The article mostly references Coachella, a very popular festival thats been around for a while. It fails to mention the many smaller festivals happening all the time, with far less noteriety or corporate sponsorship. Of course Coachella sold out, almost everyone in any industry will once enough money becomes involved. But to apply a blanket statement that modern music festivals are dystopian corporate propaganda machines is just plain wrong.
This just seems to be anti-coachella but with a clickbait headline. Sure coachella is super corporate not really surprising. As the article itself mentions there are numerous other festivals happening throughout the country that are community focused, that are collaborative, that are not focused on consumption, etc... etc...
I do wish we had the wild and free festivals they had in the 70s and 80s, but that's pretty much impossible now with all the regulations for legal festivals and the fact that organizers are legally responsible for any accidents that happen. An example of this is EDC Los Angeles 2010 where a 15 year old girl died (after sneaking into the festival and taking pills of ecstasy):<p><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/30/local/la-me-rave-death-20100630" rel="nofollow">http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/30/local/la-me-rave-dea...</a><p>Lawyers made a case of negligence against the organizers, they had a lengthy trial, the organizers settled with the parents outside of court, and the festival was never held in Los Angeles again. As a result of this tragedy and similar events, tight security is introduced, rules are put into place, and we get sterilized events in an attempt to tame the beast. But where do we draw the line?<p>Reading this article felt like the typical Coachella-hate circlejerk because it was more about Coachella than any other music festival, but a good point they brought up was the RFID chips on wristbands that allow them to track your location 24/7. Sure it helps with logistics, but it also lets them track you back to your hotel, where you ate for breakfast, what vendor booths you visited, who you were with, etc. This in combination with the required Coachella phone app would allow them to accrue a pretty large amount of personal data.