Culture

Coachella 2010: 75,000 Fans, 128 Bands, Live Streaming Concerts

by Jordon Chiarelli | April 19, 2010 at 08:50 am

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This weekend marked the 11th annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival,the first festival of its kind to be live streamed for a web audience.

The Coachella live stream was available through Facebook and later, Ustream, which required fans to log in and upload the coverage. The iPhone was also on board, offering an app to its subscribers who wanted to live stream the festival via cellphone.

Professional festival live streams may be the new way to experience music festivals without actually being there.

Coachella by the Numbers

This year's festival attracted 75, 000 fans for 128 acts and extended hours to 1am while adding a 150-ft ferris wheel. The rowdiness factor involved only 84 trips to the hospital, and upgraded camping and parking were enthusiastically received.

This year’s headliners included:

the likes of Jay-Z, Muse and The Gorillaz, but the fans also received a heavy dose of more obscure independent acts.

The History of Coachella

Coachella is the largest festival of its kind in inland Southern California and attracts the very best of the music industry, as well as fans from across the globe every year. It started in 1999 with Rage Against the Machine and Beck and has grown from there.

In a twist of irony, the reason Coachella still exists is because of the slumping economy. At the height of the real estate boom a few years ago, Coachella was very much threatened to be bulldozed out of existence.

“At the height of the real estate boom, owner Alexander Haagen III was tempted to chop up the polo grounds and covert them to residential uses at a big windfall.”

Source: LA Times

Plans for Coachella’s Future

This year's festival experienced some electricity glitches, but with expanding parking and campground space, the general consensus was overall, positive. So much in fact that Coachella representative Paul Tollett has inked an undisclosed leasing deal with the owners of Empire Polo Fields, which will keep the festival around for “the long-term.”

Upgrades to the electrical services and attempts to ease the flow of traffic in the city are goals for next year.