Music

Pukkelpop festival insurers somehow blame collapsed stages on declining CD sales

by Tyler Munro

Nearly a month after a collapsed stage at Belgium’s Pukkelpop festival killed four, injured dozens more and caused the cancellation of the fest’s final two days, its insurers have finally pulled their heads out of the sand to..uh…embarrass themselves?

According to an article in France’s Le Figaro magazine, the festival’s insurers are saying declining CD sales are partly to blame, noting that while the wind and the rain are no more destructive than ever, increasing emphasis on large-scale festivals—which they say is a direct result of slipping album sales—make such occurrences all the more probable.

Unfortunately for the insurers, Pukkelpop started back in 1985, fourteen years before Napster kickstarted the internet piracy movement of the early noughties. Ottawa Blues Fest and the Indiana State Fair, both of which experienced similar storm-caused collapses, were started in 1994 and 1881 (!!!)  respectively. [via BoingBoing]