Hangout Fest Hosts +80 Artists on the Gulf Coast

The Hangout Music Festival has just released their daily lineup. A wide selection of live music will take over Gulf Shores from May 19 – 22.

After reviewing the response on social media this year, I’ve noticed a majority of the fans are unhappy with lineup overall. I’ve seen this trend of anti-establishment/anti-corporation picking up buzz not only in music, but in politics and sports entertainment.

If you love WWE, sports entertainment like I do, one would see similar trends forming in entertainment on the whole. Let’s say you are one of the only successful independent entrepreneurs in the entertainment industry. You might have been born into it, you might have worked your way up.

Now, let’s say you have the authority to make decisions concerning your brand for years, (WWE from 1985-2000 & Hangout from 2010-2013). Your brand becomes so successful that larger companies want to buy stock into your company in exchange for creative control. It sounds like a great idea for the entrepreneurs, but it usually results with a corporate re-structuring that turns fans off.

It is well known that Viacom/MTV bought into Hangout and Bonnaroo after a few years of success. For the first three years, guests had the opportunity to experience independent music acts that they loved. The independent acts that have toured for over 10-20 years out of passion for the industry. That passion and love for music translates to everything.

After polling over 20,000 Hangout Fest fans on Google+, the majority said that the best Hangout Festival lineup was the first year with independent bands headlining the event.

Quick note, there is three major music labels with Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group and Universal. If you are not on a record label they own, I consider those artists to be independent.

In 2016, the Hangout Fest and WWE fans are not only upset, but becoming uninterested with the companies lack of ability to reposition to their demands.

Here is the real problem. It is not that Hangout Fest and WWE do not hear the complaints, but they are now business partners with companies that do not care about them, or us overall. Their main focus is to push commercial pop acts around the festival circuit in hopes that the diehard indie fans will buy into their product.

I spent over 40-60 hours developing polls on Google+ so that Hangout Fest would have a clear picture of the bands that people support. It was all pushed to the side so pop acts could be shoved down our throats. I’m okay with my work being discredited for no reason, but I have a problem not reporting on the commercialization of a festival that I love dearly. It means a lot to me.

In 2013, I had several festival and companies turned their backs on our outlet, because we didn’t have a large enough reach, (usually bought by corporate media companies). Hangout Fest brought on our independent media outlet for our first year. Since then, we have covered the event year after year. I created a Google Hangout Collection for the festival that produces 250,000-500,000 views every month. Even if MTV pulls big numbers in May, they are still not producing the numbers we generate year round.

It is easy to get upset at the festival and complain about the commercialization on social media. I wrote this post to help show the underlying problems that we all face to give more transparency overall. The festival did not ask me to write this post, and probably wish I would shut up most days to make their lives easier. I will not shut up, and I will challenge them to produce the best event possible. Why? Because when I arrived in 2013 to Gulf Shores I felt this was the best festival in the world. It is my goal to continue to make it the best event possible.