Case Study

Dance music and homegrown artists lead Dutch festivals in 2024

Featured Image: Lachy Spratt/Unsplash

Dance music has displaced rock as the leading genre at Dutch music festivals, accounting for a third of performers during 2024.

In a study conducted by Poplive, which researches the live music sector, dance music DJs and producers moved above rock as the most popular genre at festivals in the Netherlands. It has grown by more than 10% since 2016 while rock has plummeted from 32% to 19%.

The report was compiled by Martijn Mulder, a researcher at the Hogeschool Rotterdam.

This year there were an average of 39 performances per day, which is up from 29 eight years ago.

More than half of the music booked on festival main stages fell within the pop and electronic genre group.

The emergence of homegrown talent has been a positive in the country as nearly 50% of main stage artists were Dutch, ending the dominance of British artists in the country as that share dropped from 60% to 25%.

Diversity remains an issue as the proportion of male artists on the main stages as they made up around 90% of headline acts.

“The share of female artists on festival stages was lower this year than in 2022, and this trend was true for all festivals surveyed,” read a Poplive statement.

“Incidentally, the share of female artists on the main stages of the festivals did grow since 2022.

“Diversity in artists’ origins has also declined: the share of non-European artists has decreased by half since 2016.

“One explanation may lie in the sharp cost increases of recent years, both from the perspective of the internationally touring artist and the festivals themselves.”