When Does a “Concert” Become a “Festival”

Live music is returning and that’s exciting! We’ve got an awesome trip that we’re giving away to see Shinedown in Tampa. I was looking at the complete line-up that includes Seether, Fozzy, Dirty Honey, Ayron Jones and a few others. I wondered aloud, “When does a concert become a festival”?

It turns out that there’s not a clear-cut definition. There’s not a list of criteria that define a “festival” versus just a concert or show. So, why don’t I just make some up.

Based on some of the things that the big, well-known music festivals all have in common, these seem to be the basic requirements to have a real “fest”.

1.) Multiple acts

You can’t just have one or two bands to be a legit fest. There’s no agreed-upon number of artists needed to qualify as a fest so…I’ll just arbitrarily pick a number, I guess?

Six. You need at least six musical acts to be a real “fest”.

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2.) Multiple days

Lisa Sanchez disagrees and says that a fest COULD be just a one-day event. But the norm for the big music festivals seems to be multiple bands spread out over multiple days. Coachella, Bonnaroo, ACL and Pitchfork are all at least 3 days long. The ORIGINAL music festival, Woodstock, was billed as “3 days of Peace and Music”. Hell, even Fyre Fest was SUPPOSED to have been back-to-back 3 day weekend events. Of course, it didn’t pan out that way.

3.) More Than Just Music

Most of the well-known fests have other stuff going on. Bonnaroo is also an Arts Festival. Same for Coachella. And, of course, The Gathering of the Juggalos is a combination concert/wrestling/science lesson.

4.) Anything that you add the word “fest” to

At least that seems to be OUR station policy. Balloonfest, Downtown Streetfest…I even wanted to call our Bacon Festival “BA-CONN” just to change it up some. Of course, I got outvoted and that’s why it’s called Baconfest to this day.