Starfest is Doomed

7 Reasons

Not only has the Starfest Music Festival come out of left field, the odds are stacked highly against it! This North Texan festival is promising Lil Wayne along with fifty other popular hip hop, country, and edm artists to perform on September 8th & 9th in Oak Point Park. Is this really possible? According to the Starfest Website, this 'pop up' festival is sponsored by some pretty reputable sources including Cadillac, 96.7 FM, Hot 93.3 FM, and KSCS 96.3 FM. All have agreed media partnership supporting the event. Not to mention, the events founders, Michael Warden, Davis Taylor, Shamar Willis, and Bill Pletch are not total rookies when it comes to event coordination and fund raising. In their defense, Willis aids in the Legna Entertainment operation - hosting several hip-hop concerts including top artists such as 2Chainz, Ludacris, Boosie, and T.I. Warden is a 3 year managing partner of the Dallas Cigar/Rum Bar Havana Social Club. Taylor is experienced in fundraising as the owner of a crowdfunding platform that invests in gas/oil drilling excavations. And lastly, Pletch is experienced in event coordinating as he has worked with big name brands like Mary Kay in the past. Despite all of this 'experience' the event still seems as if it is doomed to fail with all of its last minute organizing, and lack of confirmed artists. Are they aware that the festival is less than a month away? Read below for 7 reasons why the Starfest Music festival is ill-fated.

1) Weak Social Media Presence

Social Media is a fairly new outlet for advertisement and of course is no solid indication of an event's success, however with Starfest's own claim that only thirty thousand people are allowed to attend - its social media numbers in relevance are terribly low. For example, Starfest's official Facebook Event has only 85 confirmed people in attendance and only another 268 people 'interested'. As if it couldn't get any worse, the event's official Facebook page itself has only 194 likes total. Its official Instagram account has only 141 followers and their Twitter account is the saddest of them all with just 41 total followers. Plain and simple these numbers are embarrassingly low and unproportioned.

2) Fake Reviews

Since this article, Starfest has deleted all of its festival reviews from its very own official Facebook page and left no options for new ones to be posted. However before this action was taken, its Facebook page comment section was filled to the brim with dozens on top of dozens of five star rating reviews. Which makes absolutely no sense because the festival has yet to take place and it is the first of its kind. Thus, the people who left the previous reviews must have either been bias friends of the founders and organizers or paid promoters from social media. In short, fake news creates less credibility and less credibility creates less ticket sales.

3) Online Ridicule

A simple Twitter or Facebook search of the word 'Starfest' will pull up hundreds of funny memes, and posts mocking the last minute festival. The most popular condescending comparison joke is that Starfest will be North Texas' Fyre Fest. We are all familiar with that epic Bahamas festival fail. You think these boys would have learned from that million dollar mistake understanding that people are skeptical of new music festivals now more than ever.

4) A Disappearing Lineup

One day an artist is listed as performing and they next day they are gone. Not to mention, the only confirmed performer of Starfest is Lil Wayne. At this point it may as well be a Lil Wayne concert. The group's original plan for the festival was to announce a new artist every day beginning August 7th. This thought was quickly canned, and although the festival is now claiming that Artful and Flo Rida will be performing as well - the fact that they just removed Carnage and Hunter Hayes has a lot of fans worried. Nothing seems as if it is set in stone. Questions are rapidly arising as to what happened to the other two artists performances and if they were ever even really apart of the lineup in the first place. Who else could be added and removed? The Starfest festival is proving to be too much of a gamble.

5) Terrible Strategization

Starfest is claiming to host a mixture of hip hop, country and edm over its two day span. While we understand that people have varying tastes in music - would a hip hop fan drive to a festival full of country singers and visa versa? Trying to please everyone is not always the best strategy. The outcome may be different if we all had a better comprehension of who was actually performing at this event but unfortunately with less than a month out, we are still pretty confused. This event should be a red flag for all music fans as it is too generic and gimmicky at the moment.

6) Odd Layout

Although the layout has been updated - it still seems a bit odd. Number one, the example on the web page is too small to clearly read and it has been divided into four pay levels. FOUR?! I don't know about you, but I have only heard of VIP or general admission. However, at the Starfest Music Festival there will be four separate areas including separate pools divided by class. This is a terrible sign. As if it couldn't get any worse the standing room for stages is extremely minimal. The main stage has the most room with the second stage looking slightly inadequate. The question to ask here is.. Who is let in what areas and what if your favorite artists aren't playing there? Starfest seems to not be worth the headache or money at this point.

7) Bad Pricing

With an unannounced lineup and unknown daily setlist - asking for $87 per single-day general admission ticket is shocking. Plus, the Starfest map reveals that general admission is far, far away from the actual event stages. What a rip. Maybe if they were more organized like the long standing Austin-City Limits festival that announces its October line up in May, they could charges these types of prices. By the way, Groupon is an excellent source to get discounted tickets on a wide range of music events, including the hottest and the most popular music festivals. Whatever music event you are going to attend make sure you use Groupon Code to save on your concert ticket as well as on tickets to other music, sports and entertainment events.