By now, the dust has settled in the Coachella valley, home to North America’s most prominent festival, the eponymous Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which took place across two consecutive weekends on 12-14 and 19-21 April 2024.

In recent years, there has been a marked shift in sentiment towards Coachella. From its origins as a celebrated alt-rock haven headlined by the likes of Beck, Rage Against The Machine and Jane’s Addiction, the festival has, in recent years, cemented its reputation as the not-so-affectionately-named ‘Influencer Olympics’. Much ink has been spilled on this year’s troubled edition, from slow ticket sales and technical difficulties, to the prohibitively expensive prices ($500 for a ticket, $18 for a hot dog) and flat atmosphere generated by a ‘there to be seen’ crowd who seemingly showed little interest in the music. 

But what story does the content itself tell? Using our proprietary technology, we ran an analysis on all user-generated content (UGC) uploaded to YouTube up to one week after the festival and discovered a total of 1,291 videos which had collectively garnered over 14.2 million views after just two weeks. With this being a preliminary scan for the purpose of our analysis, the total number of videos is sure to have increased over time. 

Here are our key takeaways from this year’s Coachella’s digital footprint:

K-pop eight-piece boy band ATEEZ beat headliners Lana Del Rey and Doja Cat to take the top spot as the artist to generate the most UGC on YouTube, with a total of 121 videos one week after the festival. Perhaps it was their history-making performance as the first K-pop boy band at Coachella. Or maybe it was their typically high-octane performance, full of explosive choreography and crowd-pleasing festival anthems. Another theory could be that their devoted fanbase, collectively known as the ATINY, took it upon themselves to push their beloved band to the forefront of the cluttered internet. Data on trending topics from Quid certainly seemed to back up that idea. 

From ATEEZ and Le Sserafim topping our top UGC generating artist chart, to eight out of the top 10 most watched videos on YouTube from Coachella featuring K-pop and J-pop artists, 2024 was the year that Asian pop had its moment. This was no doubt driven by the 88rising influence – the leading pan-Asian music company held a ‘Futures’ showcase, shining a light on Asian artists including Atarashii Gakko!, Tiger JK, Yoonmirae and Xin Liu, 88rising’s newest signing from China. 

The UGC from Coachella ranged from professionally created and AI created reaction vids, to straight up crowd footage. Special guests are something of a Coachella speciality, and these were unsurprisingly some of the stand-out moments that made it on to YouTube in the week following the festival – Will Smith performing ‘Men In Black’ with J Balvin; Justin Bieber and Wizkid with Tems; Billie Eilish coming out for Lana Del Rey’s headline set. Celebs such as Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce watching performances from the crowd, and real-life mishaps such as Nelly Furtado falling off stage and Kid Cudi breaking his foot also made up some of the UGC, showing the public’s propensity for bloodthirsty and clickbaity content. Interestingly, some of the more ‘controversial’ moments that made the column inches (Grimes’ technical difficulties; Damon Albarn’s moody outbursts at an indifferent crowd) didn’t translate into much UGC. 

Headliner Lana Del Rey garnered the most views on her Coachella content, nearing 3M views one week after the festival had ended, suggesting that bringing out surprise guests like Billie Eilish and Camilla Cabello paid off in terms of creating must-see moments. Female rap proved popular, with Doja Cat and Ice Spice videos reaching 1.7M and 614K views respectively on their content. Coachella has a history of bringing bands out of retirement, and this year was no exception, with No Doubt reforming to perform their discography – a true Y2K revival, which saw them gain 578K views across all videos one week after the festival. Suki Waterhouse made a surprising entry at #7 on the top views chart, perhaps bolstered by her personal news – her Coachella performance was her first outing after she gave birth a few weeks before. 

Of all the videos in our analysis, nearly 80% can still be claimed. Why is this? Fans uploading their videos from the crowd, combined with the unique performances of these songs, means traditional audio fingerprinting techniques miss out on this content. Most importantly, it means artists and their teams won’t know about these videos or receive the data and benefits. Using our proprietary technology, we are able to ‘find the unfindable’ – content that other identification systems are missing.