Meet FestEvo, The All-In-One Social App For Music Festivals
–Written by Kevin Madert
Picture it: you’re just returning from _________ music festival. You take the obligatory hour-long shower and immediately go horizontal in the most comfortable bed you’ve ever encountered for about twelve more hours. Upon waking up, you hop on your phone or your computer to reconnect with the world, and you encounter friends who just returned from the same festival – friends you had no idea were even attending. A few days after that, you’re cruising Soundcloud and you find your new favorite artist. Their tunes are amazing, you’re in love, you go to check their tour dates and realize they – much like your friends – were at the festival you just got back from. You had no idea, and now you’re kicking yourself because hey, your luck, they had a month-long visa and now they’re back in Russia to spend five years work on their ten-part concept album. These situations suck, but could they really have been avoided?
Meet FestEvo, the up-and-coming app that’s poised to make missed connections and missing out a thing of the past at your favorite music festivals. The brainchild of Tucker Gumber – who you may already know as The Festival Guy – FestEvo strives to take your festival experience to the next level by keeping you connected, up-to-date and well-informed on events all across the globe and all throughout the year. It’s in essence a social media platform devoted only to music festivals; a place where you can connect with those like-minded music-lovers, discover new artists, and immerse yourself in the experience more fully than ever before. The two cruxes of the FestEvo experience – and the features that have the potential to revolutionize the way we attend our favorite festivals – are the app-wide networking features and the intricate system of playlists.
Once you’ve set up your account, you’ll see a screen much like this one:
“Festivities” are the equivalent of a news feed, where the activity of all the people you’ve connected with and all the artists and festivals you’ve “liked” or “loved” will appear. The level of connectivity available is impressive; with a few taps you can discover things like who’s attending which festivals, which artists they’ll be seeing while they’re there, and what people have to say about an event or a performer. Taking it a step further, you can utilize the easy-to-understand navigation system (pictured below) to access your list of friends, shoot off messages, or browse through camps – a handy tool analogous to Facebook groups. Instead of wondering where your friends are at a festival (or realizing they were there the whole time after the fact), you can use FestEvo to plan meet-ups, as well as to meet fellow festivalgoers with similar musical interests.
Then there’s the music itself. Festevo supports full Spotify and Soundcloud integration – you can search for an artist and access their music on both platforms without ever leaving the app. This is great for artists you’re already familiar with, but what about for artists you don’t know you should be listening to? My favorite feature of the app is the answer to this question: the dedicated music lovers over at FestEvo have taken the time to craft Spotify playlists for almost every festival in their database. The playlists are personalized for each festival, comprised entirely of music by all the artists scheduled to perform. With minimal effort on your end you can familiarize yourself with any festival’s lineup from top to bottom, ensuring you’ll never miss your future favorite artists again.
As with any newly-launched app there’s certainly room for improvements, but most of them are minor fixes that detract from the experience so minimally they’re not worth mentioning. The bottom line? FestEvo is an app born out of a love for music, festivalgoing, and the communal spirit and energy these events facilitate. If you share any of those passions, download the app below, share it with your friends, and become a part of the festival evolution.
To download FestEvo via the Apple App Store, click here.
To download FestEvo via the Android app store, click here.
To use FestEvo on a computer, head over to the Festevo website. (Be forewarned that the app is designed primarily for mobile use, so you may encounter unforeseen difficulties on the site)
Editor’s Note: If you’re headed to Burning Man, FestEvo is the only app you’ll need on the Playa. Recently updated to include camps, Sound Camp lineups, workshops and more, consider it your official guide to the happenings in Black Rock City.