This year there were more women, more Dutch and more DJs on the stages at the major festivals. This is apparent from an analysis by Poplive, a study by Erasmus University and Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. They examined the programming of the eleven largest, multi-day festivals that require a ticket: Best Kept Secret, Concert At Sea, Down the Rabbit Hole, Into The Great Wide Open, Lowlands, Motel Mozaïque, Paaspop, Pinkpop, Welcome to the Village. , Woo Ha! and Black Cross.
In more than a third of all performances at the major pop festivals last summer, at least one woman was on stage, according to the research, which is supported by, among others, trade association VNPF and concert organizer Mojo. That’s a lot more than before the pandemic: in 2016, only 18 percent of programming was female. In 2019, that had already grown to 26 percent, a trend that has therefore continued.
Also read what festival directors said about it in 2019: ‘There just aren’t many suitable female acts’
At festivals Best Kept Secret, Motel Mozaïque and Welcome to the Village, more than half of the programming this year consisted of groups with at least one female musician. Never before has there been a large national festival that achieved such a percentage. The number of female artists grew at almost all festivals, only at Zwarte Cross the share of women remained the same as in 2016, at around 15 percent – that festival is at the bottom of the list.
Froukje at Pinkpop 2022:
crowd pullers
Closing acts on the main stages of the festivals – the major crowd pullers – remained mainly male at all festivals. There was an increase in the number of women on the main stages, but only 5 percent of all day-closing events on those main stages were female. The increase is therefore mainly due to the broad programming.
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The line-ups this year were also more Dutch than ever: more than half of the programming at the festivals came from the Netherlands. This is partly a result of the corona pandemic, because many American and Canadian artists have not yet embarked on tours to Europe. At the same time, the researchers indicate that a trend was already visible in 2016 and 2019 for more Dutch artists.
Singer Froukje was at six of the eleven festivals surveyed, more than anyone else. That is a record: in the other years studied, not a single artist was programmed at five or more festivals. Froukje’s colleague S10 was present at five of the eleven festivals this year.
The number of British acts increased slightly overall, despite the problems posed by Brexit.
More electronic music
Another conclusion the researchers draw is that more electronic music was heard than before, in favor of pop and rock. DJs and producers were the most programmed, with the exception of Paaspop and Pinkpop, where their share decreased slightly. At Down The Rabbit Hole, more than a third of the offerings changed from rock to electronic music. At Motel Mozaïque rock was exchanged for indie, and at Concert at Sea pop was more preferred over americana this year. The total share of hip-hop also increased, but that can mainly be explained by the growth of hip-hop festival Woo Hah!. Yet more hip-hop could be seen and heard at festivals Paaspop and Zwarte Cross in 2022 than in the previous years studied.
Also read: Behind the scenes at Best Kept Secret
It is striking that there were a lot fewer artists at many festivals, that applies to six of the eleven. For example, Best Kept Secret went from 129 artists in 2019 to 85 artists in 2022, and at Paaspop the programming went from 238 to 158 acts. Those two festivals did take place early in the season, when the uncertainty surrounding the corona crisis was greater. At festivals that took place later in the season, such as Woo Hah!, Zwarte Cross and Into The Great Wide Open, there were more artists than before the crisis.