell X1, Justin Timberlake, Basement Jaxx, Happy Mondays, Al Green, Joe Cocker and Status Quo will be performing at shows in Dublin, Portrush and Cork.
Next Friday, thousands of music fans will begin to arrive at Punchestown Racecourse in Co Kildare for the annual Oxegen festival starring more than 100 bands on six stages.
Next month, it will be the turn of Lovebox at Dublin's Malahide Castle, Roscommon's Mantua Project festival, Barbra Streisand's performance at Castletown House in Co Kildare and Midlands Festival in Co Westmeath.
The outdoor season is also set to extend into the winter months this year for the first time. POD Concerts is holding a two-week festival in the grounds of the Irish Museum Of Modern Art in Dublin from October 19, while MCD Concerts plans a series of outdoor shows in Dublin's Phoenix Park in October and November.
While the idea of putting on music shows in the open air in Ireland in November may smack of lunacy to some, this exodus to new locations has probably more to do with venue logistics than any plan to cash in on global warming.
The Point Theatre in Dublin is closing for extensive refurbishment at the end of August and is expected to be closed for 14 months. The unavailability of the biggest indoor venue in Dublin is forcing concert promoters like MCD and POD to find alternative locations, such as a tent in Dublin 8.
If Irish music fans thought that previous festival seasons were busy ones, this year will set a new record with more than 50 music festivals and outdoor shows scheduled for various locations around the country.
This increase in activity has occurred despite the closure for construction work of Dublin's regular outdoor concert site at Lansdowne Road, which hosted shows by the Eagles and Pixies in recent years, and the cancellation of the Source festival which had been running in Kilkenny's Nowlan Park annually since 2001.
The growth of the Irish music festival industry has been quite extraordinary in the past few years. Every summer, music industry observers wonder whether the Irish gig-going population can continue to sustain so many big-ticket shows. Every summer, the answer from the general public seems to be a resounding yes.
This is in marked contrast to the paucity of shows which used to be the norm up to 10 years ago when the number of outdoor shows in any summer rarely reached double figures. Indeed, veterans of expeditions to Lisdoonvarna, Féile or the first couple of Slane Castle shows will recall that those events used to be the only high spots on an otherwise blank summer calendar.
The rapid growth in activity, to the extent that it is now possible to spend every weekend from June until September at a festival or open-air show around the country, can be attributed to several factors.
Spending a weekend at a music festival has become an enormously popular and fashionable leisure activity for many Irish twenty- and thirtysomethings. This mirrors similar trends in Britain (where there will be more than 450 outdoor music festivals this summer) and Europe. Indeed, many Irish fans have begun to travel in large numbers outside Ireland to festivals such as Glastonbury in the UK and Sonar, Primavera and Benicàssim, all in Spain.
Further proof of the popularity of music festivals can be seen in how certain consumer brands, always eager to hawk their wares to this particular demographic, now compete with one another for exposure at outdoor music events. Audiences have also responded positively to the increase in the variety of festivals on offer, particularly since the arrival of the Electric Picnic in 2004. This sells itself as a "boutique festival", an event where the food stalls and the various sideshows are just as important as the bands playing on stage.
While there are still a huge number of festivals at which the bands remain the star attraction, the success of the Electric Picnic in capturing the public imagination has led to the launch of several other niche festivals including Garden Party and the Irish Green Gathering.
The proposed music and surfing event Cois Fharraige in Co Clare in September is also pitched at grabbing a piece of the Picnic's boutique pie.
But, inevitably, there will be a downturn in activity at some point. Many promoters throughout Europe are already nursing losses this summer as audiences shun such megastars as Elton John, George Michael, Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand, forcing these acts to cancel shows or play to half-filled venues.
The failure of these marquee names to sell out shows can be blamed on both over-supply in the market, leading to a surplus of shows targeted at the same audience, and high ticket prices caused by the huge fees these acts demand.
While tickets for many Irish events such as Oxegen, The Police, Rod Stewart, the Electric Picnic and the Rolling Stones quickly sold out when they went on sale, tickets are still available for many high-profile shows this summer. As experienced promoters know only too well, setting up a stage in the open air, booking a few bands and waiting for the crowds to roll up is not a surefire way of making a fortune.