Photo Credit: cuzinmank / CC by 3.0
Coachella’s tepid ticket sales last year have led to a new problem—major headliners don’t want to constrain themselves to the Coachella stage. A new report suggests both Kendrick Lamar and Rihanna said ‘no thanks’ to headlining the festival this year.
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival hasn’t had great luck with its headliners the last few years, either. Frank Ocean’s closing set for Coachella 2023 led to many a post mortem dissection, explaining what went wrong. From the show starting an hour late to completely changed stage production—fans who pay $500 per ticket plus more for amenities expect more when they attend.
In 2022, Coachella partnered with FTX to sell ten ‘lifetime passes’ for the concert via NFTs—which promptly became unavailable after FTX collapsed into bankruptcy after its founders’ fraud was revealed. Ticket purchasers who kept their NFTs stored on the FTX platform no longer had access to them. Those who did withdraw the NFT say its functionality stopped working when FTX collapsed. Those ten lifetime passes accounted for $1.5 million in sales, but Coachella partnered with FTX for other NFT promotions that year.
The result of those disasters left Coachella ticket sales tepid last year, when tickets for the second weekend were available right up until the event. That’s almost unheard of in the world of live music, where Coachella tickets used to sell out within hours of availability. Coachella promoter Goldenvoice appears to be interested in returning some of the hype for this major music festival, but not everyone is on board. Goldenvoice President Paul Tollett is reported to have reached out to potential headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Rihanna—only to be declined.
Kendrick Lamar is no stranger to Coachella, cutting his musical teeth on the stage in 2012 and then headlining the festival in 2017. His very public beef with Drake has led to massive interest in his music and speculation that Kendrick Lamar will be touring in 2025. Meanwhile, Rihanna hasn’t toured in years though she did accept a gig as the Super Bowl Halftime Show entertainer for 2023. Kendrick Lamar is headlining the Super Bowl Halftime performance this year. Both seemed like safe bets for headliners at Coachella 2025—the only problem? Both of them declined.
“Lamar is scheduled to perform at the 2025 Super Bowl and then plans a tour of major stadiums. Rihanna, head of a growing business empire, didn’t need the money or the exposure,” reads a Bloomberg report citing industry sources. “With six months to go until next year’s festival, Tollett is scrambling to secure the kind of headliner that can restore the luster of the largest music festival in North America.”
