These days, festivals are bigger than ever in more ways than one. Not only are there more of them than ever before, but almost all of them feel the need to put on as many acts as possible. Hence why the average festival attendee has around 35,000 acts per day to choose from.

But believe it or not, there was a much simpler time. Back in the days when artists could actually make money from physically selling music, there weren’t as many festivals. And those that did happen had fewer acts, but more time for each one.

Take this flyer, taken from the August 1998 issue of now defunct Muzik Magazine. If I’m counting this correctly, there are 25 acts performing over 3 days. That’s an average of just over eight per day.

Let’s compare this with the Parklife Festival, due to take place in September. I tried three times to go through the list, but lost count each time. There’s over 100 acts across 2 days, that much I can tell you.

And these festivals wonder why their profit margins are so low…

Hat tip for this story goes to Muzik Magazine Bot account on Twitter.