Tickets for the 2011 Shambhala Music Festival have sold out in record time. Online tickets sold out on May 12^th, with authorized ticket stores selling out over the course of the following fifteen days. The last store with tickets available was Salmo’s Skyway Hardware, which sold out on Thursday, May 26^th.

“Events selling tickets in record time has been quite a trend this year,” said Sara Victor, Shambhala’s Ticket Administrator, “Coachella sold out in less than a week, Sasquatch in 4 days, Ultra Music Festival a month in advance, Burning Man sold 27,000 tickets in their first twenty four hours of sales. It’s an exciting time to be in events, and to see everyone doing so well.”

Shambhala, which was named Best Large Event at the Breakspoll Awards (UK) earlier this year, and is among the top 40 most visible music festivals in the world via Google search, is no exception.

10,000 tickets are available for Shambhala annually. The first tier (of 1000) tickets went on sale in late October and sold out in less than a minute, blowing the previous record of two and half hours out of the water. The second “Early Bird” tier, sold out in late January – as opposed to a mid-May sell out of that tier in 2010. And the final tier, which was available until a mere three days prior the festival’s opening day in 2010, has sold out a full two months in advance.

“Tickets were selling online at a rate of over 200 a day for a few days leading up to selling out online,” Victor recalled. “We sold 850 in the last day of online sales. After that, we heard some pretty interesting stories from ticket stores. Line-ups out their doors and down the street, people from all over North America travelling to these stores to purchase tickets. The story that surprised me most was someone from Japan who put a friend on a plane to Vancouver to buy tickets. Beatstreet (our Vancouver store) had already sold out, so he rented a car and drove to Salmo to buy them!”

This year’s event features such world-class talent as Surismo (Germany), Bassnectar (USA), Zed’s Dead (CAN), Bonobo (UK), Flux Pavillion (UK), Dub FX w/ Flower Fairy & Cade (AU), David Starfire (USA), Skrillex (USA), Psudaform (South Africa), Trotter (Brazil); to name just a few of over 240 artists that are set to entertain the crowds over the course of four days and nights.