The Future of Coachella: Predictions for the Next Decade
Coachella 2023 will be the heartbeat of music for two straight weekends here at the end of April. All eyes will be fixated on Indio, California as some of music’s most prestigious acts will take the stage. And as the landscape of music currently shifts, it begs the question. What will be the future of Coachella and what the music of Coachella would look like ten years from now?
This festival is known for setting the standard and breaking barriers, and as you can see now with the Coachella 2023, that tradition will continue. With a historic lineup set to take place this month, if you compare this year’s billing to ten years ago, the lineups look entirely different. So it makes you wonder how much different Coachella will look in the future. Which genres will take over? Which genres will fade? Which artists will emerge as headliners? While it is impossible to know for sure, here is our guess at what Coachella will look like throughout the next decade.
When you look across the landscape of music, there seem to be three genres that are poised to take over the festival landscape for the foreseeable future. Those genres are hip-hop, Latin and K-pop. It feels like artists in these categories will (and to an extent already are) take over the live events landscape over the next ten years.
You don’t have to go far to make the argument for Latin and K-pop all you have to do is look at this year’s Coachella 2023 lineup. Two of the three headliners in Bad Bunny and BLACKPINK will make history as the first Latin and Spanish-speaking headliner and the first K-Pop headliner the festival has ever seen. In the coming years, it would not be surprising if 20-30% of the Coachella lineup was dominated by Latin artists. Which is a huge chunk for a festival that used to be very rock based. And what is now only one K-Pop group on the bill could easily turn into 6 or 7 with the likes of EXO, NCT 127, TWICE, Red Velvet, Seventeen, GOT7, and the rise of Tomorrow x Together. And, of course, don’t be shocked if not too long from now if BTS is back closing out the entire festival. It is easy to see all of this become a possibility when it once was not even a distant thought.
Even though hip-hop has been around for some time, there have been multiple rappers who have headlined the festival, such as Jay-Z in 2010, Kanye West in 2011 or Kendrick Lamar in 2017. The genre has never been more popular than it is now. It was just five years ago that hip-hop took over rock as the most popular genre in the United States, and now it is truly starting to come into its prime. There are more influential rappers in the industry than there have ever been before. And deservingly so because everyone now is so incredibly talented. Artists who know how to entertain a crowd better than most, it’s impossible to ignore their impact on pop culture. You can already see a trend as the last five years have seen both a Coachella headliner and a co-headliner be of the hip-hop genre.
Lastly, right behind these three genres would be the world of electronic music. Even though many consider the “golden years” of dance music to have taken place around 2014, nobody can deny that this genre has never been more popular than it is right now. With all-time attendance records at events across the world, more and more people continue to engage in dance music. And who would have ever thought that an act such as Swedish House Mafia would not just headline Coachella but close out the entire festival alongside The Weeknd in 2022? DJs have now completely taken over the Sahara Tent and have made it the home of EDM. And now, this year, Calvin Harris, a DJ, has been chosen to have the “Returning to the Desert” legacy spot. It is not far-fetched to say that over the next ten years, Coachella’s dance lineup might compete with other electronic-specific festivals for a better experience. Each year Goldenvoice continues to highlight this side of music more and more.
You never exactly know what will emerge over the next decade, but that’s the best part, it’s a mystery. Maybe it’s artists we are already familiar with or maybe it’s somebody who has yet to be discovered. Coachella does a tremendous job at trying to give one of the best unique experiences during festival season, and they are at the top of the game when it comes to highlighting the best talent in the world. It will be fun to see the journey of where the company goes, but one thing is for sure, it will be an absolute blast.
Coachella 2023 takes place on April 14th-16th and 21st-23rd. Join the Waitlist for Weekend One here and purchase tickets for Weekend Two here. Check out the full Coachella 2023 lineup below.
Image Credit: courtesy of Coachella / Provided by dawbell PR
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