Insights from a Music Festival

Outside Lands Greatest Hits 

I spent the past weekend in Golden Gate Park with 75,000 other music fans for Outside Lands. This is my fourth year attending the festival, and I love watching how it changes each year and how the crowd responds to those changes. I’ll get into some of the trends I noticed this year and what they might mean for a larger pop culture conversation in a bit. But first, I just wanted to run down my favorite acts and encourage folks to check out their music. Now in no particular order, are the acts I loved this year:

• Janelle Monáe

• Bob the Drag Queen

• Zedd

• Gabriels

• Raveena

• Becky Hill

• Nora En Pure

• Megan The Stallion

Platform Updates

Instagram & Threads

• Instagram Is Testing New Comment and Share Counts on Posts In-Stream

• Instagram Is Testing a New Reels Display for Multi-Advertiser Ads

The Rest of Meta 

• Creators say Meta is banning them from its creator-focused Facebook group for posting about diminished payouts

YouTube

• YouTube Adds New ‘Samples’ Element to YouTube Music to Improve Artists Discovery

• YouTube details “long-term vision” for its medical misinformation policy

• YouTube Will Now Let You Add More Links To Your Channel Profile

• YouTube Previews New Option to Link Shorts Clips to Longer Video Uploads

Reddit

• Reddit’s menswear hub is the latest casualty of its battle with moderators

Tumblr 

• Tumblr is rolling out a new web interface, and it looks a lot like X (formerly Twitter)

Snap 

• Snapchat’s My AI goes rogue, posts to Stories, but Snap confirms it was just a glitch

Twitter

The Product 

• Elon Musk’s X is throttling traffic to websites he dislikes (the line between product updates and dumpster fire watch is so blurred)

• X Is Depreciating Its Promoted Accounts Ad Option in Favor of More Interactive Ad Formats

• X Moves Forward With New ID Confirmation Elements to Tackle Bots (do not give this company your personal information like this) 

The Dumpster Fire

• Special counsel obtained Trump DMs despite ‘momentous’ bid by Twitter to delay, unsealed filings show

Culture Movers 

Film & TV

• Linear TV Takes a Backseat to Streaming Services With Viewers Dropping Below 50% for First Time

• YouTube's NFL Sunday Ticket includes live chat and highlights in Shorts

Music 

• Spotify Looked to Ban White Noise Podcasts to Become More Profitable

Creator Economy 

• Illinois Just Passed the Country's First Law Protecting Children of Influencers

• FilmRise is taking YouTubers to TV 

Gaming 

• Neopets is promising a ‘new era’ with an improved website and fixed Flash games

AI 

• Someone built an AI model on MrBeast content (I feel like a prophet) 

• Zoom rewrites its policies to make clear that your videos aren’t used to train AI tools

• Amazon is rolling out a generative AI feature that summarizes product reviews

• Google Chrome will summarize entire articles for you with built-in generative AI

• The Associated Press sets AI guidelines for journalists

Scams

• Paris Hilton is “sliving” it up in her new Roblox world

Outside Lands Trend Spotting 

Celebrity Still Matters

When I spotted “Disiel (Shaquille O’Neal)” on the festival line up I was intrigued. He was on during a slow spot in my personal agenda of artists to see, so I decided to go check it out. What’s Shaq like as a DJ? I now know the answer: awful. Truly the worst attempt at DJing I’ve ever heard. But I wasn’t the only one intrigued enough to check it out. In fact, when after a few minutes, I’d had enough of him yelling, “who wants to get on stage with the Disiel” over his morning radio soundboard key smash attempt at music, I had to fight my way out of one of the largest, most densely packed crowd I encountered all weekend. 

The rise of social media, the collapse of monoculture, and the dawn of influencers have changed how we relate to celebrities. It might look different now, but celebrity is still a cultural force that draws a crowd and directs attention at scale.

We’re In A Dance Music Moment 

A few years ago, Outside Lands added an electronic music-focused tent space. This year they had to close it twice after it appeared the floor might not be able to handle the massive crowd of dancing festival goers. I’m sure the event organizers are doing a post-mortem on the official cause, but I suspect at least part of it comes back to event producers not recognizing just how popular these DJs and their music is right now. Additionally, at Zedd, Odesza, the Dolores tent (see next section), and random DJ sets I heard passing the Toyota Music Den by Toyota, people were dancing at Outside Lands this year.

There’s a theory that dance music becomes more popular during times of economic distress. Well, we’re getting a lot of good dance music right now, and people are loving it. This might not officially be in a recession, but people are definitely feeling pressure somewhere that’s making them want to dance it out. Maybe not-exactly-recession-yet levels of economic pressure plus the accelerating impacts of climate change together trigger the parts of our brains that crave the escapism and sense of community only found on a dancefloor. 

Queer Culture is Here 

This year Outside Lands brought a new offering to the festival grounds. They invited three local queer bars and nightlife groups to each program a day of DJ sets and performances at the new Dolores tent. It was the most consistently fun part of the entire event. If I had time between sets on my schedule, I usually went by the Dolores tent to dance for a bit. It was a good choice every time, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so. SFist called the “not-so-secret winner of Outside Lands.” 

Dolores wasn’t the only source of queer joy at the festival. LGBTQ artists were a prominent part of the lineup each day at the festival. Despite the surge of anti-LGBTQ laws (especially anti-trans laws) across the country, Queer culture isn’t going anywhere. In fact, we are taking up more space than ever before. 

In the 1980s, people were dancing to Wham!, rocking out to Queen, and learning choreography from The Village People. Queer folks have always been here helping facilitate the party but were often pushed aside quickly or asked to hide parts of themselves to reach mainstream success. This era of queer artists are bringing the party while standing out and proud on stage. I’m glad everyone’s invited to the dancefloor with them.

Planet of the Bass Update

Please enjoy the official full-length music video! 

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