Conclusion

Abstract Beyoncé’s 2018 performance at Coachella serves as a potent medium to reflect on the ways that live music has evolved in the twenty-first century. The terms of Beyoncé’s breakthrough represent the continued limits that have been faced by African American artists and other artists of color, and especially by women of color. Beyoncé loudly highlights and commemorates her achievement as the first black woman to headline Coachella to draw attention to the fact that such events have followed the pattern long entrenched in the live music industry, wherein black artists are too often assigned a marginal or secondary place. Beyoncé’s performance further commanded attention because festivals have become so central to US musical life and the music economy in the twenty-first century. Behind the rise of music festivals designed on the model of Coachella is a larger transformation in the organization of the live music industry signaled by the domination of a clutch of global corporations: Live Nation, AEG Live, and Ticketmaster. Many of the largest and most successful festivals in the US are owned by either Live Nation Entertainment or AEG Live. Coachella is owned by the latter but did not begin that way. The story of Coachella’s evolution from an independent festival produced by a regionally based promoter to a signpost of the new live music economy can be taken as an allegory for the ways that live music has evolved in the age of consolidation.