Industry Commercialization Is Impacting Our Festival Experience. Where Do You Stand? [Opinion Poll]

At Ultra, we had the ever-present Heineken commercials. At EDC we had the 7Up stage in all its green glory. Even at CounterPoint we had the Blu Freedom stage and smoking area. In today’s age of live music, it seems that whenever we stare up at these grand bass fortresses we see the reality of consumerism staring right back.

Some festival goers find it hard to truly lose themselves in their 3-day musical escape when they are constantly reminded of corporate greed and media manipulation. Others consider the benefits that advertisements offer towards augmenting the cost of production and are able to turn the other cheek. Then the question to consider in all of this is, do the benefits outweigh the costs and for whom?

The team at WhiteRaverRafting has debated internally and we all seem to have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it’s important to understand that the music industry is a business, not a scene. Despite our efforts to create our own sense of community within the sub-sect of electronic music, that has a short reach beyond the attendees themselves. It’s the organizer’s prerogative to adopt that mentality or to accede with the norm.

As we demand more and more from our experience in terms of extravagant light shows or resplendent firework displays, the cost of production inflates. That combined with the cost of paying artists to perform who also want more for their share creates a situation in which either the profits go down (taking away from future budgets), the ticket prices go up (which are already more than most can afford) or advertisements plaster the festival (in hopes we’ll spend the ticket money we saved elsewhere).

On the other hand, the future of live music is at stake and at some point we need to say enough is enough. The hundreds of dollars we pay to attend these shows may not seem like much in comparison to the thousands poured in by big corporations but it means something to us and we deserve peace from the constant corporate badgering we see every day. When you turn a musical experience into just another money hustle, the magic is lost.

Can we agree to let stages be named after products instead of “What Stage” and “Which Stage”? Can we allow commercials to played in between sets? Can we accept that one day our beautiful murals and graffiti art will be replaced with posters and advertisements? These are questions we all must ask ourselves, but I will say this… The day my favorite artist stops his set to shout out for a corporate sponsor is the day the music dies.

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