Ireland's outdoor music industry is booming, and this summer is promising more festivals than ever before. But with so many choices, is wallet fatigue inevitable? Jim Carroll looks at the phenomenon.

IT'S TIME for the great adventure to begin all over again. Over the next couple of months, dozens of festivals and outdoor shows will provide potentially glorious days out in big fields and sports stadiums for all kinds of music fans. The lists and line-ups have been released, the tickets are on sale and the runners are under starter's orders.

If you have the guts of a thousand euro to splash out on tickets, you could spend virtually every weekend this summer at one festival or another. From REM playing Ireland for the umpteenth time to Franz Ferdinand in Lansdowne Road, from Kraftwerk in Stradbally to Green Day singing American Idiot at Oxegen, there's enough choice here to satisfy the most demanding music lover.

Yet, as 2005 sets out to break all those festival records which were set in 2003 and 2004, it's hard to see how the Irish concert-going population can sustain so many big-ticket shows over any given summer. While multi-band, multi-stage bashes like Oxegen and the Electric Picnic will shift thousands of tickets without much difficulty, the same can't be said about some of the other shows on the calendar.

Provided that the economy doesn't suddenly fall over, most music fans will probably take in a few shows. After all, the gig-going population here has taken to gigs in the open air with much gusto over the last couple of years. Going to a festival with your mates has become a rite of passage for teens and a normal summer activity for twentysomethings and even thirtysomethings.

There has always been a music festival culture in Ireland ­ think the Lisdoonvarna festivals, the Siamsa Cois Laoi gigs in Cork, the Feile bashes and the Witnness and Oxegen gatherings of late. But it's only really begun to flourish in recent years. So much so that there are now more outdoor shows in Ireland per head of population than anywhere else in Europe.

Compare the situation here with our near-neighbours. British festival-going culture enjoys a much longer, richer history, stretching back to the original Isle of Wight gatherings (600,000 people turned up to the 1970 event to see Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Who, Miles Davis and others), the Bath festivals and the first Glastonbury Fayres.

Such a heritage is one reason why festivals as disparate as Reading, T in the Park, Guilfest, the Cambridge Folk Festival, Homelands and dozens more continue to thrive today. Some festivals have grown bigger than their actual line-up: look at Glastonbury or even Scotland's T in the Park, which sold out this year before the line-up was even announced.

Of course, it takes a lot of punters to sustain that level of summer shows. With a population pool in excess of 60 million people to draw from, British organisers can make the sums add up.

Over here, even with a much smaller population, the Irish appetite for outdoor events leaves the UK in the shade.

"People in the industry in Europe and America think it's uncanny what's happening here," says Peter Aiken of Aiken Promotions. "Ireland is probably the biggest market in the world at the moment per head of population. Not every show is going to do well over here this summer. Some are going to tank, but we are still punching well above our weight when it comes to live shows."

Once upon a time, only best-selling megastars like U2, Bruce Springsteen or Prince could attract the multitudes to a show in the open air. Now, promoters are looking to the likes of Anastacia and Destiny's Child to fill big fields.

In one sense, it's a logical move. Venues like the Point in Dublin and the Odyssey in Belfast have maximum capacities of 8,500 and 10,000, respectively, yet there are many artists who can attract audiences in excess of that on their own.

"You can sustain as much outdoors as you like if there's enough quality," says Aiken. "You'd watch as many good football matches as you could, but you'd be hard-stretched to watch Everton playing Birmingham City."

To him, it's events like the MCD Concerts-promoted Oxegen festival ("a good line-up and great value for money") and Rod Stewart in Kilkenny which make the most sense. "There's no substitute for an artist putting on a great show. We promoted Rod Stewart in Belfast recently and he's still a great performer. That's his track record and that's why people will go to see him. It's like a new Tom Cruise film opening: you know what you're getting."

Another thing which aids ticket sales and promotion, Aiken says, is the overwhelmingly positive media coverage of music events. "Nobody really slags off a gig in the papers or on the radio. Every gig is said to be 'the best gig ever' or 'you have to see it' or 'it's gonna be great'. You have someone like Gerry Ryan going on about how he can't wait to see Bruce Springsteen in the Point. You couldn't buy that kind of on-air endorsement.

"It's very rare to read a bad review after a show and there's little criticism about what goes on around an event. You'd never get the English media putting such a positive spin on everything, and the Belfast media also are nowhere near as positive as they are down here."

Such uncritical coverage may have more to do with a lack of understanding by sections of the media about how the music industry works than anything else. This may be changing, as coverage of last year's Madonna gig at Slane showed. Then, early hype about a sell-out proved groundless when tickets were still plentiful in the weeks leading up to the show. The golden rule: don't believe the hype if there are still loads of adverts running on the radio and in the newspapers in the run-up to a gig.

Naturally some shows will struggle to make a buck this summer. Iron Maiden at the RDS is believed to be proving to be a hard sell, while Destiny's Child at Lansdowne Road and Anastacia at Marlay Park may both find it hard to attain the desired numbers. Remember that Destiny's Child, after all, were scheduled to play Dalymount Park at the height of their popularity in summer 2001 before moving the show indoors to the Point Depot.

Given how poorly their new material has been received, REM may be overplaying their hand with a second major outdoor event here within 24 months (and a third show this year). Surprisingly, there are still tickets on sale for the Coldplay show in Marlay Park and, according to support band Interpol's website, a second show is supposed to be pending. While promotion of the new X&Y album will help ticket sales, it may be for the best that initial talk about a Coldplay date at the much bigger Slane venue turned out to be idle speculation.

Speaking of Slane, it would seem that Eminem is a safe bet for this one, especially as several stadiums throughout Europe are on hold for dates in September pending an announcement about a tour. Slim Shady played a sell-out show at Punchestown in summer 2004, so the leap from Co Kildare to Co Meath would appear to make commercial sense. But Slane needs Eminem more than he needs Slane - it's no longer the blue-chip event it once was, largely because of a dreadful choice of recent headliners (the Stereophonics) and the amount of choice now available elsewhere.

And choice is really what it comes down to. This summer, it's U2, Springsteen and Oasis that punters want to see more than anyone else. Put on more shows by those acts and tickets will be snapped up in the blink of an eye. Disappointed punters may go to Oxegen or the Electric Picnic instead, but they sure as hell won't be going to see Anastacia or Iron Maiden.

At the end of the day, the public gets what the public really wants, and no amount of last-minute advertising is going to change that.