(Hypebot) — Electronic music bookings at multi-genre festivals like Bonnaroo and Coachella have surged over the past decade, while genres like rock and alternative have declined.
go through Harry Levine Author of Chartmetric Blog
In 2024, everyone wants to dance.
The scars of the pandemic have yet to fully heal, so if someone is going to spend their hard-earned money on festival tickets (especially in this economy), they want an experience that expresses their wildest selves. They want a safe space to let their weird flag fly, move their bodies without restraint, and make lots of new friends.
This is the experience that dance music provides at festivals.
Michael Berg, chief talent buyer for prestigious festivals such as the North Coast Music Festival, Suwanee Hulaween, and Rose on the River, feels a connection to the modern electronic music audience that resonates with the music he went to as a kid. The same spirit you use when watching a music festival.
“[Electronic music fans] Say “PLUR” (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect). Plur’s lifestyle is that of a hippie. Do unto others, do not impose on others. Be kind. There are many similarities between communities. Even though the music may be very different, people come together to celebrate the culture and celebrate the community in the same spirit and for the same reasons,” Berg said.
The overlap of electronic and improvised music opened up avenues for Berg to source talent and produce festivals. Suwanee Hulaween was originally created by leading jam company String Cheese Incident and is characterized by an even distribution of the two types. Looking at the 2023 list, electronic musicians like John Summit and Elderbrook are at the top of the list, along with famous improvisers like Trey Anastasio Band and Goose.
However, Suwanee Hulaween was actually the last multi-genre festival under Berg’s jurisdiction. North Coast Music Festival was once a multi-genre festival, but now its lineup is entirely electronic.
Even major music festivals like Coachella, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, and Bonnaroo, which were once hubs for rock, alternative, indie, jazz, funk, and a host of other genres, lean heavily toward electronic music.
Coachella is one of the most famous multi-genre music festivals in the world. Every year is filled with big moments. Special Guest. Customized production. A once in a lifetime reunion. But the biggest moment of 2024 (at least the most talked about moment) was Grimes’ DJ performance during Weekend 1.
The good news is that if any disappointed attendees want to see another electronic artist spinning DJ gear, they have plenty of options. watching Festival schedule That day, German techno DJs Âme and Marcell Detmann were playing at the Yuma Tent, British house expert Michael Bibi was playing on the new Quasar stage, and Grimes was playing Sahara. If those two options aren’t ideal, people can wait a few minutes to watch tech icon Charlotte De Witte play at the Mojave Tent.
The saturation of DJs and electronic music spans every level of the Coachella lineup. In fact, the festival has always welcomed the genre. The percentage of electronic artists performing at Coachella has remained stable, growing from 40.30% in 2011 to 48.00% in 2024, according to data collected by Chartmetric.
In the first edition in 1999, electronics pioneers The Chemical Brothers were the first name listed under headliner Beck. In 2006, Daft Punk performed at the Dance Tent (Sahara) at Coachella, where they were easily a headliner. Their band is now credited with popularizing electronic music in the United States.
This early and continued commitment to the genre is probably why this festival has grown so quickly compared to other festivals. Coachella is the only music festival in the world that maintains a two-week format with the same lineup.
By opening an electronic music space early on, Coachella not only created a space for the existing electronic music community, but also served as a land bridge for fans of other genres to discover communities.
Coachella now has three stages dedicated entirely to electronic music: the Yuma Tent (an enclosed stage for house and techno), the Do LaB (a space for more whimsical and alternative acts), and the 2024 Introducing the new Quasar stage.
Electronic music has always been a cornerstone of Coachella’s programming, but that hasn’t been the case at other multi-genre festivals. Bonnaroo’s electronic programming more than tripled from 11.11% in 2011 to 33.64% in 2024. More than twice that. With Lollapalooza, the share of electronic artists also more than doubled, from 12.09% to 29.82%.
Founded in 1991 by Perry Farrell, lead singer of the alternative rock band Jane’s Addiction, Lollapalooza is a touring event for rock and hip-hop acts. In its earliest tours, Lollapalooza had two stages: the main stage and the side stage. Siouxsie and the Banshees, Ice Cube, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Red Hot Chili Peppers all took the main stage in the festival’s first year. It wasn’t until 1997 when Orbital took the main stage that electronic music reached its peak.
Since 2005, Lollapalooza has been an independent event held every August in Chicago’s Grant Park. There’s at least one electronic artist topping the charts across the four days of this year’s festival, with Skrillex headlining Saturday.
Other music festivals, such as Outside Lands, have followed Coachella’s lead in curating stages specifically for electronic music. After the pandemic ends in 2021, Outside Lands launches the SOMA tent. SOMA is the Outside Lands version of Yuma. This is a closed stage where house and techno DJs such as Green Velvet, HotSince 82 and TSHA perform.
By incorporating more culture into their events, these festivals are making a huge shift in their overall genre distribution. Lollapalooza dropped from 64.84% in 2011 to 27.49% in 2024. 28.18% % Rock by 2024.
In addition to simply booking more electronic artists, more electronic artists have also been playing higher slots over the years. In 2016, Bonnaroo didn’t have a single electronic artist at the top of the charts. There are seven highest-charting electronic bands of 2023, including headliners: ODESZA. In 2017, Outside Lands has an electronic artist at the top of its lineup: Above & Beyond. In 2023, they welcome three leaders of electronic music: Fisher, ODESZA and Zedd.
These festivals are adapting to current market conditions, just as Berg adapted North Coast from a multi-genre festival to a purely electronic music festival. Culture and community are important, but so are financial factors.
First, travel costs are skyrocketing. For example, Bonobo is a well-known electronic crossover artist. He tours as a DJ and performs with full bands and full productions. His most recent full-band show in the United States in October 2022 was coming to an end, and he said it would be his last.
“Post-pandemic, live touring with large-scale productions and large numbers of moving parts and people has become financially unsustainable,” Bonobo wrote. Instagram.
As someone who still books bands for Suwanee Hulaween and Rose on the River, Berg agrees. When a DJ is on tour, there is no need to bring any equipment. All they need is a USB. This is a person’s expenses for travel, accommodation, transportation, etc. When a band tours, these costs can increase fivefold or even tenfold.
“For larger groups, it’s just more expensive,” Berg said. “A band goes out, and each instrument has its own technique. There are all the instruments you can take with you. There are so many people to feed. There are so many more hotels to choose from.
But even if the cost of touring isn’t that high, there’s another major trend affecting the live music industry right now. Simply put, there are far more DJs than any other category of artists.
When DJs like Skrillex, Avicii and Calvin Harris declared themselves the biggest in the world during the EDM boom of 2010, they showed an entire generation that they could headline festivals, nine figure net worthand Fashion deals Nothing but a laptop.
Now, more than a decade later, festival lineups are seeing the knock-on effects of its massive influence. Looking at the festival roster, it’s clear that many of the artists occupying higher positions were inspired by the DJ boom of the early 2010s. Major electronic artists at the recent Coachella festival, such as Dom Dolla, John Summit and Louis The Child, were all teenagers at the time.
“When you look at DJ culture, I can quickly name 50 people right now who could sell 5,000 tickets in Chicago where I live. Maybe more,” Berg said. “There are so many artists that are big enough to headline, and have enough demand behind their fan base, in the community around their music and their curated scenes, that this can require expensive festival tickets.”
Across Chartmetric’s entire artist database, “Electronic” has the third-highest number of artists considered “superstars” or “mainstream” at this stage of their careers. Of the 12,243 artists in these categories, “Pop” topped the list with 5,524, followed by “Hip-Hop/Rap” with 3,620, followed by “Electronic” with 2,442, and then “Rock” with 2,333.
This has a snowball effect on DJs as festivals start booking more electronic music. As these electronic artists play bigger and bigger shows at major multi-genre festivals, their audiences grow significantly.
Flume most recently hosted the Coachella music festival in 2022. In the two weeks before that, he had scored 681.
DJ Snake last appeared at Coachella last April, when he became the fastest-growing artist on Chartmetric’s artist ratings. From February 28, 2024, to April 18, 2024, his monthly Spotify listeners dropped from 34,957,842 to 33,472,993. Then the next day, when the festival was in full swing, he had 234,519. Two days later his numbers had increased to 391,317, and by May 17 they were back to 37,198,820. After seeing DJ Snake perform music from Peso Pluma, 50 Cent, Kodak Black and more in his latest performance in the desert, more than 3 million listeners are once again partying with him.
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There’s reason to believe that at least a small portion of the millions of listeners are aspiring DJs. They see what will happen if they go down this path, so they stick with it.
“You’ll hear the story over and over again about these artists who went to festivals. They saw someone and were super inspired. A few years later, they started touring,” Josh Pollack said. “It’s incredible to go from being a bedroom producer to a touring artist. With the age of social media and the internet, that ratio is at an all-time high.
Pollack is a talent buyer for prestigious music festivals such as Arizona’s Gem & Jam Music Festival and Oregon’s Cascade Equinox Music Festival. Both are multi-genre, but they place electronic music acts such as modern bass artist Of The Trees, funk beat maestro CloZee and pianist extraordinaire LP Giobbi at key points in their programming.
These festivals are vessels for future artists and people who want to escape the dullness of everyday life. Knowing what he has to offer motivates Pollack and his team to keep going. These communities are growing faster than ever and festivals will always be a place where they come together to dance.
