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Music Festivals

04/15/2024

Day 3 of Coachella 2024 was all about the surprise guest. Find our highlights from J Balvin, DJ Snake, Doja Cat, Victoria Monet, 88Rising, Lil Yachty & more.

04/15/2024

When No Doubt broke through with “Just a Girl” almost 30 years ago, it was instantly clear that frontwoman Gwen Stefani wasn’t “just” anything. And at a main-stage reunion Saturday night (April 13) at Coachella, Stefani proved that the band’s debut hit — and the band itself — remains as vital as ever in its […]

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. This is partner content. From platform sandals to lace-up boots, festival season is a the perfect time to step your shoe […]

The year may have just begun, but it’s already time to start thinking about the 2024 music festival season. Boston Calling announced its 2024 lineup via their official Instagram page on Tuesday (Jan. 9), with Ed Sheeran, The Killers, Hozier and Tyler Childers set to headline. This year’s edition of Boston Calling — which launched […]

This week, organizers with Playa Luna Presents announced the Dead Ahead Festival, an all-inclusive musical experience at the Moon Palace Resort in Riviera Cancún, Mexico, from Jan. 12-15, 2024, celebrating the Grateful Dead songbook with two nights of curated collaborations. Dead Ahead Festival includes Grateful Dead alumni Bobby Weir and Mickey Hart, as well as […]

Anyone who has attended a music festival has experienced the frustration of attempting to send and receive calls and texts amid tens of thousands of other phone-wielding fans. Messages often don’t go through, arrive an hour after being sent or show up en masse when the night is over, creating confusion and leaving meet-ups unmet.

Anyone who has attended many of the leading U.S. music festivals over the past few years has likely noticed improvements, however, with cell service approaching real-time efficiency. This isn’t a fluke, but the result of focused improvements in how service is provided both generally and at music-related mass gatherings specifically.

“Frankly, I consider phone conductivity kind of like running water these days. Venues have to have it,” says Matthew Pasco, who as vp of information for the Las Vegas Raiders oversaw construction of the distributed antenna system (DAS) at Allegiant Stadium, which has hosted major tours from Taylor Swift, Metallica, The Rolling Stones and Garth Brooks since opening in summer 2021.

That’s because while cellphones used to just be a way of connecting with (or trying to connect with) friends at shows, they’re now seen as part of the concert and festival experience, with mobile ticketing, venue apps and digital payment systems demanding fully functional coverage. Connectivity also fosters greater safety, allowing fans in need of assistance to dial out during emergencies. Social media is another important consideration, with coverage at events now expected to keep up with the ballooning data demands of TikTok, Instagram and even fans livestreaming entire shows, as has happened recently on tours by Swift and Bruce Springsteen. According to Verizon, at Governors Ball 2022, its subscribers alone used roughly 14.5 terabytes of data, which equates to one person streaming 3 million songs continually for over 10 years. So, too, do fans arrive with phones, Apple Watches and iPads ­— and the expectation all of them will work.

Until recently, cell coverage has been wonky at big events as the demands of smartphones collided with networks designed before devices burned through so much data. With upwards of 125,000 people squeezed into a square mile (the size of Coachella’s site), all of whom texting and posting simultaneously, carriers — primarily AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile in the United States — would often overload. Event organizers, who sought to solve this by providing Wi-Fi, found those networks crashed easily due to high volume.

Enter Irvine, Calif.-based tech company MatSing. Founded in 2005, the company builds antennas that, instead of reflecting signals like a traditional antenna, refracts them, creating multiple independent signals beamed in multiple directions. Instead of implementing 10 individual antennas, an event can then employ one ­MatSing lens antenna that creates 10 separate coverage sectors and allows multiple carriers to utilize it.

“Festivals are the hardest thing to create coverage capacity for,” says MatSing executive vp Leo Matytsine. “That was our best way of getting a foot in the door.”

The first music carrier to use MatSing’s technology at a festival was AT&T at Coachella in 2014. “People actually got connectivity that year,” says Matytsine. “After that, Verizon and T-Mobile saw what was deployed, and it started to snowball because the technology worked.” Indeed, it’s how networks function — or don’t — in high-demand settings like festivals that typically cause carriers to lose subscribers, making performance at mass gatherings crucial to customer retention.

MatSing sells its 150-plus antenna models directly to carriers, and they are now permanently installed at 32 U.S. stadiums, arenas, raceways and venues including the Hollywood Bowl, with temporary deployments at myriad Super Bowls, presidential inaugurations and festivals including South by Southwest, Austin City Limits, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Burning Man. The lattermost employs one antenna — incorporated by law enforcement as a safety measure, but which provides many attendees with service — while Coachella uses a few to cover its entire festival grounds. Prices vary depending on size and range from a couple of thousand for smaller models to tens of thousands of dollars for larger ones.

Carriers have also caught up with demand. While companies previously deployed mobile cell towers (along with MatSing tech) at mass gatherings to supplement coverage, Verizon representative Karen Schulz notes that “the network has evolved significantly over the past several years.” Improvements include fiber network expansion, carrier aggregation (which lets data flow freely across multiple spectrum bands) and U.S. deployments of high-speed 5G networks starting around 2019.

Unsurprisingly, venues themselves are now building and retrofitting to suit coverage requirements. Allegiant paid for the venue’s eight-figure DAS to maintain ownership over this asset, which the three major carriers rent out. (“I don’t want to sign away all the plumbing in my building so every time someone flushes the toilet, someone else gets paid,” says Pasco.) This DAS system also utilizes 28 MatSing antennas that hang from the roof around the ring of the stadium and service the 60,000-capacity bowl. (This option was chosen over deploying mini antennas under every seat, an option Los Angeles’ 3-year-old SoFi Stadium went with for its DAS.) At Allegiant, traditional cellular antennas have been installed in walkways, VIP suites and other areas MatSing antenna signals can’t reach. The stadium also offers Wi-Fi that has a 60% to 70% adoption rate among fans.

Some older stadiums and arenas, which are often “cement monstrosities,” says Pasco, “really struggle with deploying premium DAS systems because they don’t have the pathway to run cabling.” When such retrofits happen, they’re often “a little bit ugly,” he says.

However this coverage is implemented, its evolution is fostering increased connectedness among individuals in massive crowds, between attendees and venues themselves and with audiences well outside the confines of a show. This festival season, attendees might not even have to ask, “Hey, U there?”

If anyone can make Made In America extra special this year, it’s Lizzo and SZA. On Wednesday (June 14), the festival announced the two “Special” collaborators as its 2023 headliners. From Sept. 2-3, 2023, the two Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping cross-genre stars will entertain fans at Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia. This year’s festival will […]

Get ready to party, New York City. The 2023 Governors Ball is right around the corner, with festivities kicking off Friday (June 9) and lasting throughout the weekend. And, with three big stages in Queens’ Flushing Meadows Corona Park and three consecutive days to catch your favorite artists performing, this year’s lineup is packing some […]

After teasing the return of his beloved festival Camp Flog Gnaw during Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar’s “The Hillbillies” video on Tuesday (May 30), Tyler, The Creator granted the wishes of his fanbase by announcing the dates for the forthcoming event on Wednesday. 

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Slated for Nov. 11 and Nov. 12, Tyler, the Creator, will once again bring Camp Flog Gnaw to Dodger Stadium for the festival’s ninth installment. According to a press release, a limited number of sale passes will be available for purchase beginning Friday (June 2) at 12 p.m. local time. 

For $335 plus fees, GA passes will allow fans to attend Saturday and Sunday’s showings, while an advanced price of $595 plus fees will guarantee VIP status. A VIP wristband will enable fans entry on both days along with “a dedicated entry lane, exclusive food and shaded/seating areas, a viewing area at multiple stages, and a VIP merch package including a backpack, water bottle, snow globe, mini helmet, carabiner, baseball keychain, and a pin,” according to the release. Attendees can get Super VIP passes for $1,495 plus fees.

According to the press release, “Super VIP passes will include 1 VIP wristband good for entry to both Saturday and Sunday of Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival with a dedicated entry lane, exclusive food and shaded/seating areas, access to the exclusive Super VIP Clubhouse, a viewing area at multiple stages, and a Super VIP merch package including a custom SE 29″ Big Flyer Bike, Converse x Golf Wang custom shoe, a Camp Flog Gnaw blanket, fanny pack, mug, and pin.” Those with GA and VIP passes will still be able to enjoy carnival rides, while carnival game tickets require a pass, which will be available separately. 

Last year, Tyler canceled the festivities after logging in a lot hours on his on Call Me If You Get Lost Tour. “It’s really not that deep,” says Tyler’s manager Chris Clancy of the Goldenvoice-produced event. “Tyler toured all year and was busy with a number of projects. Reading the tea leaves and what’s happening with festivals coming out of the pandemic, we thought it would be best to come back next year.”

Check out the Camp Flog Gnaw website for more info on the festival. 

This year, renowned New York radio station Hot 97 looks to shake things up with its annual performance staple, Summer Jam, with Cardi B set to headline June 4 at UBS Arena.

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Cardi B looks to bring her laundry bag of hits, including Billboard Hot 100 chart-toppers “Bodak Yellow,” “WAP,” “Up” and more. The Bronx dynamo will have a practice round when she headlines Rolling Loud Thailand April 13-15 along with Travis Scott and Chris Brown. In June 2022, Cardi B headlined Wireless Festival, and in December, she reportedly netted $1 million for a 35-minute set at Art Basel. “I got payed 1 million dollars to perform at this elite bankers private event for 400 people and only for 35 minutes,” she tweeted in response to a mocking her “backyard set.”

In addition to Cardi B, Hot 97 enlisted a phalanx of female upstarts to perform along with the touted superstar, including Ice Spice, GloRilla, Coi Leray and Lola Brooke. More New York representatives will also hit the stage at UBS Arena, notably French Montana, Lil Tjay and Fivio Foreign. To commemorate 50 years of hip-hop, The LOX will lead the way.

Younger artists such as NLE Choppa, Kenzo B, 2Rare, Sha EK, McVert and TQ will perform at a pre-festival show hosted by Montana. According to the radio station, more acts will be announced later. Tickets go on sale Saturday (April 8) at 10 a.m., with presales starting today.

“HOT 97’s Summer Jam is a hip-hop staple, and we are excited to bring the most electric show of the summer back to New York for hip-hop’s 50th anniversary,” said Bradford Tobin, president, chief operating officer and general counsel in a press release.

“The show is all about bringing hip-hop’s biggest stars to the stage, and we are honored to have New York’s own Cardi B as our headliner this year,” added TT Torrez, multimedia personality and VP of artist and label Relations. “I am so proud of the strong female presence in our lineup, which represents women’s dominance over the airwaves this year.”

See the lineup below.