As festival season rolls out, the choice between going to a concert or a music festival shouldn’t even be a question.
I understand how seeing your favorite musical artist in concert can be a life changing event, but as ticket prices keep increasing, you get way better value in buying a music festival ticket than a concert ticket.
Last year when Kendrick Lamar announced he was going on tour for the first time in six years, I knew I had to be there.
I woke up early and hopped on the worst website of all time, Ticketmaster, and knew that I was going to be on the floor for the show.
Unfortunately for me, I was floored by how expensive ticket prices were, $210 out the door on Ticketmaster to see my favorite rapper of all time.
While the concert was great, I was surprised to see Lamar come back to the Bay Area again this August to perform at the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco.
Outside Lands is a three-day festival held annually at Golden Gate park.
Tickets for the entire three-day weekend stand at $507.95 with single day passes currently available at $224.95.
For nearly the same price, I could see Lamar and a plethora of other musical artists for only $15 more than I spent to see him last August.
Seeing Lamar and his two opening acts shouldn’t cost as much as a single-day music festival pass.
The price of concert tickets have increased 17.8% in 2022 with the average ticket price being $108, according to a Dec. 1, 2022 CNBC article.
We all know how difficult it can be to secure tickets for our favorite musical artists. Tickets for Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” famously caused the Ticketmaster website to crash as 3.5 million fans attempted to buy tickets, according to a Nov. 17, 2022 Variety article.
It’s going to be a cruel summer for Bay Area Swifties, who now are going to fork out $800 or more on secondary marketing companies such as Stubhub just to sit in the fourth deck of Levi’s Stadium to see her.
On the other hand, full-weekend passes and one-day passes are all available for music festivals such as Governors Ball Music Festival in New York, Lollapalooza in Chicago and of course Outside Lands in San Francisco.
Another thing that makes festivals superior is discovering new artists that you would have never known about without going there.
When I went to rap artist Tyler, the Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival in Los Angeles, I was looking solely to see Tyler as well as rap group BROCKHAMPTON, but while waiting at the main stage, I fell in love with the very first band that took the stage, Elephant Gym.
The Taiwanese math-rock group graced the stage and played a very impressive set that made me fall in love with the band, a band I would have never listened to if I hadn’t attended this festival.
Math rock is a sub genre of indie rock music that focuses on progressive rock-inspired guitar riffs and unconventional time signatures, according to a Sept. 27, 2021 Master Class article.
The same thing happened when I attended Lollapalooza in 2019. I was excited to see rappers such as Childish Gambino and 21 Savage, but ultimately really enjoyed the opening act, punk-rock band IDLES, on the main stage.
While these opening acts don’t receive the same stage productions as their headlining counterparts, when seeing smaller bands such as IDLES, they were welcoming enough to bring audience members on stage to perform with them.
Seeing IDLES embrace the fans in the audience who weren’t necessarily there to see them made me really appreciate their performance more.
Another interesting aspect about music festivals is that they often have a variety of different food options from outside the venue.
When I went to Lollapalooza in Chicago, event organizers had booked multiple tents with food from the entire city, which gave me a ton of different options to choose from.
The food options that a festival will offer will always beat out those nasty hot dogs and fries sold at sports arenas.
Some downsides of going to a music festival is you’ll be faced with a larger crowd compared to an arena or theater concert.
Last year, Outside Lands was expected to have 75,000 attendees per day, according to an August 3, 2022 SF Chronicle article, and in 2017, Coachella averaged 125,00 daily attendees, according to an April 14 San Diego Union-Tribune article.
When you are that far back from the stage and can hardly see the performer, at that point are you even really at the concert?
If you are debating about going to a festival this summer, I highly recommend it and enjoy all of the scenery and listen to new acts that a traditional concert doesn’t have.
