Coachella Jumps On Board the Floating Festival Trend, But is This New Cruise a Sinker?

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Yesterday the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival promoters announced they will be setting sail on a new festival titled the S. S. Coachella as early as this December 16th – 19th in the Bahamas and Jamaica December 19th – 23rd. With other music festivals cruises like Hard's Holy Ship and Groove Cruise already sold out it only made sense that Coachella would capitalize on their brand and bring their festivals to the high sea as well, or does it?

The line-up is nowhere near as good as the Coachella line-ups (which have been getting worse and worse throughout the years) and in a way left fans a little confused. “Why does this even have the Coachella name” tweeted fans and posted comments on the new Facebook Page. It seems more like a way for Goldenvoice to profit on the already popular Coachella brand rather than bring together like minded people on a festival cruise experience that moves and changes lives.

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Sounding more like S.S. Hipster Hell with acts like Pulp, Hot Chip, Warpaint, Black Lips, Girl Talk and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, this festival seems a lot like the already popular Holy Ship who tweeted and Facebooked “Often imitated never duplicated” yesterday after the announcement. For the same hefty $500 price tag you get twice as many artist like Justice, Boys Noize, Knife Party, Major Lazer, Diplo, A-Trak, Scream & Benga, Busy P, Zedd, 12th Planet and more on the Holy Ship. They also do a themed party on the beach on a private island in the Bahamas on top of all of the luxury cruise amenities.

Rocking boat cruises that stick to one genre of music like the heavy metal Barge to Hell festival cruise and the dance music festival Groove Cruise seem to do well with the fans for almost a decade now as have music festivals in general. With a Coachella boat cruise in the Winter and two weekends in the dessert in Spring it just seems like things are getting a little excessive on the festival front. Even Insomniac Events CEO, Pasquale Rotella tweeted yesterday after a fan asked him if there will ever be an Insomniac cruise he responded with “Yes! Working on it!”

As if there wasn't already an over saturation of music festivals, it seems like everyone is trying to take advantage of their popularity and they are popping up everywhere in all shapes and forms. There's a reason why so many people have connected at these kind of events from the Woodstock days to Coachella's inception. There's the universal groove you share with everyone there as you see your favorite band or DJ perform and in a single moment you become connected to hundreds of people. We just hope that same love for the music stays as the primary focus and the cruise festival craze doesn't become another way for promoters to make big bucks on highly enthusiastic music fans. The full S.S. Coachella line-up is below. Sound off and comment, do you think this is a good idea?

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Alf Alpha
Black Lips
Cloud Nothings
DJ Harvey
El P
Father John Misty
Girl Talk
Grimes
Hot Chip
James Murphy (DJ Set)
Jason Bentley
Killer Mike
Pulp
Simian Mobile Disco
Sleigh Bells
The Gaslamp Killer
The Rapture (DJ Set)
Tokimonsta
Warpaint
Yeasayer
Z-Trip

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