YouTube brings Coachella to your couch

This past weekend in Indo California was the Coachella Music Festival. It ran from Friday to Sunday and featured dozens of major artists including The Strokes and Kanye West.

Tickets would have cost you roughly $100 each day, and that doesn’t include camping. That will cost you an extra $75.

Of course, that’s all fine if you live in the area. If you’re not in California, or god forbid on the other side of the country, you’re looking at another couple hundred dollars in plane fare just to get to the state of California.

Being the poor college student that I am, as well as being unable to miss the classes I would have needed to, I was unable to go. I was pretty upset that I was going to miss everything, especially The Strokes’ triumphant return, the National, and especially Mumford and Sons.

However, as I was poking around YouTube I came across something glorious: YouTube was live-streaming select acts from Coachella on three different channels (since there were multiple stages).

I was able to watch The National live around 10:30 p.m. (due to the time zone change), and then I had to flip between The Strokes an an encore presentation of Mumford and Sons at 12:30 a.m.

The stream went well into Monday morning, as Kanye West started around 1:30 a.m. eastern Time. They were still showing Encore presentations as well on the other two channels.

This is absolutely brilliant. It definitely makes the people who cannot make it to the festivals feel significantly less left out. Also, those who are only casual fans or fans of only a few acts at the festivals don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to see one band; now they can watch them from the comfort of their home.

I hope that the other festivals see how popular this was for Coachella and apply it to their own fesitvals. I would love to see Bonaroo but I don’t think I can afford to go. If they stream on YouTube, I can avoid all the money and effort to get down to Tennessee but still see all my favorite bands.

Print PDF