Dance music dominates Dutch festival season

Dance music usurped rock as the dominant genre at Dutch music festivals this summer, according to a new study.

The Festival programming in the Netherlands report by Martijn Mulder, researcher at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, reveals that DJs/producers made up almost a third of festival bills, whereas rock declined from 32% to 19%. Pop/electronic artists occupied 61% of headline slots.

It paints a mixed picture for the scene, with the number of performances per festival day on the up despite multiple events disappearing from this year’s calendar, and the share of female artists on festival stages also decreasing since the previous report in 2022.

Meanwhile, the share of non-European artists has fallen by half since 2016 – the year of the first study – with rising costs and Brexit cited as factors. However, there were also good news stories such as Lichtenvoorde’s Zwarte Cross, which expanded this year and is already close to sold out for 2025.

“Quite a few festivals that had been on the calendar for years were forced to pull the plug”

“2024 was an eventful festival year,” says Mulder in his foreword to the report. “Quite a few festivals that had been on the calendar for years were forced to pull the plug. Parkpop, Welcome to the Village, Bruis, Tuckerville, Rolling Loud and Mañana Mañana are among the long list of festivals that, for various reasons, could no longer hold the line. But fortunately, there was still a lot of great things to experience last year.

“The Zwarte Cross expanded with a fourth festival day, several major festivals sold out and the number of music performances per festival was higher than ever.”

Eleven events were profiled overall, with a chapter of the report focusing on the so-called “big six”: Best Kept Secret, Down The Rabbit Hole, Lowlands, Paaspop, Pink Pop and Zwarte Cross.

The full report is available to read here.

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