The future of music festivals in cities. An analysis of the underlying values and experienced effects of key stakeholders in urban festivals

The increased importance of live music has transformed today’s music industry. In the Netherlands, this has led to the growth of music festivals in cities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The term festivalisation is often used by the media to describe the rising volume in festivals taking place in public urban areas. In turn, this has led to friction in the relationships between various stakeholders involved in these festivals. To gain a better understanding of the dynamics between these different parties, this research took a qualitative approach to map out their underlying values and experienced effects of music festivals. This is of high relevance with regards to the future of music festivals in cities, as the gentrification of dense cities are threatening the continuation of festivals that used to take place in these areas. To uncover the different perspectives on festivals in the city, the following research question was posed: “Which values and effects do key stakeholders experience in music festivals that take place in the public urban area, against the background of increasing festivalisation?” This study is grounded in a qualitative content analysis of 40 Dutch news articles, as well as 2 in-depth expert interviews with professionals in the festival industry. The analysis allowed for the identification of the main stakeholders: festival organisations, festival visitors, pro-environmental organisations, and various groups of the city municipality and residents. Furthermore, these different parties were connected to their most important values, that could be either economic, social, cultural, or spatial. Additionally, the experienced effects of stakeholders that could be either positive or negative, and direct or indirect, were linked. The findings partly confirmed and nuanced the stakeholders-effect model constructed by Mulder (2018). This study added a third dimension to the model by analysing the underlying values stakeholders attach to urban music festivals. Moreover, evidence showed that some stakeholders could be divided in multiple subgroups as not every party was homogenous in their interests and ideas. In conclusion, this paper contributed to the field of festivalisation as it provides an overview of the most important values and effects of the key stakeholders. Hopefully, this can be used as a means to understand each other’s background and values to ensure the future of music festivals in cities.