Coachella: big names and 4K streams

Coachella opens Friday, April 10, but the biggest change this year is that people at home can watch all seven stages live at once instead of waiting for a highlights reel later. The official stream runs April 10 to 12 for weekend one, then April 17 to 19 for weekend two, on Coachella’s YouTube setup. (coachella.com) Three of those feeds — the Coachella Stage, Outdoor Theatre, and Sahara — will be available in 4K, which is the high-resolution format that makes giant festival screens and wide crowd shots look less blurry on large televisions. Coachella is also offering a four-stream multiview, so viewers can watch four sets on one screen like a sports split-screen. (consequence.net) That home-viewing push lines up with a lineup built around names that already pull huge online audiences. Weekend one is topped by Sabrina Carpenter on Friday, Justin Bieber on Saturday, and Karol G on Sunday. (indy100.com) (coachellavalley.com) Karol G arrives with a milestone attached to her set, because indy100 notes she is set to become the first Latina woman to headline Coachella. That gives Sunday night a history-making angle on top of the usual closing-slot attention. (indy100.com) The schedule also got a last-minute jolt when Jack White was added after set times were already out. He is booked for a 45-minute Saturday set at 3 p.m. Pacific Time in the Mojave Tent, which is the tent Coachella has recently used for surprise appearances. (c101.iheart.com) (consequence.net) That surprise slot matters because Mojave is not one of the festival’s main outdoor stages, so a famous artist there turns a midafternoon set into a scramble. Recent years used the same kind of pop-up booking for acts like Weezer, blink-182, and Arcade Fire. (consequence.net) (c101.iheart.com) Coachella has been a California desert pilgrimage for years, but the official site is now selling the stream almost like a parallel ticket: “be there from anywhere.” When a festival can show seven stages at once, the couch version starts to look less like a backup plan and more like its own event. (coachella.com 1) (coachella.com 2) The result is a weekend built for two different crowds on the same timetable: people walking between tents in Indio, and people jumping between tabs at home. This year’s hook is not just who headlines on April 10, 11, and 12, but how much of the festival organizers are putting on screen in real time. (coachella.com) (consequence.net)