Lineup after Lineup after Lineup

This week there were huge festival announcements. The Hangout Fest in Gulf shores, Alabama and Firefly in Dover, Delaware announced their lineups on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.  Seeing that both festivals are owned by the same company called Golden Voice, this is not surprising. They are stacked with incredible artists and causing a hype since these lineup releases have come out before Coachella, which never happens. Coachella has always been the first to announce their lineups because they are the first to start the ' festival season' and start the excitement with people guessing which of the artists performing there will be at a fest they're attending.  Not only did these lineups get announced, but the second wave of artists for the inaugural Okeechobee Music Fest were also announced this week too.

 What is surprising is how early they dropped the lineups. Was this a sales strategy? Or was this a competitive strategy? I see it as more of a competition strategy. With so many different festivals in the U.S. that deliver the same artist experience, the earlier the announcement, the earlier the sales, the more likely the public will buy the tickets on impulse. I'm definitely guilty of impulse buying and this strategy does work.

Based on lineup, I would absolutely LOVE to go to Firefly. There are way more artists I've never seen, on top of some of my favorites. Location wise, The Hangout is your dream spot, right on the beach of Gulf Shores. Nothing like sitting in the sand with a tall boy listening to Leon Bridges, or Grimes.

Can I just go ahead and have my dream job so I can start my goal of hitting up all the fests?

Above & Beyond Announce New Tour and Album

The popular trance trio, Above & Beyond, are excited to announce their second acoustic album, along with an acoustic global tour in the Spring at legendary venues like the Sydney Opera House, Royal Albert Hall, and the Chicago Theater. The trio were inspired by their successful sold out two-night acoustic performance at the LA Greek Theater, following their release of the 2013 album.

This album will contain acoustic versions of their hit electronic album "We Are All We Need," along with some previous hit songs not featured on the first acoustic album. The orchestra will include 15 musicians and will feature vocals by Zoe Johnston, Annie Drury, and Alex Vega.





As for me, I'm trying to look at my budget to catch this show in Chicago. Seeing an electronic artist be able to make their music with an orchestra is an incredible talent that I would love to see. Above & Beyond is already a fantastic group, it would be incredible to see them stripped.

What I've Learned

I have a deep passion for music and live music. Once I was heavily involved, I stumbled upon Festival Snob. This blog has been the number one source of festival news for me over the past two years. This blogger has always been kind of a secret guy when revealing his identity and what he does as a profession, but I was excited when he got back in contact with me and voluntarily shared this info. His name is Nick L. and he is from Nashville, Tennessee. He is 30 years old and his profession is computer forensics. His interest in music festivals started from his first time attending Bonnaroo in 2011. Nick experienced the magic of a music festival and couldn’t wait to share his experience with everyone. He then started spending a lot of his time discussing music festivals on online forums and message boards, and still occasionally does in his spare time.  After a while, he started sharing his information he had learned on social media sites. Nick then decided to stop bugging his friends who weren’t as interested as him and start a WordPress blog. A year after that, he resorted to creating social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter and it took off quickly from there. His page updates followers on any festival news, rumors, and information. Because of his increase in popularity, Nick and his partners are able to get Media passes to festivals which means they get the front row, uncrowded view of the stage and even backstage sometimes.

 Once accumulating a decent following, he made an Instagram account to post photos of the festivals he attended and then made a snapchat account so you could follow him wherever festival he attends. At first, this blog did not receive any money; but after January of this year, he started to make a little income by adding Google Sense Ads and was able to add more partners to expand the festivals attended. Now the amount of money made doesn’t earn enough income for the festival expenses of Nick or any of the other partners, but he expects that to change.  

What makes this blog more unique than the rest is how many different social media sites he’s on. Not only is there the site and twitter, but you can follow along with him at whatever festival, which is different than the rest. Now that he has expanded, he’s added more professional photographers and uploads great shots of the bands played at the festivals, as well as the festival goers. Nick is quick to respond to tweets and emails and does a great job on updates.  And now that he has added partners, Festival Snobs is able to show live coverage of more festivals.

Some strengths of this blog is what I keep saying, the live coverage. Being able to follow the blogger on SnapChat makes a huge difference. The only problem is sometimes two of the Festival Snobs partners will be at two different festivals in the same weekend, so unless you pay attention to the environment around the stages, you can’t tell which festival is which. Nick is good at putting a caption on who he is saying, but I’ve noticed other partners fail to put the artist that they’re seeing which is frustrating. The site, Festivalsnobs.com, is very well organized. It has everything you can possible find about music festivals on one page. One downfall is that there is so much info and so many music fests that all the thumbnails can be a little overwhelming. But, with the increase in the number of North American music fests, it’s understandable how many thumbnails there are to choose from.

            The advice I got from Nick was “Don't force it. I see a lot of other festival/music blogs trying to be something they aren't yet. Example: Throwing "#1 Source For Etc" on your blog, when you're only updating a handful of times a month. Let your followers come natural. Identify who your target audience is and start interacting with them on social media. From there you can identify what exact type of information your followers crave and put your focus there.”

What I learned from this interview was to be noticed, but don’t force it. I found his advice kind of ironic when he said don’t force it, only because the way I discovered him was from Nick mass following people tweeting about music festivals so we would follow him back and just to have him unfollow us. Still, I found his information useful, interesting, and exciting because of how secretive he makes himself out to be.