Sydney entertainment impresario Justin Hemmes has confirmed to inthemix that Jam Music’s annual Good Vibrations will return in 2012, but it will run at the beginning of the festival season in December at the end of the year, rather than as a summer ending party in February.

The festival boss and owner of the Jam Music and Merivale empires was quick to declare “Of course it will return!” when asked about the festival earlier today in the Green Room of his latest venture – the new live venue Upstairs at the Beresford. “It’ll be December, December next year… December temperatures are warmer and it’s just a better time for us. It was just getting flooded around that time [February].”

Hemmes admits that this year’s festival tour was down on previous years in 2011 and hurt by the late cancellations by Cee-Lo Green and Janelle Monae, who chose to play at the Grammys rather than meeting their Good Vibrations commitments. The move to December will avoid clashes with the Grammys and the BRIT awards and, as Hemmes explained with a laugh, it will also avoid the end of Summer detox.

“It was a tough year last year. It’s a very competitive market,” Hemmes confessed. “There’s one hundred and one festivals on and there’s a lot of choice. Prices were very high for acts. There was a bidding war going on for acts which pushes the prices up. Prices are inflated, demand is down. And I probably didn’t pick the market as well as I should have… you’ve gotta have one bad year to keep you honest.”

Responding fact that even Glastonbury has suggested that music festivals are ‘on the way out’ and the suggestion that the festival market may be flooded in Australia, Hemmes noted “I don’t know about the rest of the world but I know that we have more festivals here per capita than anywhere else in the world. There are definitely too many. And with that much choice punters are last minute buying which means that festival promoters don’t have any certainty at all; with any business you need some sort of certainty to take the risk. They’re big risks and they’re big challenges. It’s just a flooded market – supply and demand: economics class one.”