Ceecide Festival
After the coronavirus had a big impact on the music business, touring, merch sales, etc., a few friends and I started to put together an online music festival to help benefit artists and bands that have been impacted.
What started as a joke between a friend and I, soon turned into a full blown music festival online. Being inspired by other festivals such as Square Garden by 100 Gecs and Nether Meant, we started work on contacting bands and getting all the technical streaming details worked out. Unlike other festivals of this nature, our festival had a strong focus on the music being performed live by the artists, and we can all say now that the live aspect had a huge impact on how fun and “real” the event felt.
We partnered with Sweet Relief Musicians Fund to help donations get to artists on the bill and to other artists who are struggling.
Music
When the festival was originally starting, it only had a few small bands that I knew personally, but as the scope of the festival grew, so did the bands that we got onboard for this. There were a total of 26 bands who played, they were as follows: Dogleg, Rome Hero Foxes, I’m Glad It’s You, Bad Luck, Alex Seigel, onumi, Abi Natesh, Champ Major, PowerPCME, Halloween Costume Contest, aether three (laptop funeral b2b deadsun), ADJC, Stefan James, Unusual Demont, blueberry, Puppy Parlor, GOVVNS, mary is, lunafreya, Flourysh, ceecide, lumious, Lost Ultra, worry club, .regular, and 11SIXONE.
Results
During the two day music festival we were able to raise 700$ USD and reach over 600 attendees. Ceecide Festival was mentioned in Brooklyn Vegan and Buzzlands. The festival was also attended by Kitty, Tyler Barstow of Vinyl Me, Please, Dylan Owens, EchoDDT, ABGOHARD, DylAn of MSFTSrep, Max Schramp, and more.
Team
Joe Anthony – booked bands, contacted sponsors & charities, soundchecked artists, hosted festival
ceecide – booked bands, contacted sponsors & charities, built Minecraft venue, organized Discord server, soundchecked artists
Link – built Minecraft venue, organized Discord server, soundchecked artists
Faarko – livestreamed festival on Twitch, edited performances for release
Mary – soundchecked artists, researched charities
Douglas Stewart – built Minecraft venue, researched charities
Lunafreya – soundchecked artists
Leslie – contacted bands
Brianna – soundchecked artists, hosted festival
Minecraft Venue
Since we started building the Minecraft venue a few days after starting on the project, we went with the idea to have the festival take place in a garage, just as if we were to attend an in-real-life house show. Though near the end of making the festival, the scope of the artists were larger than a house show, we felt like it’d still be a welcoming and homely place to hosts the shows.
There was a total of ~30 houses, parks, a church, a spa, and even a plotline involving haunted houses and parallel universes.
Ceecide Festival II
With the success of the first Ceecide Festival, we immediately knew that we had to create a second festival. We wanted this to be bigger and better than the first one and be able to help even more people.
Before the first festival had even happened, we already had artists, bands, managers, and more contacting us and asking if we would be putting together another one.
Not only did we intend this one to be bigger and better, we also wanted it to be different. That was a huge point. We already had seen so many Minecraft festivals and fests with pre-recorded music so we made sure that our venue was going to be unique. We didn’t rely on Minecraft or Roblox or anything else, instead we worked with a developer and created a multiplayer virtual venue from scratch that runs in your browser. A place where artists and fans could go to and feel like they were really at a beach show listening to the music.
Protests broke out during the creation of this festival and, just like everybody else, we wanted to help in any way we could. We reached out to the National Bail Fund Network and we partnered with them so that we could help people, get them advocates, legal providers, and reduce incarceration.
Music
With us wanting a bigger festival this time around, we decide it would be a three-day event. This allowed us to have such a wide variety of artists, genre, style, and more. Ranging from black metal to rap to indie and more, it was such a joy to hear all these artists perform.
We had Bartees Strange, EchoDDT (of Man Overboard), Lando Chill, Dyyo, Kendall!, cvmel, A Day Without love, Akenya, Slowsie, Pinkshift, Jake, Nydia, Zach Wood, ErrorSVI, Lowtow, Warfill, ceecide, worry club, Unusual Demont, Riverby, NIQU, Fits of Pleasure, Smile Black, 24hr Video, Funny Moments Compilation #1 (consisting of lunafreya, lumious, Connor Mowat, and ceecide), Jet, 11SIXONE, Stefan James, Abi Natesh, and 7K DEHYDRATION (consisting of Alicks, Flourysh, ceecide, Jet, Acid, Hayashi, and Jaysen).
Results
The three-day music festival was quite a success and everyone had such fun hearing the artists, joining the virtual venue, interacting with artists, interacting with fans, listening to the hosts talk and joke, and just enjoying the entire event. We all were so excited for the GoFundMe to have reached $500 and I’m so glad we were able to donate to the National Bail Fund Network and to some of the artists who played. I personally am so proud of what we’ve been able to do, especially considering this started a few months ago with an idea of my friend and I playing music live.
Team
Joe Anthony – booked bands, contacted sponsors & charities, soundchecked artists, hosted festival
ceecide – booked bands, contacted sponsors & charities, organized Discord server, soundchecked artists
Link – organized Discord server, soundchecked artists, hosted festival
Abi Natesh – livestreamed performances on Twitch, hosted festival
Douglas Stewart – contacted artists, distributed money, accountant for festival, soundchecked artists
Oasis-mihal – created, designed, and coded the virtual venue, soundcheck artists
Bon Couer – hosted festival
Jet – hosted festival, soundchecked artists
Lost Ultra – contacted artists
Leslie Sanchez – contacted artists
Virtual Venue
The idea of a custom venue was thought of a few days before the first Ceecide Festival, I knew some developers and programmers who could help and so the rest of the team agreed that this would be a great direction to go. The venue was built in Unity and hosted on my website. The idea was to recreate the feeling of going to the beach and listening to live music there. There was a bar, volleyball, frisbees that you could paly with, a piano, a stage, a camp fire and more.
ceecide fest forever