Music festivals play a huge role in today’s music culture. Festivals such as Coachella, Rolling Loud, and Lollapalooza are opportunities for fans to celebrate music and enjoy their favorite artists in person. Instafest is a new web application that creates an imaginary music festival, with the performing acts based on artists that the user frequently listens to.
How to view your Instafest lineup:
Visit Instafest.app
Connect your Spotify, Apple Music, or Last.FM account
Choose the data range (last 4 weeks, last 6 months, or all-time)
The data options may vary depending on which platform you select
Select a visual style
Name your festival (optional)
Enjoy!
The website also features a “Basic Score” based on how popular the artists in your festival are. A higher-scored festival lineup might have more mainstream artists, while a lower score features artists tied to a certain genre of music. The “basic score” can be turned on or off depending on personal preference.
This website is purely meant to showcase listening habits, but I still wish some more customization options were in place. The dates that appear on your Instafest lineup will always be based on when you view it. There is not a way to customize the date or days of the week in which your imaginary festival occurs. While it is possible, it would be very odd to see Taylor Swift headlining the final day of a music festival on a Tuesday. Users should be able to customize these factors, changing them to a birthday, holiday, or whenever their heart desires.
Another amazing possibility for Instafest would be more freedom with the artists in our lineup. Kanye West is a heavily controversial and disliked figure, but he popped up in all of my festival lineups (he still made some pretty good music). With that being said, having him visible on my music festivals is not necessarily something that I want. If we had the ability to hide an artist and have the next popular artist replace them, then I’m sure many more people, including me, would be willing to share our lineups online.
Rearranging the order of artists in your Instafest festival would be another fantastic option for customization. Drake is my favorite artist of all time, and I would love to have him headline my dream festival. I should be able to switch these around to choose which artist I want to perform on which day. This would also open up the possibility for me to have a day exclusively for rap, rock, and pop music.
This program was created by Anshay Saboo, a software development student at the University of Southern California. He has experience creating other applications that aid high school and college education. This website is still new, and many more features will likely be added as it gains popularity. Congratulations to Anshay Saboo, as he has created something truly original.
Below is my Instafest based on the last 6 months of listening. Feel free to marvel at what you see or possibly shame me.
If you’d like to show off your own lineups on social media, be sure to tag WIUX @wiuxfm on Instagram and @WIUX on Twitter.
