When people first heard about the Frye Music Festival, it was portrayed as the next big hit music festival such as Coachella or Lollapalooza, or so, that what was a person thought that it would be once they arrived. Sadly, attendees were in for a different reality that was completely different than what was portrayed on social media. The Frye Music Festival was being promoted by some of the biggest names in the music industry set to take place on an island in the Bahamas full of glamour with all the bells and whistles of a once in a lifetime experience. Spreading the word through social media sites such as Instagram basically helped promote and spread like fire the music festival, but it also, became the biggest downfall of the festival and its lack of delivering what it had promised.
Organizers for the festival were rapper, JaRule, and the founder of Frye Media, Billy McFarland. The Frye Music Festival was supposed to take place over two weekends in April and May of 2017 in the Bahamas. It was being described as a luxury music festival with the majority of its promotions being spread through Instagram by such famous people as Kendall Jenner.
All of this hype of glamour and luxury was easily passed and gained followers through Instagram by people that feared missing out on the next big thing. But, why wouldn’t they? Everything that was described or portrayed gave those followers a sense that it was the perfect musical experience. If you were one of the lucky people to gain a ticket to the Frye Music Festival, then you were promised with such luxuries as arriving on a private jet and accommodations of luxury.
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Ticket holders were even promised full VIP treatment along with gourmet meals prepared by top chefs. Such promises as these turned out to be anything shy of disaster for the ticket holders that had paid thousands of dollars to have the experience of luxury that was only seen in the pictures of the promotion of the Frye Music Festival.1 Sadly, what was actually in store for these ticket holders was far more like a disaster zone and a journey that they wished that they had never set to take.
To break down what was actually experienced by the music festival attendees can be described as nothing short of chaotic disaster.
Once arriving to the island:
- Those luxury accommodations were mere tents that were available in a chaotic first come first serve basis.
- Those meals prepared by gourmet chefs were only plain jane cheese sandwiches.
- Staffers for the Frye Music Festival were few and far between and didn’t really know what was going on them-selves.
- Concert goers were left fending for themselves in what appeared to be “Survivor” like mode.2
As night approached to what was going to be the next best music festival around the world, the Frye Music Festival was cancelled, but certainly not without consequences that were to follow by media and blasts against it on social media sites
This is the part where social media became the biggest downfall of the festival after giving the festival its biggest start. Pictures from disgusted and disappointed attendees of the festival starting filling up social media as well as tweets describing the horrible chaos experienced from attendees that were clueless before arriving on site. JaRule took to twitter to tweet apologies, but still stated that it wasn’t his fault as he was clueless to what was going on. The main creator of the festival, Bill McFarland, has really yet to apologize or take responsibility for the demise of the music festival. Instead of the Frye Music Festival bringing in millions of dollars, it would end up costing the organizers of the festival, hundreds of millions of dollars. Five law-suits were filed in excess of hundreds of millions of dollars.3
A lesson that should be learned from the Frye Music Festival is to “never use social media to make promises you can’t keep, and to make your apologies quick and heartfelt if need be. The same things that build you up can tear you down—tweet by painful tweet.”4 This is a great example of how social media should not be used. Promotions of the festival made by celebrities who were later found out to be paid for their service has since been determined to be against the law not to mention that promises were made that could not and were not delivered.
Also, there was no way to hide what took place at the festival for attendees since social media captured pictures and it was an instant replay to the world what was happening at the click of a button. Another way that could have helped make things a little better, would have been apologizes given instantly from the organizers. But, sadly, the lack of these instant apologizes just made it seem like a scam that they were trying to crawl out from. Lesson learned, hopefully!
