Pop-Rock Festivals Today: counterculture hippie transformed into a mainstream commodity

Abstract

In recent years, outdoor pop-rock festivals are becoming a global phenomenon due to their power for attracting tourists and encouraging the economic development of the area that hosts them, but also because they have adapted to the cultural practices of the younger generations, which are dominated by speed, condensation and the search for experiences. Nowadays, it can be argued that festivals, especially outdoor festivals, are products elaborated, designed, planned and commodified by the current cultural and creative industries, in particular by the music business, but also by other actors involved in the process of their development. As a result, festivals have proliferated all over the world, whose organisers have used the collective imaginary of the Counterculture festivals of the 70s and 80s in order to produce commercially marketable, saleable, experienced products that are more typical from the entertainment economy than from culture. Using an in-depth documentary review and interviews with experts, this paper aims to offer a conceptual delimitation that describes the current nature of the phenomenon, which is heir to the hippie counterculture, but is more like an experience and leisure destination. The results suggest that contemporary outdoor pop-rock festivals have transcended beyond the musical product to convert themselves into ecosystems where the players involved —organisers, sponsors, artists, festival-goers, authorities, mass media, etc.— develop their own narratives, rooted in the collective imaginary of popular culture regarding rock festivals, in order to create a product that can be consumed in an experiential way. In the same way, the study shows that, despite the differences and specificities of each event, we are faced with a truly uniform and global phenomenon that responds to common and recognisable characteristics in each one of them.