Music festivals for and by the community. Values Created Through Music Festivals and the Challenges Organizers Face in the Rapidly Growing Industry.

The music festival industry represents the evolution of how communities share experiences to create cultural and artistic value. Furthermore, festivals have also become deeply embedded in the social and economic planning of urban life, often being employed by authorities to stimulate their local ecosystems. As new musical genres developed highly specialized music festivals catering to certain sub communities have emerged, each with differentiated products allowing individuals to participate with other like-minded people creating new ideas and aesthetical tastes. Music festivals have become a significant part of the music industry due to recent developments in the distribution of music. They function as the primary source of revenue for most musicians around the world but also stand as gatekeepers of the music industry through their power of influencing the taste of their audiences. The increased interest and benefits resulted in an exponential growth in the number of festivals, a trend some name festivalization. Festivalization in turn changed the dynamics of competition within the industry, empowering the position of some stakeholders while leaving others in a worse-off situation. Along with the huge growth of the industry came the inevitable consequence of commercialization, which by some companies was exploited to a great extent, creating inefficiencies in the festival ecosystem. The theoretical framework of this thesis builds upon existing literature on how music festivals have become incubators of values also resulting in the festivalization and the commercialization of the music festival industry. In-depth interviews are conducted with organizers of music festivals differentiated in purpose, scale, location, and artistic focus. The analysis led to a broad and varied view of the topics at hand. While most festival organizers view their festival to have a positive impact on the artistic and cultural life in their area, their approach in creating such impact differed. While not-for-profit festivals kept a clear objective towards providing the most artistically relevant programs, for-profit ones had to account for different factors such as growth or profit. Some consensus regarding the negative effects of festivalization could be found as most organizers agreed it caused aggressive competition resulting in astronomical artist fees, hurting the industry in general. Opposing views against commercialism was a common occurrence, as some criticized its impact on the artists ability to create, others mentioned how it stimulated underground scenes through creating wider attention around the industry.