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April 28th, 2014 - 08:00pm

By Martine Paris

It's boom times for the music festival circuit inNorth America with top shows selling out in recordtime and record numbers.

San Francisco's Outside Lands sold out in less than24 hours, and Coachella in just 20 minutes forgeneral admission tickets.

With hundreds of thousands attending, all withtheir cell phones, these festivals should be the nextfrontier for game brands to engage with fans.

Pocket Gamer checked out the emerging mobilegaming scene at SXSW (read more here) and then headed into theCalifornia desert for the world-renowned Coachella Valley Music & ArtsFestival to see what opportunities exist for publishers and developers.

Early days

Rave pioneer, Gregg Gillis of Girl Talk, well-known for his stand on fair useof mashups, shared thoughts on the festival phenomenon, how culture isbecoming more connected, and where gaming might Xt in.

"The reason why Coachella is so great is that it's just so highly curated, allthe artists are here in one place with time to spend together," he said.

Indeed, Coachella's stellar lineup this year included most of the industry'sbiggest acts: Arcade Fire, Muse, MGMT, Cage the Elephant, Broken Bells,Bryan Ferry, Beck, Skrilex, Krewella, Girl Talk, Duck Sauce, Queens of theStone Age, Foster the People, Lorde, Outkast, Pharrell, Neutral Milk Hotel,the list was endless.

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Hollywood celebrities making cameos included Green Day's Billie JoeArmstrong, Gwen Stefani, Blondie's Deborah Harry, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Diddy,and Snoop Dogg.

When asked if anything has changed since he appeared in the 2008 Xlm,RiP: A Remix Manifesto, Gillis explained, "Well copyright law hasn'tchanged, but culture has evolved and now that we're all more connected,there are more artists supporting music sampling and the right to freeexpression."

When asked how he uses mobile, Gillis replied that he follows his favoriterappers on Twitter like Soulja Boy, Busta Rhymes and Freeway, butadmittedly doesn't game.

In speaking with Yasmine Yousaf of Krewella, the EDM trio who headlinedMachinima's E3 2013 party, on whether she gamed, she replied, "I do -Call of Duty." But no mobile games have yet hooked either Yasmine or hersister, Krewella's Jahan Yousaf.

Where the potential lies

Aside from Global Inheritance's solar arcade of 8-bit knockoffs like NOIMPACT-MAN and URBAN FROGGER, none of the Coachella sponsors in2014 were even remotely related to gaming.

Power and connectivity were an issue on both the festival grounds andcampgrounds, and most festival goers seemed to be using their phonesonly for selXes and social media, not gaming.

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Samsung, Sephora, Spotify, Fruttare and H&M had great brand activationsthat provided all the essentials - air-conditioned tents, makeup refresh,free ice cream, drinks, recharge stations, a chance to win valuable VIPpasses, and relax pods.

Any publisher of games (particularly musical mobile ones) seeking toconnect and reward fans in an amenity-rich environment could do well onthe festival circuit, but perhaps what's keeping gaming away fromCoachella is the limited availability and premium pricing of thesponsorships, rumored to be in the millions.

Coachella is one of the highest grossing festivals in the world and assuch has been able to keep the number of sponsorships to a minimum.With onsite activations estimated in the thousands, it's possible that theROI is just not in line with traditional mobile gaming metrics.

A matter of time?

That said, with the mobile gaming industry generating more money thanXlm, tv and music combined, it's only a matter of time before some hugegame launch takes the plunge. It's good to know there's still so muchunchartered territory to conquer.

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To see all the fun that was had, check out the Coachella photo gallery ofPocket Gamer's photographer, Jon Malloy.

Martine ParisTech reporter Martine Paris covers trends across mobile, games, AR VR,wearables and IoT, the intersection of emerging tech, music, video and culture, andhow to get featured, funded and monetized. You can typically Xnd her at showswith a mic in her hand interviewing industry's leading voices. Follow her@contentnow.

Get the latest mobile games news, interviews and in-depth analysis onTwitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and our daily newsletter.

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