Coachella 2023
Coachella 2023, a contentious topic, was it worth the money?
musicisentropy, CC BY-SA 2.0
With crowds growing, attendees are struggling with lines, resources, and transportation, is it even worth going?
Coachella is a yearly music and arts festival that takes place in Coachella Valley, Indio, California. This festival brings together some of the most well-known artists along with up-and-coming artists hoping for some new exposure and publicity. These artists come from all over the world to share their form of music and art.
This year at the 6-day long music festival over 150 artists preformed ranging from small artists to some of the most listened to artists in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people attend each year growing more and more as time goes on.
Fans were ecstatic over the back-to-back artists that they could enjoy without having to leave the crowd. At the festival there were various stages and groups to watch. From K-pop to rap the crowd could choose where and who they wanted to listen to.
While fans were excited to watch, Coachella was not all sunshine and rainbows, it was reported that the prices were outrageous. Just starting at $550 for general admission tickets and almost double that for VIP admission tickets, this is not including an Airbnb, hotel, camping, food, drinks, and travel/transportation, some participants were looking at trips well over 2-5000 dollars. A journalist attending the festival said “The fast-growing tally was at roughly $3,500 before I’d even heard a single song.”
Another issue with Coachella is its location, in the center of Los Angeles traffic is already bad enough as it is. After finally finding a parking spot the last thing people wanted to do was go on a long walk to the festival through the audacious dust in the air. This dust can cause breathing problems and make the performances a lot less enjoyable.
One of the main talking points of the festival was the Frank Ocean performance, after not preforming live in years this attracted many fans of all ages. Unfortunately, many attendees where highly disappointed when the singer showed up over an hour late and did not even play some of his most popular songs. Additionally, the festival’s curfew cut the performance even shorter.
Continuing with the performances, some of the most current popular musicians preformed such as Metro Boomin, 21 Savage, Diddy, The Weekend, Dominic Fike, and Rosalia. Kali Uchis and Tyler the Creator collaborated on one of their most popular songs, See you again, causing a huge reaction from the crowd after the song has recently blown up on practically every social media platform and radio.
Through the thick and thin, this festival is an out-of-world experience that can be both positive and negative to different people. As more learn about this festival it will grow to even more, potentially causing ticket prices to rise even higher.
In years to come, will the festival change? Will more popular artists present themselves onto one of the various stages? This festival has been substantial in pop culture and is continuing to grow its presence on social media. With Instagram and Tiktok posts left and right, will there be even more attention brought to the festival next year?
