Soul’d Out Productions, the group behind Portland, Oregon’s Soul’d Out Music Festival, is suing California’s popular Coachella Music & Arts Festival. The suit was filed at the U.S. District Court’s in Oregon on Monday.
Portland Business Journal reports that the primary issue is a “contractual restriction” that prevents artists who have been booked by Coachella from playing “at any other festival or themed event within a distance that extends over 1,300 miles” for five months before or after Coachella. Soul’d Out Productions alleges that the so-called radius clause is a “monopolistic practice” that has injured its business, which is located over 1,000 miles from the site of Coachella.
The suit claims that Coachella’s practice violates federal antitrust laws, as well as antitrust laws in Oregon and California. The plaintiffs allege that the radius clauses limit consumer choice and force promoters and fans alike to pay higher prices, adding that artists have declined to perform at the Soul’d Out Festival as a result of Coachella’s radius clause.
“We seek no less than to operate in a fair and open environment,” Soul’d Out Productions co-owner and co-founder Nicholas Harris reportedly said in a release. “But as our industry has become more consolidated, it is subjected to more and more corporate tactics that penalize the public. Music, and the culture that births it, is not a commodity to be exploited. It is meant to inspire and enrich our lives.”
Evidently, Soul’d Out’s goal is “to bar Coachella and its AEG affiliates from enforcing any performance contracts that contain such a radius clause, and also seeks treble damages from injuries caused by their unlawful actions and attorneys’ fees spent bringing this lawsuit.” The company is currently represented by Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt PC.
As previously reported, Coachella will return to the Empire Polo Fields in Indio, CA over the next two weekends: April 13-15 and April 20-22. Beyonce, Eminem, and The Weekend are set to headline, and many of the fest’s biggest performances will be streamed online for free.
The Soul’d Out Festival, on the other hand, will feature Erykah Badu, De La Soul, Wyclef Jean, Tipper, Noname, and more when it takes place April 18-22.