Coachella

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Coachella (officially called the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, or also known as Coachella Festival) is an annual music and arts festival held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, located in the Coachella Valley in the Colorado Desert. The event was co-founded by Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen in 1999, and currently takes place during the second and third weekends of April. About 125,000 people attend the annual event each day in both weekends, and it made more than US$114 million in 2019.^[1]

History

On November 5, 1993, Pearl Jam performed for almost 25,000 fans at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California.^[2] The site was selected because the band refused to play in Los Angeles as a result of a dispute with Ticketmaster over service charges applied to ticket purchases.^[3]

The show established the polo club's suitability for large-scale events. Paul Tollett said the concert sowed the seeds for an eventual music festival there.^[4]

Around 1997, Goldenvoice was struggling to book concerts against larger companies, and they were unable to offer guarantees as high as their competitors, such as SFX Entertainment.^{[note 1]}

As a result, the idea of a music festival was conceived, and Tollett began to brainstorm ideas for one with multiple venues. His intent was to book trendy artists who were not necessarily chart successes.^[5] While attending the 1997 Glastonbury Festival, Tollett handed out pamphlets to artists and talent managers that featured pictures of the Empire Polo Club and pitched a possible festival there.

On July 16, 1999, Goldenvoice announced that the Indio City Council had approved the festival and would provide $90,000 for services such as traffic control and public safety. The funds came with a guarantee of repayment from the promoter, as the city was keen to avoid incurring another loss; the previous year's Big Gig festival cost Indio $16,000 due to last-minute changes to the lineup and poor attendance.^{[note 2]} The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was officially announced on July 28 with a preliminary lineup of 40 acts, tickets went on sale on August 7.^{[note 3]}

Coachella's announcement came just one week after the conclusion of Woodstock '99. Goldenvoice's insurance costs increased 40% as a result and the company faced uncertainty regarding Coachella's tickets. Organizers were already aiming to provide a "high-comfort festival experience" for Coachella but rededicated themselves to those efforts after Woodstock '99. Tollett called the decision to announce a new festival just two months prior to staging it "financial suicide".^[6]

The annual festival started out as a single-day event in 1999, which then expanded to a two-day event in 2002. The event later expanded to three days in 2007. As of 2012, the event lasts 2 weekends long during the middle of April. The event was canceled in 2020 and 2021, both due to complications from the COVID-19 pandemic, the former which was initially postponed to October of 2020 before being canceled altogether in April of 2021.^[7][8] The event resumed annually in 2022.^[9]

YouTube channel

The Coachella YouTube channel was created on May 9, 2006. Their first video, titled "Coachella Tilt-Shift", was uploaded on October 5, 2010. Each location of concerts in the event have their own livestreams in the channel, which are replayed.

Locations

• Coachella Stage
• Outdoor Theatre
• Mojave
• Gobi
• Yuma
• Sonora
• Sahara

Notes

References

Attribution

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