How Outside Lands Became San Francisco’s Never-Ending Party: Secrets, Surprises, and Festival Drama Revealed!
Added on August 8, 2025 inMusic News Cards
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If Mercury is in retrograde, does that mean the Wi-Fi will cut out right as Doja Cat hits her chorus? Or will Hozier’s set get rained out in a cosmic fit of jealousy because Venus is squaring Saturn again? Every year, as Outside Lands plants its quirky, stubbornly independent roots even deeper in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, I can’t help but wonder—do the stars have it out for music festivals, or are they quietly egging us on, just for the spectacle? After all, Outside Lands never seems to follow the script. Now in its 17th orbit around the sun, this fest keeps finding weirder, wilder ways to stand out—from pioneering legal cannabis sales to letting fans tie the knot at City Hall faster than you can say, “What house is my moon in?” Maybe it’s the city’s restless spirit, maybe it’s the fog, or maybe it’s that stubborn Taurus energy refusing to sell out to the festival giants… Either way, there’s still nothing in the universe quite like it . Will this year’s festivities be written in the stars—or rewritten by them? LEARN MORE
In an increasingly-saturated music festival market, there’s still no other festival quite like Outside Lands.
Synonymous with San Francisco, for the last 17 years, Outside Lands has taken over the city’s Golden Gate Park and hosted iconic performances from the likes of Kendrick Lamar, The Strokes, Green Day and Chappell Roan, while injecting more Bay Area DNA into the event each year. In 2018, it became one of the first major music festivals to offer the sale of marijuana, while last year, Outside Lands added a “City Hall” where festivalgoers can get legally married, an homage to the 2004 “Winter of Love” where San Francisco offered the first same-sex marriage licenses in U.S. history.
“This is a like never ending art project for us is how we think about it,” Rick Farman, who co-founded the festival with Bay Area concert promoter Another Planet Entertainment through his promotion company Superfly. “It’s always constantly evolving. We’re always looking for opportunities that make sense with culture and with our mission, which is to make a festival for the Bay Area.”
In a festival landscape that faces a challenging global economy, consistent rising costs and industry consolidation, Outside Lands continues to weather the storm as one of the biggest independent music festivals in the country, a notable distinction given that most festivals of its size such as Coachella or Lollapalooza are owned and operated by corporate giants like Live Nation and AEG Presents.
The 17th edition of Outside Lands kicks off Friday, with a lineup that includes Doja Cat; Tyler, the Creator; Hozier; Gracie Abrams; John Summit; Doechii; Vampire Weekend and Beck among many others throughout the weekend. Ahead of the fest, Farman and fellow Outside Lands co-founder Allen Scott of Another Planet spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about keeping the festival new, staying independent and what a festival booking means for an artist in 2025.
What has been the main driver in what’s kept outside lands to its indie roots over all this time?
Scott: We started in 2008. There were five festivals that came out that year; it was the beginning of the recession. Those other festivals didn’t make it past a few years; we were fortunate to come out of that class still standing 17 years later. We’re in San Francisco, one of the great live music markets in the world. We punch above our weight in terms of people going to concerts. And Golden Gate Park couldn’t be a better location for a festival, which adds to the draw. And a lot of festivals cater to the high school and college crowd, but we book a very multi-generational lineup, which I think helps people grow with the festival since there’s always going to be something for them here.
Farman: We have a lot of industry muscle on our own too. Between Another Planet and Superfly, plus with my partner Coran Capshaw [the music manager behind Red Light management], the types of people that are working on this on a daily basis are always trying to think about how we can make this better, unique, not resting on our laurels. Every year’s a fresh and new festival, we don’t have any sacred cows.
We’re a year shy of 18 here, how has the festival changed?
Farman: I think the big factor is that we’ve gone deeper and deeper into what our mission is, which is making a festival that’s reflective of Bay Area culture. That started with food and beverages, we’ve got 50 different types of wine from all over the region. And then we were early with cannabis; we’re still the only major music festival that has legal sales and consumption of cannabis. Then we launched the Dolores area a couple years ago, which expresses what’s special about the LGBTQ community and history in the Bay Area. Last year we launched “City Hall.” All of that helps make a really hyper-local feel.
Scott: I don’t think you can put Outside Lands anywhere else in the world because it’s so much about San Francisco and the Bay Area. That keeps it unique, we can’t do this anywhere else but here.
How would you describe the state of the festival business in 2025?
Farman: I’d say it’s still going through phases of innovation and success and failure, but it’s getting more mature. This modern U.S. festival market has now been around for over 20 years and it shows. We’ve seen things with lasting power and others that have come and gone. You look at the landscape and there’s still new independent promoters trying to create new things. I think it’s large when you look from a macro perspective; it’s strong.
What’s the biggest challenge festivals face today?
Scott: Certainly the costs. Since COVID, costs have gone up over 50 percent, and ticket prices have not been able to keep up with that. So we’ve had to be creative with sponsorships, more premium experiences so that we could keep the GA price down. And as we’ve gotten bigger, it’s also about keeping a unique lineup in the festival landscape. But cost is the biggest obstacle.
Have your costs been more from production or the rising cost of booking talent?
Scott: It’s both. It’s more expensive for artists to tour, so their fees go up. Since we started, platinum tickets on tours are more common. When they use platinum tickets, they make more on their touring shows, and therefore they want more on the festival. But really the biggest bump has been the production costs, whether that’s security, fencing, bathrooms, it’s across the board.
If the top-tier artists that help draw audiences can get more from platinum tickets on a tour, what’s the value add for them at festivals now?
Scott: Let’s be clear, artists are still making more money at a festival than on routed dates. There’s a lot of costs they save for a festival date in addition to getting paid substantially more. That said, when we’re at that level, we’re at an interesting place in an artist’s career. They might be an arena artist, but they’re not quite a stadium artist. And the fact that they can go and play in front of 60,000 people is something that’s enticing to them.
Farman: Beyond that, I think the value prop of playing a festival is the same, maybe even more so than it’s ever been, because of the ability to break through in some capacity with audiences. We saw that last year with some of these pop artists, these festival dates are important for building audiences for these young stars who are rising up.
How do you think Outside Lands will continue to evolve?
Farman: I think you see every year that we’re always trying to find new things. “City Hall” was a huge success last year. We added a new stage this year, the Duboce Triangle, because we had an opportunity to put more programming into the festival. There are always new things that people are engaging with, especially in a dynamic city like San Francisco. And so it’s always going to give us an opportunity to speak to our audience in a way that’s current and progressive.
Scott: We’re doing it as much for ourselves as for the audience. We want to curate the most interesting and dynamic lineup that we could put together each year. We want to keep things fresh and not get complacent.
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