[Air-L] "SOCIALS DON’T SOCIALISE IN FIELDS"

[Joly MacFie]

I thought aoir's might like this para, pulled from a story analyzing a
downturn in the UK music festival industry. A promising research avenue?

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https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/weve-got-to-rethink-music-festivals/

*ISSUE 4: CULTURE – SOCIALS DON’T SOCIALISE IN FIELDS*

An increasingly common response from those who went to festivals in the
past but chose not to this year is that ‘they didn’t think they had friends
to go with’. Ouch! I’m not equipped to unpack this one but I’ll try to help
you do so by pointing out two things.

First, social media may result in what Amazon’s *Katie Vitolins*
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/katieschlosser/>referred to as a ‘*claustrophobia
of abundance*’. They may have hundreds (or thousands) of friends online,
but that doesn’t translate into human interaction in festival fields.

Second, remember the target market for many of this year’s festivals –
school leavers (18-19 years) and graduates (21-23 years) — these age
buckets were caught in the awful cross-fire of the 2020 pandemic. Healing
that wound may still be a work in progress.

*“FANS WITH TATTOOS OF THEIR FAVOURITE BAND OR THOSE ABLE TO RECITE LYRICS
WORD-FOR-WORD… HAS WAY MORE MEANING THAN ANY DATA DASHBOARD.”*

Putting angst about future generations aside, another consideration is that
the internet, which I’ve long argued can scale just about anything other
than intimacy. Promoters must have a wry smile when labels debate the
definition of ‘superfan’.

Looking for superfan signals in a pro rata pool of streaming data is
meaningless.

Marty Diamond, a legendary booking agent, once told me that the only data
point he trusts is comments-per-views ratio. Lots of views with no comments
translates to a lot of ‘meh,’ but lesser views accompanied by a higher
ratio means a lot of engaged fans.

For promoters, not only do they have the issues of price and scarcity to
juggle, but they can also visibly count those fans with tattoos of their
favourite band or those able to recite lyrics word-for-word. That has way
more meaning than any data dashboard.

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Joly MacFie  +12185659365
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