About Headliner
Festivals are about more than the names on the line-up.
We created Headliner because we love festivals, but finding the right one, or discovering your new favourite, isn't always as easy as it should be.
There are hundreds of festivals out there. Big ones, small ones, weird ones, wonderful ones. Festivals built around music, creativity, food, community, adventure and everything in between.
The problem is finding them.
We're building a place where you can discover festivals based on what the experience is actually like: the music, the atmosphere, the people, the setting, the things to do and all the little details that make each one unique.
Because a festival isn't just about the names on the line-up.
It's how you spend your weekend, who you go with, the people you meet, the stage you stumble across at 2am, the set you weren't expecting to love, the sound bath before breakfast, the stranger who becomes a friend, the story you'll still be looking back on fondly ten years later.
Who are we?
We're El and Franz, two friends that met travelling South America and bonded over our love of festivals. We wanted to build something we'd actually use ourselves.
Both working in corporate jobs, attending festivals is the perfect break-away from the rat race of every day life. Between us, we've spent plenty of weekends in fields, dancing until sunrise, discovering artists we didn't know, stumbling across stages we weren't looking for and making the kind of memories that can only happen at festivals.
We've also spent far too much time trying to work out which festival to go to.
We realised there wasn't really a place that brought everything together, somewhere you could discover festivals based on the kind of experience you want, compare your options, find something new and hear from real people that have attended.
So we decided to build it.
Headliner started as an idea between two festival lovers and is growing into a platform for the wider festival community.
What we're building
At its heart, Headliner is a festival discovery platform.
We want to make it easier to explore the festival landscape, discover events you might never have come across and compare festivals based on the things that actually make them different.
Music is a huge part of that, but it's only part of the story. We care about the atmosphere, the setting, the people, the size, the camping, the creativity, the food, the weird and wonderful experiences, all the things that make a festival feel like that festival.
Down the line we plan to build out 'The Lowdown', where we'll explore the culture around festivals: the stories, ideas, people and important conversations shaping where the industry goes next.
We're also excited to shine a light on the festivals, people and organisations doing things differently, particularly those creating spaces that are independent, creative, inclusive, sustainable and community-minded.
Why we're doing it
We think festivals can be some of the most creative, inclusive and community-driven places around.
They're places to discover new music, meet people you wouldn't otherwise meet, try something completely different and escape from everyday life for a little while. They can give emerging artists a platform, bring people together around shared interests and create experiences that stay with you long after the tents have been packed away.
We want to celebrate that.
We're not here to tell you which festival is the best. We're here to help you find your favourite.
And as we grow, we want Headliner to become more than a place to find festivals. We want it to be a place for festival people, a community that celebrates what makes festivals special and supports the people working to make them even better.
We're here to help you find your people, discover new experiences and find your next favourite festival.
This is just the beginning.
We're building Headliner because we believe finding a festival should be part of the fun.
And we're building it with the festival community, so if you've got a festival we should know about, a story to tell, a future idea for The Lowdown or simply think we're missing something, we'd love to hear from you.
Drop us a line at hi.there.headliner@gmail.com.