Footage from major fests to be shown in WMG’s PlayOn Fest
Past performances at major festivals including Coachella, Primavera Sound and Rock in Rio, as well as from venues such as the O2 Arena, will be streamed as part of Warner Music Group’s three-day virtual event, PlayOn Fest.
The event, which kicks off on Friday (24 April) at midday EDT will stream live for 72 hours via the Songkick YouTube channel, allowing fans to “relive epic performances for one time only”.
The virtual festival will raise funds for the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Covid-19 solidarity response fund through the sale of merchandise and donations.
Performances from over 65 acts, including Ed Sheeran, Cardi B, Coldplay, Twenty One Pilots, Bruno Mars, Janelle Monáe, Green Day and Slipknot will be broadcast over the three-day event.
“PlayOn Fest is a great way to come together, enjoy good music and company, and support the WHO’s most urgent global work to combat Covid-19”
PlayOn Fest will include festival footage from Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Primavera Sound and Rock In Rio, as well as live shows from London’s O2 Arena, Sydney Opera House and Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
“During this pandemic, we are all searching for ways to stay connected,” says Elizabeth Cousens, president and CEO of the UN Foundation, which powers the WHO’s Covid-19 fund.
“The PlayOn Fest is a great way to come together, enjoy good music and company, and support the World Health Organization’s most urgent global work to combat Covid-19.”
Over the weekend, the Global Citizen-organised, Lady Gaga-curated One World: Together at Home benefit concert, which featured live performances from acts in real time, raised $127 million for the WHO’s fund.
Read more about the booming business of livestreaming here.
Photo: slgckgc/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) (cropped)
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Primavera Pro gets untamed with Insumisas
Primavera Sound has partnered with Spanish association Women in the Music Industry (MIM) to launch Insumisas, a new strand of its industry facing Primavera Pro event focused on the role of women in music, culture and politics in increasingly “conservative times”.
Insumisas (Spanish for “Untamed”) will take place on Thursday 30 May, on the second day of the Barcelona convention/festival, and serves to open “debate about the dissemination of feminist thinking in the cultural domain”, according to organisers.
Primavera Sound awarded MIM (Mujeres de la Industria de la Música) its Primavera Award in 2018, in recognition of its work to promote gender equality in the Spanish music industry, and Insumisas cements the relationship between the two parties. The festival is a signatory to the Keychange declaration, and its 2019 line-up is gender-balanced, with at least as many female as male performers.
Insumisas comprises two roundtable discussions. The first, ‘Feminism, politics and culture: separate battles?’, tackles class differences, cultural segregation and the ‘patriarchy’, as well as the role of women in societal conflicts, while ‘All-female showcases: a necessity or a double-edged sword?’ asks whether ‘safe spaces’ for women are a positive development – or an excuse for event organisers to exclude females from the main programme.
Primavera Pro, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, takes place alongside Primavera Sound from 29 May to 2 June 2019. Tame Impala, Solange and Cardi B headline Primavera Sound 2019, which runs from 30 May to 1 June at Parc del Forum in Barcelona.
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Women in the Music Industry to receive Primavera Award
Mujeres de la Industria de la Música (MIM), a Spanish association set up to raise the visibility of women working in music, is to receive the Primavera Award at Primavera Sound 2018, in recognition of its work to promote gender equality in the music industry.
Previous winners of the award, first presented at Primavera Sound 2014, include ITB co-founder Barry Dickins, online music magazine Pitchfork and Danish festival Roskilde.
Commenting on the decision to award the 2018 prize to Mujeres de la Industria de la Música (Women in the Music Industry), Primavera Pro director Almudena Heredero explains: “MIM does not work only by complaining about and denouncing situations of inequality, but dedicates its efforts to proactive work – to finding ways of making projects managed by women viable and working on in integrating them into the music scene, not only on stage, but in all sectors, including […] those which are apparently the most inaccessible, such as technical and programming jobs.”
“We see this award as a homage to all the years of work by many, many women in the music industry who have found themselves very isolated in a predominantly masculine sector”
MIM was established in 2016, and now has around 240 members. It produces training courses, studies and reports and organises collaborations “that help to ensure that the [role] of women in music is not limited to their being objects of desire or the butt of contempt in song lyrics”, according to Primavera.
MIM chair Carmen Zapata (pictured), who is also manager of the Catalonian Concert Venues Association (ASACC), says: “At MIM we are very happy to receive the Primavera Award, which we see as a homage to all the years of work by many, many women in the music industry who have found themselves very isolated in a predominantly masculine sector, and who have fought, and are still fighting, for equality.”
The Primavera Award 2018 will be presented at Primavera Pro in Barcelona on 30 May.
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