Ozzfest 2007 to be free

Ozzfest 2007, the 12th edition of the annual summer metal festival, will be free. The announcement was made on Tuesday, February 6th, by tour co-founders Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne at a press conference in Los Angeles. The traveling extravaganza will once again be headlined by Ozzy, who will perform on the full 25-date schedule. The tour will kick off on July 7th in Los Angeles, and while the rest of the cities were announced, venues and the rest of the lineup were yet to be confirmed. Sharon Osbourne said that doing the tour like this was unprecedented: "We're doing 25 shows across America, and it's the first time that actually a summer festival tour has gone out free. There's been millions of free one-off shows, but this is gonna be a 25-city tour. And we're having our second stage, as usual, and everything goes as normal, except it's free."

Ozzfest will utilize sponsors to offset the costs of producing and running the festival. To gain entry into the event, fans will go to ozzfest.com or livenation.com to find links that will direct them to special sponsor sites where tickets can be secured. More details regarding the process are forthcoming.

Sharon said that rising artist fees would have forced Ozzfest organizers to raise ticket prices this year. While smaller acts have traditionally not received a fee, Sharon insisted that no one is getting paid this time: "We are giving people a stage, and we're giving them a chance to play in front of thousands of people. And we're giving them the chance on days off, they can go work wherever they wanna work, gig wherever they wanna gig. They can even play Ozzfest and then go off that night and do another gig, 'cause we start music from noon. But they can come, they can sell their merchandise, they can sell their music. But it's free. We're not paying anyone."

Sharon said that the tour already had "bands committed," adding, "We know there aren't any major headlining acts that would tour all summer for nothing, but we're confident we can turn some of the genre's biggest bands on to what we're doing and have them come out to play a date or two."
In a prepared statement, Sharon also said that the reason for doing the tour this way was simple: "We're reaching the same point we did years ago when kids no longer wanted to pay for overpriced CDs. As a result, they found alternative ways of getting music. That's what's happening with summer touring in this country, it's out-pricing itself. We started this and we want to keep it and we want to make it bigger and bigger each year by getting bigger sponsors to be involved with the festival and underwriting the festival."

Confirmed Ozzfest 2007 cities:
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
Denver, CO
Albuquerque, NM
Phoenix, AZ
Dallas, TX
San Antonio, TX
Kansas City, MO
St Louis, MO
Chicago, IL
Indianapolis, IN
Columbus, OH
Pittsburgh, PA
New York, NY
Boston, MA
Philadelphia, PA
Hartford, CT
Charlotte, NC
Atlanta, GA
West Palm Beach, FL
Nashville, TN
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