Born in a time where I fall in between the millennial and gen Z age ranges, I find myself relating to both, who make up the main age demographics for music festivals. This puts me in an odd position where I can see why older millennials may dislike what music festivals have become while also understanding why Gen Z feels so drawn to them.
Keep in mind that this post isn't aimed towards local festivals but instead at regional and major ones in the US. I cannot speak to what festivals were like even ten years ago as I was too young to attend them, but over the last 5-7 years, I have noticed some shifting trends among major festivals that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Keep reading to see what bones I have to pick with major music festivals.
The Music
While I don't know the detailed history of every major festival, I have in general noticed a shift in the type of lineups that these festivals book. In trying to reach younger audiences, major festivals seem to be moving away from their roots. For instance, Music Midtown in Atlanta used to be known for alternative rock lineups including legends like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. However, starting around 2014, their lineup slowly started to shift to include more rap, pop and EDM acts.
On a more national level, other festivals like Bonnaroo, who were once known for jam bands and rock, have started to give more and more prime lineup real estate to the Cardi B's and Bassnectar's of the world. While there has been an EDM area at Bonnaroo for some time now, the stage, originally dubbed The Other Tent, was transformed into a stage called The Other in 2017. This transformation signals a shift towards catering more and more to the EDM tastes of Bonnaroovians.
I think that this demand could be due in part to the widespread mainstream adoption of EDM with the turn of the century. The new millennium ushered in an explosion of EDM festivals like Tomorrowland and EDC to meet growing demand. As these festivals became more and more popular, festival curators faced the decision of whether or not to follow profit margins and more widely embrace EDM.
I completely understand the dilemma that lineup curators face. They feel pulled between wanting to curate lineups that appeal to their core fan base, who has been around since the beginning, are older, and are more drawn to alternative and rock acts, or, wanting to appeal to the younger Gen Z audience, who can be more drawn to trendy rap, pop, and EDM artists. In this dilemma, the core problem for festival curators becomes who their target audience truly is.
Halfheartedly appealing to both demographics seems to be the current method of choice, but this isn't an efficient long-term strategy for growing and retaining a fan base.
I can appreciate that culture is not a static monolith and that sometimes festivals may need to periodically re-evaluate themselves to maintain profit margins, especially when Gen Z now arguably has more purchasing power than millennials. However, to me at least, it seems that festivals are shifting their culture so rapidly to attract younger fan bases that they're losing their core identity.
I don't always think that this shift is for the better, especially seeing as the growth of Internet culture has created younger generations with goldfish-like attention spans, entranced by an artist one moment and then moving onto another soon after.
To me, I see a festival curator's job being as exhausting as a social media marketer that chases influencers to collaborate with. You constantly chase after the hot artist of the moment without any reassurance of how long that artist will stay relevant. Trending artists do have a place in lineups, seeing as they are an easy boost for ticket sales and serve as a barometer for which way the industry is trending, but how much of the lineup should they make up and should any of them be headliners?
That brings me to another issue in these major festival lineups: trending artists receiving headliner status when they haven't "earned" it yet. I know this is a hot button issue, but I don't always see the need for new artists to receive headliner slots. For instance, artists like Billie Eilish and Lizzo, who I love and appreciate, were popular for barely a few years before they started headlining festivals.
To me, a headliner slot should be reserved for legends who have been popular yet relevant for a long time, like the Black Keys or Skrillex. When you start to give headliner slots to new artists with big social media followings, in a way, you degrade the achievements of other artists like Beyoncé who have earned that slot over time. I think that we should keep the Lizzo's of the world towards the top of lineups, seeing as they are extremely relevant and have amassed a large following, but lineup curators should wait before elevating them to God status.
Lizzo brings me to my final point. Google the lineups for any major music festival. Go ahead, do it. You'll see many of the same names pop up, especially when you look at the headliners. I find it problematic that lineups are becoming more and more homogeneous because, to me at least, it feels like festivals are chasing profits rather than curating a unique yet appealing lineup.
Additionally, when festivals fail to differentiate their lineups from the competition, that only serves to make a consumer's choice more difficult, in turn pushing festivals into relying more and more on experiences to sell tickets. While experiences like yoga and trendy food trucks could be the differentiator for a conflicted consumer, festivals should use their lineup to set themselves apart. Music is the reason why festivals exist, after all!
The Culture
Classic festivals like Woodstock arose as a way to find unity and peace among the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Woodstock sent a powerful message about the sense of community that live music can bring, and it set the tone for festivals for decades to come.
From a branding perspective, every festival has its own schpeal about its unique culture. Although this is critical from a marketing perspective in order to differentiate oneself from the competition, I feel that in recent years, festivals have been increasingly trying to create culture by pivoting to curate more and more experiences for their attendees.
Festival curators know that both millennials and Gen Z value experiences, which would explain why some larger festivals are increasingly turning to "yoga workshops" and "meditation tents" to make a festival attendee feel like they're getting a holistic experience rather than simply a concert. While building more experiences into a festival can positively impact its culture, I feel that sometimes it can attract the wrong kind of crowd.
When you attend a festival, you'll notice a few types of people. There's those who are there mainly for the music, and there are those mainly there to party and have cool pictures to post on Instagram. For those who fall in the latter group, they may not care enough about a lineup to pay hundreds of dollars for a ticket. However, when you start including experiences like hair braiding stations, art workshops, and improv shows, you make the price of ticket seem more worthwhile to those who may not care as much about the music.
I'm not saying that festivals shouldn't have any of these experiences, because I do think it makes them more memorable and unique, but there are some un-intended consequences when you veer into this territory, one of which being the type of crowd that you begin to attract. Another un-intended consequence is that curating more experiences likely raises ticket prices, which can in turn start to drive away the very people that festival promoters are trying to bring in.
The People
The correlation between building more experiences into a festival and an increase in attendees who are mainly coming to party and post on social media brings me to my final point. While "hippie dippie" crowds have always been drawn to festivals, for whatever reason I feel like the types of crowds attracted to major music festivals has shifted in recent years.
This shift could be attributed to the popularity of social media and "influencer culture" among Gen Z, which has created a generation obsessed with Instagramming every facet of their lives. This could, in turn, create a demographic that has a shallow appreciation for festivals. I have seen more and more of these types of people at concerts and festivals in general that I've attended over the years. I feel that, at least at bigger festivals, crowds are becoming younger and more full of the stereotypical "frat bro".
I had a friend that attended Music Midtown around 2018 for the first time, and I remember her telling me that as a 21-year-old, she felt too old for the crowd, which was a sea of high schoolers and drunk guys wearing Hawaiian shirts. This shift in demographics could also be attributed to the types of lineups that major festivals are starting to pivot towards.
Festivals like Music Midtown and Coachella that have commercialized and turned more so to rap, pop, and EDM could be drawing in these types of people purely because of the nature of the genres that they book. EDM and pop tends to attract a younger crowd, so naturally if your lineup includes these types of artists then you should expect a shift in the demographics of your attendees.
While I understand that people attend music festivals for a variety of reasons, it bothers me a little when I see people not even paying attention to the music because they're more worried about getting the perfect Snapchat or getting drunk. I think Coachella is the most obvious example of this. Although it's still classified as a music festival, from what I've heard, it seems like it's now nothing more than a bunch of rich influencers using it as an excuse to flaunt their outfits online.
This post is a note to all festival curators: when chasing trends and shifting your culture to keep up with profit margins, don't completely forget your roots, because sometimes that could be what attracts people to you.