Music can save the world, but it can’t help rock fans who are “purchased for zero dollars”. During the National Day, the "Zhongyuan Midi Music Festival" in Nanyang, Henan Province repeatedly appeared on the hot search topic list. However, this mass attention incident did not satisfy the participants and the local government, but instead caused a headache. According to reports and feedback from music fans, on October 3, the belongings of many music fans in the camping area were "stolen". In addition to "laptops in suitcases", stereos, musical instruments and other valuables, "mud-stained jackets", music festival bracelets and other personal items were also included.
Some music fans said that they were "robbed" when they came back from going to the toilet, and the clothes in the tent and the tent itself were looted. The suspect quickly pointed to the local villagers. Videos showed that the villagers who broke into the Midi camp were searching for valuables such as laptops in the tent.
The Midi "zero-yuan purchase" incident was ridiculous, and Nanyang, which hosted the music festival for the first time, failed to catch this "vast wealth". After the official organizing committee intervened, a task force was set up to investigate. Today (October 5), Zhongyuan Midi issued another article saying, "So far, the local police have received 73 reports and implemented 65 stolen cases." Some thieves have been captured and detained, and some property has been recovered. It also noted that among the current alarms received by the police, no cases of hundreds of thousands of missing property reported by individual netizens were found.
After the Midi Music Festival "broke up" with Taihu, as an established music festival IP that is being competed for by various places, it has many commercial values and sentimental blessings such as being a utopia for young people and music lovers. Behind this "theft door" incident, not only the hard work of many parties was wasted, but also the uncontrollable side of large-scale music performances was completely exposed. Rather than irrationally pointing the finger at "region", this incident has served as a wake-up call for music festival organizers. It also conveyed to the outside world the double-edged sword behind the strong binding of music festivals to local cultural and tourism business cards.
150,000 people in 4 days,
The utopian dream of "Mud Flute" trapped in a burglary door was shattered?
A few days before the "Theft Gate" occurred, the Midi Music Festival became the focus of the National Day Music Festival. On a rainy day, the video of fans rolling in the mud to the rhythm of the music made "Mud Flute" a hot topic. The wheelchair of Dong Yu, a disabled person, was lifted up by fans in the audience to watch the performance. Popular videos and pictures composed of these famous scenes went viral on the Internet.
This is a "whole job" that occurs at every Midi Music Festival. Young music fans who love freedom and uninhibitedness will find it difficult to refuse such freedom and the joy of meeting similar people. Music fans who have attended the Midi Music Festival describe the utopian atmosphere created by the festival as "Midi sequelae".
The Midi Music Festival is like a link between the real society and the spiritual world for music fans. It allows this group of people to meet like-minded friends, leave the world behind, and loosen their bonds. At two or three in the morning, strangers they met began to raise their beers to clink glasses, hug or salute. After the theft incident, music fan Xiao Liu lamented, "Are you going to steal things from these rock youths?" In Xiao Liu's understanding, Midi's audience is still a group of rock fans who are young in spirit and not too wealthy materially. On the Internet, some music fans are happy to share tips on how to go camping with Midi and how to stay overnight at a low cost.
But the spirit of rock and roll and the romance of rebellion were severely "hit hard" on this day. Afterwards, many netizens attributed the incident to the malicious guidance of a short video posted by a blogger before the music festival ended: the villagers believed that the music festival was over and no one wanted the tents left in the camp. But upon closer inspection, there are many contradictions. It makes no sense to break into the wall or to find personal valuables inside and outside the tent.
From a market perspective, among the "performance assassins", Midi Music Festival has always been selling its products at low prices and a deep atmosphere among music fans. The performance market has recovered after the epidemic. Music festivals with various brand sponsorships and titles have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain. Four-digit admission ticket prices have made related topics such as #whomanagestheperformanceassassin # a hot search topic. Against this background, the Midi Music Festival, which has stable ticket prices and is backed by a brand, has become an important option for many music fans. At that time, the Midi Music Festival also ushered in its own IP fission, from being an annual event to cooperating with local governments to develop and even test the Midi Music Festival IP in different towns.
Local cultural tourism "forced kidnapping" music festival,
Is it difficult to pick up "Wealth from the Sky"?
Music festival IP can bring a large number of young people, consumption power, and reputation to towns that have never held a music festival, but it also brings many implementation difficulties.
In July this year, veteran music fan Tomato participated in the Yangma Island Midi Music Festival in Yantai, Shandong. Although the music festival is named after the coordinates of Yantai Yangma Island, the specific location is Libeng Island across the sea from Yangma Island. Before the start of the music festival, many young people cycled around Yangma Island. In the afternoon, before the start of the music festival, vehicles piled up to cross the bridge.
Tomato came to Libeng Island from Yangma Island to participate in the music festival. There was a serious traffic jam just a few kilometers away. It took nearly half an hour to pass the ten-minute journey. The driver sighed and complained that the flow of people was soaring, but there were no special changes to the traffic lights at the intersection and no traffic police guidance, which resulted in long-term meaningless congestion.
Such incidents of "local governments not being prepared to host music festivals" are not uncommon in the past two years. As music performances flourish, negative incidents also occur frequently. In addition to the transportation and service standards centered on drinking water and toilets that are most likely to be complained by music fans, the professionalism of the organizers and local security management have also become top priorities.
The previous "Qingkong Music Festival" in Nanjing, except for the band performances, has almost always become a sour point in the mouths of music fans. The on-site audio equipment was complained by many netizens that it was not as good as "the subwoofer bought at home for 20 yuan." In addition, the large-scale electronic music festival Ultra held in Bali at the end of September this year also failed to avoid large-scale gang crimes. A blogger with the Douyin ID "Jin La La La" posted a "disco" video on the platform that he shot during the Bali Electronic Music Festival. The video shows that while a friend was filming the video, a man put his hand into the blogger's backpack and stole the phone. The friends and bloggers who recorded the whole process were not aware of it. In the comment area of the video, the blogger added that besides himself, many other people had their phones stolen that day. After choosing to report the crime, the gang of thieves retaliated and stole a friend's phone.
Although the Midi Music Festival’s landing in Nanyang has done more harm than good, more often than not, the music festival, as a local cultural and tourism business card, has done more good than harm.
Since the recovery of music performances after the epidemic, cultural and tourism bureaus in relevant cities such as Shandong and Sichuan have successively extended olive branches to music festival IPs that symbolize young groups. Shandong Yantai Yellow Bohai Midi Music Festival, Chengdu Cactus Music Festival, Strawberry Music Festival, Wheatfield Music Festival, etc. have all boosted local consumption to varying degrees. In fact, before the theft incident at this music festival, from the afternoon of September 29 to the afternoon of October 2, this new place name "Green Field Monologue", which was created for Midi and was unknown even to Nanyang locals, had already received 150,000 music fans to watch it live.
The cultural tourism market is quietly emerging, and as a "city business card" strongly supported by the local government, the music festival is carrying important expectations for the development of local cultural tourism. Domestic music festivals are constantly improving themselves. Over the years, music festivals have expanded into an industrial chain with tourism, catering, transportation, performing arts and other industries.
Whether before or after the epidemic, the opening of the New Life Music Festival is always accompanied by help from the local government. Compared with unknown emerging music festivals, music festivals with IP support can easily respond to a variety of needs. This phenomenon was particularly evident during the first explosive stage of music festivals in recent years. Around 2016, various new music festivals emerged one after another. In 2017, Tomato participated in the Tianmo Music Festival. In addition to the sparse music fans, there were also local villagers who came out of nowhere. Under the stage of the electronic music festival were restless young people wave, and behind were helpless villagers. But the situation improved in the second year.
If an emerging music festival wants to be held continuously for many years, it cannot do without word-of-mouth communication, self-correction and evolution year after year. Senior music fan Xiao Liu observed that this year’s music festival has been significantly standardized compared to previous ones. This includes pre-inspection of the cultural flags carried by music fans before the music festival. The height must not be too low and the slogans must not be negative.
The system of local cultural tourism and music festivals is also more complete and perfect. In the second half of this year, many cities have proposed to build "rock cities", "musical cities", "concert cities" and "music festival cities". According to third-party data, in the distribution of concerts in mainland cities in 2023, in addition to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Wuhan inviting more artists and higher numbers of performances, cities such as Nanjing, Chengdu, Xi'an, Changsha, Suzhou, Shenyang, Xiamen, Taiyuan, and Qingdao are not far behind.
With a large number of music performances appearing together, organizers have a headache on how to avoid negative incidents such as stampedes and thefts. The hosting of large-scale events not only requires comprehensive management and service capabilities. From the quality of the music festival itself to the security management and services, it not only requires industry support, but also civilized support.
Author|Yuan Jiaqi
Edit|Fig