Melbourne is often praised as Australia’s capital of sport and culture. Weather, however, has never been its strong suit. And so it was on Saturday, March 24, when the skies emptied over the Victorian capital, drenching the site for the inaugural Download Festival Australia. Never mind. A city that boasts a lane named after AC/DC doesn’t fret about a little rain.

Nearly 30,000 turned out at Flemington Racecourse to see this nostalgia-heavy lineup led by Korn, Limp Bizkit, Prophets Of Rage and NOFX. “We love coming to Australia. This is a country where you party a lot, right?,” roared Amon Amarth frontman Johan Hegg during the Swedish metal veterans’ late afternoon stint on the “Red” stage. The sun was now beating down. All this rock and metal apparently blew away the clouds. Hegg’s comment rings true as a man in a wheelchair is lifted above the crowd, throwing devil horns back to the stage.

Visitors of this festival, the first of its kind to be established in Slovakia, separate waste, use refundable bottles, eat from naturally degradable plates and use solar lighting.

Head of the Pohoda music festival near Trenčín, Michal Kaščák, would like to use as much green energy and as little waste as possible for his event. His festival was praised on January 17 in the Dutch city of Groningen. Pohoda received the prestigious European Festival Award and was subsequently named the most environmentally-friendly festival in Europe.

2017 was a massive year for the global concert industry, with the 100 biggest tours alone generated 16% more revenue than the 2016 top 100.

That’s according to the 2017 edition of Pollstar’s traditional year-end special features, which track the value of the year’s biggest tours, promoters, arenas, festivals, individual concert grosses and more. The top 100 worldwide tours chart, topped by U2’s Live Nation-promoted Joshua Tree 2017 tour, also shows the tickets sold by the top 100 reached a new record high of 66.79 million – a 10.4% increase on 2016.