Can Ireland sustain the festival fever?

You know, it may well be time for Discotheque to start tipping horses. Last September, in the middle of a column rounding up the summer festival season, we talked about the huge success of the Electric Picnic. We wondered how rival promoters MCD would react to the competition and predicted that they would probably put on their own Picnic-like event earlier in the summer.

Hey, what do you know, here comes Hi:Fi, "a new style of festival" which MCD are putting on over the August Bank Holiday weekend. Like the Picnic, Hi:Fi will be held in the grounds of a country house (Belvedere House outside Mullingar). Like the Picnic, it sees itself as a cut above the common mucky festival (if the Picnic is a "boutique festival", Hi:Fi is for "the iPod generation").

Like the Picnic, Hi:Fi also has a mix of DJs and bands, but it's more skewed towards superstar DJs than bands. There are a couple of tried and tested live acts on the bill - The Prodigy and Ian Brown - but the real pull is such spinners as Tiesto, Paul Oakenfold, Sasha, Mylo, Ferry Corsten, Armin van Burren, Tiga and Marco V.

By comparison, the Picnic is wall to wall with bands so far, with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Massive Attack, Antony and The Johnsons, Gang of Four, The Blue Nile and more already confirmed. There will be DJs in Stradbally, of course, but there won't be any of the trancers who are heading to Co Westmeath.

Hi:Fi is also the latest in a long line of imported festival brands, akin to those Irish versions of Creamfields and Homelands of old. It's a Godskitchen/Global Gathering brand, which will also host two festivals of the same name in the UK this summer.

MCD has a slice of the Godskitchen action though Hamsard, the joint venture established by the Irish company with Live Nation/Clear Channel to take over the Mean Fiddler group. When they needed their own mini-fest set-up, they simply did some cutting and pasting with the Hi:Fi concept.

Indeed, the same quotes about "bridging the gap between out and out dance and live shows" and "the opportunity to see indie and dance heroes performing side by side for the first time" appear on both UK and Irish press releases,with the same quote attributed to different people.

While Hi:Fi will no doubt do well as an overflow festival for those who didn't get their hands on Oxegen tickets, its arrival means that 2006's outdoor season will be the busiest one ever seen here. We knew that the live music sector was booming, but no one thought it was this good.

Over the last few years, the number of Irish outdoor shows has increased enormously. But when you add Hi:Fi, Garden Party, Life and Midlands to an already busy calendar of established festivals and shows featuring big-name headliners, you really do wonder how all of these events can be sustained.

Is a two-day country music festival such as Midlands - even one with free admission for the under-12s and a performance from the very uncountry "multi-tentacled, genre-melting" Jimmy Cake - going to work? Does Billy Joel really need wall-to-wall ads every time there's a commercial break on Morning Ireland to fill Croke Park? And can Slane ever again be the premier Irish outdoor music event?

This summer's festivals also show clearly that there is only a finite number of potential headliners and big draws on the touring circuit in any given

year. That's why the Red Hot Chili Peppers will be here for their fifth visit in six summers. And they're not the only act coming back for more. For example, 2 Many DJs should be very rich Belgians on the back of the Irish shows they're doing this year (five and counting), while Razorlight's Hi:Fi appearance will come just over three months after their Dublin show.

The effect of all this repeat business on the final head count will be interesting to note. But you can be sure that as festival fever sweeps the land, there will be a few nervous promoters out there.