It’s safe to say that the majority of people attending Coachella in Indio are not experiencing enough to justify the cost of the event.

Most people see Coachella as a yearly opportunity to indulge in alcohol and substance of choice. Then maybe see a musician play a couple songs they know.

But these are the people who have already resigned themselves to going there for reasons other than the music.

Last year, the consensus was the headlining group, Outkast, was ultimately a disappointment.
One look at the hip-hop duo’s performance list is all you needed to see the problem.

Its is easy to see that the songs we are familiar with can be counted on one hand, all of which were radio hits and took a small part in their collection of thirty-two songs.

Call it a poor judgment call on the group’s part for not appealing their audience, but they can’t play Ms. Jackson and Hey Ya for an hour.

Apart from the overload of festival tweeters tweeting how excited they were to see Outkast, you had the crowd of people who did not have Outkast on their list of artists to see.

Similar to this year’s festival, goers will not lose sleep over not seeing the original AC/DC line up from the band’s prime.

People now hear Coachella and think friends, drugs and indulging in a carefree atmosphere for three days. And hey, if they get to see The Strokes or Arcade Fire play that one song they like then it’s nice.

This particular crowd of festivalgoers doesn’t necessarily pertain to Coachella.

The same could be said for any multi-day festival of this sort such as Outside Lands, Lollapalooza, BFD and other massive music festivals.

In a world where Outside Lands tickets get sold out before the line up is revealed, it’s clear to see what concerns the average music festival attendee, and it isn’t the music.

That’s not to say that those who blindly purchase a $100 plus ticket are wrong in doing so.

If people went to festivals only when all the artist on the lineup were their favorites, then no one would attend a festival.

Coachella is no longer about scribbling down the name of that song played by that one weird guy or fretting over having to choose between Arctic Monkeys and Kanye West.

Most people are just looking to drive into the desert and get weird with their friends in a new surrounding. If a dessert and psychedelics sound amusing, then I urge you to think if that’s all really worth 2 5-hour drives and 400+ dollars for one 3-day general admission ticket.

Seriously, if the music is more important you could just go to Outside Lands in San Francisco. It’s a forty-minute drive or an hour-long ride on BART and you won’t have to worry about heat stroke.