I’ve been a professional influencer hater for years now. I love to hate them, and I love to blame them for so much — my favorite being their tendency to turn chances for genuine human connection, like music festivals, into soulless opportunities to make content for cash and clout.
The ultra-commercialized version of festivals like Lollapalooza (Lolla) today are a far cry from the low-cost, community-based celebrations of music from the ’70s. Influencers, as the front-facing ambassadors of this changing market, make an easy target that I’d love to pin it all on.
But the truth is that it’s not the influencers’ fault — not fully, at least. They’re not the masterminds behind the chess game of commodification that’s ruining the festival experience for everyday consumers. They’re just the pawns.
And all of us are the losers.
Here’s how the game is played: festival producers (and the brands that sponsor their festivals) pay for an influencer’s ticket. In exchange, the influencer makes photo and video content on sight that serves as advertisement for the festival or brand.
It’s easy to resent influencers for their access to free tickets, while us peasants have to scrape money together and scramble to buy tickets before they sell out (which happened in under an hour this year for Lolla). But be so for real: Can you blame them for jumping on the opportunity to see artists like Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and Tyler, The Creator, for free? Wouldn’t you do the same?
“I don’t blame the influencer(s) that get invited,” Alejandra Roman, a Chicago-based rave scene influencer, said. “Anyone would go if they were invited. … Don’t get mad at the influencers; get mad at the brand.”
In other words, if you need someone to rage against because you sat in the ticket queue for an hour only to end up on the waitlist, don’t take your frustrations out on influencers. In reality, they’re just doing the job for which they were hired.
Roman said that festival producers and brands utilize influencer marketing to “create FOMO,” or the fear of missing out. That, in turn, boosts the social currency — or as the kids say, the hype — of these events. This manufactured hype is the festival’s method of tricking audiences into believing that ticket prices equivalent to a first born child are actually reasonable.
“The hyper-commercialization, the ad-driven nature of these festivals, just unfortunately makes it a money-oriented experience,” Meredith Bach, a senior at DePaul, said. “It’s all about profit … and I think it taints the experience of just going to listen to music.”
Lolla’s ticket prices have increased 49% over the past decade, which severely outpaces the inflation rate of production cost of 32%, according to Finance Buzz. In short, consumers are saddled with disproportionately high costs that pour more money into Lolla’s profit margins — and are still willing to pay them.
That is, if they can afford it. These ever-soaring prices often box out many of the fans who are genuinely passionate about the artists that festivals tout. Chicago-based gossip and lifestyle influencer Michelle Lopez said this results in “dead crowds” of people who have the financial freedom to “do something just to say they did it.”
But festival producers aren’t the only ones hoping to turn a profit off the backs of music fans. The city of Chicago has a stake in this business model as well, as former mayor Lori Lightfoot called Lolla a “significant economic driver” for the city in a statement from 2022.
Chicago has a 9% “amusement tax” on festival tickets, meaning the city adds $37 onto every $415 4-day general admission ticket purchased that it gets to keep. This revenue opportunity helps explain Lightfoot’s decision to permit the festival to increase its capacity to 115,000 in 2022.
Though the crowd sizes at Lolla have increased, the size of the venue has not. This has turned festival-goers into a herd of cash cows inside a venue that’s packed like a factory farm.
Lopez said this phenomenon makes the experience “horrible” and even dangerous, which she learned all too well after being stuck in the record-breaking crowd at Chappell Roan’s set last year.
“After the set ended, it took me 20 minutes to get out of the crowd,” Lopez said. “It was so bad. I was so anxious. These two young girls … were crying next to me.”
To sum it all up, festival producers and the city of Chicago are trying to coerce you to buy overpriced tickets and enter dangerous environments. Influencers are a part of that, but only a small one. To put it all on them would be like blaming an entire rainstorm that delays a show on one cloud.
Maybe I don’t hate influencers as much as I thought I did.
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