HARD Festival Director Opens Her Playbook on How to Book DJs in the Hip-Hop Era

Meg Deschenes and the scene at HARD Day of the Dead 2019

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Meg Deschenes and the scene at HARD Day of the Dead 2019. (Photos by: Virisa Yong, Drew Ressler for Rukes)

HARD Festival Director Opens Her Playbook on How to Book DJs in the Hip-Hop Era

by Mikey Glazer | November 11, 2019 @ 7:35 PM

“We’ve learned that most of our audience, the younger crowd, they’re not using Spotify. They’re on YouTube,” says Meagan DesChenes, the promoter leading the electronic and hip-hop festival brand

How do you book an EDM festival at a time when hip-hop seems to dominate the music scene?

For Meagan DesChenes, the director of Insomniac’s HARD festivals, setting a lineup for this month’s one-day HARD Day of the Dead festival at the L.A. State Historic Park had less to do with responding to what’s on trend than serving her community of music fans.

“We notice that even when we book a little of both (electronic and hip-hop), the electronic music still wins” in terms of crowd size and guest engagement, DesChenes said, seated backstage at the Nov. 2 event among candy-filled sombreros and a strolling mariachi.

The challenges for electronic music circa 2019 are acute. There isn’t a single EDM song on the Spotify U.S. Top 50 chart right now, while hip-hop artists claim 34 of those spots. Meanwhile in Las Vegas, KAOS, the newest DJ-driven megaclub abruptly closed last week after just seven months, with owners citing high talent costs as a cause. (They dropped superstar Marshmello’s $60 million multiyear deal shortly before shutting down, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.)

Also Read: Coachella 2020 Lineup Is 95% Booked, Founder Says

But DesChenes remains undaunted by the rise of hip-hop and the glut of electronic offerings in the L.A. market — including four consecutive weekends of competing outdoor, multi-stage, EDM festivals in October and early November. Each drew thousands of fans with mutually exclusive lineups of house, techno, mainstream EDM or a dash of headliner-level talent, like Diplo and Deadmau5.

For her event, which fell last in the four-week cycle, DesChenes booked Skrillex’s side-project “Dog Blood” and Coachella alums like Elohim, Zhu and the Martinez Brothers.

So how does DesChenes, one of the only women leading an established festival brand in the U.S. besides Stagecoach chief Stacy Vee, find the right balance for her program?

“Honestly, I personally listen to the music. I don’t always book what I like because I don’t have the same taste as an 18-year-old. But, I’ll go to an artist’s Instagram page because I like people to have a good personality and talk to their fans. I love that,” she said. “When I look at an artist and I see they post videos that get a lot of comments and they’re constantly interacting with their fans, I love that. Some artists will just come and play, and they are dead on socials. I don’t find that very attractive.”

While agents and managers pitch an artist’s streaming numbers, that’s not the decisive metric for DesChenes to determine if she will make an offer. “It’s always hard to gauge an artist just on Spotify. We get that all the time when we’re booking our shows — ‘He has this many streams’ — but people listen to music on all different platforms. We’ve learned that most of our audience, the younger crowd, they’re not using Spotify, to be honest with you. They’re on YouTube, literally. That’s where they’re streaming their music — on YouTube.”

To be clear, fans are listening to videos for free on YouTube’s video platforms, not on YouTube’s audio-only music app.

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DesChenes said she and her two-person team like to dig into a DJ’s track record on so-called “hard ticket” shows — dates where the artist headlines as the draw without the cushion of a festival or a Vegas casino. When fans have to pry themselves away from a streaming service, leave their homes and buy a ticket specifically for that artist, it’s a leading indicator of their draw.

“It’s always streams, but the other metric is how many tickets the artist sold in a market, especially if it’s L.A.,” she said, noting that the team at parent company Insomniac “are out everywhere” and report back on how crowded various shows are.

While her team also looks at data from their own festival apps to see how many times fans “favorite” or “schedule” an artist, DesChenes said she also steps away from the quantitative moneyball approach to building a lineup and also relies on an analog toolkit of relationships and gut intuition.

“I have some of my favorites that I book on Hard that aren’t massive, but are people that I just like,” she said. “Born Dirty has been around for a long time. I always have him on Hard. He’s just a really good DJ and I know when I book him he’s going to play really well.”

EDC 2019 Final Report Card: Winners and Losers, From Skrillex and Idris Elba to Miscast Bill Nye

As 150,000 dance music fans, 240 artists, and a week of shoulder events across Las Vegas wind down from the 2019 Electric Daisy Carnival, we note the highlights (the return of Skrillex and a full embrace of Idris Elba) and missteps.
(DRB and CTL for Insomniac (2); Getty Images)
WINNER: Idris Elba

This is not a fluke. The legitimate actor now has a legitimate international DJ career. His hour-long collaboration with UK house duo Solardo (called a "b2b" set) had organic energy, enthusiasm and joy inside their booth that is usually long gone by the time DJs are big enough to get booked for a prominent show like the Neon Garden at EDC.
DRB for Insomniac
LOSER: Bill Nye

The "science guy" served as the opening ceremony emcee, but either didn't understand or wasn't given parameters for his role. Instead of a token appearance (a wave and a proverbial toast from an icon of millenials' youth), he launched in to what sounded like his stump speech from "Science Con." He blabbered on about how he get got interested in science, referred specific internet URLs to an amped up crowd waiting for bass music, and asked the crowd to go see a rocket launch. To make it worse, his livestream audio dropped out for most of his speech. Nye was booked as a thematic crossover to the idea of "kinetic energy," which ties in to...
Virisa Young for Insomniac Events
WINNER: The "Kinetic Field" and Maximalist Design

This was the newly redesigned "Kinetic Field" (main stage) based on the concept of kinetic energy. By sidelining video screens, the bionic human sculptures took center stage.
Calder Wilson for Insomniac Events
This stage (the Basspod) was also newly redesigned for 2019. Keep in mind that this genre-specific area is only the fifth or sixth biggest stage at this festival, but would overshadow the main stage at many other festivals.
PP for Insomniac
This is why the festival is nicknamed "Under the Electric Sky."

Also Read: Coachella 2019 Final Report Card: Winners and Losers, From Kanye West to Zedd (Photos)
AGP for Insomniac
WINNER: Skrillex

The icon of 2010's electronic music was a surprise addition to the lineup, announced hours before Night 2 got underway. He tilted the gravity of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, drawing a massive crowd to his stage early (10:30 p.m.). He delivered a "something for everyone" set not unlike his former Jack U collaborator Diplo's well-received sets at Coachella last month. He scrambled the default template for how DJs use lights and cameras during a show and proved to be among the most gracious of the performers. "Pasquale Rotella, thank you for having me as your guest," he said as he finished. He also introduced the lesser known Slander, who was up three minutes after him, a courtesy that comics extend universally in comedy clubs but one I didn't hear any other performer do at the festival. Intentional or not, I'm not sure what Skrillex was getting at with his Michael Jackson shirt.
CTL for Insomniac
SPLIT DECISION: A "Walked Back" Evacuation Order

Near the end of Tiesto's main stage set Saturday night, messages appeared on the screens advising guests that the venue was being evacuated due to high winds and seek shelter in a car. However, a venue-wide evacuation was not actually ordered. Many stages and areas continued on schedule. Hours later, Insomniac tweeted a clarification that only certain stages were being closed and that people who had been advised to leave could return. At 3:20 a.m., for the thousands who already took an hour-plus trip back to the strip and followed orders ("leave calmly"), it was an infuriating miscommunication.
Getty Images
SILVER LINING: Humor

In the wake of the evacuation fiasco, Tiesto tweeted that his new single "Evacuation" was instantly having a huge impact. Reddit user "WinslowPete" later won the snark award by chiming in that "Tiesto's marketing techniques have really gotten out of hand."
Twitter/Tiesto
WINNER: Transparency and Communication

Between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, organizers solved opening night shuttle snafus with a plan that included bussing drunken ravers through the highly secure Nellis Air Force Base. The always hyper-communicative Insomniac and its leader Pasquale Rotella then took to social media after the shutdown to explain the evacuation timeline and their "safety first" mantra. These rapid responses suggest they had contingency plans for a variety of situations and available manpower to make meaningful changes on the fly. Further proof: they rebooked Kaskade and RL Grime (two artists who never got to play Saturday night), moving them to the Campground at dawn and on a different stage the next night, delivering an instant make-good despite that "lineup subject to change" fine print that haunts every festival lineup poster.
Instagram/EDC_Las Vegas
WINNER: Fireworks

Most municipalities can't afford a 4th of July show on this scale. Globetrotting Diplo (top right) found it to be Instagram-worthy even for him, putting up video selfies of himself enjoying the pops. In the bottom right is the signature blast, the letters E-D-C spelled out in the sky.
Insomniac; Instagram/Diplo; Instagram/Dillon Francis
WINNER: Vibes

With turf, large-scale art and vignettes across the grounds, producers Insomniac turned endless speedway asphalt in to something comfortable.
Keiki-Lani Knudsen for Insomniac Events
MEH: Paris Hilton at EDC

Pros: She comes every year. This year she was spotted on two different nights... and she's a working DJ in some corners of the planet (not at EDC), so she's arguably there "for the right reasons," meaning, the music and her friends at the company.

Cons: Her dated brand of mid-2000's aspirational social climbing and vertical caste groupings doesn't square with the "All Are Welcome Here" sloganeering and the egalitarian ethos of mutual acceptance that this brand propagates all year. (See the next photo.)

Another Pro: To be fair, she has good taste. I spotted her rocking out on the rail of the VIP during Skrillex.
TJH for Insomniac
NOTABLE: Good Behavior

Through the first two nights of the festival, not a single one of these ravers got a DUI. Media reports indicated 36 other felony or gross misdemeanor arrests over the opening nights, which is about a third of what comparable festivals have.
DRB for Insomniac
WINNER: The Move to May

Only a year after moving the date from the scorching 100-degree heat of June to May, the schedule change was barely discussed in the run-up to this year's EDC. This year temperatures late at night were in the 50s. For health and hydration, "a little too cold" is always the choice over "way too hot." That fire wasn't just for decoration. It was needed.
Adi Adinayev for Insomniac Events
Insomniac announced that EDC will return in May 2020 via a cleverly placed billboard that went up on the highway outside Las Vegas Monday morning.

Also Read: ‘Rocketman’ Film Review: Elton John Gets a Musical Fantasy That Sometimes Achieves Liftoff
Graham John Bell for Insomniac Events

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Electric Daisy Carnival 2019 will be remembered for its muscular production design, Vegas’ cooler May weather, and a walked-back evacuation order that cut a night short

As 150,000 dance music fans, 240 artists, and a week of shoulder events across Las Vegas wind down from the 2019 Electric Daisy Carnival, we note the highlights (the return of Skrillex and a full embrace of Idris Elba) and missteps.

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