Soundwave’s AJ Maddah hits back over $75k Adelaide City Council debt

AJ Maddah, founder of the now-defunct Soundwave festival, has responded to reports in Adelaide media about his event.

According to one report, Adelaide City Council announced it had agreed to wipe off unpaid event fees totalling $75,000 as a bad debt.

Soundwave last played Adelaide in February 2015, at the 25,000-capacity Bonython Park, after a drastic drop in attendance.

But to put things in perspective, Maddah released a statement toMusicFeedsthis morning.

It reads, in full:

“For over a decade Soundwave brought events to Adelaide and over that time provided jobs to thousands of South Australians, hiring thousand of hotel rooms, rental cars, close to $1M in backstage catering supplied locally, paid ridiculous Adelaide City Council charges and incidentally provided entertainment for South Australian youth, the most marginalised and forgotten section of the South Australian population with the highest rate of boredom, despondency and suicide.

“And over that decade Adelaide City Council constantly punished Soundwave for being a successful event.

“Doubling and quadrupling the rent at Bonython Park and charging us close to 10 times what it charged other events that used the park and employing every 3rd world tactic imaginable to squeeze the event.

“In the meanwhile council staff, including elected officials abused the festival’s hospitality, demanded backstage access for their kids who never paid to attend and made a nuisance of themselves at every turn.

“We took all of this, grimaced and persevered despite the Adelaide market only turning a profit once in the history of the event.

“Soundwave incurred catastrophic losses in 2015, with Adelaide accounting for a high portion of the loss. We were simply unable to meet the council’s post event demands.

“But over its lifetime, Soundwave was a net contributor to ACC and the taxpayer by a very significant margin.

“So, Adelaide City Council, what does the car racing and vanity events sponsored and subsidised by the Council cost the Adelaide taxpayer EVERY SINGLE YEAR?”

Starting out in Perth in 2004 as the Gravity Games, by 2007 Soundwave expanded to Brisbane and Sydney.

In 2008 it entered the Adelaide and Melbourne markets. In 2012 Adelaide drew 37,000. A year later it peaked at 45,000. But in 2014 it slid to 20,000 and in its last year in the city, managed just 12,000.

It cost well over $2 million to stage the event in the city, and Maddah announced that it would not return to Adelaide again.

Soundwave and Adelaide City Council had some highly publicised run-ins.

The best known was the loss of a $10,000 bond after the Council maintained that the festival had gone over the noise level for 70% of the time.

Soundwave responded that three of the six complaints came from the same person.