Why Can't America Have Nice Things?

Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of traveling to Amsterdam, the center of marijuana tourism and a veritable EDM superstar DJ factory. I was there for a dance music festival, but one worlds away from the sorts of massive, exhausting, molly-fueled affairs that local exports like Tiësto, Ferry Corsten, Armin van Buuren, Junkie XL, Afrojack often headline. Instead I was at Dekmantel, a three-day affair that takes place in Amsterdamse Bos, a manmade forest approximately three times the size of New York's Central Park.

Whether you wanted Detroit dons (Carl Craig, Jeff Mills, Derrick May, Model 500, Robert Hood), Dutch masters (I-F, Legowelt, Cinnaman), modern techno's finest (Ricardo Villalobos, John Talabot, Nina Kraviz), or the harder stuff (Silent Servant, Actress, Shackleton, Peverelist), the line-up was a dream come true for fans of adventurous electronic music. Every stage—from the main to the wooden shed erected for NTS Radio to broadcast from—boasted Funktion-One speakers, meaning state-of-the-art sound no matter where you walked. The festival boasted plenty of space for dancing—more often than not, under a trellis of trees—chilling, and eating those world-famous pomme frites. And whether you were in need of a beer, an espresso, a vegetable curry, or a pee, there was almost never a queue to waste time in. As far as electronic music festivals go, Dekmantel has located the sweet spot.

"If I'm completely honest, if you go into a 20,000 capacity—or even bigger—festival, usually the atmosphere changes drastically," says Thomas Martojo, co-founder of the Dekmantel label and Dekmantel Festival, which in three years went from 2,000 to 10,000 attendees. "It really takes away the pleasure of having fun at the festival. So we feel like where we're at right now is the right size to do a festival, and I think we are gonna grow only in baby steps from now on."

From Mutek in Canada to Outline in Moscow, and from Rewire in the Hague to Positivus in Latvia, there's no shortage of mid-sized electronic festivals to enjoy in the West. But in the United States, the festival situation is one of extremes. On one end of the spectrum, you have something quaint and vibrant, like FORM: Arcosanti—a Hundred Waters-founded three-day event welcomed about 850 people into the deserts of Arizona this year—or New York's recent Sustain-Release, located a hundred miles outside of the city and catering to a crowd of approximately 700. On the other end of the spectrum is Electric Daisy Carnival, Electric Zoo, Ultra Music, or the Winter Music Conference, festivals that regularly pack in tens of thousands of EDM fans into cattleyard-like spaces and feature the same popular headliners that you see at any other festival, with almost no discernible sense of tastemaking at play. So why can't the US have nice things—like tightly curated, not-too-crowded, not-too-small, electronic music festivals?

"I think this 'middle ground' between the underground and EDM is almost completely absent in North America, and it's one of the main reasons why I founded Decibel in 2003," says Sean Horton, whose Decibel Festival in Seattle recently wrapped its 12th edition. Decibel—which mixes its electronic programming in with rock and avant music—is that rare example of a medium-sized festival operating stateside. "There is this mentality in the U.S. that if you grow beyond a certain size, you're not cool anymore. Based on my experience, festivalgoers in Europe tend to be more open-minded and less critical, which I think has a lot to do with it."

Early editions of Decibel topped out at 2,500 goers, but since 2011, Horton estimates that the event averages between 20,000 and 25,000 attendees, spread out over five days and 16 venues in Seattle. As smaller festivals like CRSSD in San Diego and Brooklyn's own Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival continue to grow, there's a glimmer of hope that such midsize festivals might slowly be gaining traction, but for Horton, the hardest part has been getting advertisers on board. "I've been turned down by dozens of sponsors over the years because we're 'only 25,000 people,'" Horton says. Still, he says that Decibel's smaller size and discriminating curation has also been crucial to its success. "Luckily, the partners we do work with are all on board because they believe in what we do creatively," he says. "They appreciate the intimate format of Decibel showcases and the fact that we're not like the other 95% of the electronic music festivals in North America." (Note: last week, Horton posted a note to Facebook stating that he was relocating from Seattle to Los Angeles, and that the future location of the festival—and future, period—is still up in the air).

Another issue is the audiences themselves—a whole new generation of young people who already associate the festival experience with shouldering your way through crowds to find your friends and overpaying for bottles of water. "The goal of EDM festivals is maximum revenue," Hornton says. Through an onslaught of targeted social media campaigns and advertising, they've completely hijacked the minds of millennials into believing that 50-100k festivals are the norm. I actually had a younger attendee the other day ask me, 'Why do you call Decibel a festival if it's not outdoors?'"

Of course, not every major electronic music event in America adheres to the EDM festival template. Detroit's Movement Festival, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary next year, is the rare big electronic music festival in the States that keeps one foot in the underground and one foot in the mainstream. "In 2015, we had a record-breaking number in attendance of over 111,000 people, Sam Fotias, Director of Operations at Movement, explains. "Movement is special because it has day programming at one festival location, which is why we sometimes get compared to the larger mainstream events."

Fotias agrees that funding is the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the aspiring midsized festival curator. "There is money out there for events of that size, but it takes a much longer time to search out and foster those relationships with brands that recognize the significance of the event," he says. "Many large sponsors are just looking more for mass appeal brand exposure. Very few of them are actually looking for a unique event that encapsulates what their brand is all about." Still—as Fotias has observed first-hand in his work with Movement—production costs, artist fees, and the sheer manpower needed to pull off such multi-day events go up every year, to the point where it's almost inconceivable to pull off a festival, small or gargantuan, without outside fincial assistance.

David Sinopoli, founder of Miami's III Points Music Festival, points out an additional challenge for the aspiring festival planner: staying true to one's artistic vision while increasing the number of people who come through the gates. Now celebrating its third year, the festival will welcome Neon Indian, Panda Bear, Run the Jewels, and Nicolas Jaar onstage on October 9-11, to a projected audience of 8,000 attendees. Even with a sponsorship from BMW this year, he says balancing buzzworthy headliners with smaller, more up-and-coming talent was no easy feat. "You have to really thread a needle to do it right," he says. "If Radiohead wants to headline my festival, Massive Attack, Portishead, I'd be totally down with that. But a little boutique festival like ours has trouble pulling them in. That's the biggest challenge, to not sellout but also put people through the doors so it becomes a viable business."

One solution Sinopoli came up with was focusing on local talent; though attendance has more than tripled since the festival's first year, the lineup is still comprised of 60% local acts. Still, Sinopoli says he dreams of III Points being able to reach five-digit crowds in the future—the maximum size he thinks the festival could handle "without losing the integrity and magic at the core of this."

So what will it take for the mid-sized festival—events with just that sort of magic—to survive and flourish in the US? For one thing, we need corporate sponsors to come around to the idea that flooding festival grounds with glossy fliers and emblazoning their logo everywhere isn't always the best way to reach an audience, and that targeting more specialized niche groups can sometimes be a better use of their war chest.

And we'll also need to help young people remember why they are at a music festival in the first place. At the end of the day—in addition to hogging the money and oversaturating the marketplace—the biggest problem with giant, corporate-driven EDM festivals is the way they've trained an entire generation of music lovers to have low expectations. As Fotias puts it, "Larger events promote the 'experience' to the younger generation instead of the most important aspect: the music and its legacy." By putting music first, smaller, better curated festivals like III Points, Decibel, and Sustain-Release are already helping to raise the bar.