An Intro to Sonar Presents

What were the highlights then for you guys in terms

of the festival?

I mean, so I've done the whole festival circuit this year.

So I've been basically out on the road since the middle of May across... a whole host of festivals across the UK and into Europe as well with some of the rock ones.

So we've had a really, I mean, weather-wise, it's been pretty gorgeous right up until Reading.

Highlights, there've been some amazing artists coming through, obviously because of what we do and we heavily focus on grassroots music.

So it's very good to go and see as many up and coming bands, you know, the early guys, the ones that are on midday, the ones that are on the smaller stages.

There's Yeah, all of that's quite cool.

It's a little bit

more difficult at Reading, though.

You may have seen they got rid of the BBC Introducing stage there, and the stage they replaced it with has been called by the media the Nepo Baby stage.

Yes.

So there's been quite a lot of media on that, and since we exist to give a platform to emerging artists, it was obviously food for thought, because it was definitely felt this year in terms of the lack of independent artists that we able to see hey

i got to see david beckham so um with with without the nepo baby stage you wouldn't see better that is

true well there you go um in terms of that though yeah i want something i've seen which when you think like pretty much most of the festival is getting shown on the bbc and the stage is the bbc introducing stage why are they not giving a platform to emerging artists as much

It's really scary how this is all, it's all snowballing and it's all happening in front of our faces.

We know about it without, obviously throwing any employers of mine under the bus, but this, my Reading Festival this year, we all know that it's run by Festival Republic and it didn't even feel like they're pretending anymore.

Every stage was an activation.

It was all branded.

It was all advertising.

There was adverts for people All of the brands that were supplying the drinks, Budweiser, Pepsi, Smirnoff, everything had its own stage, everything had its own name.

The artists were clearly chosen with the brands in mind as well and put on stages where the brands were in mind.

It genuinely felt like we're not even pretending anymore.

The big corporations are running this.

The money, that's where the money is.