The Coachella/Bonnaroo Lineup Situation

On the morning of January 10^th, Bonnaroo announced their lineup, as they had advertised that they would; that day, so did several other festivals, including Boston Calling, Sonic Temple, and Coachella.  While I will discuss each lineup in an episode of my podcast (Groupie and Harmony), there is something I found interesting with this.  Coachella’s announcement was something that seemed scripted after over a month of speculation since the festival is occurring just 3 months after their lineup was announced (typically lineups are announced 4-6 months prior).  I believe that Coachella waited until Bonnaroo announced theirs and planned their announcement a few hours after Bonnaroo’s was scheduled.

Before continuing on, I would like to emphasize that I am not insinuating that there is anything wrong with this strategy or that this should not have occurred.  Ultimately, festivals organized by competitive companies (such as Coachella with Goldenvoice/AEG and Bonnaroo with Superfly/AC Entertainment) have no motivation to collaborate on the festival lineup announcements.  Sure, it might feel a bit slimy, but welcome to the world of business, especially entertainment.  I don’t want this to be construed as Coachella being evil and Bonnaroo deserving sympathy; if the opposite had happened, I wouldn’t have batted an eye (though I think it makes more sense that it happened this way based on target audience).

In this post, I will be focusing on the fact that Coachella announced their lineup after Bonnaroo did and not on other festivals doing so.  There are three major factors that I have chosen to do this.  The first is because Coachella and Bonnaroo are bigger festivals than others announced on the same day.  I focused on Boston Calling and Sonic Temple in the intro, and while both are major rock festivals, they are not of the same scale as festivals like Coachella, Lollapalooza, or Bonnaroo.  The second major reason is due to similarities in style/origins.  Sonic Temple is typically a hard rock/metal festival and often doesn’t have as much crossover as the other festivals discussed thus far (though there is potential for some, as I’ll get to in a bit).  While Boston Calling and Bonnaroo feel similar in terms of some artists booked, Boston Calling and Bonnaroo have different origins which still impact the acts that they book.  Boston Calling was historically an alternative festival and Bonnaroo historically a jam festival; while both have strayed from their origins a bit, they still book several acts based on these factors.  While there are differences in some of the acts book, I feel like Coachella and Bonnaroo would have the most crossover between people interested considering the genres and target audience.  The third reason is because of headliner crossover between Bonnaroo and the other festivals discussed.  Bonnaroo, Boston Calling, and Sonic Temple all have Foo Fighters as one of their headliners.  It is not surprising to see festivals with a major headliner announce their lineups near each other and to see that headliner announce that they are performing at each of these festivals.  In Foo Fighters’ situation, it is especially not surprising considering these are their first festival dates announced since the passing of drummer Taylor Hawkins.

The strategy behind doing what Coachella did is fairly straightforward and transparent:  announce their lineup right after Bonnaroo to steal the focus on which lineup is being focused on.  A lineup announcement is typically viewed as a big deal with festivals because the general mindset is that ticket sales boost immediately following the lineup announcement.  I don’t have data to demonstrate whether this is true or not, but that’s the general school of thought, which makes sense.  I also don’t have ticket sales values for each festival following this day.  That said, I’m not sure it worked in the manner that Coachella had expected or had a significant impact.

I would like to start by saying that there are some positives that I believe did result from this lineup being announced.  For one, they were able to steal a bit of attention on multiple social media platforms, which was their biggest goal.  While there were some negative responses from Facebook, the target audience for Coachella is rich, young, white individuals, which is not necessarily the demographic for Facebook at this point.  It ended up trending on other forms of social media, which a nice confidence boost for them.  I would expect that the lineup would trend across social media (especially TikTok), but it didn’t seem to be hindered majorly by the Bonnaroo announcement that proceeded it.  Additionally, Coachella’s lineup announcement was listed ahead of that of Bonnaroo’s on some publications; while I don’t believe this is how the majority of people that care about major festivals find their news, there is a little bit of pride and bragging rights that can be used within select business circles and meetings.

With all this said, I don’t think it was a major success for one major reason:  the lineups.  I think both lineups are deep and successful given the target audiences, so I am going to focus on the headliners.  On Friday, Bonnaroo has Kendrick Lamar (probably the biggest rapper/hip hop artist in the world) and Coachella has Bad Bunny (possibly the biggest artist in the world):  point to Coachella.  Saturday, Bonnaroo has Odesza and Coachella has Blackpink; while it might be tied given the audience for each, I’d lean towards a point for Bonnaroo in general.  On Sunday, Coachella seemed like they had nailed it with Frank Ocean’s first show in a few years, but then Bonnaroo announced that Foo Fighters would headline Sunday.  Foo Fighters are one of the most popular (and beloved) rock bands in the world who is performing their first shows since longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins passed away.  The fact that this was the first festival announcement of several within a few days (including several on that day), it would be difficult to steal the news cycle from that story.  If they seriously had no idea this was happening, then they likely aren’t in tune with what’s going on in the industry (while the general public wasn’t sure, a lot of companies have an idea what acts other companies are working with in entertainment due to scheduling and booking).  If they knew what Bonnaroo had up their sleeve, I’m not sure why they thought they could trump this story.  Add onto the fact that Coachella had Swedish House Mafia as a special act not specified on a day last year and have Calvin Harris this year, which is a bit of a drop-off, especially considering he wasn’t going to headline the 2020 version that didn’t occur.  I think part of my issue at this point is that I don’t get why Coachella would think they had more to gain than lose by doing this.

Ultimately, I’m not even sure that it matters in the big scheme of things.  The truth is that within 2 weeks, tickets were sold out for Bonnaroo and for weekend 1 of Coachella.  It feels safe to say that Bonnaroo didn’t lose much as a result of Coachella’s strategy, yet it isn’t as if it hurt either party.  Both festivals are established enough that the only thing Coachella might have done was taken a tiny bit of attention from Bonnaroo for a few minutes.  I might be making a big deal about something minor and silly in the big scheme of things, but it was something I found interesting even as inconsequential as it likely is to each festival.

 

What do you think about this situation?  Let me know in the comments!