More female musicians on festival stages than ever

Women on the rise

Female and Dutch artists are on the rise in the Dutch festival landscape. More than a third (34%) of the music performances featured a female artist on stage and that share has never been so high before: in 2016 it was still 18%. During Best Kept Secret, Motel Mozaique and Welcome to the Village, more than half of the PCACS featured a female artist on stage, and that’s a first.

“Froukje is the queen of the festival season”, POPLIVE states. She played on six out of the eleven researched festivals. A record: in the other researched years not one artist played on five or more festivals.

Read the article in NRC about the POPLIVE research

5 years POPLIVE

In collaboration with the VNPF and Mojo Concerts, researchers from Erasmus University and the Hogeschool Rotterdam analysed the live music sector over the course of five years. Since 2017, POPLIVE collected – on the basis of research on more than 35 VNPF members, more than 2000 concert and festival visitors and a database of almost 300.000 performances – a treasure of information about artists, concert and festival visitors, stages, festivals and policy. A unique venture.

In front of an audience of more than 100 interested people, Martijn Mulder and Erik Hitters (ESHCC) presented the results of the POPLIVE project during an annual congress on the Dutch live music scene. Their findings emphasised the importance of the live experience of the visitor, the changing role of stages and festivals in cities, the consequences of festivalisation and the importance of trust in the popular music sector. VNPF director Berend Schans and TivoliVredenburg director of programming Margriet van der Kraats discussed with the audience the future of stages and festivals, diversity, digitalisation and the societal role of stages and popular music.