A Portland music festival is suing the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, claiming that it uses anti-competitive and monopolistic practices that end up hurting smaller music events.
In a lawsuit filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, the producers of the Soul’d Out festival – which will take place around Portland from April 18 through April 22 – argue that the “radius clause” that prohibits acts that play Coachella from playing another festival in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington or Arizona from December 15, 2017 until May 7, 2018, has a “substantial chilling effect on the market for music venues” in the western United States, reports KOIN-TV.
The Soul’d Out organizers say in the lawsuit that Coachella’s radius clause has prevented multiple artists from performing in the Portland festival. Portland is located more than 1,000 miles away from Indio, Calif., where Coachella will be held later this month.
Specifically, New Orleans-based funk and soul group Tank and the Bangas confirmed it would play in the Soul’d Out festival in September, only to back out of the agreement in January because of Coachella’s radius clause.
Other artists, including SZA and Daniel Caesar, also declined to perform at the Soul’d Out Festival because of the radius clause.
Soul’d Out organizer Nicholas Harris told the TV station, “We seek no less than to operate in a fair and open environment. But as our industry has become more consolidated, it is subjected to more and more corporate tactics that penalize the public.”
Coachella did not comment on the story.
