The 2024 Made in America Festival in Philadelphia has been canceled again

For the second year in a row, the Made in America Festival has been canceled.

The 2024 edition of the festival, which is hosted by Jay-Z and produced by his entertainment company Roc Nation in partnership with concert promoter Live Nation, has been cancelled.

The announcement was made on the festival's social media accounts on Wednesday afternoon. “Made in America will not be made in 2024,” the statement read. He continued, “As agents of change, the Made in America executive production team is reimagining the live music experience that affirms our love and dedication to music and the work we do. We promise an exciting return to the festival.”

“Made in America” ​​premiered on Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway in 2012, with Jay-Z and Pearl Jam fronting it. It continued every year on Labor Day weekend until it was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, then resumed the following year. It was last held in 2022, when Puerto Rican rap star Bad Bunny headlined the closing night of the festival, which drew a crowd of 50,000 to the main stage set up in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Rocky Steps.

Last year, MIA was canceled in August, after Lizzo, one of two scheduled headliners alongside SZA, was sued by several of her dancers for harassment, though no official reason was given for canceling the festival.

The news that MIA will be discontinued this year comes at a time when large-scale, multi-day music festivals, which grew into a dominant force in the concert industry in the 2000s and 2000s, have struggled in the years since the pandemic. Even as the concert industry as a whole has fallen behind big names like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.

Delaware Firefly Festival, also founded in 2012, drew dwindling crowds in 2022 and took a planned sabbatical last year. In February, the festival was canceled again this year. While the Xponential Music Festival, the annual festival presented by radio station WXPN-FM (88.5), has continued its new spot on the September concert calendar, it is now a smaller gathering, with bands playing only in the more intimate Wiggins Park in Camden, and also occupies the adjacent Freedom Mortgage suite.

The exception in Philadelphia is Roots Picnic, which has increased in recent years from one day to two days, with the gathering sponsored by and starring the Philly hip-hop group, and is once again scheduled to take over the expanded Mann Center campus in Fairmount Park with a bill that includes Lil Wayne and Andre 300 Jill Scott and others.

This is a developing story.