Coachella Music Festival Is Being Sued Over Radius Clause

This weekend, Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival begins its two-weekend extravaganza. As die-hard fans get ready to gather together in the desert to celebrate music and art, the festival got hit up with a lawsuit.

The Oregon-based promotor, Soul’D Out Productions filed lawsuit against the AEG-owned company that puts on the popular Coachella, Goldenvoice. The lawsuit claims that the California festival’s radius clause, which places a limit on where artists can play before and after its event, violates federal anti-trust laws. The two-weekend Coachella festival begins this Friday.

Soul’d Out Festival is held during the second weekend of Coachella on April 18-22 and includes acts like Erykah Badu, De La Soul, and Wyclef Jean. It is held across five venues in Portland, Oregon, which is about 1,000 miles north of Indio, California, the place where Coachella sets up shop.

At the heart of the issue at hand is a contract that asks artists to sign which bars them from performing at any other festival or themed event in a 1,300-mile radius for five months surrounding the event. The Oregon festival tried to book SZA, Daniel Caesar, and a few other artists but was turned down due to the radius clause.

Nicholas F. Aldrich, one of Soul’d Out’s lawyer stated that since the festival (Coachella) sells out months in advance, it doesn’t benefit much. They are asking the court to toss out the radius clause agreements.

Goldenvoice issued a statement regarding the lawsuit to Celebrity Access:

“Radius clauses are common in the concert business where promoters take great risk and spend huge sums to produce marquee festivals, tours, and other shows. With over 100,000 fans attending each of its two weekends, Coachella is a premier festival destination attracting visitors from across the region and around the world. The producers of Coachella will vigorously defend against this lawsuit, which calls into question a long-standing industry practice that is crucial to our ability to continue offering fans the unrivaled experience for which Coachella has become known.”