ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a series of expanding perspectives on significant transformations that have shaped music festivals in recent years. More specifically, we trace the ways in which different ways of engaging with festivals online can be seen as a reflection of wider socio-economic factors that have shaped the relationships between festivals, festival-goers and the internet. These include the commercialization, niche-ing and corporatization of the music festival industry, both online and offline over the past decade; the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 – particularly the shift to user-generated content and participatory web cultures; and the ways in which participation online is, in turn, a manifestation of the wider practices of consumption and identity-construction that characterize neoliberal and post-industrial society (Miller 1995; Walkerdine 2003). Drawing on material from a three-year study of music festivals and free parties, we explore the ways in which festival-goers engage with different platforms online. More specifically, we focus on engagements with festival web forums and the creation and sharing of festival videos on the media-sharing site YouTube. By mapping the ways in which contemporary music festivals exhort festival-goers to engage with music festivals such that they both consume and produce – or co-create – the festival experience, and exploring whether and how this takes place online, we identify the ways in which online platforms extend and multiply the meanings and identities of festivals and festival-goers alike.
