Unveiling the Secrets of Popular Music Festivals

Music festivals have been growing in popularity and attracting more and more attendees over the past couple of years. A change in revenue structure for musicians and a developing experience economy are driving this over growth of the music event market. With this increasingly competitive market, it is becoming more and more important to know how to attract your audience and guarantee popularity of your festival as organizers. This study will provide an insight into what the key factors are contributing to the differential popularity of Dutch music festivals, specifically examining the impact of festival content, format and social aspects. To come to a meaningful conclusion a survey has been compiled for the top ten biggest music festivals in the Netherlands. These events have been scored by attendees of the 2022 edition based on several variables based on the festival's content, format and social aspect. The results of this questionnaire have been used in a statistical analysis together with the variable for popularity which has been combined by using statistics for level of sold-out tickets, online interaction and event capacity. Ultimately, the statistical analysis resulted in a significant positive effect for the variables ticket price, atmosphere and escapism and in a significant negative effect for location. For the other variables included no significant effects were found. From these results can be concluded that providing in the overall festival experience seems to be key in attracting and mostly retaining customers. The creation of a safe and fun atmosphere in which people express themself freely and escape from daily life is the most important aspect in providing this experience. However, this study comes with significant statistical limitations which limits the generalizability and reliability of the results. Therefore further research is needed to confirm this finding and to answer the follow-up question on how to create such an atmosphere.